Abstract:

Pre-class materials are an important part for the implementation of flipped learning approaches, allowing the students to arrive to the experimental laboratory prepared for deeper exploration of the subject, and enabling them to develop a focused discussion during class time. Moreover, the pre-class materials have a key role for student engagement and development of independent learning. When learning Mechanics of Materials, the students must develop analytic and applied skills around fundamental stress analysis concepts, which enable the students to perceive critical insights into the behavior of materials under various loads and conditions. These skills are very important for failure mode prediction, safety and performance enhancement, standards and regulations compliance, or supporting design and innovation.

In these areas of technical education, there is increasingly a commitment to developing more accessible and effective learning environments for students. For the promotion of inclusive education, the learning materials must ensure accessibility for all students, regardless of their physical or sensory disabilities. Thus, the elaboration of inclusive pre-class materials contributes to attain equity in the access to education, enhanced learning effectiveness and skill development, promotes learning independence, and reduces barriers for the full participation in educational activities. Particularly, the development of inclusive learning materials for blind and visually impaired students in the field of Stress Analysis and Mechanics of Materials is a challenging and time consuming task, due to the frequent employment of equations, graphs and diagrams.

In this work, an experience in the development of pre-class materials for inclusive education in Stress Analysis and Mechanics of Materials for visually impaired students is presented. The required structure, text accessibility, specific navigation characteristics, tagging, metadata, among other characteristics of the learning materials is analyzed and discussed. Special attention is paid to the most important aspects of early content creation, which can also play a fundamental role in transforming conventional pre-class material into inclusive materials. Moreover, the main barriers, resource constraints and limitations associated to inclusive learning materials in the technological fields, and the effective strategies to overcome such difficulties are analyzed.

Keywords:

Undergraduate education, inclusive education, visual disabilities, Mechanics of materials, flipped learning.