Abstract
The COVID‐19 pandemic has meant a year of challenges. We asked our Advisory Board members to share how they've addressed the challenges they have faced and what their plans are for moving forward.
At Keene State College, a residential liberal arts college, going remote was a huge change, said Gail Zimmerman, Associate Vice President of Student Affairs. The campus reopened for in‐person instruction in the fall, and students had the option to return or remain remote. Some faculty kept teaching online, so some students have lived on campus but taken classes online. The most prominent issue for Disability Services was how to serve students with hearing impairments. Those who read lips could not do so when speakers were wearing masks. For the classes with affected students, the institution bought clear face masks for the faculty members. Officials also increased amplification in the classrooms to assist hard‐of‐hearing students.
Over winter break, staff members got closed captioning working on Zoom. That has been a real boost for hearing‐impaired students, and for others who want to download transcript of classes, Zimmerman said.
Last summer, Muhlenberg College offered training to faculty members in pedagogy for teaching online. Only first‐year students came to campus in the fall, said Pamela Moschini, Director of the Office of Disability Services. Those students were all placed in single rooms spread across campus. In the spring, any student could come back, although not all did. The college tested every student for COVID‐19 every week and had a lot of restrictions in place to keep students safe.
The Disability Services staff is still virtual, and operations have been smooth. Staff members have seen an increase in the numbers of students with anxiety and with temporary medical conditions, Moschini said.
The only service that has significantly changed is that the college has used an alternative to peer note takers, Moschini said.
At the University of Phoenix, in‐person programs went online last spring because of COVID‐19. Students in those programs now meet through Blackboard Collaborate, said Kelly Hermann, Vice President of Accessibility, Equity, and Inclusion. Many students like not having to go to campus. So far, online learning has been extended through the summer, and officials are looking at ways to be as flexible as possible going forward, looking at the regulations in the states where the in‐person programs are located.
In the past year, the number of students who have disclosed disabilities has grown, and the 19 advisors in Hermann's office are maxed out. One area that saw an increase in requests when classes went online was captioning. The institution's captioning provider couldn't keep up with the requests, so officials added artificial intelligence captioning.
Tools assist with communications
Being remote doesn't mean being out of touch with students, staff members, or others. Loren O'Connor, who recently retired at Assistant Vice Chancellor, Office of Accessible Education and Counseling Services at Brandman University, now consults with colleges, universities, agencies, and students around the world on providing accessible education. His favorite communications tools are Zoom and WhatsApp.
Maria Pena of California Southern University works with learners all around the world. Because they are all online, it's possible to work from anywhere. She uses whatever tool works best in the particular situation, including Zoom, Teams, email, and phone calls.
Looking forward
Last summer, Muhlenberg offered free classes as an inducement for incoming students who deposited by a certain date. The college plans to do that again this coming summer. Onboarding students with disabilities quickly for those classes was a challenge for Moschini's office last year. The staff members had to onboard about 80 students in a few weeks, and the students missed out on preadvising. A number of students enrolled in classes, such as science requirements, that were not a good fit for their first course, particularly in an accelerated format.
This coming summer, Moschini is working on having her office better prepared and is encouraging students to send in documentation as soon as they make deposits. Her office has an agreement with the Admissions Office that staff members there will let DS know if a student discloses a disability. With the SAT being optional, many students write about their disability in their essay, Moschini said. Last summer that list was delayed, but having it sooner this summer would help officials reach out to students to encourage them to start the process of requesting services, rather than waiting till later in the summer or until they move in.
In Georgia, some colleges are almost completely online this spring, others have a lot of students on campus, and others tried to offer in‐person learning but had to scale back because of outbreaks, said Louise Bedrossian, Retired Director of the Disability Resource Center at Clayton State University. For fall, the chancellor has said campuses will be open for in‐person learning. But Bedrossian expects there will still be students not ready to go back to campus, so online learning will still be a factor.
Officials at both Muhlenberg and Keene State hope to be fully open in the fall, said Moschini and Zimmerman.
If vaccination goals are met, the likelihood looks good that a full return to campus will be possible, Zimmerman said. The return to campus will allow students who took leaves because they didn't want to learn online and were afraid to be on campus to reengage, she said.
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What initiatives have you developed to support students with disabilities on your campus? How do you engage the community in making the campus fully accessible and understanding disability as diversity? What challenges have you faced providing accommodations, and how did you solve them? What leadership strategies work best for you?
For submission guidelines, please contact Editor Joan Hope at jhope@wiley.com.
PREPARE TO MEET NEEDS OF STUDENTS WITH POST‐COVID SYNDROME.
Disability Services Offices can expect to see students requesting accommodations for the aftereffects of COVID‐19. Students are coming forward with documentation of post‐COVID syndrome, and each person is different, said Maria Pena of California Southern University. The disability has an unknown duration, and the symptoms vary. For example, Pena worked with a student who was having issues with concentration and was easily exhausted.
Some research shows a large percentage of people who have had COVID‐19 suffer from post‐traumatic stress disorder, said Consultant Loren O'Connor said. They can also have trouble with depression, anxiety, and expressive language.
At the University of Phoenix, 4,200 students have reported having COVID‐19, said Kelly Hermann, Vice President of Accessibility, Equity, and Inclusion. Even some of people who were asymptomatic are now having long‐term impacts. Hermann's staff members are accommodating students based on what they need at the time with a plan to revisit the needs in the future. Hermann's office has given the staff members a lot of coaching and professional development to ask good questions to determine the educational impact of the student's symptoms.
Because the long‐term effect isn't clear, the guideline at the University of Phoenix has been to approve the accommodations for two or three five‐week courses and then check in with the students, Hermann added.
From a departmental and budget standpoint, the number of students with aftereffects of COVID could create a need for more staffing, Pena said. Documentation of the impact for resources will be necessary.
In Hermann's office, officials look at “metrics that demonstrate efficacy of accommodations and use those to justify the level of staffing we have and why we need more.” Those include 30‐day retention rates, course pass rates, and withdrawal/failure rates and how they are positively impacted for students with disabilities. That has worked better than just straight numbers of students who have disclosed, Hermann said.