2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This NSF-funded Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) project conducts three studies using mixed research methods to understand the academic success of STEM college students with ADHD. Studies 1 and 2 are complete, while Study 3 is ongoing. Study 1 is a quantitative analysis examining the relationships between pre-college factors, college experiences, and the academic success of college students with ADHD. The study found that the relationship between an ADHD diagnosis and first-year grades was partially mediated by academic adjustment. Study 2 is a scoping literature review exploring the individual student experiences of STEM college students with ADHD. After synthesizing 39 articles, the study identified key characteristics and findings about the individual student experience, highlighted potential gaps in the literature, and proposed opportunities for future research.

Study 3 is an ongoing qualitative investigation studying the effects of instructional practices (including lecture and active learning) on the individual student experience. We conducted 9 focus groups and 6 individual interviews, with a total of 26 unique engineering college students from a research-intensive institution located in the Midwest. Our study is guided by the Individual Student Experience component of Terenzini & Reason’s (2005) College Impact Model.

We used inductive and deductive coding approaches to analyze students’ classroom experiences, academic adjustment, and sense of belonging. In the first round of coding, we applied a deductive approach to label codes and refine the codebook. We coded 1,001 segments as classroom experiences (with sub-categories of instructional practices and student response), 268 segments as academic adjustment (with sub-categories of academic transitions and study skills), and 214 segments as sense of belonging (with sub-categories of classroom belongingness and engineering belongingness). In the second round of coding, we are using an inductive approach to allow emerging themes and sub-themes within each sub-category and identify the underlying patterns.

Preliminary results provide some insights about the classroom experiences of engineering college students with ADHD who participated in our study. For instance, the students generally prefer active learning classes over lecture-based classes, and they favor instructional practices that provide more structure, such as mandatory attendance and homeworks with fixed deadlines. Participants also reported that asking questions in class and having professors who knew them by name motivated them to learn. They also shared that they were more likely to learn if they could feel the instructors’ efforts and passion.

The overarching goal of this project is to understand the relationship between individual student experiences and instructional practices to create more inclusive learning environments for engineering college students with ADHD. The next steps include synthesizing findings of all three studies, and providing comprehensive suggestions to better support engineering instructors and educators.