Estrategia pedagógica para la formación de ingenieros con discapacidad visual

Abstract

Educational inclusion of people with disabilities is an obligation of the institutions of higher education supported by the constitution and laws in several countries of Latin America. Although efforts have been undertaken to make adjustments at institutional, regulatory, educational, curriculum and teaching levels, especially at primary and secondary education, there are still few educational and methodological training proposals for visually impaired engineers. In this paper a methodology of problem based learning as a teaching strategy for inclusive education of engineering students with visual disabilities is proposed. The strategy was used with a blind student of Electromechanical Engineering, caused by an accident, who developed his graduation project to get his professional degree. After acquiring the skills needed for the search, selection and management of information, it was possible for the student to undertake the monitoring of a problem solving in the classroom when interacting with peers in a subject called research seminar of the eighth semester. The experience was a challenge for students and teachers since it is unusual to have disable people in the classroom, along with the limited guidance provided by the institution to help this type of population. As a main conclusion, the need for training university teachers on topics related to inclusive education, teaching aids and alternative teaching strategies is highlighted to make their work more effective when working with this type of disable people.