2025 - Anonymous student comments from the Online Course Evaluation

Here are the responses to the question: What skills or knowledge did you learn or improve?

• So much about assistive technology and how it can be used, had a faint vision, I know so much more now.
• Understanding how to engineer disability equipments in several different fields
• My overall knowledge of assistive technology and how it benefits people who have impairments.
• I learned so much! I learned so much on how people with disabilities live their lives and the emerging tech that has been created/has yet been created.
• Practiced a lot of empathetic listening, information gathering, and learned a lot about the engineering process.
• I learned how to design for individuals and more personalized need-finding.
• I learned a lot about the differences in the lives of those who have disabilities and how I can be someone who can help someone out and make their lives easier!
• I learned new perspectives in assistive technology.
• I learned the importance of user-centered design, especially when it comes to assistive technologies. The speakers were very knowledgeable and I commend them on the work they are doing.

2025 - Anonymous student comments from the Online Course Evaluation

Here are the responses to the question: What would you like to say about this course to a student who is considering taking it in the future?

• Be excited about the cookies!
• Highly recommend this class to others. The lectures and guest speakers were super interesting and the project taught me a ton!
• Dave is so passionate and really just cares that you understand how assistive technology helps people with impairments and how that impacts their lives.
• Definitely take this course!! Super rewarding and you develop a great work ethic and team spirit. Also, its not too much work if you put a little time every week to work on the project.
• This is a great class if you have an interest in assistive technology, Dave is a great instructor and brings cookies to all lectures! It is informative and helps you grow skills to guide you in the engineering process.
• This class will introduce you to the wide range of assistive technologies out there. The speakers presentations vary in how interesting they are but overall they are engaging. Dave and the teaching team are great and fun to work with. The projects are pretty well scoped and are very rewarding. Working with a community partner is fun and adds more meaning to the class. Would recommend.
• Not that technical of a class so it's a relief. Guest speakers did get old but not too bad.
• TAKE IT!! SO WORTH THE RELATIONSHIPS AND BONDS THAT YOU CREATE!!
• Pretty chill if you have a good group and happen to be upperclassman engineering.
• If you are considering this for a mechanical engineering elective -- take it. It is super low stakes, the project is fun, and you get out of it what you put into it. It was super rewarding to work with the project sponsor on a project that will meaningfully improve their life. This class felt like putting all my engineering skills to a good cause. Most of the guest lecturers are also super interesting. Overall, I would strongly recommend this course.

2025 - Comments from Cardinal Course Student Survey: "What did you find valuable about the community engaged experience or project?"

• Being able to connect and engage with people from outside the community as well being able to bring my own experiences and perspectives to the class
• Being able to help members of the community.
• Being able to make an actual impact for actual people.
• Being able to see that our creation was going to be of use to another person.
• Community-based insights and design
• Designing for specific needs.
• Getting to work on a meaningful project where I saw the benefit that the product brought to the community.
• Helping someone
• I appreciated the direct impact this class afforded.
• I found that the chance to make someone’s life better was extremely valuable.
• I found the ability to tell others I helped someone in need is very valuable.
• I got to hear the actual voice.
• Interacting with the students.
• Interaction with user
• Interviews and analysis of the interview
• It is awesome to be able to work with someone in the community and make something that will be useful for them.
• It was nice to complete a project with impact.
• It was very valuable to work with the community member, receive their feedback, and ultimately create a prototype that they were very pleased with.
• Just listening and empathizing with our community partner through our meetings.
• Meeting people in the community
• Teamwork
• The back and forth feedback between our project partner was the most valuable for our project.
• The community engagement motivated me work on the project. I enjoy engineering projects in the real world.
• Very valuable to create something that actually had a measured impact on someone’s life
• Was very cool to actually communicate with the person we would be making a product for.

2025 - Comments from Cardinal Course Student Survey: "Please provide an example of a course concept that you encountered in your community engaged project. Did your exposure to the community partner help you better understand this concept? If so, how?"

• “Understanding the problem.” It helped my team see first person how people manage challenges in their everyday lives with assistive technology.
• user centered design
• Yes, definitely. It helped to get insight in what he wanted and how we could help him the most we can.
• Working to understand a need by talking to.
• We visited the individual’s home and were able conduct engineering need finding in detail.
• We discussed the difficulties that disabled individuals face in doing daily tasks, and engaging with our community partner really helped me understand that on a deeper level.
• Understanding capabilities of a particular disabled person
• The project partner helped me to understand that adaptive technology needs to be made for an individual to be most effective as each disability is unique.
• The coverage of the design process in class helped.
• The course brought in several members of the community to help me understand different disabilities and how they affect the daily lives. From this, we are able to better serve these members by catering their needs in our project.
• The community member sufficiently described the scope of issues she was having.
• Test and reiterate
• One example of a course concept that I encountered is to design with the people instead of designing for them.
• My exposure to my community partner put this concept into practice.
• Lecture covered community engagement content.
• Learned how important getting a design perspective from our partner was and how that helped us develop a universal design.
• Learned about the needs of wheelchair users with regards to day to day operations.
• It definitely helped me a lot.
• Individual design. Usually we think of design in a broad and manufacturing perspective but during this class we were encouraged to empathize and understand the individual experiences of disabled people.
• I really enjoyed visiting the play ground and I appreciated all of its features
• I encountered the idea of interviewing users with disabilities.
• Human centered design - specifically understanding user needs and putting in a lot of time and effort there before actually fabricating the device. got first hand experience with this working with the community partner! Helped see the needs!
• Designing for individuals with disabilities: yes, they provided help with understanding different options and possible solutions in mind.
• Design process
• Coolness factor was a concept that I encountered in this project. Yes, my community partner helped explain why it was important to have coolness factor in accessibility design.

2025 - Here are anonymous student comments from the end-of-term presentations scoring form.

• Amazing class! Every single lecturer was interesting and taught me a lot. Loved how you brought leaders in this field and gave them free reigns to talk about their work. Also really enjoyed the team project and completely a task that was purposeful and meaningful! Thanks for a great class!!!
• I loved all the lectures and our project! Also, I think the course structure was really accessible too.
• Thank you so much Dave! This was a great opportunity.
• I have liked this class! It was fun to work with Abby and Nathan. I feel like we designed something that we are very proud of that Abby will really be able to use.
• Thank you all for such a wonderful class. This truly is the best Assistive Technology class at Stanford ;). I will carry these lessons and experiences with me throughout my life. Thank you.
• Thanks for this great class. I learned a lot and it was so fun.
• Great course - loved designing for Abby!
• I thought the course was amazing. It was great to work with new people I didn't know and develop a product that would help someone. This class also helped me improve my presentation / professional skills. Great class and would highly recommend it to others.
• I really enjoyed this course and the open-ended projects. I enjoyed the wide variety of assistive technologies we were exposed to. Thanks!
• I loved this course! I especially liked the session where Stanford students talked about their experiences with disability. Thank you!
• I think that this class was excellent! It was absolutely amazing to meet the people that we worked with and working together as well was amazing! THANK YOU DAVE!!