Asee peer logo

Addressing the Needs of Students with Disabilities during the COVID Pandemic

Download Paper |

Conference

2022 Spring ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Location

Newark, New Jersey

Publication Date

April 22, 2022

Start Date

April 22, 2022

End Date

April 23, 2022

Page Count

2

DOI

10.18260/1-2--40042

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/40042

Download Count

321

Paper Authors

author page

Paul J Marchese City University of New York, Queensborough Community College

biography

Deborah Hecht Center for Advanced Studyin Education

visit author page

As Director of the Center for Advanced Study in Education, at the CUNY Graduate Center I am involved in a wide range of educational evaluations of funded and local projects. I also mentor graduate students interested in careers in evaluation.

visit author page

Download Paper |

Abstract

Students with disabilities account for a significant portion of those pursuing an engineering degree. According to the National Center for Education Statistics 19.4% of undergraduate students report having a disability (Okoro, 2018). Additionally, 14% of students pursuing an undergraduate degree in engineering report needing some type of accommodation. Before the onset of COVID students with disabilities tended to have lower retention and completion rates. The reason for this varied but included factors such as difficulty of the engineering material, low self-efficacy, lack of accommodations to address the disabilities of the students, and pedagogy that does not take into account the students’ needs (students with different abilities learn differently). In the spring of 2020 when universities switched to an online modality many students faced difficulties and left college. Students with disabilities, an already vulnerable population, faced even greater challenges than their peers. Educators, having to switch to teaching online, did not always take into account those students with disabilities. In this paper we present the efforts at several colleges XXXX to address the needs students with disabilities. These accommodations include, the use of innovative technology, enhanced pedagogy, and academic and personal counseling.

Marchese, P. J., & Hecht, D. (2022, April), Addressing the Needs of Students with Disabilities during the COVID Pandemic Paper presented at 2022 Spring ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference, Newark, New Jersey. 10.18260/1-2--40042

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2022 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015