Virtual STEM Mentoring Models for Students with Disabilities

Date & Time

Wednesday, March 20, 2024 - 9:20 AM PDT  

Location

Platinum 7  

Description

The online mentoring of students with disabilities has been shown to improve their retention in STEM education and careers. We examined what an effective mentoring model would look like based on students' preferences of being mentored for various research skills and topics specific to students with disabilities, across a range of communication paradigms. To achieve this, we conducted closed card sorting sessions and interviews with 8 students with disabilities to illustrate their mental models around the mentorship communication paradigm, in which, students sorted components of mentorship across communication modal categories and explained their thought process behind the sort. Our findings indicated a consensus across 75% of the component/category sets, indicating that student mental models for mentorship are similar. We also noticed a similarity in the pattern of sorting for online and neurodivergent learners. These findings led us to reflect on the factors that cause a similar mentorship expectation across these learners, and helped us define the criteria that a mobile, online mentorship platform for this population should contain. In addition, we developed the "Theory of Virtual Integration", which will advance the efforts towards improving the persistence of this population in STEM. Through our presentation, we would like to discuss in detail the insights we discovered, the platform criteria we formed and the broader implications these would have on the field.  

Audience

• Higher Education
• Information & Communications Technology
• Disability Specific
• Research & Development

Audience Level

Intermediate  

Session Summary (Abstract)

Providing students with disabilities with the right mentorship support helps retain them in STEM. In this session, we will discuss the mentorship model we uncovered, how it applies to an online platform, and the impact it has for the field.  

Primary Topic

Education  

Secondary Topics

• Digital Accessibility
• Information & Communications Technology (ICT)
• Mobile Technology
• Research

 

Session Type

General Track  

Presenters

• Beverly Vaz
  Georgia Institute of Technology
• Maureen Linden
  Georgia Institute of Technology
• Nathan Moon
  Georgia Institute of Technology

Add to Outlook/iCal (How it works)

Back to Session List