2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

WIP: Developing an Interview Protocol to Unveil the Stories of Neurodivergent Engineering Students

Presented at ERM WIP II: Equity & Accessibility in Engineering Education

This Work in Progress (WIP) paper will present an interview protocol development that leverages social media analysis for capturing narratives of neurodivergent (e.g., ADHD, autistic, dyslexic) engineering students. The work presented in this WIP is part of a larger mixed-methods sequential research project which aims to capture neurodivergent engineering student narratives that describe their engineering experiences in terms of strengths and challenges.

Through social media analysis, we identified key language used by the neurodivergent community (e.g., neurodivergent, spoon, forget). We developed a few initial themes such as multiple pathways to recognizing one’s identity of being neurodivergent, multiple ways in which neurodivergence symptoms are experienced, and the ways in which an individual internally and outwardly interacts with their own symptoms.

To capture neurodivergent narratives, we plan on conducting semi-structured interviews with neurodivergent engineering students three times over the semester (beginning, middle, end). Initial interview protocols for each interview will be developed and adjusted throughout the interview data collection process. An initial compilation of relevant interview questions was compiled from previous research and from the objectives of the research study. This initial pool of questions will then be refined based on our thematic findings and using the nuanced language identified on the social media platforms TikTok, Reddit, and Twitter. Results of this work will be presented in this paper as an interview protocol that will continue to be adapted as part of this larger research study, but can also be used as a starting point for researchers exploring similar topics in capturing the experience of neurodivergent engineering students.

Authors

Leslie A Brown Utah State University [biography]

Leslie Brown is an Engineering Education PhD student at Utah State University. She recently completed a Master's degree in Engineering Education at Utah State University with thesis focus on training high school STEM teachers to implement engineering curriculum into their classrooms.
Dr. Catherine McGough Spence http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5288-8345 Minnesota State University, Mankato [biography]

Catherine Spence is an Associate Professor at Iron Range Engineering in the Integrated Engineering Department at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She received her PhD in Engineering and Science Education in 2019 and a BS in Electrical Engineering in 2014 at Clemson University.
Autumn Cuellar Utah State University [biography]

Autumn Cuellar is a Ph.D. student in Engineering Education. Her undergraduate and master's careers were both in Computer Science. She believes that everyone can achieve their goals, regardless of physical ability. This is why Autumn strives to make engineering accessible for everyone.
Kartik Thakkar Utah State University
Hamid Karimi Utah State University [biography]

I obtained my Ph.D. in Computer Science from Michigan State University (MSU) in 2021. My main research interest during my Ph.D. was artificial intelligence (AI) for social good and focused on several exciting directions, including AI in education, computational politics, and misinformation detection.
Dr. Marissa A Tsugawa http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6009-8810 Utah State University - Engineering Education [biography]

Marissa Tsugawa is an assistant professor at Utah State University who leverages mixed-methods research to explore neurodiversity and identity and motivation in engineering. They completed their Ph.D. in Engineering Education where they focused on motivation and identity for engineering graduate students.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

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