Helping to Support Science Undergraduates with Disabilities in an Active Learning Setting

What is active learning?

Active learning has been proven to show an increase in student learning and a decrease in student failure compared to passive learning. As a result, many institutions have adopted various active learning pedagogies. Evidence also shows that active learning may decrease achievement gaps between students in traditionally underserved groups, such as women and underrepresented minority students. While active learning has been dubbed as inclusive teaching, it is still unclear if active learning is inclusive for all students. It has now been established that students from certain demographic backgrounds such as students with anxiety and the LGBTQ+ community have encountered barriers in an active learning setting. In a recent study, we interviewed 37 Disability Resource Centers (DRC) Directors from various U.S. Institutions to identify “To what extent is active learning inclusive for science undergraduates with disabilities”

What is the DRC and who does it serve?

Disability Resource Centers (DRC) are offices on university campuses that provide academic and social services for students with disabilities and diagnosed medical conditions. Recently, ASU’s DRC changed its name to Student Accessibility and Inclusive Learning Services (SAILS). DRCs offer support to students with a variety of different types of disabilities. Some of the most common types of disabilities include learning disabilities (e.g. autism, dyslexia), physical disabilities (e.g. cerebral palsy, spina bifida), chronic health conditions (e.g. cancer, diabetes), visual impairments, hearing loss, and mental health and psychological disabilities (e.g. anxiety, depression). Based on a student’s specific disability and needs, the DRC can work with the student to provide specific academic accommodations or modifications to ensure that the student can meet the learning goals of a course without fundamentally altering the academic program in any way. Common examples of academic accommodations include peer note-takers, extended time for exams, and adaptive furniture in lecture halls.

What challenges exist for students with disabilities in active learning?

The majority of the common academic accommodations that are provided for the DRC have been adopted based on traditional lecture where an instructor speaks and students listen passively. Active learning uses different modalities of teaching and learning, such as group work, clicker questions, and cold/ random calls. When we interviewed DRC directors, they mentioned that students with a variety of different types of disabilities often struggle with this more interactive mode of teaching and that they often need to get more creative at coming up with an accommodation, since the standard ones are often not useful. This all takes more time and effort, which typically means that a student won’t get the right accommodation until later in the semester. This delay can negatively impact the student, both as far as how welcoming the classroom feels to them and in their overall academic success.

What steps can be done to enhance the experiences of students with disabilities in active learning?

To better help students with disabilities in an active learning setting, instructors can be more transparent about their teaching practices so that students can get the right accommodations earlier. This can be done by highlighting these practices in the course syllabus or in an email sent out at the beginning of the course. Students may also benefit from instructors specifically trying to design their courses to be inclusive for students with disabilities. Instructors can be proactive in this by adopting universal designs for learning (UDL) practices because they provide opportunities for students to engage with the material through different methods.

Instructors can also ask students to complete a survey where, if they feel comfortable, they can reveal their disability status to the instructor. This provides an opportunity for the instructor to reach out to the student, build a relationship, and help the student to identify an accommodation for the active learning course.

Finally, instructors can work with their institutional DRC office to flag certain courses that they teach in an active learning way and provide the DRC with suggestions for accommodations for specific teaching practices based on their prior experience with students. Beginning to document which courses are active learning courses and which accommodations might be helpful is an important step institutionally to ensure that we can best support our students with disabilities in active learning.

What about supporting students with disabilities in other learning environments?

DRCs have established these standard accommodations based on traditional lecture courses. These don’t translate well to active learning settings. However, what about other learning environments such as online learning, undergraduate research experiences, or field courses? We would predict that these learning environments also present novel challenges for students with disabilities and standard accommodations may not be sufficient. Our research team is currently exploring these settings, so stay tuned for future studies!

Sources:

• Gin, L. E., Guerrero, F. A., Cooper, K. M., & Brownell, S. E. (2020). Is Active Learning Accessible? Exploring the Process of Providing Accommodations to Students with Disabilities. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 19(4), es12. https://www.lifescied.org/doi/10.1187/cbe.20-03-0049

Post Author: Frank Guerrero is a Research Assistant in Sara Brownell’s Biology Education Research Lab at ASU, which broadly focuses on making undergraduate STEM courses more equitable and inclusive. His research has focused on helping support students with disabilities in undergraduate science. Frank hopes to be able to create change and improve the undergraduate experience broadly for first-generation students, students of color, and students with disabilities in STEM.