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Advantages and Disadvantages of a Virtual Engineering Experience During COVID-19 for Blind and Low-Vision High School Students

G. Timko ; N. Shaheen ; W.H. Goodridge ; T. Green ; D. Kane. ( June 2022 , 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

The purpose of this research paper is to explore advantages and disadvantages of conducting an engineering experience for blind and low vision (BLV) participants in a virtual/online environment. This experience was designed to expose BLV high school students to engineering content and enhance their spatial ability. Spatial ability is an intelligence generally defined as the ability to generate, retain, retrieve, and transform well-structured visual images and is particularly important to fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). A variety of spatial ability constructs have been identified, a few of which include mental rotation, spatial orientation, and spatial visualization. This paper refers to spatial ability as a quantification of performance on a specific construct of spatial thinking: rotation and cutting plane.

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The purpose of this paper is to explore results from a qualitative study of how high school aged BLV youth used spatial language during a virtual engineering experience administered by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB). Findings from this study can provide recommendations to enhance language in curricula that better reflects BLV students' content and may ultimately encourage more BLV students to pursue careers in STEM fields.