<< A WORD FROM THE EDITOR >>
One of the disadvantages of preparing and disseminating a newsletter by
email is that you can't use postal delays as an excuse for late publication.
I don't suppose anyone would buy the idea that this newsletter is late because
of the Christmas rush, huh? Oh, well. The fact is that the newsletter is late
because I have taken on too many projects all at the same time. I apologize.
I hope you find it worth waiting for -- again!
In preparing this month's newsletter, I was reminded of a number of bumper
stickers and office graffiti I have seen over the years. The one that seemed
most apropos to the topic(s) at hand was a poster I used to have on my office
wall with a picture of a rag doll being put through an old hand-wringer. In
large letters across the top the poster proclaimed, "THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU
FREE…" Across the bottom. in equally bold print, it said, "BUT FIRST IT WILL
MAKE YOU MISERABLE!!!" I have come to some rather uncomfortable personal conclusions
over the last month as to the state-of-the-art for DSS in higher education
and how we got ourselves in this situation. Note that, in the last sentence
I indicated these were *personal* conclusions. I don't know that they are
right, but I do know that this line of thinking has explained a lot to me
about what I see/read these days, and thus I thought I would share it with
you…
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<< BACK TO BASICS >>
I remember a story a colleague shared a number of years ago that centered
around WHY we do the things we do. He told of his first holiday season with
his new bride, who had proudly invited the entire family, from BOTH sides,
to join them at their home for a holiday dinner. On the eve of the big occasion,
she had sent him out to buy a HUGE ham -- enough to feed the 20+ people they
were expecting. The following morning, he watched in fascination as the young
woman proceeded to cut the ham in half, then carefully prepare it for baking.
Throughout the day, she nurtured the two halves, cooked successively in the
oven, lovingly basting it with the carefully prepared glaze and arranging
the hams on two separate platters, surrounded by appropriate parsley, yams,
and so on. When he finally got up the nerve to ask WHY she had cut the ham
in two, she carefully explained to the poor, witless fool that this was the
way a ham should be cooked. You did it as two separate pieces so that you
could have it ready to serve from each end of the dining table at the same
time. That way, everyone could be quickly served from those succulent platters
with all the trimmings of a festive holiday dinner. She had watched her mother
do it that way all her life.
While politely appreciative of her cooking expertise, my friend privately
questioned her logic. After all, he had been watching HIS mother cook hams
all his life and she NEVER cooked it in two pieces. That evening, when the
company arrived, he found a quiet moment alone with his mother-in-law, and
raised the subject of "how to cook a ham" in the context of having been fascinated
to watch his wife as she prepared for the company throughout the day. "She
told me that you taught her to always cut the ham in two pieces before cooking
it. Why is that?" His mother-in-law patiently explained that this was the
way ham was cooked. It not only allowed you to better gauge the temperature
and "done-ness" of the meat, when dealing with those smaller pieces, but it
assured the ham would not be too dry at the end of the baking because the
outer juices had been cooked off while waiting for the heat to do its work
on a larger piece of meat. She had ALWAYS prepared ham in this way, as had
her mother before her.
Now this "it'll-get-too-dry-the-other-way" explanation made slightly more
sense to my colleague than his wife's explanation, but being a scientist at
heart, he decided to probe further. As it turned out, Grandma was also invited
to the dinner that night, and so he found a way to bring up the subject of
cooking a ham by cutting it in two, and asked about the origin of this fascinating
family tradition. Grandma started to laugh uproariously in response. It turns
out that the first stove Grandpa could afford to buy her when they got married
and set up housekeeping was VERY small, to fit in their VERY small apartment.
The oven compartment couldn't hold a roasting pan bigger than about 10"x13"
so she had gotten in the habit of cutting larger things (such as hams) into
two pieces and cooking them separately. Thus was born a family tradition,
carried on through successive generations, but with less and less understanding
of how (and why) it all began.
Why am I telling you this? Because I have recently begun to wonder whether
we, as a profession, have gone through several generations of service providers/service
provision in a relatively short span of time (say, about 20 years!), and whether
today we carry on certain activities that are appropriate to accomplishing
the task at hand, without really understanding WHY we do it -- or what the
task is, for that matter!
QUESTION: WHY do we provide accommodations for students with disabilities
in higher education?
ANSWER: We provide accommodations in order to provide equal access to educational
opportunity for students with disabilities. EVERYBODY knows that, right?
That's the right answer, but lately I am not so sure that the answer means
the same thing to all of us. In MY understanding, this means removing barriers
to the educational activity through the provision of some accommodation. I
wonder if others don't understand it to mean providing something extra that
will help to make up the difference. Two mental images come to mind: (1) when
they weigh in the jockeys at the race track, they add extra pounds to the
saddle of the lighter jockeys to make sure all horses are carrying the same
weight -- they don't allow the heavier jockeys to start the race two furlongs
out in front; (2) we are fond of talking about "leveling the playing field"
with our accommodations. I keep visualizing that playing field balanced precariously
on a fulcrum. Should we add something to the high side to make things level
out? Or should we put props under the low end to artificially raise it to
the same point? Enough of these metaphors -- let's talk turkey (er… ham!).
In responding to technical assistance inquiries, I find myself brought back
repeatedly to the idea of making a determination of what is appropriate based
on the idea of "providing equal access to educational opportunity." I often
get online and rant and rave about not assigning accommodations on the basis
of a label -- that is, not assuming that all students with learning disabilities
need "x", "y", and "z," or that all students with visual impairments should
have "a" and "b." The alternative takes more work. It means figuring out what
everyone else has access to and sorting through the functional impact of THIS
student's disability to determine if he/she has EQUAL access.
Let's see if we can put this in practice. What is it that a student without
a disability has access to in a typical classroom situation that may be somehow
limited by a student's disability? Nondisabled students can go to class, *listen*
and *participate* in that class as it is ongoing, and *take notes* on the
important information/concepts presented in that. Now let's talk about functional
limitations that might impact on any piece of this traditional scenario…
What if the student cannot listen to the class? If the student has a hearing
loss but maintains some usable hearing, we provide an assistive listening
device, coupled with some good classroom management techniques (don’t talk
with your back to the board, don't pace around the room while speaking, repeat
questions from the class, and so on) to try to provide equal access to the
auditory portion of the class/discussion. If the student is deaf, we consider
other alternatives for providing on-the-spot access to what other students
take in through their ears, such as sign language interpreters or real-time
captioning (more about real-time captioning as an accommodation later in this
newsletter!). What if the student can HEAR what is being said, but cannot
process auditory information in the same way, such as the learning disabled
student with an auditory processing problem? There is nothing we can do to
help the student "hear" that information in another way during the class to
ease his/her understanding, but there MAY be something we can do that will
help mitigate the impact of that doubtful auditory processing on the student's
future understanding (read on!). But just because a student is unable to hear/process
fully what is being said in class, we do NOT suggest th at he/she should not
be held responsible for the information that is conveyed in class. We do NOT
suggest that the student should be allowed to skip class and work solely from
a report of that class (through a transcript of through the notes of others).
That would NOT be an appropriate accommodation.
What if the student cannot participate in class? If the student is deaf and
does not have intelligible speech that will allow him/her to participate,
a sign language interpreter may provide a supplement to the student's capabilities
through reverse interpreting. If a student has a severe speech disability,
we look at the possibility of some form of augmentive communication system
that will allow the student to create output through technology that will
allow fuller participation. If the student is a severe stutterer (or has similar
problems in communicating on demand), it may be possible for the faculty member
to phrase questions to that particular student that can be answered with yes/no
responses, encouraging involvement without slowing the class interaction or
scaring the daylights out of the student! But remember that in MOST classes,
not every student speaks on every issue, or even during every class period.
"Participation" doesn't necessarily mean saying something to add to a discussion.
Just because the mouth isn't moving doesn't mean the brain isn't engaged.
SOMETIMES the nonvocal student can participate fully without ever saying anything.
And sometimes he/she can't. Nothing we can do will make the student less disabled,
and it is NOT appropriate to say, "Since you can't talk, we won't expect you
to communicate in class -- even though it IS expected of everyone else." That
is NOT an appropriate accommodation.
What if the student cannot take notes? Bzzzzzzt! Wrong question. I need to
know WHY the student cannot take notes. Does the student have an upper body
mobility problem (quadriplegic? cerebral palsy? arthritis?)? Does the student
have a learning disability that interferes with his/her ability to appropriately
focus attention on listening and writing at the same time? Does the student
have an auditory processing problem that may interfere with the accuracy of
the information he/she can record in those notes? Does the student have a
hearing loss that requires the visual attention be directed fully on the interpreter/instructor,
thus making it impossible to take notes at the same time? Does the student
have an attention deficit disorder which creates difficulty in sustaining
attention throughout a typical class period, thus suggesting the possibility
of gaps in the notes the student may be taking? There are lots of good reasons
for providing notetakers for students with disabilities, but the level and
organization of those notetaking services may vary dramatically depending
upon WHY the student is unable to independently take notes. We should NOT
be providing a notetaker because the student has a disability and we want
to make sure that he/she has good notes to work from without taxing the student
too much. Other students are "taxed" to listen, participate, and take notes
-- that's equal access. If the disability makes it impossible to do that equally
then so be it, but DON'T tell me that is it unfair to ask a student with a
disability to be expected to do as much independent "student-ing" (you know
what I mean!) as his/her disability will allow. I continue to be amazed when
I hear reports of institutions who have several hundred students with disabilities,
most of whom are receiving notetakers as an accommodation. Are the notetakers
being assigned as a service -- or a bonus? And if we blur the lines ourselves,
how will we defend the integrity of the accommodation process to faculty who
question it?
What actually got me started on this line of thinking was a conversation
I had with someone regarding the appropriateness of providing extended time
on a test to a student with a learning disability. The nature of the exam
(a geology test, requiring students to correctly identify samples and their
basic properties) required little reading or writing. Thus the new service
provider questioned the need for extended time on such an exam. The service
provider knew nothing of the idea of a processing speed deficit that might
accompany a learning disability -- she was focused solely on the idea of assessing
the student's achievement scores in reading/writing in comparison with the
reading/writing elements of the test. She knew WHAT could be done, but she
wasn't so sure WHY it might be done. Because she had failed to assess what
functional limitation might impact on the student's performance on this test,
she was inclined to disallow the accommodation.
I could provide lots of other examples. Everybody knows that textbooks-on-tape
may be an appropriate accommodation for a student with a disability. But does
everybody know WHY it may be appropriate, so we also know for whom it is NOT
appropriate or in what situations it may NOT be a viable option? For example,
a blind student may be able to make good use of a recording of a Political
Science textbook, but find the recording of a chemistry textbook very difficult
to use effectively because the chemical formulas are not so easily processed
when presented in a strictly auditory fashion as are the larger concepts of
equality and justice! Some LD students use textbooks-on-tape instead of trying
to read the texts directly because of the severity of their reading problems.
Some LD students would be well-served to use textbooks-on-tape to supplement
their reading (i.e., to listen to the tape WHILE reading the text, to provide
auditory input to supplement the visual input, and to keep them from getting
stuck on a word that may alter the meaning or slow down the process). And
some LD students with auditory processing problems may find that textbooks-on-tape
make things worse, instead of better! The quadriplegic student who cannot
independently turn the pages of a textbook may have relied on the alternative
of textbooks-on-tape in the past because of limited options. In today's high
tech world, a quadriplegic student may find e-text, which he/she can read
independently onscreen to be a far superior alternative. Are we still providing
textbooks-on-tape to such students because "we've always done it this way"?
The bottom line is that I think it is time we went back to basics. I think
we need to review THOROUGHLY why we provide certain accommodations -- and
make sure everyone is listening -- so that we are sure we are providing accommodations
appropriately focused on trying to assure equal access. Nothing more, nothing
less. I am designing a new online course that will be a review of these "basics"
-- each lesson will discuss thoroughly a specific accommodation, why it is
given, to whom, the pro's and cons. I haven't got all the details worked out
-- more about that later. In the meantime, though, let's talk about how we
got ourselves in this position in the first place!
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<< NOTIFICATION LETTERS: A PRIME
EXAMPLE! >>>
How do faculty receive notification of assigned accommodations on your campus?
Most of the campuses I visit or read about these days prepare some form of
notification letter for students to share with faculty detailing their assigned
accommodations. Philosophical and practical arguments abound as to whether
such letters should be (a) sent out by the DSS office or hand delivered by
the student; and (b) whether students should be required to go through the
DSS office to get such a letter or whether they have the right to negotiate
their own accommodations directly with faculty. Let's lay those arguments
aside for the moment and simply talk about the letters themselves.
It used to be that students sat down with their DSS counselors at the beginning
of every term. They would talk about what classes were scheduled and determine
what accommodations were needed. Then the administrative staff would be directed
to prepare a series of letters for the student to take to their faculty; note,
a "series of letters." There were different letters for different faculty
because there were different accommodations assigned for different classes.
As the number of students needing accommodation began to rise, the methodology
needed to be streamlined. Many programs began preparing a single letter to
be taken to ALL faculty members that detailed necessary accommodations, and
might indicate that a calculator was needed just for the math class, or that
a scribe or word processor would be needed for essay exams, but not for multiple
choice. Slowly, most programs have drifted away from even that level of specificity.
Lately, most of the letters I see simply have a place to fill in the students
name on the top, then list all the accommodations the student needs in any
and all classes, presumably with the idea that the faculty member and the
student will sort out what is really necessary for a particular class -- except
that in my experience it doesn't happen that way. Students assume that if
it says it on the letter, they are entitled to those accommodations in EVERY
class and for EVERY test. I have heard of students who rant and rave because
their English professor refuses to allow them to have a calculator on their
desk during their composition exam. After all…"it was on THE LETTER." Or the
reverse may occur… the student who is dysgraphic and has need for a scribe
or word-processor for tests involving written language, and who is campaigning
to have his College Algebra test put onto the computer so he can use the word
processor because "THE LETTER says I am entitled to these accommodations."
I know it doesn't make sense, but it happens.
Even more alarming, in my thinking, are the letters that are prepared for
students simply on the basis of a certain diagnostic label. On a recent site
visit, I asked how faculty were notified of assigned accommodations and the
service provider turned to his administrative assistant and said, "Would you
please pull copies of the LD letter and the Psych disability letter for Jane
to see?" The letters themselves did not name the disability -- they just said,
"(This student) has a documented disability and should receive the following
accommodations." But the list of accommodations was limited to those typically
associated with students with learning disabilities or psych disabilities,
and was pre-printed on the letter. Standard practice at this institution is
to carefully review the thoroughness of the student's documentation (they
have VERY strict guidelines for that!) and, if everything passes inspection,
the service provider pulls a copy of the "LD letter" (for example), fills
in the student's name, and sends the student on his/her way. That's not the
way it is supposed to be!!!
This is all compounded by a misperception on the part of a lot of folks
that once you have provided an accommodation for a student you cannot (legally)
withdraw it. That's just not true. The purpose of accommodations is supposed
to be to equalize access to the educational opportunity. If an accommodation
is assigned and found not to impact on access, or to no longer be effective
because of changes in the student's functional limitations, or is inappropriate
because of curricular considerations as the student progresses, then it is
no longer appropriate to be providing that accommodation. Granted, such instances
don't happen every day. Most of the time a student's accommodation needs will
not change dramatically over the course of a college career. But if you believe
you CAN'T change accommodations, whether they are appropriate or not, then
it is logical to assume that once you have made that initial determination
of accommodations (for that incoming freshman), there is little need to re-visit
each student's documentation and plans on a regular basis. Why not just tell
students to come in and pick up their letters for next semester -- they always
read the same anyhow, and it will save a lot of time if the secretary fills
them out and has them waiting in an alphabetical file. "But when you provide
an accommodation for a student haven't you established that student as --
at least -- being REGARDED as having a disability?" Yep, very possibly. So
what. Persons who fall under the protection of 504/ADA because they are persons
with disabilities (under any of the three prongs of the definition) are entitled
to protection from discrimination -- NOT accommodation. If we stuck to handing
out accommodations on the basis of NEED, in order to provide equal access,
we wouldn't be having this conversation!
How does all this play with faculty? Let's be realistic. If I am a faculty
member who sees a half a dozen students a year requesting accommodations,
and they are all carrying the SAME letter with the SAME accommodations assigned,
why should I believe that there is any kind of individual assessment of what
is necessary occurring? I don't care HOW stringent your documentation guidelines
are in terms of establishing that this person REALLY is disabled and REALLY
DOES need accommodation -- if you give every one just the same accommodations,
I have got to assume that individualization of the process ends with identification.
And it appears that I am justified in assuming that you really didn't consider
this student, or my course demands, you just did the paperwork. We have worked
so hard to have the profession of DSS recognized AS a profession. Are we ready
to be relegated back to the status of clerks? (As an aside, I would venture
to guess that the same tactics that drive service providers crazy when our
students face challenges to their accommodation requests by outside agencies
-- testing agencies, NCAA, and so on -- are the things we seem to be doing
that drive faculty to distraction as well. "Does it match the spec's? Give
him whatever he asks for. Is something missing in the paperwork? Don't give
him anything until he brings the paperwork. THEN give him whatever he asks
for!!!" That may not be what we are doing, but that may be how it appears
to others, and in this case the appearance is as dangerous as the practice!)
I have talked to a number of service providers, old and new to the field,
who are not comfortable with the procedures established within their office,
but who don't see any options. "We just don't have the time to do individual
evaluation of accommodation needs for every student in every class. There
are too many students and not enough hours in the day." And I am sure that
is true. But there has GOT to be a better way. Some way that will reassure
faculty that the process of providing accommodation remains credible as a
means of providing equal access, not added perks, while at the same time reminds
service providers WHY they are assigning accommodations. The best answer,
of course, is fuller staffing of the DSS component (Administrators, are you
listening?). Short of that, if you are going to send out pre-printed letters
listing accommodations, then AT LEAST make it a list of ALL the accommodations
offered to ALL students with disabilities from which you must (hopefully,
consciously!) choose those things to be provided to this particular student
by placing a check in the correct box, and by adding a place on the bottom
for additional comments such as, "Calculators necessary only in those classes
in which mathematical calculations are involved." I think if we fail to provide
at least that much individualization in our assignment of accommodations,
we will soon find ourselves looking at a credibility gap so huge that it can't
be bridged without MAJOR revisions in policy, procedure -- and personnel?!?
After staring at the screen for two days, I have suddenly realized that
I don't have an ending for this article. No pithy phrase to wrap up my point,
no clever means of summarizing my thesis. Just a plea… be careful out there!
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<< REAL-TIME CAPTIONING: A Good Idea,
Used Badly >>
A number of years ago, real-time captioning (RTC) was the newest technology
available to reach the needs of students with disabilities in the classroom,
specifically those who are deaf or hard-of-hearing (D/HOH). Using an adaptation
of the hardware and software developed for use in (legal) court reporting,
students could be provided with the written text of a presentation AS IT WAS
HAPPENING. Those who could not access the auditory presentation of a lecture
could be provided with (ostensibly) the same information in the same time
frame as their hearing classmates. They could participate in the class as
it was ongoing, using the same language everyone else was using, without worrying
about lining up sign language interpreters or the student's skill or level
of sign language usage. Isn't that great? Yes…when it works, and for the right
people.
But it doesn't always work like that. There are a lot of D/HOH people who
can't use it effectively and, BECAUSE WE HAVE LOST TRACK OF ITS PURPOSE, we
are starting to see its use subverted…
First, RTC may make better use of newly-available technology than using
a sign language interpreter, but the adequacy of EITHER system is still dependent
on the skill of the human being involved in the process (either the sign language
interpreter or the captionist). There are wonderful, skilled interpreters
out there, and some interpreters whose skills are questionable and therefore
who do not provide complete and accurate information to the student watching/relying
on them. There are also some amazingly good captionists out there with tremendous
speed and accuracy -- and the very real possibility of less skilled captionists
whose renditions of the lecture may have gaps/inaccuracies that create those
self-same problems for students. As an aside, remember that while there are
starting to be some available methodologies and rating systems for assessing
the skill level of interpreters for the educational setting, we are pretty
much at the mercy of the market when it comes to real-time captionists. IF
you can find someone, you take what you can get and simply hope for the best.
Ironically, while I have heard students complain about the skills of sign
language interpreters, I haven't heard much complaint about the skills of
captionists being raised by STUDENTS. I think they assume that because technology
is involved, it MUST be right and MUST be accurate and if they don't understand
it is their fault, not a problem with the RTC.
An entirely different set of problems arises when discussing the "end-users"
of RTC (as opposed to the captionists), the students who are D/HOH. There
are some populations of individuals for whom RTC is CLEARLY a boon and, most
likely, a necessity in providing full and equal access. The hard-of-hearing
population, who have useable hearing but may miss things now and then, can
use the RTC to supplement their ability to hear and use the information presented.
Late-deafened adults who have full use of standard English and who can read
as fast as the technology can produce a transcription are probably the users
with the greatest need for RTC -- they clearly can use what is provided through
the medium and they are generally NOT proficient in sign language and thus
cannot use that as an option. Students in high level courses with specialized
vocabulary, or in which the way in which something is phrased makes a dramatic
difference, probably should have this attempt at verbatim reporting of the
presentation if possible (law schools or allied health programs being the
prime examples). But many of the D/HOH students currently in college do NOT
match this profile. They neither have the reading/language skills nor the
critical need for exact translation that suggests a need for RTC. There are
many reasons why D/HOH college students may have lower reading/language skills
than their peers; there are many practical and philosophical arguments that
persist as to whether such difficulties are artifacts of their disability,
their culture, or their educational preparation. We'll save those discussions
for another time. The fact is, too many D/HOH students do not have the reading
speed or language fluency to be able to make good (full) usage of RTC for
it to be hailed as a panacea or to be arbitrarily substituted for the use
of interpreters.
Case in point… One night as I watched the evening news on TV with the captions
turned on, the reporter spoke about his respect for "…the courage and ten
as it tea of the young people pursuing this goal." That is what came across
the screen. Of course, the captions keep moving as the speaker moves on, so
I had only a matter of seconds to translate "ten as it tea" to "tenacity"
(and only because I heard the word spoken), before it was gone and he was
on to another thought. It is not just reading speed that is called into play
when making the most of RTC -- sometimes it takes an excellent command of
the language to fill in the pieces or make sense of the output. And that's
assuming that ALL of the output is there. Try watching a basketball game (or
some other fast-paced event) on TV with the captions turned on and the volume
up so you can hear it. What comes across the screen may be 100% accurate --
but I'll bet you will find it is not 100% complete. In order to provide the
accuracy necessary, the captionist often skips whole sentences or some detail
he/she determines as extraneous. All too often, it is NOT a verbatim translation,
but it is assumed to be just that!!!
Let's go back to the premise of the first article -- evaluating the functional
limitations on learning and supplying an accommodation that supports equal
access to the educational opportunity. True, D/HOH individuals may have difficulty
hearing a lecture, but they may also have difficulty PARTICIPATING in the
class. For the sign language user, typically the interpreter is assigned primarily
to translate what the instructor/class is saying to the D/HOH student. But
there may also be times in which the D/HOH student wants to offer some contribution
to class discussion, or ask a question. The sign language interpreter can
reverse-interpret that question, if needed. In most cases, the captionist
does not have a similar means for serving as a conduit for the D/HOH user
back to the class. Remember, too, that while sign language interpreters are
steeped in classes in deaf culture, deaf language, and confidentiality/ethics
of interpreting, the captionist is likely to be trained only in the task at
hand, with no appreciation, understanding, or affinity for the issues of the
population being served.
None of this brings us back to the biggest issue in the use/abuse of RTC…
TRANSCRIPTS FROM RTC. The boon that RTC had to offer was the availability
of onsite and immediate translation of what was being said. But the nature
of the technology used in realtime translation can produce a by-product --
the possibility of a computer disk that can be pulled off later, containing
the transcript of the class session just passed. A (supposedly) word-for-word
transcript of the entire class period. No more notetakers who simply summarize
the content of a lecture -- here's the whole lecture in one place. How wonderful,
right? Wrong. First, most captionists will tell you that the transcript is
not in a format that will be usable to the student until they have had a chance
to "clean it up" -- a process that can take as much as an hour after the hour
of class (question -- if it really is word-for-word coming out IN class, then
why does anything have to be "fixed" after class?). More importantly, I don't
believe that (almost) word-for-word transcript of the class are either a fair/effective
alternative to notes, nor do I think it provides equal access to learning
-- I think it goes way beyond equal!
What is the educational opportunity that other students have that the D/HOH
student does NOT have? The opportunity to listen/attend to the class lecture
and take notes on the important content imparted so that he/she can go home
and study from those notes. My guess would be that most students take six
to eight pages of notes during the course of a 50-minute lecture. The real-time
transcript of that same 50-minute lecture can easily run for 40-50 pages or
more! Is it equal access to opportunity to provide the student with five times
as much material to be sorted through in hopes of getting to the same key
elements for understanding/learning? Not in my book.
BUT, you say, the student who is getting notes from a notetaker is having
to rely on what someone else thinks is important in the lecture AND is not
necessarily learning the skills of deciding for him/herself what IS important
for learning. That's true. I can't argue with that very real limitation. On
the other hand, if you provide the student with the full real-time transcript
of the lecture instead of standard notes, the student can decide independently
what information is important and should be culled out of the lecture. That's
true, too. And that is what makes it both less AND more than equal access
in my book. The student who is provided with the transcript instead of notes
is being expected to do considerably more work to get to the same place as
his/her nondisabled counterparts. Everyone else comes out of class prepared
to sit down and study the important elements presented. You are expecting
this student to (conceivably) put in that same amount of time already expended
to review the entire lecture again, sift through the information, and cull
out the notes needed to be prepared to sit down and study. If the student
with a disability has to sit through the lecture twice to get to the same
place, I don' see that as equal access. But what about the student who CHOOSES
to sit down and go through the painstaking process of sorting through the
transcript to take notes independently? The fact remains that the other students
in the class are expected to listen in class, understand or ask questions
about the key concepts, and then use their notes to remind them of what they
heard/learned. They do not have the full transcript of the lesson at home
to peruse at their leisure and assure the accuracy of their understanding.
The bottom line is that, except in unusual circumstances, I would not provide
the realtime transcript of a class to a D/HOH student unless I was prepared
to provide copies of the realtime transcript to every student in the class.
THAT would be equal, rather than preferred, access.
QUESTION: If you are going to provide the D/HOH student with a full transcript
of the class via RTC, why ask the student to go to class at all? Why not just
send the captionist to class, and provide the transcript? OH!!! Because the
purpose of RTC is supposed to be simultaneous and complete access to the lecture
as it is ongoing. It was NOT created as a notetaking system. It is NOT appropriate
to use it as such. BUT… if we forget what the accommodation is supposed to
do (that is, what functional limitation it was meant to respond to), then
we lose sight of what use of the accommodation IS and IS NOT appropriate.
And that is all too easy to do. After all, in these days of shrinking budgets
and tight money, the lure of providing RTC with a transcription as opposed
to providing BOTH an interpreter/RTC and a notetaker seems very efficient
and cost-effective. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. Don't betray the process of accommodation
in a misguided effort to cut costs. It will come back to haunt you. Recently,
there was a heated discussion on one of the listservs I monitor regarding
a law school student who was insisting that she be provided with BOTH an interpreter
AND real-time captioning. She wanted the interpreter because it provided her
with the most immediate and ready access to the class presentation. She wanted
the RTC because it would clearly provide her with more complete text than
she could get from a notetaker. Since the institution at which she was enrolled
has discontinued the use of notetakers for students who are receiving RTC
(and giving them the transcripts instead), in my opinion they were going to
have a hard time refusing her request. In the past we have refused requests
for simultaneous interpreters and RTC, saying that you could not use both
services at the same time. But if you use RTC transcripts as a substitute
for notetaking when it is convenient for YOU, you had best start preparing
to face the student who demands RTC for notetaking when it suits him/her!
You can't have it both way folks… BEWARE!!!
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<< WHAT'S NEW AT THE HOME OF DAIS???
>>
Ever heard the expression, "Everything old is new again?" Well, this month
there is some new "old" stuff to be found. Do to a communications glitch on
my end, the articles that were to have been posted to the Dining Room last
month never got posted. A check on the website statistics shows that few of
you went looking for them and only one person contacted me to say, "what happened?"
So… I am going to leave those posts in place (they are up now!) for you to
have a second (first?) look.
In the Faculty Corner of the Dining Room, read an article pulled from Volume
I of the DAIS Newsletter called, "Sense and Sensibility: Getting the Job Done
Without Offending the Audience" (http://www.janejarrow.com/dinroom ). Are
the accommodations determined as appropriate for the student by the DSS staff
person required of the faculty member?
In the Administrator's Corner, "Who Do You Trust???" is also taken from
Volume I and discusses how best to use -- REALLY use -- free advice! (http://www.janejarrow.com/dinroom
).
Within the next 10 days, you can expect to see an additional mailing from
DAIS, inviting you to start the new year and the new millennium with some
exciting professional development opportunities. Looking forward to seeing
you there…
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