Academic standards & disabled students

[Chikoletta]

Hi,

I am applying for a (non academic) job supporting disabled students in HEI, and need to talk about disability support with regard to academic standards, and teaching & learning policies.

Can anyone give me a pointer as to what is being suggested here? I have relevant experience but not much in HEI and wonduring if I'm missing something obvious! Ta

They want you to talk about the tension between reasonable adjustments and the need for students to meet learning outcomes. Eg if the adjustment is “individual work to be substituted for group work” (paraphrasing) when a course is entirely based on a group project and one of the learning outcomes is “work effectively in a group to complete an open ended project “ and this project is required as part of an accredited degree. I have no idea what the solution to that is. Or where a student is entitled to automatic extensions but coursework is weekly and each exercise builds on the previous one, but feedback cannot be given until everyone has submitted. Or where a student cannot be asked to speak in class but contributions to discussion is part of the assessment. It’s a very difficult area, perhaps especially in externally accredited programmes..

I agree that this is a really difficult area. And I would add that one of the gripes I have with disability services in my university is that they (a) pay no regard to the fact that learning outcomes exist (in fact I'm impressed at the interview task that they've given you, which suggests that, in some universities, the disability team recognise that adjustments can impact learning outcomes) and (b) that "reasonable" adjustments are imposed on departments without any regard for the problems they'll cause the student (e.g. automatic extensions impacting upon the student's ability to engage with a new module, because they're finishing an essay for last term's module and don't have time to prepare for and attend the first seminars for a new module)

Completely agree with @GCAcademic and @Chemenger about the necessity for disability services to be aware of (gosh, even have knowledge of) learning outcomes for modules and courses. And how rarely they appear to take any notice of what their expert teaching colleagues (ie academics) say is needed to complete a module/course satisfactorily.

You might want to discuss liaising with academic staff to see if whatever adjustment that is being proposed doesn't clash with academics' own disabilities (eg requiring materials in a format the academic can't provide), or clashes with teaching content (eg requesting recording of seminars clashing with sensitive subject matter that may not be recorded).

At the least, consult, don't impose!

Thanks, that's really helpful.

I am a former teacher so appreciate the need for certain learning outcomes to be met in order to build on additional skills.

I assume that is the course Covenor that has the final say in deciding whether a student has passed the module/course? I guess reasonable adjustments need to be agreed in advance with academic staff to ensure the student can meet the assessment criteria.

Thing is, at my place anyway, there’s no consultation between disability services and academics. The “reasonable “ adjustments are just imposed. And I’ve had a couple of students use them to really interfere with how and what I teach.

From next year all of our students automatically get three attempts at their summative assignments. If they fail a third time and can evidence contact with student support services they can be offered a fourth attempt.

What!!

I guess reasonable adjustments need to be agreed in advance with academic staff to ensure the student can meet the assessment criteria.

You would think so, wouldn’t you? But, no, they are imposed on us where I work, with no consideration of how that will affect the delivery of the module. My husband has taught seminars where half the students in the group have adjustments saying they can’t be expected to contribute to seminar discussions. When the entire delivery of the module is via (heavily participatory) seminars, that makes teaching it virtually impossible.

Fucking hell. Hope you have no plans to do anything other than set and mark assessments.

Are these going to be capped resits?

Crikey! I'm just imagining AIBU in about 5 years' time ...

@GCAcademic capped resubmissions unless there's extenuating circumstances

@JenniferBarkley we do in year submissions so will be marking constantly I'm guessing

Four attempts is very generous!

It's beyond generous. It's lowering standards to a level that'll devalue the degree entirely. Not to mention the pressure to set and mark all those extra assignments.

Let's just go back to all learning being assessed. by formal exams!

I teach in a department where we don't do exams. We do live on-the-spot stuff such as presentations, but no unseen supervised exams. It's often a drawcard in Admissions terms.

But in one discussion of students' demands over extensions/whatever (they complain of their workload in having 2 x 3,000 essays due in the same week after the Christmas or Easter vacations) - A colleague of mine suggested we just go back to Summer Term sit-down exams.

Our students don't realise they're born sometimes!

There's actually a lot to say about the usefulness of some types of unseen examination as a preparation for working life - eg. you get a big policy document land on your desk; your boss asks for a summary of the main points of a section of it for a team meeting the next day ...

My academic colleagues are desperate to return to sit-down exams. We have an online platform for exams now, but no sooner had that been brought in, than ChatGPT appeared. It feels like an arms race now to maintain academic integrity. The University is firmly resisting attempts to return to exam halls because they don't want to have to service sit-down exams.

I no longer trust anything that wasn't done in an invigilated exam hall.

It's a shame as you can do much more interesting and valuable assessments otherwise, but I have zero faith that they are being produced honestly.

(I often sit on academic offense panels, increasingly we're seeing AI reports coming through. This is the easy ones to catch - God knows how many are slipping through.)

It's sold by the institution as a method to widen participation and ensure we are terribly inclusive. It also just happens to keep
fee paying bums on seats for longer.

I've had the same experience of many here. Our disability services team imposes adjustments and doesn't consult with us.
I think that if this is the set-up at the university then it would be unrealistic to say in the interview that you'll strive to change it so that academic staff are consulted? I wonder though whether you can signal towards adopting a more flexible approach in which disability provisions are "the start of a conversation" or something along the line, where the student, the disability services team and academic staff can actively discuss what a given provision means in a certain context.
For example, one of our accommodations is "flexibility with extensions". Some students took it to mean "submit whenever and however", but in reality they were meant to discuss extensions with us at all points, the provision simply meant we should be more lenient with them than with other students (which in itself is somehow puzzling but anyway). So this is an example of a situation in which the student can be encouraged to be proactive and come up with a time management plan that takes their disability into account.
Or you can point to the different assessment modes/teaching and learning formats used by different disciplines and the need to have some flexibility with accommodations - at my institution, a standard accommodation is "15 minutes extra time. But what if you are a theatre student, performing a 15-minute monologue as your assessment... an extra 15 minutes would either mean performing a longer piece (which is a different scale of assessment) or doing so more slowly (which likely wouldn't make sense in dramatic terms).

Hello @Chikoletta just wondering if you got the job and how you're finding it. I'm curious about a similar role locally.