Enhancing Success for All Students

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Enhancing Success for All Students

• What do you expect your students to be able to
  do to benefit from your teaching?
• What if they cant?
• Anne Simpson
• Head of the Disability Service, University of
  Strathclyde
• anne.simpson_at_strath.ac.uk

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Enhancing Success for All Students

• Talk an introduction to the disabling
  environment
• http//www.celebratingthejourney.org/talk-videos.
  asp

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What are the benefits?

• In designing a course, or teaching for that
  course, or in designing an assessment, what did
  you set out to give students, to take from the
  experience as a benefit?

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What are your expectations?

• If students are to derive that benefit, what did
  you expect them to be able to DO?

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Barriers

• And what can you do if students cant do that,
  or in that way?

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Solutions

• Could you have designed the course, or the
  teaching, the placement or the assessment in such
  a way that the likelihood of all students being
  able to derive the benefit would have been
  greater?

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Enhancing Success for All Students

• A higher education environment that is as
  accessible as it can be is less likely to be
  disabling.
• What makes it accessible?
• Whats the environment of higher education?

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Teachability

• Lectures
• Seminars
• Placement, study abroad, field trips
• Examinations and Assessments
• Course descriptions
• E teaching
• Practical classes
• Courses and programmes of study

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Adjustments v courses and teaching designed to be
accessible?

• Legal considerations
• Anticipatory duty to make adjustments
• Public Sector Duty to Promote Disability
  Equality Impact assessments
• Participation of disabled people in public life

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Example Exams and Assessments

• What are the benefits of exams and assessments
  for all students?
• What do you expect students to be able to DO to
  derive these benefits?
• What barriers can you foresee?
• What are the possible solutions?

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Accessible

• Accessible ? easy or easier
• It means without avoidable or unnecessary
  barriers.

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A Competence standard is

• an academic, medical or other standard applied
  by or on behalf of an education provider for the
  purpose of determining whether a person has a
  particular level of competence or ability.
  (5.71)

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Competence standards why are they important to
the DDA?

• There is no duty to make reasonable adjustments
  to a provision, criterion or practice which the
  Act defines as a competence standard. (5.70)
• If a disabled student is disadvantaged
  substantially as a result, this will be
  disability related discrimination, but it may be
  justifiable.

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Competence standards

• any such requirement or condition only amounts
  to a competence standard if its purpose is to
  demonstrate a particular level of a relevant
  competence or ability.
• If it is not relevant, then it is not a
  competence standard as described in the Code of
  Practice.

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Disability-related discrimination might be
justifiable

• May be justifiable if you can show
• The standard is or would be applied equally to
  people who do not have his (sic) particular
  disability and
• Its application is a proportionate way of
  achieving a legitimate aim.

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Is the application of the standard a
proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim?

• Is there a pressing need that supports the aim
  the treatment is designed to achieve?
• Does applying the standard achieve that aim?
• Is there no other way of achieving that aim, less
  detrimental to the rights of disabled people?

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3-hour essay style exam, Arts and Social Science

• Is it likely that some of these aspects of
  achievement might be at odds with students
  impairments?
• If so, then what?

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Adjustments?

• Extra time?
• Rest breaks?
• Amanuenses?
• OU yardstick examination?
• Signed answers for students whose first language
  is BSL?
• Continuous assessment instead of exam?

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Literature, Languages and Culture

• One of the assessments is an oral exam in
  spoken German and a listening comprehension. The
  oral exam tests fluency and presentation skills
  in the spoken language, and the students accent,
  intonation, pronunciation, grammar and
  vocabulary.

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Expectations ? Barriers

• What if the successful acquisition of some of
  these skills is adversely affected by the nature
  of some students impairments?
• What then?

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Solutions and Limits

• How the assessment regime fits into the course,
  and how the course fits into the programme
• Competence standards genuine and relevant,
  proportionate way of achieving a legitimate aim,
  least detrimental to disabled people.

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Adjustments

• What you can change rests on what you should
  assess
• Speed?
• Memory?
• Presentation?
• Performance under pressure?

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So what does this mean?

• Is it wrong to assess, e.g. manual dexterity,
  speech, presentation, stamina?

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Summary

• The benefits
• The expectations
• The foreseeable barriers
• The solutions
• Adjustment ? Routine, anticipation, universal
  design.

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Conclusions

• Wider application of the approach.
• Questions?
• Comments?
• Further discussion?