2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Studies in the field of engineering education have demonstrated that students with disabilities in engineering encounter barriers and discrimination in their academic experiences. Even though accommodations are designed to support these students, these accommodations are not necessarily a complete “solution”. Other studies have illustrated examples of students with disabilities who have dropped out of their engineering programs and opted to pursue different college majors. Moreover, scholars have suggested that research on disability in higher education is limited. In an effort to amplify the voices of these students and to better understand what is already documented in the literature, this conference paper will present a review of the literature on the experiences of undergraduate students with physical disabilities in engineering.

This literature review seeks to answer the following question: What is the current landscape of literature about the experiences of undergraduate engineering students with physical disabilities? Three databases will be consulted for finding the articles: the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) PEER Document Repository, the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) and the Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering. These databases were selected to capture diverse perspectives within educational research and within engineering education research specifically. Some of the search keywords will consist of ‘disability’, ‘engineering’, ‘experiences’, ‘undergraduate education’, ‘students with disabilities’, ‘disabled students.’ The search will include articles in conference proceedings and journals during the span of the last ten (10) years (2013 through 2023). The following inclusion criteria will be used to select the appropriate studies for review: (1) the participants in the studies include students with physical disabilities, (2) the context for the study is undergraduate engineering education in any engineering discipline, and (3) the focus of the study will include explorations of students’ experiences. After the papers are screened by title, abstract and full-text, the ones that comply with the three mentioned criteria will be declared as eligible. The eligible papers will be analyzed by a qualitative content analysis to articulate the breadth of research on the experiences of undergraduate engineering students with physical disabilities and to isolate key gaps.

It is expected that the results of the literature review will address academic experiences such as learning processes, barriers, discrimination, positive and negative interactions of engineering disabled students with classmates and faculty, and others that impede the academic success of these students. It is also anticipated that current literature focused on lack of accommodations in classrooms, absence of students with disabilities’ opinions in the design of solutions, and some disabled engineering students abandoning their programs to pursue other horizons. Overall, this literature review will provide the engineering education community with an understanding of the current conditions of students with physical disabilities and a foundation for pursuing additional research that can further enhance the experiences of these students within engineering.