Engineering for Inclusive STEM Education. An Interdisciplinary Collaboration Project for the Design and Creation of Accessible and Inclusive Learning Materials

Abstract

Worldwide there is an emphasis on STEM education. However, current academic programs do not usually reach disadvantaged groups such as students with disabilities. Science education is saturated with representations of scientific concepts and most of these representations are visual. Therefore, an important challenge for the goal of attaining equitable education is the availability of teaching/learning resources for inclusion of students with visual impairments. Previously, our group has developed tactile three-dimensional representations to teach/learn biological concepts of microscopic nature but the production of these materials is expensive due to the technology used and their hand-made fabrication. In this study, we involved university students from engineering and other majors to create and construct educational materials to foster inclusive STEM education informed by Universal Design for Learning and User Centered Design frameworks. Students applied to participate in the project and were grouped into five interdisciplinary teams. Preliminary results obtained from student interviews and field notes indicate that participants fully engaged in the challenge and expressed that the goal is highly motivating, given that this is the first opportunity they have to apply their knowledge from the field of engineering to educational problems.