Are Universities Failing the Accommodations Test?
August 13, 2024 7:36 AM Subscribe
As instructors struggle to meet the complex needs of students, schools are leaving both to fend for themselves. (slTheWalrus)
I'm sorry, but when an article positively quotes the head of an organization that works to defend bigotry in academia under the guise of "free speech" and "academic freedom", I suddenly find myself questioning its thesis. The reality is that the academy has always done a shit job at accommodating anyone who doesn't fit its mold - what's changed is society's willingness to accept that. It's time that accommodations are taken seriously, and that the Spartan mentality in academia is taken out behind the woodshed and told to look at the pretty butterflies.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:12 AM on August 13 [21 favorites]
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:12 AM on August 13 [21 favorites]
This article was the opposite of what I expected from the title. More like, "professors are being terrorized by excessive accommodation requests."
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:28 AM on August 13 [10 favorites]
Leniency had become a survival strategy. As a contract instructor, she works punishingly hard for between $40,000 and $60,000 a year, and she knows that haggling with students over deadlines or grades can add four to ten unpaid hours to an already exhausting week. But it isn’t just extra labour that worries her. If a student responds to a poor grade or a firm deadline by alleging discrimination on the basis of disability, will the course coordinator back her up? The pre-semester meetings didn’t exactly fill her with confidence. “When you’re a contract lecturer, you know you’re disposable,” Elise says. “That’s why I’m afraid of my students. I don’t want them complaining about me or drawing attention to me in any way.”Meanwhile, people are having legit problems getting help. What a mess.
After Nathan received the letter informing him of his tribunal hearing, the university provided him with legal counsel. His lawyer advised him to swallow his pride and admit to wrongdoing in exchange for forbearance. At the hearing, Nathan apologized for the harm he’d caused. It hardly matters whether his words were sincere: the university paid a $1,000 fine on Nathan’s behalf, and he kept his job.
The experience has left him with mixed feelings. At times, he worries that a culture of toughness—one that nurtured his young intellect—is no longer available to students who may benefit from it. At other times, he wonders if toughness is perhaps overrated. “I have found myself reflecting on past instances in which I’ve been a hardass for no good reason,” he says. Mostly, though, he doesn’t think his opinions matter. Two decades of work as an instructor doesn’t buy him a whole lot of clout in the accessibility debate. “These days,” he says, “when I get a letter from accessibility services, I shut up and do what I’m told.”
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:28 AM on August 13 [10 favorites]
The idea that students need to suck it up and learn in the approved way and demonstrate their learning using a set of rigidly-determined assessments is small-minded and harmful.
People who are forced to conform to a system that is harmful to them are often hurt in a very specific way. They internalize the values of that system as a survival mechanism, and then when they have power, they lash out and hurt people like them in the same way they were hurt.
I find I have to offer very few individual accommodations because I offer all my students multiple ways to encounter course content, multiple ways to demonstrate their mastery, and multiple chances to return to material they struggled with and show that they now understand it.
My students still report via evaluations that my courses challenge them intellectually, and they learn the material if they put the effort in.
Instructors do need support to build courses that are different from the ones they are familiar with, and students need support to understand how their brains work, how they learn best, and how to overcome barriers to their success. So let’s please hire an adequate number of excellent professionals and pay them well.
If those folks can spend less time arguing with tenured professors who think their immaculate syllabi were handed down from On High, and more time helping students and instructors get better at teaching and learning, all the better.
posted by BrashTech at 8:31 AM on August 13 [19 favorites]
People who are forced to conform to a system that is harmful to them are often hurt in a very specific way. They internalize the values of that system as a survival mechanism, and then when they have power, they lash out and hurt people like them in the same way they were hurt.
I find I have to offer very few individual accommodations because I offer all my students multiple ways to encounter course content, multiple ways to demonstrate their mastery, and multiple chances to return to material they struggled with and show that they now understand it.
My students still report via evaluations that my courses challenge them intellectually, and they learn the material if they put the effort in.
Instructors do need support to build courses that are different from the ones they are familiar with, and students need support to understand how their brains work, how they learn best, and how to overcome barriers to their success. So let’s please hire an adequate number of excellent professionals and pay them well.
If those folks can spend less time arguing with tenured professors who think their immaculate syllabi were handed down from On High, and more time helping students and instructors get better at teaching and learning, all the better.
posted by BrashTech at 8:31 AM on August 13 [19 favorites]
This is a weird article. The lead example is a professor who should simply have been informed by his university that certain specific accommodations were a legal requirement. There’s no indication that it he’d been informed properly he would have pushed back at all!
posted by bq at 8:34 AM on August 13 [13 favorites]
posted by bq at 8:34 AM on August 13 [13 favorites]
Plus it’s very weird that it mixes very simple accommodation requests (allow volunteer notetakers in class) with very onerous ones(write an extra exam) and particularly stupid ones (don’t require students to write essays) with extremely fundamental ones (buy the student the Braille machine).
posted by bq at 8:35 AM on August 13 [30 favorites]
posted by bq at 8:35 AM on August 13 [30 favorites]
As an adjunct I dealt with countless accomodation requests and generally just accomodated them. Want your grade changed? Sure. Need to retake a test, take it from home, have your laptop in class, etc. Sure, why not. At first I thought "no this isn't fair" and resisted, especially efforts to get a grade change for x or y reason (my favorite was, "i have depression", like, me too, tell me about it) and then I thought "what isn't fair is being paid $2100 per 3 credit hours when the 30+ students are paying $1600 each for those 3 credit hours". I taught logic and critical thinking, so the entire budget for the course was me and access to a xerox machine. The easiest thing to do was just to accomodate as much as possible every student that asked for it, and not really care about whether or not this means one person's A is more fair or equitable as another person's A. Who cares? What's the point of a university anyway? Is it to be graded, or is it to learn? Generally it's a sorting system to produce employees for intellectually-skilled labor, but producing good workers was not my problem. I wanted to teach philosophy, and if some people didn't really learn that much because they took advantage of generous accomodations to get an easy passing grade, whatever, there were always students who did really learn and for whom my class was the beginning of an intellectual journey. Balances out, to me.
posted by dis_integration at 8:38 AM on August 13 [58 favorites]
posted by dis_integration at 8:38 AM on August 13 [58 favorites]
I also think there are some areas where the article really should go deeper. In some cases, the problem is that the university is ahead of the world.
For example: there is no fucking reason why a person who has a diagnosed disability that impacts their ability to deal with deadlines must still be required to adhere to rigid deadlines in the world, whether it be in the workplace or in the government. Such things are harmful. They are why people find themselves unhoused, or fired. The problem isn't that the university is failing to prepare people for these life situations, the problem is that these life situations haven't caught up with what we now know about how people work.
I also think that these professors in many ways are making more work for themselves. If you're making two tests rather than just giving the same test to the student testing later, that's on you, buddy.
Also, "theft of intellectual property" because a student was recording your lecture? Are you fucking kidding me?
posted by corb at 8:41 AM on August 13 [13 favorites]
For example: there is no fucking reason why a person who has a diagnosed disability that impacts their ability to deal with deadlines must still be required to adhere to rigid deadlines in the world, whether it be in the workplace or in the government. Such things are harmful. They are why people find themselves unhoused, or fired. The problem isn't that the university is failing to prepare people for these life situations, the problem is that these life situations haven't caught up with what we now know about how people work.
I also think that these professors in many ways are making more work for themselves. If you're making two tests rather than just giving the same test to the student testing later, that's on you, buddy.
Also, "theft of intellectual property" because a student was recording your lecture? Are you fucking kidding me?
posted by corb at 8:41 AM on August 13 [13 favorites]
As a precarious adjunct instructor, I'm not at all surprised to see my colleagues in accessibility administration offices are also facing exploitative labor conditions, but I am as outraged for them as I am my teaching colleagues (at least as much as my exhaustion and anxiety can allow for):
Lucy—not her real name—works in accessibility services at a university in the Greater Toronto Area. She says the system’s biggest problem is a lack of resources. She estimates that, in the past five years, the number of students seeking accommodations has doubled or perhaps tripled, but the staff hasn’t grown at anything like that rate. “The caseload average is about 300 to 400 students per adviser,” she says.posted by audi alteram partem at 8:41 AM on August 13 [12 favorites]
The results are predictably grim. Students can be forced to wait two or three weeks for a brief meeting. Advisers must sometimes work fifteen-hour days to keep pace with demand: burnout is endemic, and annual turnover is high. Instead of working with students to devise innovative, bespoke solutions, Lucy says, staff often revert to quick fixes—mostly, deadline extensions and exam deferrals.
The article is about the Canadian context. I work at a U.S. university and my PhD is in U.S. higher education (technically "higher education" but the "U.S." part can be assumed given the content and context of my coursework and dissertation) so I can only speak to the U.S. context. There are a few complications in the U.S. context and I'm not sure if they apply in the Canadian context but (I think that) they're still interesting and important.
First, what k-12 schools are required to do for their (minor) students is very different from colleges and universities are required to do for their (adult) students. In particular, k-12 schools are required to be proactive about identifying students' needs. For colleges and universities, on the other hand, the onus is placed on students to notify and provide evidence to the institution that they need an accommodation. I understand the rationale for this and of course we should treat adults and children differently in some situations. What worries me is that this critical shift is very abrupt for students who are instantly moved from an environment where the institution was required to identify their needs to an environment where they have to proactively identify and advocate for themselves. That's a big shift for anyone but especially for a young person who is also dealing with a lot of other changes at the same time.
Second, the U.S. laws require "reasonable accommodation." Our colleagues who work in disability service offices know the most common accommodations that are helpful for many people e.g., extra time for tests, an institutionally-provided notetaker. But sometimes the accommodations that are initially recommended don't work well for the particular course or student. So when an accommodation is requested there may be some negotiation between the three different parties - student, faculty member, and institutional representative (disability services staff member, in many cases). And in a handful of instances the faculty member can legitimately say that an accommodation cannot be made because it would not be in alignment with the learning goals of the course. That is rare but it happens.
posted by ElKevbo at 8:45 AM on August 13 [13 favorites]
First, what k-12 schools are required to do for their (minor) students is very different from colleges and universities are required to do for their (adult) students. In particular, k-12 schools are required to be proactive about identifying students' needs. For colleges and universities, on the other hand, the onus is placed on students to notify and provide evidence to the institution that they need an accommodation. I understand the rationale for this and of course we should treat adults and children differently in some situations. What worries me is that this critical shift is very abrupt for students who are instantly moved from an environment where the institution was required to identify their needs to an environment where they have to proactively identify and advocate for themselves. That's a big shift for anyone but especially for a young person who is also dealing with a lot of other changes at the same time.
Second, the U.S. laws require "reasonable accommodation." Our colleagues who work in disability service offices know the most common accommodations that are helpful for many people e.g., extra time for tests, an institutionally-provided notetaker. But sometimes the accommodations that are initially recommended don't work well for the particular course or student. So when an accommodation is requested there may be some negotiation between the three different parties - student, faculty member, and institutional representative (disability services staff member, in many cases). And in a handful of instances the faculty member can legitimately say that an accommodation cannot be made because it would not be in alignment with the learning goals of the course. That is rare but it happens.
posted by ElKevbo at 8:45 AM on August 13 [13 favorites]
Good article. I thought it outlined the conflicts between the workers neatly.
$2100 per 3 credit hours when the 30+ students are paying $1600 each
Lol. I hope you use that in your critical thinking class.
At my former university, the President's house was an actual plantation house, and he flew charter jets to visit President Bush II. It was clear where the tuition money was going. Many kids were on board when we advocated for raises above the $6/ hr that the custodial and kitchen workers were receiving.
We did not get to living wages, but we were able to kick loose a lot of the retirement funds that the university was withholding from custodial workers, people who worked their lives without a proper breakroom, because guess when the university buildings were built? These buildings did not have breakrooms.
And boy they found the money to hire those anti- living wage attorneys quickly! Talk about accommodation.
Anyway, it sounds like a problem that can be studied and solved if the labor of teachers, learners and speciallists can be respected and resolved.
I only ever had a
posted by eustatic at 8:52 AM on August 13 [10 favorites]
$2100 per 3 credit hours when the 30+ students are paying $1600 each
Lol. I hope you use that in your critical thinking class.
At my former university, the President's house was an actual plantation house, and he flew charter jets to visit President Bush II. It was clear where the tuition money was going. Many kids were on board when we advocated for raises above the $6/ hr that the custodial and kitchen workers were receiving.
We did not get to living wages, but we were able to kick loose a lot of the retirement funds that the university was withholding from custodial workers, people who worked their lives without a proper breakroom, because guess when the university buildings were built? These buildings did not have breakrooms.
And boy they found the money to hire those anti- living wage attorneys quickly! Talk about accommodation.
Anyway, it sounds like a problem that can be studied and solved if the labor of teachers, learners and speciallists can be respected and resolved.
I only ever had a
posted by eustatic at 8:52 AM on August 13 [10 favorites]
And in a handful of instances the faculty member can legitimately say that an accommodation cannot be made because it would not be in alignment with the learning goals of the course. That is rare but it happens.
It should never happen. Professors who are unwilling to make accommodations because of the "learning goals" of a course they designed are professors unwilling to perform their job, and should be treated as such.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:54 AM on August 13 [2 favorites]
It should never happen. Professors who are unwilling to make accommodations because of the "learning goals" of a course they designed are professors unwilling to perform their job, and should be treated as such.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:54 AM on August 13 [2 favorites]
For someone who lives in a university town, I hear about both sides so much. I am more inclined to place the blame on administrative bloat, enough that it drags out the process to make sure both students and teachers trying to find a compromise or accommodation. These issues could be resolved quicker if there weren't a bajillion levels above everyone's pay grades.
posted by Kitteh at 8:55 AM on August 13 [6 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 8:55 AM on August 13 [6 favorites]
I find I have to offer very few individual accommodations because I offer all my students multiple ways to encounter course content, multiple ways to demonstrate their mastery, and multiple chances to return to material they struggled with and show that they now understand it.
Yeah, in the post-COVID course I taught I had maybe two or three individual requests per semester because my course was designed in such a way that people could access and show their learning a multitude of different ways, with minimal to no increase in work for me. Which overall decreased my work compared to what my colleagues were doing. I spent an hour max responding to student emails each week and I put zero energy into determining who was “legitimate” because my methods of evaluating students didn’t rely on that. There’s no means testing, everyone can access these different ways of engaging in court content and showing their learning and it’s up to them to decide which one fits.
Now my class was 50 people, I don’t know how this would translate to a 400 person class. And it did require radical course redesign, a flipped classroom at minimum, and lots of people don’t have the resources to do that. I was teaching the course fresh though so I had to make it all from scratch anyway so why not make it accessible from the get-go instead of trying to staple it on afterward? But I also only knew how to do that because I have personal experience with a bunch of the disability issues that come up with courses so it came much more naturally to me while others have no such familiarity.
posted by brook horse at 8:56 AM on August 13 [13 favorites]
Yeah, in the post-COVID course I taught I had maybe two or three individual requests per semester because my course was designed in such a way that people could access and show their learning a multitude of different ways, with minimal to no increase in work for me. Which overall decreased my work compared to what my colleagues were doing. I spent an hour max responding to student emails each week and I put zero energy into determining who was “legitimate” because my methods of evaluating students didn’t rely on that. There’s no means testing, everyone can access these different ways of engaging in court content and showing their learning and it’s up to them to decide which one fits.
Now my class was 50 people, I don’t know how this would translate to a 400 person class. And it did require radical course redesign, a flipped classroom at minimum, and lots of people don’t have the resources to do that. I was teaching the course fresh though so I had to make it all from scratch anyway so why not make it accessible from the get-go instead of trying to staple it on afterward? But I also only knew how to do that because I have personal experience with a bunch of the disability issues that come up with courses so it came much more naturally to me while others have no such familiarity.
posted by brook horse at 8:56 AM on August 13 [13 favorites]
It would be interesting to see a measure of flexibility between adjunct and tenured. One would think those with tenure would have more ability to be flexible...
Eh, universities today are like sausage factories. The whole point of a factory is to grind everything down.
posted by BlueHorse at 9:01 AM on August 13 [4 favorites]
Eh, universities today are like sausage factories. The whole point of a factory is to grind everything down.
posted by BlueHorse at 9:01 AM on August 13 [4 favorites]
More than half the boilerplate accommodations letters I get I can simply ignore -- I loathe timed exams and almost never do them. Project-based learning and lots of small-stakes assignments are my bread and butter. Doesn't work for every course or everyone, but it does for me.
I can only think of a couple of instances (in over fifteen years of teaching) when a student was clearly trying to bend accommodations past reason to get out of doing the work. In both cases, the disability office totally had my back. I value them and appreciate their work, and do my level best to be easy for them to work with.
Re corb above and "IP theft:" I think it's worth listening to the anxieties beneath the IP claim. One is quite simply that the institution will run a course with an instructor's created materials... but without the instructor. (Anybody else remember the school that tried to run an instructor's course after that instructor had passed? Hell yes they'll pull this shit if they think they can get away with it. See: MOOCs.)
Another, for those of us teaching in-person, is that we'll end up trying to teach empty rooms. I teach both online and in-person, have for over a decade -- and the whole fucking point of in-person is the genial productive unpredictability of student-instructor and student-student interactions. Which go away if the students aren't fucking there.
A third, for some of us, is that the recordings fall into the hands of the fash and get used against us. It's happened.
posted by humbug at 9:04 AM on August 13 [19 favorites]
I can only think of a couple of instances (in over fifteen years of teaching) when a student was clearly trying to bend accommodations past reason to get out of doing the work. In both cases, the disability office totally had my back. I value them and appreciate their work, and do my level best to be easy for them to work with.
Re corb above and "IP theft:" I think it's worth listening to the anxieties beneath the IP claim. One is quite simply that the institution will run a course with an instructor's created materials... but without the instructor. (Anybody else remember the school that tried to run an instructor's course after that instructor had passed? Hell yes they'll pull this shit if they think they can get away with it. See: MOOCs.)
Another, for those of us teaching in-person, is that we'll end up trying to teach empty rooms. I teach both online and in-person, have for over a decade -- and the whole fucking point of in-person is the genial productive unpredictability of student-instructor and student-student interactions. Which go away if the students aren't fucking there.
A third, for some of us, is that the recordings fall into the hands of the fash and get used against us. It's happened.
posted by humbug at 9:04 AM on August 13 [19 favorites]
It should never happen. Professors who are unwilling to make accommodations because of the "learning goals" of a course they designed are professors unwilling to perform their job, and should be treated as such.
You want to be treated by nurses who were excused from demonstrating an ability to correctly perform dosing calculations because they have diagnosed math-related anxiety?
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 9:20 AM on August 13 [38 favorites]
You want to be treated by nurses who were excused from demonstrating an ability to correctly perform dosing calculations because they have diagnosed math-related anxiety?
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 9:20 AM on August 13 [38 favorites]
Nurses have to pass licensure exams outside of their education, and the accreditation requirements are incredibly detailed and strict for the programs themselves, so I'm sure there are procedures for that in both contexts.
posted by idb at 9:26 AM on August 13 [9 favorites]
posted by idb at 9:26 AM on August 13 [9 favorites]
I also think that these professors in many ways are making more work for themselves. If you're making two tests rather than just giving the same test to the student testing later, that's on you, buddy.
They have to because students talk to each other.* Maybe not so much in certain hypercompetitive kill-or-be-killed programs, but someone who's a good friend of a person who's writing the same exam later might tip them off on what's going to be asked. And then you'd get complaints from the earlier writers that the later-writing students would be at an advantage. So better to have modified versions to preserve the impression of a level playing field. And many instructors prepare multiple versions for use in the SAME exam period, which is especially important for large classes crammed into big lecture halls, so as to cut down on copying from the student in the next seat.
(*And on the whole that's an overwhelmingly positive thing. In both undergrad and grad studies I found I learned so much more from my fellow students than I would have from just sticking to the professors' lectures, the textbooks/course materials, and the library. Not only from my peers explaining (many) things I didn't understand, but also getting me used to the give and take of group work and dealing with multiple approaches to the same issues and problems we faced. Which I think made me better prepared to be a teaching assistant in grad school, and better able to work with colleagues and clients in my later career.)
posted by hangashore at 9:35 AM on August 13 [8 favorites]
They have to because students talk to each other.* Maybe not so much in certain hypercompetitive kill-or-be-killed programs, but someone who's a good friend of a person who's writing the same exam later might tip them off on what's going to be asked. And then you'd get complaints from the earlier writers that the later-writing students would be at an advantage. So better to have modified versions to preserve the impression of a level playing field. And many instructors prepare multiple versions for use in the SAME exam period, which is especially important for large classes crammed into big lecture halls, so as to cut down on copying from the student in the next seat.
(*And on the whole that's an overwhelmingly positive thing. In both undergrad and grad studies I found I learned so much more from my fellow students than I would have from just sticking to the professors' lectures, the textbooks/course materials, and the library. Not only from my peers explaining (many) things I didn't understand, but also getting me used to the give and take of group work and dealing with multiple approaches to the same issues and problems we faced. Which I think made me better prepared to be a teaching assistant in grad school, and better able to work with colleagues and clients in my later career.)
posted by hangashore at 9:35 AM on August 13 [8 favorites]
The increase in higher education budgets is in part due to Baumol's cost disease, and healthcare cost inflation in the US. Government mandates, and reporting requirements are also part of it, as is the increase in the use of IT (which does not increase productivity). Archibald and Feldman have written extensively on this topic, and Romano as well.
One thing that's interesting to me (from my own research) is that people in different roles lament how busy and overworked they are, while complaining how little work other people do (e.g. bloated and useless administration, lazy and clueless faculty, etc.), and how little other people understand what they themselves do.
posted by idb at 9:45 AM on August 13 [7 favorites]
One thing that's interesting to me (from my own research) is that people in different roles lament how busy and overworked they are, while complaining how little work other people do (e.g. bloated and useless administration, lazy and clueless faculty, etc.), and how little other people understand what they themselves do.
posted by idb at 9:45 AM on August 13 [7 favorites]
This entire thing makes me feel gross.
During the last year of my PhD, I was teaching two classes while attempting to finish my thesis. This was at the same time that the pandemic hit. There was very little support for anything - not for the sudden transition to online courses, not for how to handle students who needed new accommodations due to changing format or circumstances, nothing. Everyone had conflicting or at least non-overlapping needs: some needed more structure, some needed less; exams needed extended time or other accommodations; cheating was rampant and not in the "we worked together collaboratively way" but in the "student who has never put work into the class or done well on assignments copies answers directly from someone else and can't explain the solution" sort of way.
And yes, the truth is that accommodating students places an additional burden on already overworked instructors. I nearly had a nervous breakdown. It is part of what contributed to me deciding to give up on academia. I felt exploited and was too angry about it.
But the other truth is: That is not the students fault. They're owed accommodations. It's a matter of justice. It's also what makes it possible to teach and assess students on what matters rather than on whether or not they have a quiet place to study, or a sensory processing issue, or a chronic illness, or whatever. Accommodations aren't an "extra burden" and shouldn't be framed that way, they're a regular part of the job.
This feels a lot like pitting instructors against students when the real failure is institutional. Budgets have ballooned, costs have ballooned, and yet instructors still receive way too little training and support for this role. It's a fiasco and pointing fingers at students who need accommodations as though they're the problem is just some punching-down nonsense. Any instructor who does so has misplaced their anger and resentment. Reserve it for the institutional structures that are withholding the necessary resources.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:46 AM on August 13 [22 favorites]
During the last year of my PhD, I was teaching two classes while attempting to finish my thesis. This was at the same time that the pandemic hit. There was very little support for anything - not for the sudden transition to online courses, not for how to handle students who needed new accommodations due to changing format or circumstances, nothing. Everyone had conflicting or at least non-overlapping needs: some needed more structure, some needed less; exams needed extended time or other accommodations; cheating was rampant and not in the "we worked together collaboratively way" but in the "student who has never put work into the class or done well on assignments copies answers directly from someone else and can't explain the solution" sort of way.
And yes, the truth is that accommodating students places an additional burden on already overworked instructors. I nearly had a nervous breakdown. It is part of what contributed to me deciding to give up on academia. I felt exploited and was too angry about it.
But the other truth is: That is not the students fault. They're owed accommodations. It's a matter of justice. It's also what makes it possible to teach and assess students on what matters rather than on whether or not they have a quiet place to study, or a sensory processing issue, or a chronic illness, or whatever. Accommodations aren't an "extra burden" and shouldn't be framed that way, they're a regular part of the job.
This feels a lot like pitting instructors against students when the real failure is institutional. Budgets have ballooned, costs have ballooned, and yet instructors still receive way too little training and support for this role. It's a fiasco and pointing fingers at students who need accommodations as though they're the problem is just some punching-down nonsense. Any instructor who does so has misplaced their anger and resentment. Reserve it for the institutional structures that are withholding the necessary resources.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:46 AM on August 13 [22 favorites]
...and of course, substantial cuts in state funding relative to inflation, coupled with a shift from grants to loans.
posted by idb at 9:46 AM on August 13 [2 favorites]
posted by idb at 9:46 AM on August 13 [2 favorites]
You want to be treated by nurses who were excused from demonstrating an ability to correctly perform dosing calculations because they have diagnosed math-related anxiety?
If I’m in a non-urgent care setting where the nurse is always allowed to have access to a calculator, yeah? I’d prefer that, actually, to someone who’s so confident in their ability to convert kg to lb in their head that they give a patient an extra fifteen pounds and refuse to correct the chart when called on it (true story).
posted by brook horse at 9:49 AM on August 13 [7 favorites]
If I’m in a non-urgent care setting where the nurse is always allowed to have access to a calculator, yeah? I’d prefer that, actually, to someone who’s so confident in their ability to convert kg to lb in their head that they give a patient an extra fifteen pounds and refuse to correct the chart when called on it (true story).
posted by brook horse at 9:49 AM on August 13 [7 favorites]
Professors who are unwilling to make accommodations because of the "learning goals" of a course they designed are professors unwilling to perform their job, and should be treated as such.
This is simply not in alignment with reality. An essay writing course requires students to write essays. A public speaking course requires students to speak in front of class. A science class might have lab sections that are held in a specific place and time that a student needs to be at. A practicum might have components that involve physical presence at specific events. All possible flexibility should be offered in the interest of learning, but infinite flexibility is not possible.
posted by bq at 9:52 AM on August 13 [34 favorites]
This is simply not in alignment with reality. An essay writing course requires students to write essays. A public speaking course requires students to speak in front of class. A science class might have lab sections that are held in a specific place and time that a student needs to be at. A practicum might have components that involve physical presence at specific events. All possible flexibility should be offered in the interest of learning, but infinite flexibility is not possible.
posted by bq at 9:52 AM on August 13 [34 favorites]
You want to be treated by nurses who were excused from demonstrating an ability to correctly perform dosing calculations because they have diagnosed math-related anxiety?
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 9:20 AM on August 13
Nurses have to pass licensure exams outside of their education, and the accreditation requirements are incredibly detailed and strict for the programs themselves, so I'm sure there are procedures for that in both contexts.
posted by idb at 9:26 AM on August 13
If a student is graduated from a course without being able to pass a required licensure test for their field, that student is not being served correctly. That’s one of the reasons tests exist. Not just so others can judge students, but so students can judge their own progress. Can you imagine a nursing student being excused from performing these calculations, going through years of study and paying tuition accordingly, and then being unable to pass a licensure exam and work in that field because they weren’t taught this material? That would be a shockingly negligent injustice.
posted by bq at 9:56 AM on August 13 [34 favorites]
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 9:20 AM on August 13
Nurses have to pass licensure exams outside of their education, and the accreditation requirements are incredibly detailed and strict for the programs themselves, so I'm sure there are procedures for that in both contexts.
posted by idb at 9:26 AM on August 13
If a student is graduated from a course without being able to pass a required licensure test for their field, that student is not being served correctly. That’s one of the reasons tests exist. Not just so others can judge students, but so students can judge their own progress. Can you imagine a nursing student being excused from performing these calculations, going through years of study and paying tuition accordingly, and then being unable to pass a licensure exam and work in that field because they weren’t taught this material? That would be a shockingly negligent injustice.
posted by bq at 9:56 AM on August 13 [34 favorites]
This is simply not in alignment with reality. An essay writing course requires students to write essays.
A better question is why the course is designed as an essay writing course in the first place, when it doesn't have to be. And I think the answer in a lot of cases is that the courses are designed not for maximum learning, but for maximum profit extraction.
We know about how many students a professor can meaningfully engage with and evaluate. It's about 30-45. Yet time and again, we have "lecture" classes, where a professor has 60-120 students in a classroom. These classes cannot be meaningfully evaluated except by tests and essays - usually one, maybe two large tests and essays, with the assistance of a grading assistant or TA.
But the reason to cram that many students into a classroom is not for pedagogic value, it's so that the school can charge that many students for the class while only having to pay one professor to teach it.
posted by corb at 9:59 AM on August 13 [4 favorites]
A better question is why the course is designed as an essay writing course in the first place, when it doesn't have to be. And I think the answer in a lot of cases is that the courses are designed not for maximum learning, but for maximum profit extraction.
We know about how many students a professor can meaningfully engage with and evaluate. It's about 30-45. Yet time and again, we have "lecture" classes, where a professor has 60-120 students in a classroom. These classes cannot be meaningfully evaluated except by tests and essays - usually one, maybe two large tests and essays, with the assistance of a grading assistant or TA.
But the reason to cram that many students into a classroom is not for pedagogic value, it's so that the school can charge that many students for the class while only having to pay one professor to teach it.
posted by corb at 9:59 AM on August 13 [4 favorites]
One would think those with tenure would have more ability to be flexible...
But less incentive to do so. Tenured professors are basically allowed to be dicks.
posted by bq at 10:01 AM on August 13 [3 favorites]
But less incentive to do so. Tenured professors are basically allowed to be dicks.
posted by bq at 10:01 AM on August 13 [3 favorites]
Can you imagine a nursing student being excused from performing these calculations, going through years of study and paying tuition accordingly, and then being unable to pass a licensure exam and work in that field because they weren’t taught this material? That would be a shockingly negligent injustice.
Which is why it's a very good thing that the vast majority of students seeking accommodation are not asking for that. The main reason people seek out accommodations is not to avoid stressors, but to handle them in a manner they're capable of. And as has been pointed out, the questions they raise often call into question the validity of existing educational techniques, many of which have an element of abuse thanks to Spartan attitudes in academia.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:08 AM on August 13 [6 favorites]
Which is why it's a very good thing that the vast majority of students seeking accommodation are not asking for that. The main reason people seek out accommodations is not to avoid stressors, but to handle them in a manner they're capable of. And as has been pointed out, the questions they raise often call into question the validity of existing educational techniques, many of which have an element of abuse thanks to Spartan attitudes in academia.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:08 AM on August 13 [6 favorites]
This is simply not in alignment with reality. An essay writing course requires students to write essays.
A better question is why the course is designed as an essay writing course in the first place, when it doesn't have to be
It has to be an essay writing course if it is ‘Essay Writing 101’ and taken by people who want to practice writing essays. I agree that in many situations flexibility is possible. I’m simply saying that it is not always possible and ‘learning goals for the course’ can indeed sometimes be unchangeable and it’s not professors failing to do their jobs when that happens. It’s not even an edge case. Its very common.
Should a course in time management be required to offer students deadline extensions? I’m not even kidding, I’m serious. I think probably yes. I can’t figure out why I think so, though, maybe because there’s no licensure exam that requires demonstration of time management skills?
posted by bq at 10:09 AM on August 13 [13 favorites]
A better question is why the course is designed as an essay writing course in the first place, when it doesn't have to be
It has to be an essay writing course if it is ‘Essay Writing 101’ and taken by people who want to practice writing essays. I agree that in many situations flexibility is possible. I’m simply saying that it is not always possible and ‘learning goals for the course’ can indeed sometimes be unchangeable and it’s not professors failing to do their jobs when that happens. It’s not even an edge case. Its very common.
Should a course in time management be required to offer students deadline extensions? I’m not even kidding, I’m serious. I think probably yes. I can’t figure out why I think so, though, maybe because there’s no licensure exam that requires demonstration of time management skills?
posted by bq at 10:09 AM on August 13 [13 favorites]
A science class might have lab sections that are held in a specific place and time that a student needs to be at. A practicum might have components that involve physical presence at specific events.
And when these specific locations are not wheelchair accessible, what do we do? We change the course location or we change the learning goals to not rely on participation in a specific inaccessible location unrelated to their content learning. Your other examples may be valid but including these examples as equal to those show how often we have decided that something is integral to the “learning goals” of the course, but often it is simply the easiest way to achieve those goals without considering disabled students at all. On a system level, I’m not trying to trash individual teachers here. But yeah there were in fact portions of my science classes I could not access because I was in a wheelchair, and my practicums were needlessly inaccessible because even when I was doing strictly notes/project work, my sites only wanted me to have a max of 5 days WFH a year—not because it wasn’t secure or possible—because that wasn’t in line with their “learning goals.” So I would come in to my office in the hospital and sit there all day doing work and then going home in pain because the setup wasn’t ergonomic and every time I had to use the bathroom I had to traipse halfway across the hospital. But their learning goals were being met by that apparently.
posted by brook horse at 10:09 AM on August 13 [8 favorites]
And when these specific locations are not wheelchair accessible, what do we do? We change the course location or we change the learning goals to not rely on participation in a specific inaccessible location unrelated to their content learning. Your other examples may be valid but including these examples as equal to those show how often we have decided that something is integral to the “learning goals” of the course, but often it is simply the easiest way to achieve those goals without considering disabled students at all. On a system level, I’m not trying to trash individual teachers here. But yeah there were in fact portions of my science classes I could not access because I was in a wheelchair, and my practicums were needlessly inaccessible because even when I was doing strictly notes/project work, my sites only wanted me to have a max of 5 days WFH a year—not because it wasn’t secure or possible—because that wasn’t in line with their “learning goals.” So I would come in to my office in the hospital and sit there all day doing work and then going home in pain because the setup wasn’t ergonomic and every time I had to use the bathroom I had to traipse halfway across the hospital. But their learning goals were being met by that apparently.
posted by brook horse at 10:09 AM on August 13 [8 favorites]
Which is why it's a very good thing that the vast majority of students seeking accommodation are not asking for that.
I agree.
posted by bq at 10:10 AM on August 13 [1 favorite]
I agree.
posted by bq at 10:10 AM on August 13 [1 favorite]
because that wasn’t in line with their “learning goals.”
That’s not a learning goal, that’s a stupid administrator.
My argument is ‘learning goals can actually exist’, in answer to ‘professors who refuse accommodations due to learning goals aren’t doing their jobs and should be fired’.
posted by bq at 10:14 AM on August 13 [4 favorites]
That’s not a learning goal, that’s a stupid administrator.
My argument is ‘learning goals can actually exist’, in answer to ‘professors who refuse accommodations due to learning goals aren’t doing their jobs and should be fired’.
posted by bq at 10:14 AM on August 13 [4 favorites]
Yes, but the fact that the examples you provided are a mix of legitimate learning goals and ones that are not illustrated the problem that many professors think they are just defending their learning goals and they are not.
Doesn’t mean they should be fired for it, I disagree with that. But I think it’s more often a cover—even if a sincerely believed in one—than an actually legitimate “it is not possible to accommodate this and also show your learning” conflict. And professors should have more support resolving “my student can learn and show their learning on this topic but not in the way I planned.”
posted by brook horse at 10:18 AM on August 13 [3 favorites]
Doesn’t mean they should be fired for it, I disagree with that. But I think it’s more often a cover—even if a sincerely believed in one—than an actually legitimate “it is not possible to accommodate this and also show your learning” conflict. And professors should have more support resolving “my student can learn and show their learning on this topic but not in the way I planned.”
posted by brook horse at 10:18 AM on August 13 [3 favorites]
I think y'all are working with two different interpretations of the phrase "learning goal." It sounds like on one side is a definition of "learning goal" as "whatever bullshit someone labels as learning goal as an excuse to not deal with accommodations" and the other side is "learning goal" as roughly "what the class is about."
Like, I can understand it's hard to teach a swim class without getting students in water, so in that scenario, "teach me to swim without getting me wet" is perhaps an unreasonable request (although maybe a good instructor would take a whack at that one). On the other hand, if I'm the instructor of a swimming class and I don't want to accommodate people wearing goggles because I claim it's a "learning goal" to swim with chlorine in your eyes then that's just some bullshit.
posted by axiom at 10:21 AM on August 13 [9 favorites]
Like, I can understand it's hard to teach a swim class without getting students in water, so in that scenario, "teach me to swim without getting me wet" is perhaps an unreasonable request (although maybe a good instructor would take a whack at that one). On the other hand, if I'm the instructor of a swimming class and I don't want to accommodate people wearing goggles because I claim it's a "learning goal" to swim with chlorine in your eyes then that's just some bullshit.
posted by axiom at 10:21 AM on August 13 [9 favorites]
Yeah basically axiom, and a lot of the people quoted in the article seem to be doing the latter. Of course that’s not everyone talking about learning goals, but when you start talking about how it’s integral to your course to “be tough” one has to wonder.
posted by brook horse at 10:22 AM on August 13 [1 favorite]
posted by brook horse at 10:22 AM on August 13 [1 favorite]
*And on the whole that's an overwhelmingly positive thing. In both undergrad and grad studies I found I learned so much more from my fellow students than I would have from just sticking to the professors' lectures, the textbooks/course materials, and the library.
My mother was a college professor and one of her favorite "tricks" was to hand out a list of questions and announce "not all of these questions on this paper will be on the exam, but all of the exam questions are on this paper." Her students would break up into groups, split up the list, and then share answers. They would pat themselves on their back for their "clever trick". Mom, meanwhile, was patting herself on the back because she could tell from the exam results that the students doing this were learning the material.
Her college also had a relatively high percentage of ESL students and she developed a practice of telling students that if they needed help with drafts, they were welcome to write them in their first language and she'd find a reader to help them out.
posted by Karmakaze at 10:31 AM on August 13 [26 favorites]
My mother was a college professor and one of her favorite "tricks" was to hand out a list of questions and announce "not all of these questions on this paper will be on the exam, but all of the exam questions are on this paper." Her students would break up into groups, split up the list, and then share answers. They would pat themselves on their back for their "clever trick". Mom, meanwhile, was patting herself on the back because she could tell from the exam results that the students doing this were learning the material.
Her college also had a relatively high percentage of ESL students and she developed a practice of telling students that if they needed help with drafts, they were welcome to write them in their first language and she'd find a reader to help them out.
posted by Karmakaze at 10:31 AM on August 13 [26 favorites]
1. The story's strongest point had to do with conflicts between UDL and precarity, I think. If you are tenured and teaching a 3-3 load, you have a certain flexibility about assignments, deadlines, grading strategies &c. that a contingent faculty member teaching 6-6 at multiple colleges (not a hypothetical: some of our own contingent faculty have had schedules like that) just does not have.
2. I was idly wondering if "Some suggest that instructors should Zoom their lectures in real time—or record their lectures and post them online afterward—for the benefit of students who can’t come to class" was a Canada thing, because this is something that we cannot do--it would be regarded as circumventing the accreditation process. (In NYS, at least, unless you are accredited for it no more than 25% of a department's major-specific courses can be online.) There are circumstances under which an in-person course can be recorded and streamed to accommodate a student, but those circumstances are extraordinarily narrow. But YMMV in other states or countries.
3. "Being tough" is, indeed, not a learning objective. (We do in fact have specific learning objectives that are registered with and approved by the university, listed in our syllabi and on our webpage, and assessed at the end of the year.)
4. Under-funded offices for SWD are a genuine problem! The downturn in enrollments and budgets after COVID did a number on administrative staffing across the board, but it's particularly noticeable in student-facing offices.
posted by thomas j wise at 10:40 AM on August 13 [4 favorites]
2. I was idly wondering if "Some suggest that instructors should Zoom their lectures in real time—or record their lectures and post them online afterward—for the benefit of students who can’t come to class" was a Canada thing, because this is something that we cannot do--it would be regarded as circumventing the accreditation process. (In NYS, at least, unless you are accredited for it no more than 25% of a department's major-specific courses can be online.) There are circumstances under which an in-person course can be recorded and streamed to accommodate a student, but those circumstances are extraordinarily narrow. But YMMV in other states or countries.
3. "Being tough" is, indeed, not a learning objective. (We do in fact have specific learning objectives that are registered with and approved by the university, listed in our syllabi and on our webpage, and assessed at the end of the year.)
4. Under-funded offices for SWD are a genuine problem! The downturn in enrollments and budgets after COVID did a number on administrative staffing across the board, but it's particularly noticeable in student-facing offices.
posted by thomas j wise at 10:40 AM on August 13 [4 favorites]
And professors should have more support resolving “my student can learn and show their learning on this topic but not in the way I planned.”
Some profs need more support (in terms of course materials or better buildings or etc), some need an attitude change. The ones that need the attitude change make it harder for those of us that just need support.
Similarly the few students who really do cheat make for a bad system for everyone else. Straight-up copying solutions from another university that gave a somewhat similar project, taking a photo of the exam to share with a student who will take it late, etc. So unfortunately I do actually have to write new exams when a student needs to take an exam late. (All of my exams are open book, because memorizing random things is absolutely *not* a learning goal, whereas using existing reference materials is).
posted by nat at 10:45 AM on August 13 [7 favorites]
Some profs need more support (in terms of course materials or better buildings or etc), some need an attitude change. The ones that need the attitude change make it harder for those of us that just need support.
Similarly the few students who really do cheat make for a bad system for everyone else. Straight-up copying solutions from another university that gave a somewhat similar project, taking a photo of the exam to share with a student who will take it late, etc. So unfortunately I do actually have to write new exams when a student needs to take an exam late. (All of my exams are open book, because memorizing random things is absolutely *not* a learning goal, whereas using existing reference materials is).
posted by nat at 10:45 AM on August 13 [7 favorites]
Re: recorded lectures, we also had a no more than 25% online rule but that only applied to class time, not lectures specifically. So a flipped classroom didn’t run afoul of those rules. I had most of the lectures recorded and assigned as homework, and then used a bunch of class time as discussion and work time for students to collaborate and get real time feedback working on assignments that otherwise would have been done outside of class. Students who couldn’t make it to class for xyz reason had alternate assignments available but I only had a handful of requests for these over the course of a semester. Attendance was pretty stellar, I think partially because there was direct encouragement of developing connection with your fellow students. I knew that small group time would typically devolve into socializing after about 15 minutes, so I always planned for 20-25 to give people that outlet because students were starving for it and it increased accountability and engagement in the class.
Livestreaming an in-person lecture would have sucked though, I agree. I had mini-lectures in person and I just gave people the Powerpoint slides with my notes and no one asked for more than that. And I never quizzed on that content; it was more “what’s new in the research” and “applications in the news” etc type stuff.
posted by brook horse at 11:11 AM on August 13 [2 favorites]
Livestreaming an in-person lecture would have sucked though, I agree. I had mini-lectures in person and I just gave people the Powerpoint slides with my notes and no one asked for more than that. And I never quizzed on that content; it was more “what’s new in the research” and “applications in the news” etc type stuff.
posted by brook horse at 11:11 AM on August 13 [2 favorites]
I have taught in a range of college classrooms. One of my biggest gripes is most of the most vocal proponents of UDL are based in relatively well-resourced institutions. If your a professor at a top-ranked competitive institution, engaging in UDL is much easier than if you're teaching students that range from the top-performing student you'd find anywhere to students who are unable to write a paragraph. I am not exaggerating. I will preface this all saying that over my years of teaching, I had many students thank me for how accommodating and caring I was - and it is something I cared about - but so much of this article really resonated with me, and a lot of the comments in this thread strike me as unfair.
During the height of the pandemic, my institution (of the latter variety) told us to "meet students where they are" to avoid "melt" (the admin's favorite euphemism for drop outs). And again, I am generally in favor of doing that. But some of where my students were, was working full-time jobs simultaneously to attending their full-time classes online. No, I do not think educators should be expected to figure out ways to allow students to still excel in them even if they are merely listening in to class while they do whatever their full-time job is. And yet, students expected me to do that, my chair expected me to at least try and do that (though they were sympathetic).
Some of the issue is also that a lot of this varies discipline to discipline. During the height of the pandemic I had a conversation with a Chemistry professor, and she was struggling with the fact that failing students that semester felt harsh, but also if these students then went on to Chem 201 without learning much of anything from Chem 102, well, it just felt like pushing the problem on their future instructor. Whereas me, I was teaching history courses, and could easily not worry if the students were learning much. This creates a landscape of wildly different approaches to accommodation across departments, which is no doubt confusing to students to navigate. The pandemic hyper charged this divide, but it existed before the pandemic.
Perhaps it's bureaucracy, but as noted there is this language of "reasonable accommodation" which is vague, and often interpreted differently by faculty, students, and admin. The accommodation request I got that seemed the least helpful to everyone involved was "flexible attendance." I once had one such student not show up for a month - that's a quarter of the course material. I can try to work with students, but I can't magically teach them a months worth of a material in office hours. That the disability office gave the student "flexible attendance" as an accommodation gave some students the false impression that if they didn't attend class after class there would be no consequence - which really did them no favors, given that most classes are designed to be attended. Missing a class here and there is one thing, but there is a limit to how much you can miss before it will have an impact.
What worries me is that this critical shift is very abrupt for students who are instantly moved from an environment where the institution was required to identify their needs to an environment where they have to proactively identify and advocate for themselves.
I would add that I gather K-12 is much more embedded in tech than college. Yes, professors use Learning Management Software (LMS), but often minimally. Whereas in high school, students are now used to seeing their grade updated daily, their parents can often track it, etc. When that micro-management goes away, a lot of students struggle - another way of putting it is that learning in college has always required more independence than high school, but the gap has grown, and many faculty aren't even aware of the extent.
posted by coffeecat at 11:49 AM on August 13 [12 favorites]
During the height of the pandemic, my institution (of the latter variety) told us to "meet students where they are" to avoid "melt" (the admin's favorite euphemism for drop outs). And again, I am generally in favor of doing that. But some of where my students were, was working full-time jobs simultaneously to attending their full-time classes online. No, I do not think educators should be expected to figure out ways to allow students to still excel in them even if they are merely listening in to class while they do whatever their full-time job is. And yet, students expected me to do that, my chair expected me to at least try and do that (though they were sympathetic).
Some of the issue is also that a lot of this varies discipline to discipline. During the height of the pandemic I had a conversation with a Chemistry professor, and she was struggling with the fact that failing students that semester felt harsh, but also if these students then went on to Chem 201 without learning much of anything from Chem 102, well, it just felt like pushing the problem on their future instructor. Whereas me, I was teaching history courses, and could easily not worry if the students were learning much. This creates a landscape of wildly different approaches to accommodation across departments, which is no doubt confusing to students to navigate. The pandemic hyper charged this divide, but it existed before the pandemic.
Perhaps it's bureaucracy, but as noted there is this language of "reasonable accommodation" which is vague, and often interpreted differently by faculty, students, and admin. The accommodation request I got that seemed the least helpful to everyone involved was "flexible attendance." I once had one such student not show up for a month - that's a quarter of the course material. I can try to work with students, but I can't magically teach them a months worth of a material in office hours. That the disability office gave the student "flexible attendance" as an accommodation gave some students the false impression that if they didn't attend class after class there would be no consequence - which really did them no favors, given that most classes are designed to be attended. Missing a class here and there is one thing, but there is a limit to how much you can miss before it will have an impact.
What worries me is that this critical shift is very abrupt for students who are instantly moved from an environment where the institution was required to identify their needs to an environment where they have to proactively identify and advocate for themselves.
I would add that I gather K-12 is much more embedded in tech than college. Yes, professors use Learning Management Software (LMS), but often minimally. Whereas in high school, students are now used to seeing their grade updated daily, their parents can often track it, etc. When that micro-management goes away, a lot of students struggle - another way of putting it is that learning in college has always required more independence than high school, but the gap has grown, and many faculty aren't even aware of the extent.
posted by coffeecat at 11:49 AM on August 13 [12 favorites]
A friend at a well resourced college usually does very well just by following accessible course design so many accommodations that students need are already built into the syllabus. Lately, though the number of accommodations requested and students just not showing up to class has been skyrocketing.
How do you give an exam when one student needs it read out-loud, another needs absolute quiet and no distractions, another needs to be able to move around, another gets to use their laptop, another gets it on paper only, and other students get a variety of extra time between 1.5 and 3x. On top of this my friend needs accommodations for their own disability. Its like crossing the river with a fox, a chicken, and a bucket of grain but there is no solution.
Its absolutely an institutional failure to invest in resources to make higher ed more accessible. Instead schools just depend on instructors to do more with less and students get screwed.
The issue of why skipping class is so much more common and the number of accommodations going up probably deserves it's own fpp.
posted by being_quiet at 12:10 PM on August 13 [7 favorites]
How do you give an exam when one student needs it read out-loud, another needs absolute quiet and no distractions, another needs to be able to move around, another gets to use their laptop, another gets it on paper only, and other students get a variety of extra time between 1.5 and 3x. On top of this my friend needs accommodations for their own disability. Its like crossing the river with a fox, a chicken, and a bucket of grain but there is no solution.
Its absolutely an institutional failure to invest in resources to make higher ed more accessible. Instead schools just depend on instructors to do more with less and students get screwed.
The issue of why skipping class is so much more common and the number of accommodations going up probably deserves it's own fpp.
posted by being_quiet at 12:10 PM on August 13 [7 favorites]
The accommodation request I got that seemed the least helpful to everyone involved was "flexible attendance." I once had one such student not show up for a month - that's a quarter of the course material. I can try to work with students, but I can't magically teach them a months worth of a material in office hours
But if you were allowing the student to attend via Zoom, or you were taping the material via Zoom, then the student could learn all the material.
I have had flexible attendance accommodations in law school, which is not known for its mercy in grading. I have been able to keep up at least with the middle of the pack in tested classes through viewing taped classes for the classes I missed, which has been a significant number and probably in some cases does add up to a month's worth.
I am sympathetic to the worker anxiety issues - the question of whether allowing those taped lectures to exist will then remove job security is a valid one. But it's not a learning issue, and it's one that could easily be solved by legislative protections for workers.
posted by corb at 12:18 PM on August 13 [3 favorites]
But if you were allowing the student to attend via Zoom, or you were taping the material via Zoom, then the student could learn all the material.
I have had flexible attendance accommodations in law school, which is not known for its mercy in grading. I have been able to keep up at least with the middle of the pack in tested classes through viewing taped classes for the classes I missed, which has been a significant number and probably in some cases does add up to a month's worth.
I am sympathetic to the worker anxiety issues - the question of whether allowing those taped lectures to exist will then remove job security is a valid one. But it's not a learning issue, and it's one that could easily be solved by legislative protections for workers.
posted by corb at 12:18 PM on August 13 [3 favorites]
In the U.S., "reasonable accommodation" is language that comes directly from some of the relevant laws e.g., Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Rehabilitation Act.
At my university, our disability support unit does not and cannot award accommodations to students in coursework. They work with faculty and students to recommend, develop, and support accommodations. Faculty can, and sometimes should, negotiate and otherwise provide feedback and even pushback for some of the recommended accommodations.
My staff position doesn't carry a teaching load but I have sometimes taught graduate courses on overload. A few years ago, one of the requested accommodations I received from our disability support folks was to allow one of my students to bring food and eat during the class. I didn't reply but I wanted to tell them that "the class meets from 5:30 until 7:30 in the evening - we're all bringing and eating food (and I don't care if the little sign by the door says that food and drink aren't allowed)!" They also recommended extra time for exams and that was easy, too, since I didn't have any exams for that particular class.
posted by ElKevbo at 12:21 PM on August 13 [2 favorites]
At my university, our disability support unit does not and cannot award accommodations to students in coursework. They work with faculty and students to recommend, develop, and support accommodations. Faculty can, and sometimes should, negotiate and otherwise provide feedback and even pushback for some of the recommended accommodations.
My staff position doesn't carry a teaching load but I have sometimes taught graduate courses on overload. A few years ago, one of the requested accommodations I received from our disability support folks was to allow one of my students to bring food and eat during the class. I didn't reply but I wanted to tell them that "the class meets from 5:30 until 7:30 in the evening - we're all bringing and eating food (and I don't care if the little sign by the door says that food and drink aren't allowed)!" They also recommended extra time for exams and that was easy, too, since I didn't have any exams for that particular class.
posted by ElKevbo at 12:21 PM on August 13 [2 favorites]
You have to wonder if there would be a way to lump accommodations - so for instance, this semester Modern European Literature is taught in person and the exam is given on paper in person and next semester it's taught remotely with and the exam is a take-home which can be prepared as a podcast. You'd need some bespoke accommodations as well, but maybe a solution might be to teach courses for different learning modalities tout court. You'd have X number of seats in each course and student with accommodations would get early enrollment to make sure they got a seat. Some people would get stuck with a modality that they didn't really like, but at least the professor could give all their energy to teaching one kind of course at a time.
posted by Frowner at 12:23 PM on August 13 [2 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 12:23 PM on August 13 [2 favorites]
Different teaching modalities might also address some of the "is this class about teaching you to write under pressure and remember complex details on the spot" stuff - if you're going into a field or type of work where writing under pressure and making an argument based on complex details fairly quickly are useful skills, it's reasonable to expect your college work to build you up there. If you're expecting to go into work which doesn't require those skills, you don't need to practice them in class if you're not interested.
posted by Frowner at 12:28 PM on August 13 [3 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 12:28 PM on August 13 [3 favorites]
corb, the "flexible attendance" request was one that started pre-pandemic, so no, Zoom wasn't always an option. And then after the pandemic, the students I'm talking about were not like you - keeping up with course material on their own - that would have been fine (though not ideal for group work, discussion, etc.)! These were students who were completely checked out for a month, not responding to my concerned emails, then resurfacing.
posted by coffeecat at 12:35 PM on August 13 [6 favorites]
posted by coffeecat at 12:35 PM on August 13 [6 favorites]
How do you give an exam when one student needs it read out-loud, another needs absolute quiet and no distractions, another needs to be able to move around, another gets to use their laptop, another gets it on paper only, and other students get a variety of extra time between 1.5 and 3x.
This is at a Big State U, but I just email a copy of the exam to the accessibility people and let them work it out.
But if you were allowing the student to attend via Zoom, or you were taping the material via Zoom, then the student could learn all the material.
Zoom isn't costless. One thing that happens if a class is being recorded is that participation or even just asking questions absolutely tanks, because students don't want to be recorded.
It also ends up being substantially more work to manage. Which, eh. This is not a noble calling of sacrifice, it's a fuckin' job. If they want me to do a whole bunch more work without giving me more currency, I'm gonna resist that same as anyone in any job should.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 1:05 PM on August 13 [21 favorites]
This is at a Big State U, but I just email a copy of the exam to the accessibility people and let them work it out.
But if you were allowing the student to attend via Zoom, or you were taping the material via Zoom, then the student could learn all the material.
Zoom isn't costless. One thing that happens if a class is being recorded is that participation or even just asking questions absolutely tanks, because students don't want to be recorded.
It also ends up being substantially more work to manage. Which, eh. This is not a noble calling of sacrifice, it's a fuckin' job. If they want me to do a whole bunch more work without giving me more currency, I'm gonna resist that same as anyone in any job should.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 1:05 PM on August 13 [21 favorites]
yeah, all the people I know who are professors are underwater in terms of work and admin will often throw stuff at them like "hey we need to you cook up an entire independent study course with lessons and assignments for one student. No extra pay!" If they're tenured they might be able to say no, but adjunct or tenure track? Good the fuck luck, enjoy making a whole damn class for one person who is going to need lots of extra time and effort.
This is not a noble calling of sacrifice, it's a fuckin' job. If they want me to do a whole bunch more work without giving me more currency, I'm gonna resist that same as anyone in any job should.
Amen, being a teacher doesn't mean you have to have infinite time and energy for extra work in a job that isn't thanking you for it.
posted by Ferreous at 1:52 PM on August 13 [11 favorites]
This is not a noble calling of sacrifice, it's a fuckin' job. If they want me to do a whole bunch more work without giving me more currency, I'm gonna resist that same as anyone in any job should.
Amen, being a teacher doesn't mean you have to have infinite time and energy for extra work in a job that isn't thanking you for it.
posted by Ferreous at 1:52 PM on August 13 [11 favorites]
My sense is that there are a few things that are related, but not the point that they just collapse into one another:
1) Colleges and universities -- and state governments -- have done a lot to casualize instructional labor and make it precarious
2) For good reasons, expectations that instructors engage in UDL and develop workable accommodations for students with recognized disabilities
3) There is a growing demand for multimodal assessments and teaching models, partly for accessibility and partly from a more debatable claim that "demonstrating learning" should not be seen as medium-dependent
4) A number of students and other stakeholders want programs of study that break away from existing liberal arts and general education structures, such as the standard "freshman composition" course
1 and 2 are really the focus of the article, and the place where the ADA's just and correct mandate runs into the unjust defunding and casualization of vital staff and faculty roles needed to implement that mandate. The institutions of higher education that serve the vast majority of students in the U.S. are among the worst-funded on a per-student basis and on a staffing basis, so more and more of the work of implementing accommodations, creating universally accessible courses, and managing unexpected situations for students falls on fewer people and on undercompensated and overworked people (many of whom may have their own visible or invisible disabilities).
3 and 4 are partly about accessibility, but are also part of a much bigger and more contentious debate about the basic structure and purpose of of higher education. There, there's more of an argument for throwing out, say, the department structure and perhaps whole (often state-mandated) courses.
In my state, for instance, the stated course learning outcomes for English composition, aren't mine or the college's; they're the state's, and they include stuff about the ability to use proper citation in recognized styles and "writing essays in standard written English." That practically means that the medium of assessment for at least some of the learning goals has to be written material.
There is also some research that suggests that lasting learning requires the medium of instruction to be aligned with the skill being taught. It's hard to become a good writer, for instance, without being taught using writing as the medium.
There's also the issue of instructors needing to retrain and be resourced to teach in -- and assess student creations in -- multiple media. When I add a podcast option or a video option to my classes, for instance, I'm going to need to be prepared to suggest tools to create in those media to students who are interested, to deal with the limitations of the required course platform (learning management system) in terms of what students can upload, and be ready to run into locked files at sites that require an account, or to chase students down to get them to unlock access permissions to stuff they've linked, and so on. It greatly multiplies the work and the prep, and underresourced and underpaid folks are not going to do that.
3 and 4 are also complicated by the role higher education plays in credentialing and class mobility in the U.S. Colleges and universities are a bottleneck for class mobility, because the college credential has become the preferred filter for many employers and because it's cheaper for businesses to get people to pay for their own training and do it on their own time before they even apply for jobs.
Consequently, there is much more emphasis on "completion" as a metric for colleges, and not a lot of agreement on how to meaningfully assess learning, specially long-term or lasting learning. Indeed, learning for purposes other than professional or pre-professional credentialing might be a non-working, nonsensical concept for a lot of students: they are there to get the credential they need to make the changes they need to make in their lives.
Trying to make higher education institutions as they currently exist serve those needs while also being knowledge production centers and places of inclusion is going to take money, personnel, and time, and likely some radical restructuring. And there is not only a lot of institutional inertia to overcome for that, but also a lot of political barriers. Even then, it won't solve the bigger problem that class mobility goes through a very specific set of institutions, and disproportionately places time and cost burdens (including opportunity costs) on the students for whom class mobility is most crucial. That's a bigger societal issue of inclusion and economic justice.
posted by kewb at 1:52 PM on August 13 [14 favorites]
1) Colleges and universities -- and state governments -- have done a lot to casualize instructional labor and make it precarious
2) For good reasons, expectations that instructors engage in UDL and develop workable accommodations for students with recognized disabilities
3) There is a growing demand for multimodal assessments and teaching models, partly for accessibility and partly from a more debatable claim that "demonstrating learning" should not be seen as medium-dependent
4) A number of students and other stakeholders want programs of study that break away from existing liberal arts and general education structures, such as the standard "freshman composition" course
1 and 2 are really the focus of the article, and the place where the ADA's just and correct mandate runs into the unjust defunding and casualization of vital staff and faculty roles needed to implement that mandate. The institutions of higher education that serve the vast majority of students in the U.S. are among the worst-funded on a per-student basis and on a staffing basis, so more and more of the work of implementing accommodations, creating universally accessible courses, and managing unexpected situations for students falls on fewer people and on undercompensated and overworked people (many of whom may have their own visible or invisible disabilities).
3 and 4 are partly about accessibility, but are also part of a much bigger and more contentious debate about the basic structure and purpose of of higher education. There, there's more of an argument for throwing out, say, the department structure and perhaps whole (often state-mandated) courses.
In my state, for instance, the stated course learning outcomes for English composition, aren't mine or the college's; they're the state's, and they include stuff about the ability to use proper citation in recognized styles and "writing essays in standard written English." That practically means that the medium of assessment for at least some of the learning goals has to be written material.
There is also some research that suggests that lasting learning requires the medium of instruction to be aligned with the skill being taught. It's hard to become a good writer, for instance, without being taught using writing as the medium.
There's also the issue of instructors needing to retrain and be resourced to teach in -- and assess student creations in -- multiple media. When I add a podcast option or a video option to my classes, for instance, I'm going to need to be prepared to suggest tools to create in those media to students who are interested, to deal with the limitations of the required course platform (learning management system) in terms of what students can upload, and be ready to run into locked files at sites that require an account, or to chase students down to get them to unlock access permissions to stuff they've linked, and so on. It greatly multiplies the work and the prep, and underresourced and underpaid folks are not going to do that.
3 and 4 are also complicated by the role higher education plays in credentialing and class mobility in the U.S. Colleges and universities are a bottleneck for class mobility, because the college credential has become the preferred filter for many employers and because it's cheaper for businesses to get people to pay for their own training and do it on their own time before they even apply for jobs.
Consequently, there is much more emphasis on "completion" as a metric for colleges, and not a lot of agreement on how to meaningfully assess learning, specially long-term or lasting learning. Indeed, learning for purposes other than professional or pre-professional credentialing might be a non-working, nonsensical concept for a lot of students: they are there to get the credential they need to make the changes they need to make in their lives.
Trying to make higher education institutions as they currently exist serve those needs while also being knowledge production centers and places of inclusion is going to take money, personnel, and time, and likely some radical restructuring. And there is not only a lot of institutional inertia to overcome for that, but also a lot of political barriers. Even then, it won't solve the bigger problem that class mobility goes through a very specific set of institutions, and disproportionately places time and cost burdens (including opportunity costs) on the students for whom class mobility is most crucial. That's a bigger societal issue of inclusion and economic justice.
posted by kewb at 1:52 PM on August 13 [14 favorites]
I wanted to draw out two lines from the article which speak to higher ed labor in this context:
"Leniency had become a survival strategy."
“That’s why I’m afraid of my students."
Think about what it means to teach in that environment.
posted by doctornemo at 2:05 PM on August 13 [7 favorites]
"Leniency had become a survival strategy."
“That’s why I’m afraid of my students."
Think about what it means to teach in that environment.
posted by doctornemo at 2:05 PM on August 13 [7 favorites]
This article is a giant setback to the whole accomodations issue and is super ableist...how can this person call themselves a lecturer!!
posted by yueliang at 2:50 PM on August 13 [4 favorites]
posted by yueliang at 2:50 PM on August 13 [4 favorites]
Nursing certification exam pass rates after graduation are part of nursing program accreditation, so a program that does not have adequate certification pass rates risks losing accreditation.
posted by idb at 3:17 PM on August 13 [2 favorites]
posted by idb at 3:17 PM on August 13 [2 favorites]
I was idly wondering if "Some suggest that instructors should Zoom their lectures in real time—or record their lectures and post them online afterward—for the benefit of students who can’t come to class" was a Canada thing, because this is something that we cannot do--it would be regarded as circumventing the accreditation process. (In NYS, at least, unless you are accredited for it no more than 25% of a department's major-specific courses can be online.) There are circumstances under which an in-person course can be recorded and streamed to accommodate a student, but those circumstances are extraordinarily narrow. But YMMV in other states or countries.
I have been streaming all of my courses on Zoom since 2020, even though I now officially teach in person only. I never asked anyone's permission--it just made sense to keep doing it. Students love it for when they're sick or (even more often) their kid is sick, and I have had zero pushback from anywhere. Our accreditation used to be in person only, but we had just added an online only software development degree in 2019, so maybe that helps. Or maybe folks just have other things to worry about.
I have colleagues who are concerned about students using videos of them for deep fakes or just to mock on TikTok. I just don't have time to think about things like that.
My mom worked her way through grad school in Disabled Student Services, and then stayed on there as staff for several years. Her psychology professor graduate advisor was blind, and so I grew up around old school page readers and talking about dyslexia at the dinner table.
In general, I have found accommodations not that hard, and I'm always glad to do it. Occasionally, I get the delight of having an ASL interpreter in class, or an autistic student who rarely speaks but then signs up to do a presentation on reptiles and totally nails it because that's their special interest. To be fair, our class sizes are small, and our campus was built this century and is very accessible. Of all the (seemingly few) things we get right, this is one I'm really proud of.
posted by hydropsyche at 3:21 PM on August 13 [7 favorites]
I have been streaming all of my courses on Zoom since 2020, even though I now officially teach in person only. I never asked anyone's permission--it just made sense to keep doing it. Students love it for when they're sick or (even more often) their kid is sick, and I have had zero pushback from anywhere. Our accreditation used to be in person only, but we had just added an online only software development degree in 2019, so maybe that helps. Or maybe folks just have other things to worry about.
I have colleagues who are concerned about students using videos of them for deep fakes or just to mock on TikTok. I just don't have time to think about things like that.
My mom worked her way through grad school in Disabled Student Services, and then stayed on there as staff for several years. Her psychology professor graduate advisor was blind, and so I grew up around old school page readers and talking about dyslexia at the dinner table.
In general, I have found accommodations not that hard, and I'm always glad to do it. Occasionally, I get the delight of having an ASL interpreter in class, or an autistic student who rarely speaks but then signs up to do a presentation on reptiles and totally nails it because that's their special interest. To be fair, our class sizes are small, and our campus was built this century and is very accessible. Of all the (seemingly few) things we get right, this is one I'm really proud of.
posted by hydropsyche at 3:21 PM on August 13 [7 favorites]
I've been teaching in the UK for a year, and accommodations are a major issue. The article makes me feel slightly better, because the issues raised there are also what my department has been experiencing as persistent troubles that arise from the way that our institution handles accommodations.
I don't mind granting accommodations for students, and for the most part believe they're sought earnestly and genuinely help students. However, because of the vast number of accommodations for students (that gets bigger every year) the department isn't staffed to handle the volume of accommodations. We are also in belt tightening that I think is just the new expected operating procedure for higher ed in the UK, which is essentially austerity foisted on overworked staff and students getting underserved, so the staffing isn't likely to change to respond to the increased demand.
What our office has done (this is speculation, but it's backed up by word of mouth and seems reasonable given what we've experienced) is to just increase leniency for every single request, but not to provide any actual additional support. This presents the institution with the least legal liability, and passes that labor (unpaid) onto lecturers, because they know that we're probably just going to do it. Students know this, because they talk, and many abuse it, which increases the overall stress on everyone involved and reduces resources for students who need it. I routinely hear students talk about this, for what it's worth, although I obviously can't provide hard numbers or data.
This has knock-on effects with how we teach. Ideally I would assess attendance, because I think that to get the most out of classes it helps to have discussions, and discussions need people there to attends. However we are heavily discouraged from assessing attendance because it would run afoul of too many potential accommodations and open up the institution to legal problems. I think, ideally, a good accessibility program would work with students who have persistent attendance issues for valid reasons, but those resources simply don't exist. I've talked to students in real mental health crisis, and the local facilities who can provide that help are also at capacity - think month long waiting times. Our accessibility office seems to exist to rubber stamp accommodations, and they're at capacity doing that, so often ILPs are very hastily written, and don't reflect good pedagogy. Which, by the way, I'm not qualified to suggest since I'm not trained in it, nor am I paid to be.
Part of the accommodation policy is something called an extenuating circumstance or "EC". An EC is used in an instance of a real mental health or physical health crisis, or a major personal emergency (such as the death of a family member). We used to give a dozen of these for a 100 person class. The same "just give it to anyone who asks" policy has been extended to ECs, and in most classes over 50% of the students took them. I overheard multiple students strategically factoring this into their deadlines. This has several consequences.
First is that our deadlines aren't arbitrary or capricious - we talk among the staff to try to make sure that students have enough time for big deadlines and that things are spaced properly. If you suddenly have an extra 3 weeks for an unknown half of your students, those deadlines are now in conflict.
Second, we do a lot of group work because our students are working on large projects. The deadlines we've set are made (with many years experience) to give enough time to do the standard of work that will let our students have portfolios that let them get jobs. Now imagine that some arbitrary 30% of your group is working on other stuff that was supposed to be due weeks ago, but because they know the accessibility office will rubber stamp it they just decided to procrastinate for those three weeks and now everything is piling up. Those group members aren't contributing what they would be if the deadlines were actually deadlines.
Third, is the fact that we are already miserable due to the way the academic calendar is arranged in order to squeeze in as much recruiting as possible. We've been thrust into making higher ed a for-profit service (essentially), and compete on recruitment, because that's where funding comes from. So our academic calendars are very tight - there is almost no turnover between semesters. So what happens when you unexpectedly have to grade 50% of your student work 3 weeks later than you had carefully planned for? Well, guess.
The people saying that this person is a bad teacher, or that we should simply refactor everything that higher ed. does and the way it exists... well, I think you don't know what you're talking about. The accommodation crisis, if you want to call it that, is basically a bunch of stuff coming to a head because of austerity policies and neoliberal mismanagement. It's awful, and I think everyone is losing except for people skimming money off the top of the system, but it's not fake, and it's not a result of callous teachers who are bad at their job or unaware of good teaching methods.
posted by codacorolla at 3:22 PM on August 13 [31 favorites]
I don't mind granting accommodations for students, and for the most part believe they're sought earnestly and genuinely help students. However, because of the vast number of accommodations for students (that gets bigger every year) the department isn't staffed to handle the volume of accommodations. We are also in belt tightening that I think is just the new expected operating procedure for higher ed in the UK, which is essentially austerity foisted on overworked staff and students getting underserved, so the staffing isn't likely to change to respond to the increased demand.
What our office has done (this is speculation, but it's backed up by word of mouth and seems reasonable given what we've experienced) is to just increase leniency for every single request, but not to provide any actual additional support. This presents the institution with the least legal liability, and passes that labor (unpaid) onto lecturers, because they know that we're probably just going to do it. Students know this, because they talk, and many abuse it, which increases the overall stress on everyone involved and reduces resources for students who need it. I routinely hear students talk about this, for what it's worth, although I obviously can't provide hard numbers or data.
This has knock-on effects with how we teach. Ideally I would assess attendance, because I think that to get the most out of classes it helps to have discussions, and discussions need people there to attends. However we are heavily discouraged from assessing attendance because it would run afoul of too many potential accommodations and open up the institution to legal problems. I think, ideally, a good accessibility program would work with students who have persistent attendance issues for valid reasons, but those resources simply don't exist. I've talked to students in real mental health crisis, and the local facilities who can provide that help are also at capacity - think month long waiting times. Our accessibility office seems to exist to rubber stamp accommodations, and they're at capacity doing that, so often ILPs are very hastily written, and don't reflect good pedagogy. Which, by the way, I'm not qualified to suggest since I'm not trained in it, nor am I paid to be.
Part of the accommodation policy is something called an extenuating circumstance or "EC". An EC is used in an instance of a real mental health or physical health crisis, or a major personal emergency (such as the death of a family member). We used to give a dozen of these for a 100 person class. The same "just give it to anyone who asks" policy has been extended to ECs, and in most classes over 50% of the students took them. I overheard multiple students strategically factoring this into their deadlines. This has several consequences.
First is that our deadlines aren't arbitrary or capricious - we talk among the staff to try to make sure that students have enough time for big deadlines and that things are spaced properly. If you suddenly have an extra 3 weeks for an unknown half of your students, those deadlines are now in conflict.
Second, we do a lot of group work because our students are working on large projects. The deadlines we've set are made (with many years experience) to give enough time to do the standard of work that will let our students have portfolios that let them get jobs. Now imagine that some arbitrary 30% of your group is working on other stuff that was supposed to be due weeks ago, but because they know the accessibility office will rubber stamp it they just decided to procrastinate for those three weeks and now everything is piling up. Those group members aren't contributing what they would be if the deadlines were actually deadlines.
Third, is the fact that we are already miserable due to the way the academic calendar is arranged in order to squeeze in as much recruiting as possible. We've been thrust into making higher ed a for-profit service (essentially), and compete on recruitment, because that's where funding comes from. So our academic calendars are very tight - there is almost no turnover between semesters. So what happens when you unexpectedly have to grade 50% of your student work 3 weeks later than you had carefully planned for? Well, guess.
The people saying that this person is a bad teacher, or that we should simply refactor everything that higher ed. does and the way it exists... well, I think you don't know what you're talking about. The accommodation crisis, if you want to call it that, is basically a bunch of stuff coming to a head because of austerity policies and neoliberal mismanagement. It's awful, and I think everyone is losing except for people skimming money off the top of the system, but it's not fake, and it's not a result of callous teachers who are bad at their job or unaware of good teaching methods.
posted by codacorolla at 3:22 PM on August 13 [31 favorites]
Am one of those tenured professors who is allowed to be a dick. Mostly, I'm not: long ago, I did what someone upthread mentioned, and just got rid of timed tests. They don't really test for anything useful in the field I'm teaching. Much easier, and more effective as far as student learning goes, to have them do presentations, performances, etc., and that eliminates 90+% of the need for accommodations.
Every semester, I get a bunch of students with disability accommodations, but nearly all of those are irrelevant to my classes because the sort of things they're asking for accommodations on simply don't exist: tests and quizzes, timed assignments, that sort of thing. The person who needed the ASL interpreter, ok fine, watch out because I tend to wander around the classroom a lot. The buildings are newish, so there's no issue as far as physical disability goes.
The one issue that I consistently get from 3-4 students per semester is that they need my lecture notes in advance. At first, I was like there aren't any, I've been teaching this subject for 25 years and literally wrote the textbook on it: all I do is look at the syllabus five minutes before class and think "Oh yes, that topic", and then walk in and deliver a very comprehensive (and rather more interesting to students because entirely ad-libbed) talk about it, and then leave time to actually do something with it. I used to get in all kinds of time-wasters with the disability office. No, I'm not going to write lecture notes. Make a friend and have them take notes for you. After a while, and mostly for other reasons, I just put all the lectures up on YouTube and flipped the classroom, so I could point those students to recorded lectures they could watch over and over. I'm way too overworked, like all tenured faculty who actually do their job (which is about 2/3), with administrative crapola to either fight the disability services people no matter how wildly evident it is that a student is milking the system (not that many, but they're there), or to write up a whole new test or whatever to prevent cheating.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 4:08 PM on August 13 [5 favorites]
Every semester, I get a bunch of students with disability accommodations, but nearly all of those are irrelevant to my classes because the sort of things they're asking for accommodations on simply don't exist: tests and quizzes, timed assignments, that sort of thing. The person who needed the ASL interpreter, ok fine, watch out because I tend to wander around the classroom a lot. The buildings are newish, so there's no issue as far as physical disability goes.
The one issue that I consistently get from 3-4 students per semester is that they need my lecture notes in advance. At first, I was like there aren't any, I've been teaching this subject for 25 years and literally wrote the textbook on it: all I do is look at the syllabus five minutes before class and think "Oh yes, that topic", and then walk in and deliver a very comprehensive (and rather more interesting to students because entirely ad-libbed) talk about it, and then leave time to actually do something with it. I used to get in all kinds of time-wasters with the disability office. No, I'm not going to write lecture notes. Make a friend and have them take notes for you. After a while, and mostly for other reasons, I just put all the lectures up on YouTube and flipped the classroom, so I could point those students to recorded lectures they could watch over and over. I'm way too overworked, like all tenured faculty who actually do their job (which is about 2/3), with administrative crapola to either fight the disability services people no matter how wildly evident it is that a student is milking the system (not that many, but they're there), or to write up a whole new test or whatever to prevent cheating.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 4:08 PM on August 13 [5 favorites]
Yeah, back when I was teaching (I’ve been pushed into administration), I did everything I could to reduce stress on the students. For my subject, exams weren’t useful, so I did away with them in favor of iterative work that feeds into a final project, plus group work and in-class exercises. If I ever go back to teaching, I’m going to do that more so.
The idea of doing away with deadlines is attractive but doomed. The institution has a semester model, and a lot rides on that… completion rates, federal funding, etc. it is not possible to endlessly extend student time, and I’ve said this as someone who has bent rules to let a student who was really struggling turn work in “late.” I’ve also spent enormous amounts of time running around campus to advocate for students who were suffering in my class and others. I figure that’s part of my job. At the end of the day, though, I have a deadline where I have to submit a grade. Incompletes are a thing, but the conversion rate is terrible; most incompletes are essentially delayed Fs.
Lastly, in most Higher Ed threads, if you haven’t taught, you really shouldn’t be talking. Students see maybe 10-15% of what goes on in the classroom, and taking classes and getting degrees does not give you valuable insight about how classrooms or the wider university works, however fucked up it is. It’s exhausting to read these threads.
Something I do like to hear from my students and others is what accommodations they think would help them, whether I can provide it or not. I have my own disabilities and restrictions, not yours.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:37 PM on August 13 [19 favorites]
The idea of doing away with deadlines is attractive but doomed. The institution has a semester model, and a lot rides on that… completion rates, federal funding, etc. it is not possible to endlessly extend student time, and I’ve said this as someone who has bent rules to let a student who was really struggling turn work in “late.” I’ve also spent enormous amounts of time running around campus to advocate for students who were suffering in my class and others. I figure that’s part of my job. At the end of the day, though, I have a deadline where I have to submit a grade. Incompletes are a thing, but the conversion rate is terrible; most incompletes are essentially delayed Fs.
Lastly, in most Higher Ed threads, if you haven’t taught, you really shouldn’t be talking. Students see maybe 10-15% of what goes on in the classroom, and taking classes and getting degrees does not give you valuable insight about how classrooms or the wider university works, however fucked up it is. It’s exhausting to read these threads.
Something I do like to hear from my students and others is what accommodations they think would help them, whether I can provide it or not. I have my own disabilities and restrictions, not yours.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:37 PM on August 13 [19 favorites]
Glad to hear you flipped the class, outgrown_hobnail .
That's one of the potential boons of recording class materials.
posted by doctornemo at 4:47 PM on August 13
That's one of the potential boons of recording class materials.
posted by doctornemo at 4:47 PM on August 13
The linked article describes much of what I'm hearing from different academic populations: instructors, disability services staff, and other staff who work in and around this field, like student life, IT, librarians, etc.
-There's been a boom in student requests for support.
-Some campuses seem to get more of this demand than others.
-Accommodation departments (funny how no one mentions them when discussing "administrative bloat) are always massively overworked and underfunded.
-Faculty members have all kinds of reactions: wanting to help; fearing a loss of rigor; not believing some requests; confusion.
-Senior administration not always being coherent on this score, nor supportive
I've seen some of this in my own work, although I only teach grad school now, which largely differs from what TFA describes. I've gotten a few accommodation requests, which I grant. I've had a hard time reaching disability services, but the one person who talked with me was brilliant. I teach UDL in my ed tech seminar. Students love the idea, yet aren't sure how to implement it, and often think it's about "learning styles."
posted by doctornemo at 4:53 PM on August 13 [3 favorites]
-There's been a boom in student requests for support.
-Some campuses seem to get more of this demand than others.
-Accommodation departments (funny how no one mentions them when discussing "administrative bloat) are always massively overworked and underfunded.
-Faculty members have all kinds of reactions: wanting to help; fearing a loss of rigor; not believing some requests; confusion.
-Senior administration not always being coherent on this score, nor supportive
I've seen some of this in my own work, although I only teach grad school now, which largely differs from what TFA describes. I've gotten a few accommodation requests, which I grant. I've had a hard time reaching disability services, but the one person who talked with me was brilliant. I teach UDL in my ed tech seminar. Students love the idea, yet aren't sure how to implement it, and often think it's about "learning styles."
posted by doctornemo at 4:53 PM on August 13 [3 favorites]
Welp, FIRE sure must be glad to have successfully set the cat loose amongst the pigeons here. Bad professors! Bad students! Bad everybody-but-the-universities-and-their-resource-choices!
posted by praemunire at 5:08 PM on August 13 [7 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 5:08 PM on August 13 [7 favorites]
Is it to be graded, or is it to learn?
Thing is, it definitely isn’t just the second one. (I know you know that, but educational institutions have a hard time not talking out of both sides of their mouths about it).
posted by atoxyl at 5:24 PM on August 13
Thing is, it definitely isn’t just the second one. (I know you know that, but educational institutions have a hard time not talking out of both sides of their mouths about it).
posted by atoxyl at 5:24 PM on August 13
Glad to hear you flipped the class, outgrown_hobnail .
That's one of the potential boons of recording class materials.
The trouble is that only anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 of the students will actually watch and listen to the content they're supposed to bring to the flipped class. The number goes up during the semester, because I'm real good at very politely going after the ones who don't so they get shamed into it without thinking I'm a giant dick, but it's still always already a class of people discussing the material and a bunch of people either zoning out or doing the thing where they pick up what we're talking about and either ask smart questions or interject dumb meme crap.
For the record, these are the reasons why regular public college costs so much astonishingly more, in order of decreasing impact.
• State governments VASTLY reducing their subsidies to the university system. Varies wildly by state. They NEVER reduce the amount of interference, though.
• Tech. It barely existed in the mid-80s and now is pervasive, useful and very expensive to purchase and especially to maintain.
• Federal and some state regulations requiring more administrators to comply and document compliance with them.
• Athletics. NCAA sports are a large net drain on all but the hugest sports schools like Michigan, Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia, etc.
• Student amenities. We had two kids to a room, a bathroom down the hall, and a cafeteria where you had four choices. They have suites, all kinds of boutique food choices, the gym is far flashier, the library is vastly different.
• Administrative bloat. Instead of tenured faculty doing a stint in the administration, we now have a professional administrative class, trained as such, in better offices, with fancy suits, trying to give us orders. Literally all of them should be thrown to packs of howler monkeys.
• Federally-guaranteed student loans.
• Marketing. Endless, expensive marketing. The US birth rate dropped like a rock in 2008/2009, never really recovered, and then dropped further with Covid. So beginning quite soon, we'll see a drop of about 1/3 in the total pool of 18yos: the "demographic cliff". It will destroy every single small liberal arts college in the USA, just wipe them out. They'll all be gone in five years max, except for the one or two that figure out some really innovative way to survive. Big universities like mine will do okay, but only because they market the absolute crap out of themselves and compete with bigger amenities and athletics.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 5:42 PM on August 13 [10 favorites]
That's one of the potential boons of recording class materials.
The trouble is that only anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 of the students will actually watch and listen to the content they're supposed to bring to the flipped class. The number goes up during the semester, because I'm real good at very politely going after the ones who don't so they get shamed into it without thinking I'm a giant dick, but it's still always already a class of people discussing the material and a bunch of people either zoning out or doing the thing where they pick up what we're talking about and either ask smart questions or interject dumb meme crap.
For the record, these are the reasons why regular public college costs so much astonishingly more, in order of decreasing impact.
• State governments VASTLY reducing their subsidies to the university system. Varies wildly by state. They NEVER reduce the amount of interference, though.
• Tech. It barely existed in the mid-80s and now is pervasive, useful and very expensive to purchase and especially to maintain.
• Federal and some state regulations requiring more administrators to comply and document compliance with them.
• Athletics. NCAA sports are a large net drain on all but the hugest sports schools like Michigan, Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia, etc.
• Student amenities. We had two kids to a room, a bathroom down the hall, and a cafeteria where you had four choices. They have suites, all kinds of boutique food choices, the gym is far flashier, the library is vastly different.
• Administrative bloat. Instead of tenured faculty doing a stint in the administration, we now have a professional administrative class, trained as such, in better offices, with fancy suits, trying to give us orders. Literally all of them should be thrown to packs of howler monkeys.
• Federally-guaranteed student loans.
• Marketing. Endless, expensive marketing. The US birth rate dropped like a rock in 2008/2009, never really recovered, and then dropped further with Covid. So beginning quite soon, we'll see a drop of about 1/3 in the total pool of 18yos: the "demographic cliff". It will destroy every single small liberal arts college in the USA, just wipe them out. They'll all be gone in five years max, except for the one or two that figure out some really innovative way to survive. Big universities like mine will do okay, but only because they market the absolute crap out of themselves and compete with bigger amenities and athletics.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 5:42 PM on August 13 [10 favorites]
I didn't have trouble getting students to watch the flipped content, but I think this was due to a structure I will not take credit for--my advisor was the first to do it--but which basically assumes if you have a lecture assigned for each class period, students are going to skip some of those the way they skip assigned readings and everything else that feels less urgent than whatever else is going on. If you have a a set of lectures assigned for a period of two weeks, any content from which may appear any day in class activities/assignments in those two weeks, then if you haven't watched the lectures by the first day, instead of going, "Well, fucked that up, I'll go back and watch later for the final exam" (which no one ever does), you actually go and get caught up because you have multiple rewards for doing so coming up in your immediate future at consistent timepoints. Two weeks seemed to be the sweet spot where it wasn't so long you felt you could just procrastinate for a while, and not so short that you went, "I can bullshit my way through this week and get caught up next week." Were there people who didn't watch the lectures by the first day of the two-week module and failed the quiz? Yeah. But they either got caught up by the time they had to do in-class group assignments, or by the time their individual assignments were due at the end of the module. Giving them at least some opportunity to show their learning. Points were distributed such that if you fucked up your time at the beginning of week one, you could still pretty much catch up if you applied yourself, and you would see immediate rewards for doing so.
Anyway, don't know if that would work in any other settings or classroom structures, but I found assuming students were going to skip things and then having built in carrots for getting caught up (that weren't simply "you can turn this in late") worked really well. And helped them learn to strategize so they eventually skipped a lot less. But also I leaned hard on peer pressure by putting them all in assigned groups for the whole year and giving them team names and everything so you were Beholdn To Your Tribe. Ethics and accessibility of this (as an autistic person myself) possibly questionable but students are way better at holding each other accountable than I am. (I did have options for working individually, but no one ever took that willingly.)
posted by brook horse at 6:41 PM on August 13 [7 favorites]
Anyway, don't know if that would work in any other settings or classroom structures, but I found assuming students were going to skip things and then having built in carrots for getting caught up (that weren't simply "you can turn this in late") worked really well. And helped them learn to strategize so they eventually skipped a lot less. But also I leaned hard on peer pressure by putting them all in assigned groups for the whole year and giving them team names and everything so you were Beholdn To Your Tribe. Ethics and accessibility of this (as an autistic person myself) possibly questionable but students are way better at holding each other accountable than I am. (I did have options for working individually, but no one ever took that willingly.)
posted by brook horse at 6:41 PM on August 13 [7 favorites]
(Semester, not year. I did not enforce their tribes past the final exam date. Though I think some of them did stick together afterward!)
posted by brook horse at 6:55 PM on August 13 [3 favorites]
posted by brook horse at 6:55 PM on August 13 [3 favorites]
For the record, these are the reasons why regular public college costs so much astonishingly more, in order of decreasing impact.
And for elite-ish public universities and private universities, you can add that in part they didn't -- they switched from a model where the sticker price is what they expect their "normal" students to pay and poorer kids get scholarships to a model where the sticker price is a price they just barely aren't embarrassed to charge the King of Siam, and most people get big scholarships.
Literally all of them should be thrown to packs of howler monkeys.
What do you have against howler monkeys?
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 7:08 PM on August 13 [3 favorites]
And for elite-ish public universities and private universities, you can add that in part they didn't -- they switched from a model where the sticker price is what they expect their "normal" students to pay and poorer kids get scholarships to a model where the sticker price is a price they just barely aren't embarrassed to charge the King of Siam, and most people get big scholarships.
Literally all of them should be thrown to packs of howler monkeys.
What do you have against howler monkeys?
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 7:08 PM on August 13 [3 favorites]
brook horse, that might be tricky to pull off, given how these particular courses work, but I'll take a look at how I might do that. Thanks.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 7:36 PM on August 13 [1 favorite]
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 7:36 PM on August 13 [1 favorite]
I know someone with vision issues (partially blind due to Nystagmus [rapid, uncontrollable eye movements]) who uses a guide cane to get around and who needs documents in very large print. He did a linguistics degree at a British university in the last few years (I think he graduated in 2019?).
The accommodation he wanted was that electronic course content documents that were being provided to all students every week were provided in a format that he could enlarge on his computer.
Fighting for this was so difficult that he almost dropped out of his degree.
He ended up relying on internet friends around the world to reformat his documents for him for free every week.
Another accommodation he wanted was prior warning if the lecture was going to be in a different physical lecture theatre that he hadn't been to (because navigating around campus with the guide cane was very difficult and time consuming). The university kept changing the lecture theatres each week, often with zero warning - he would turn up to the lecture theatre to find out that the venue had been changed at the last minute for no reason, again.
Eventually, the university promised him that if the lecture venue changed suddenly, they would provide him with a person to meet him and guide him to the right venue - except, often the guide never showed up; was running very late; or didn't know how to find the new venue.
A lot of the accommodations that universities deny are very, very basic accommodations.
Oh, and when he complained about the lack of accommodations, they demanded he waste his time meeting with a university psychologist (who was clueless about disability) every week to talk about being Blind.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:31 PM on August 13 [14 favorites]
The accommodation he wanted was that electronic course content documents that were being provided to all students every week were provided in a format that he could enlarge on his computer.
Fighting for this was so difficult that he almost dropped out of his degree.
He ended up relying on internet friends around the world to reformat his documents for him for free every week.
Another accommodation he wanted was prior warning if the lecture was going to be in a different physical lecture theatre that he hadn't been to (because navigating around campus with the guide cane was very difficult and time consuming). The university kept changing the lecture theatres each week, often with zero warning - he would turn up to the lecture theatre to find out that the venue had been changed at the last minute for no reason, again.
Eventually, the university promised him that if the lecture venue changed suddenly, they would provide him with a person to meet him and guide him to the right venue - except, often the guide never showed up; was running very late; or didn't know how to find the new venue.
A lot of the accommodations that universities deny are very, very basic accommodations.
Oh, and when he complained about the lack of accommodations, they demanded he waste his time meeting with a university psychologist (who was clueless about disability) every week to talk about being Blind.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:31 PM on August 13 [14 favorites]
> State governments VASTLY reducing their subsidies to the university system. Varies wildly by state. They NEVER reduce the amount of interference, though.
Back when I was actively involved in our state higher education system and tracking this regularly - about 20 years ago - the ongoing annual cuts were nothing short of appalling pretty much every year.
This had been going on for about 30-40 years by that point, and has continued for the ensuing 20 years.
That's the basic reason my Dad was able to go to a good state university with tuition of about $40/quarter in the 1950s (around $400-$500 today) whereas the exact same university today is about $4200.
It is literally 10X the cost now, in real inflation-corrected dollars.
The other big change from, say, the 1970s is that less affluent students then received grants whereas today federal support almost entirely takes the form of student loans.
When my Dad finished his degree in the late 1950s, he didn't have any debt - and most of his fellow students didn't, either. When I finished my first undergrad in 1985, the typical graduate might have a few hundred or up to a couple of thousand dollars in student loans to pay off.
When I finished my most recent degree, in 2000, it was super-common for people to graduate with an undergraduate degree and $20,000-$40,000 in student loan debt.
Yikes.
And things have only gotten worse in the ensuing 24 years.
With all that student loan money sloshing around, see, the states had no incentive to keep subsidizing higher ed to the same degree they had. They could simply shift most of the expense to the students - surely the "fair" way to handle it, because the students are getting the benefit of all that education, right? - while the state happily balanced its budget each year and now in recent years has passed a long series of tax cuts.
A big factor in making those things possible was the ever-smaller portion of the state budget dedicated to higher education.
We've shrunk and balanced the state budget - but on the back of students who will be paying back these student loans for decades and in some cases their entire lives.
posted by flug at 10:39 PM on August 13 [19 favorites]
Back when I was actively involved in our state higher education system and tracking this regularly - about 20 years ago - the ongoing annual cuts were nothing short of appalling pretty much every year.
This had been going on for about 30-40 years by that point, and has continued for the ensuing 20 years.
That's the basic reason my Dad was able to go to a good state university with tuition of about $40/quarter in the 1950s (around $400-$500 today) whereas the exact same university today is about $4200.
It is literally 10X the cost now, in real inflation-corrected dollars.
The other big change from, say, the 1970s is that less affluent students then received grants whereas today federal support almost entirely takes the form of student loans.
When my Dad finished his degree in the late 1950s, he didn't have any debt - and most of his fellow students didn't, either. When I finished my first undergrad in 1985, the typical graduate might have a few hundred or up to a couple of thousand dollars in student loans to pay off.
When I finished my most recent degree, in 2000, it was super-common for people to graduate with an undergraduate degree and $20,000-$40,000 in student loan debt.
Yikes.
And things have only gotten worse in the ensuing 24 years.
With all that student loan money sloshing around, see, the states had no incentive to keep subsidizing higher ed to the same degree they had. They could simply shift most of the expense to the students - surely the "fair" way to handle it, because the students are getting the benefit of all that education, right? - while the state happily balanced its budget each year and now in recent years has passed a long series of tax cuts.
A big factor in making those things possible was the ever-smaller portion of the state budget dedicated to higher education.
We've shrunk and balanced the state budget - but on the back of students who will be paying back these student loans for decades and in some cases their entire lives.
posted by flug at 10:39 PM on August 13 [19 favorites]
I've said it before and I'll say it again--colleges have had to become everything for students as neoliberalism increasingly led to their communities doing less and less. The most obvious example is that young adults have statistically poor access to health services; colleges now need to provide them.
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:26 AM on August 14 [9 favorites]
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:26 AM on August 14 [9 favorites]
Fighting for this was so difficult that he almost dropped out of his degree.
I've seen so many iterations of this story. It's awful... and one reason why some campus administrations will press hard for accommodations. How many people stop their formal studies because of this?
posted by doctornemo at 7:27 AM on August 14 [2 favorites]
I've seen so many iterations of this story. It's awful... and one reason why some campus administrations will press hard for accommodations. How many people stop their formal studies because of this?
posted by doctornemo at 7:27 AM on August 14 [2 favorites]
Lastly, in most Higher Ed threads, if you haven’t taught, you really shouldn’t be talking. Students see maybe 10-15% of what goes on in the classroom, and taking classes and getting degrees does not give you valuable insight about how classrooms or the wider university works, however fucked up it is. It’s exhausting to read these threads.
Not for nothing, but disability rights is literally the subject that “Nothing about us without us” was coined for. This is a discussion where BOTH sides really need to get involved. There are folks here, like Corb and myself, who are current or recent students. I definitely would have needed accommodations if my degree wasn't mostly project based and the writing portions weren't submitted electronically.
I get the need to complain about the particularly bad parts of your job with peers, and away from the costumers, I really do. But, man I don't think that this a good space to try and make that happen and it's a terrible topic to get overheard complaint about.
I have spent a lot thinking about how different my life would looked if I was able tested for the stuff that I needed accommodations for back in the 90s/00s. I'm positive I would have at the very least graduated with a degree, which I don't have to tell you folks would've had a major impact on my economic status since then. It feels really bad to read grumbling about what would have made my life so much better.
posted by Gygesringtone at 7:56 AM on August 14 [5 favorites]
Not for nothing, but disability rights is literally the subject that “Nothing about us without us” was coined for. This is a discussion where BOTH sides really need to get involved. There are folks here, like Corb and myself, who are current or recent students. I definitely would have needed accommodations if my degree wasn't mostly project based and the writing portions weren't submitted electronically.
I get the need to complain about the particularly bad parts of your job with peers, and away from the costumers, I really do. But, man I don't think that this a good space to try and make that happen and it's a terrible topic to get overheard complaint about.
I have spent a lot thinking about how different my life would looked if I was able tested for the stuff that I needed accommodations for back in the 90s/00s. I'm positive I would have at the very least graduated with a degree, which I don't have to tell you folks would've had a major impact on my economic status since then. It feels really bad to read grumbling about what would have made my life so much better.
posted by Gygesringtone at 7:56 AM on August 14 [5 favorites]
I am a disabled person who was almost forced out of my degree because of how my college and university handled my disability (including TURNING OFF THE WHEELCHAIR ACCESS BUTTONS TO SAVE POWER), and I have also taught classes at a college level and may be doing so again next semester. Students absolutely need to be talking because I only know about 10-15% of what they need! As did my professors when I took classes. They needed to be told that students in wheelchairs might be late to class or miss class periods entirely because our classrooms were all at the top of the hill and during winter the maintenance team would often not clear the path well enough for even a power wheelchair to get to the top. This wasn’t me deciding I just wanted to skip class but being systematically denied access to it. And yeah, it would have been a lot of extra work for professors to consistently catch me up on the information I missed, so if they were willing to give me the Powerpoint slides and not punish me on participation I was happy to do it myself. I think the culture of leniency is a good thing when professors don’t have the resources to provide alternative methods for disabled students to access things. And obviously there are some things you can’t let go but if you are constantly coming up against those things it’s probably time to think about the Systemic Issues making students of different abilities constantly run into issues. You may not be able to do anything about it but sometimes you can, like when a professor let me e-mail things that they usually required to be printed because the library’s wheelchair accessible entrance was on the opposite side of the building (down the beloathed hill) from all of the class buildings and I couldn’t just run in and print before class like everyone else could.
Or if you have the freedom to design a class from scratch, building in an assumption that disabled students are going to have to miss class for a variety of reasons (for me, another one was routine visits with specialists to keep prescribing my meds who only had This Thursday In June At 2:30pm available and nothing else) and designing the course so people can get caught up and succeed anyway as long as they learn the information they need to learn.
posted by brook horse at 8:19 AM on August 14 [15 favorites]
Or if you have the freedom to design a class from scratch, building in an assumption that disabled students are going to have to miss class for a variety of reasons (for me, another one was routine visits with specialists to keep prescribing my meds who only had This Thursday In June At 2:30pm available and nothing else) and designing the course so people can get caught up and succeed anyway as long as they learn the information they need to learn.
posted by brook horse at 8:19 AM on August 14 [15 favorites]
I'm probably not adding much that hasn't been said, but schools now are only a physical location for babysitting and a price-stratifies for-sale gatekeeping service, despite this, or because of it, the experience for students is even more kafkaesque, stressful, and out of their control. we have given up on even pretending that a student must be challenged, must perform, should be treated in a standard manner or should be accomodated in a manner that is backed up by anything approaching well designed experimental evidence. Having acquired 2 learning disabilities later in life and having taught for 14 years, i can assure you that nothing works in the education system, that the grades and degrees are worthless except as class signifies and that if you want to employ someone you will have to train them to do the job from scratch, including how to actually read, and that nee employee will be utterly shocked and unprepared at the experience of having to actually learn and perform, because deslite years of traumatic institutional abuse, that former student will never have had to actually successfully do that before.
I wish i could be cheery, but the onlything people are learning now are memes and tricks in social media.
posted by No Climate - No Food, No Food - No Future. at 10:12 AM on August 14
I wish i could be cheery, but the onlything people are learning now are memes and tricks in social media.
posted by No Climate - No Food, No Food - No Future. at 10:12 AM on August 14
Weird, because all of my Principles of Biology II students practiced writing research questions and hypotheses and all of my Limnology students learned to perform a statistical test in R today. Somehow I got more done in one day (the second class meeting for both) than the entirety of the educational system has in years?
posted by hydropsyche at 4:02 PM on August 14 [6 favorites]
posted by hydropsyche at 4:02 PM on August 14 [6 favorites]
Professors need accommodations, too; it's a mistake to treat them as inherently pitted against the students. I have a friend who teaches at a Canadian university who went from being a very fit black belt to mobility-impaired after an awful accident. The stories she tells me about the university's failure to maintain even the basics of mobility accessibility would turn your hair white.
posted by praemunire at 7:44 PM on August 14 [5 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 7:44 PM on August 14 [5 favorites]
I would like to add, as someone with a stress related disability, that it’s actually an absolute misunderstanding of how certain stress related disabilities work to say things like “oh, they can’t handle deadlines, how will they handle high pressure situations when lives are on the line?” I have post-traumatic stress. I can *absolutely* handle high pressure situations when lives are on the line; I have lovely reviews and recommendations from my county public defenders office, where I never missed a single court deadline. The deadlines I cannot handle are bullshit deadlines where lives *aren’t* on the line, because my brain has been irretrievably damaged such that it instinctively sorts things into “life threatening for someone” and “not life threatening for someone” and when there is a situation that rings the same bells in my brain as “life threatening for someone” situation going on, I cannot possibly give a fuck about the artificially imposed deadline for a paper, and indeed, cannot even force my brain to work on the paper or whatever until the first priority situation is sorted out.
So if I have, say, a suicidal friend because one of our other friends just committed suicide (actual situation that happened), then no, I can’t write a law review article, because I’m busy keeping my friend alive; I *can* however make my jail call and bail hearing because getting someone out of jail rings all the same alarm bells of priority.
posted by corb at 12:42 AM on August 15 [7 favorites]
So if I have, say, a suicidal friend because one of our other friends just committed suicide (actual situation that happened), then no, I can’t write a law review article, because I’m busy keeping my friend alive; I *can* however make my jail call and bail hearing because getting someone out of jail rings all the same alarm bells of priority.
posted by corb at 12:42 AM on August 15 [7 favorites]
I've said it before and I'll say it again--colleges have had to become everything for students as neoliberalism increasingly led to their communities doing less and less. The most obvious example is that young adults have statistically poor access to health services; colleges now need to provide them.
Colleges have been doing this since at least 1994 when I was in college. I suspect it has been common for that long or longer in most large residential colleges in rural areas because of the paucity of local options otherwise. It is not new.
posted by bq at 8:04 AM on August 15 [2 favorites]
Colleges have been doing this since at least 1994 when I was in college. I suspect it has been common for that long or longer in most large residential colleges in rural areas because of the paucity of local options otherwise. It is not new.
posted by bq at 8:04 AM on August 15 [2 favorites]
It will destroy every single small liberal arts college in the USA, just wipe them out.
I think this is an exaggeration but probably 1/3 will disappear, yeah.
HCBUs are being particularly hard hit already.
posted by bq at 8:07 AM on August 15 [1 favorite]
I think this is an exaggeration but probably 1/3 will disappear, yeah.
HCBUs are being particularly hard hit already.
posted by bq at 8:07 AM on August 15 [1 favorite]
I strongly suspect that institutions will find themselves needing to track and manage accommodations within each class, as the numbers and variety rise.
being_quiet wrote above about the circus that just one exam can become. Exams are only one aspect of a course, and when every aspect of a course (assignments, evaluations, attendance, zoom vs in person, slides ....) is subject to negotiation, the sum total of the work heaped on the single instructor is in theory unlimited. Even when each single accommodation is "reasonable". The net result is degradation of the entire course, for all the students.
posted by Dashy at 8:15 AM on August 15 [2 favorites]
being_quiet wrote above about the circus that just one exam can become. Exams are only one aspect of a course, and when every aspect of a course (assignments, evaluations, attendance, zoom vs in person, slides ....) is subject to negotiation, the sum total of the work heaped on the single instructor is in theory unlimited. Even when each single accommodation is "reasonable". The net result is degradation of the entire course, for all the students.
posted by Dashy at 8:15 AM on August 15 [2 favorites]
I mean, I work in a community college, not as faculty, but I still get all the college wide e-mails and my institute offers (paid) professional development for professors to help design more accessible courses. It's like curb cuts, yeah sure, there's a ton of work retrofitting existing streets, but if you start intentionally designing stuff to be accessible from the get go, everyone benefits.
Like I said, I DIDN'T need formal accommodations BECAUSE my courses were set up in a way that already included anything I would have needed, and that was on purpose.
posted by Gygesringtone at 8:53 AM on August 15 [6 favorites]
Like I said, I DIDN'T need formal accommodations BECAUSE my courses were set up in a way that already included anything I would have needed, and that was on purpose.
posted by Gygesringtone at 8:53 AM on August 15 [6 favorites]
Not for nothing, but disability rights is literally the subject that “Nothing about us without us” was coined for. This is a discussion where BOTH sides really need to get involved. There are folks here, like Corb and myself, who are current or recent students. I definitely would have needed accommodations if my degree wasn't mostly project based and the writing portions weren't submitted electronically.
There are two things going on. One is the accommodations issue, which I will address in a second, the other is that every time we have a thread on Higher Ed, it is full of people who have Big Opinions without any Relevant Experience on what can/should be done or what is happening. It makes these threads miserable to read and never go anywhere, because the people with the actual expertise just give up and go away.
For accommodations, I think that students and faculty should talk more. There a bunch of barriers to this, many of them listed above that I won't address, but another one is that Student Services is often overwhelmed and takes a "one size fits" approach which isn't very useful. Many times I would get an accommodation letter that said something like "they need more time for exams," and I would ask the student "OK, I don't give exams, sometimes we use warm-up writing, do you need more time if it's a two sentence response?" and sometimes the answer was yes and sometimes no. We'd talk about other things that might help and were within my ability to do, and sometimes I would loop back to Student Services and say "is it OK if I do this change for this student?" And I wish more faculty did this kind of thing. Because the basic accommodation letter is just a start. I had two students one semester with very similar issues and basically identical letters, but the outcomes were really different, because it turns out they didn't need the same accommodation at all because they were... separate people? So I'm not sure an accommodation Office is the be all and end all.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:01 AM on August 15 [7 favorites]
There are two things going on. One is the accommodations issue, which I will address in a second, the other is that every time we have a thread on Higher Ed, it is full of people who have Big Opinions without any Relevant Experience on what can/should be done or what is happening. It makes these threads miserable to read and never go anywhere, because the people with the actual expertise just give up and go away.
For accommodations, I think that students and faculty should talk more. There a bunch of barriers to this, many of them listed above that I won't address, but another one is that Student Services is often overwhelmed and takes a "one size fits" approach which isn't very useful. Many times I would get an accommodation letter that said something like "they need more time for exams," and I would ask the student "OK, I don't give exams, sometimes we use warm-up writing, do you need more time if it's a two sentence response?" and sometimes the answer was yes and sometimes no. We'd talk about other things that might help and were within my ability to do, and sometimes I would loop back to Student Services and say "is it OK if I do this change for this student?" And I wish more faculty did this kind of thing. Because the basic accommodation letter is just a start. I had two students one semester with very similar issues and basically identical letters, but the outcomes were really different, because it turns out they didn't need the same accommodation at all because they were... separate people? So I'm not sure an accommodation Office is the be all and end all.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:01 AM on August 15 [7 favorites]
I've said it before and I'll say it again--colleges have had to become everything for students as neoliberalism increasingly led to their communities doing less and less. The most obvious example is that young adults have statistically poor access to health services; colleges now need to provide them.
Precarity (for students, faculty, and staff) and a sense of impending crisis are useful affects that allow policy makers to make changes in the present feel inevitable. Technological solutionism does the same thing, e.g. we must adapt to AI because AI is inevitable.
That aside, colleges absolutely are doing more social and other services, e.g. food pantries, clothing banks, child care, health care, social services referral, etc.
posted by idb at 11:16 AM on August 15 [3 favorites]
Precarity (for students, faculty, and staff) and a sense of impending crisis are useful affects that allow policy makers to make changes in the present feel inevitable. Technological solutionism does the same thing, e.g. we must adapt to AI because AI is inevitable.
That aside, colleges absolutely are doing more social and other services, e.g. food pantries, clothing banks, child care, health care, social services referral, etc.
posted by idb at 11:16 AM on August 15 [3 favorites]
For accommodations, I think that students and faculty should talk more. There a bunch of barriers to this, many of them listed above that I won't address...
I can back this up both from a having been related to a college professor and a having been a college student perspective. I had a few classmates who were struggling in classes and I told them "Well, go talk to the professor. They have office hours for a reason." They hesitated because either they didn't want to be that whiny entitled person who demands a better grade or because they didn't want to be a bother. I had to explain that barring burnout or the occasional power trip, most professors do not want to fail their students. They got this far into their subject because they care about it and they want their students to care about it. If you go in with "I want to understand this thing but am encountering a barrier" you are neither being entitled nor being a bother.
posted by Karmakaze at 5:25 AM on August 16 [5 favorites]
I can back this up both from a having been related to a college professor and a having been a college student perspective. I had a few classmates who were struggling in classes and I told them "Well, go talk to the professor. They have office hours for a reason." They hesitated because either they didn't want to be that whiny entitled person who demands a better grade or because they didn't want to be a bother. I had to explain that barring burnout or the occasional power trip, most professors do not want to fail their students. They got this far into their subject because they care about it and they want their students to care about it. If you go in with "I want to understand this thing but am encountering a barrier" you are neither being entitled nor being a bother.
posted by Karmakaze at 5:25 AM on August 16 [5 favorites]
For accommodations, I think that students and faculty should talk more.
I have to disagree. I have no training whatsoever in understanding what accommodations are appropriate for what conditions and nobody is paying me to get that training, and so I shouldn't play a role in deciding what accommodations to grant.
I do what the letter says. Beyond that, I'll do stuff that I'd be willing to do for any student who asks for that with or without a reason, but most of that ends up getting folded into a syllabus or related course policies section of the intro day if it happens more than once.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:05 AM on August 16 [1 favorite]
I have to disagree. I have no training whatsoever in understanding what accommodations are appropriate for what conditions and nobody is paying me to get that training, and so I shouldn't play a role in deciding what accommodations to grant.
I do what the letter says. Beyond that, I'll do stuff that I'd be willing to do for any student who asks for that with or without a reason, but most of that ends up getting folded into a syllabus or related course policies section of the intro day if it happens more than once.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:05 AM on August 16 [1 favorite]
GCU Sweet and Full of Grace said:I have to disagree. I have no training whatsoever in understanding what accommodations are appropriate for what conditions and nobody is paying me to get that training, and so I shouldn't play a role in deciding what accommodations to grant.
At least where I'm at, these conversations happen about the accommodation plan a student gets from our ADA compliance team. Their accommodations tend to be "one size fits" all stuff, almost always extra time and access to instructor notes. Our documentation is explicit that how -- not whether! -- the accommodations apply to a specific class involves a conversation with the instructor.
My reading of Genjiand Proust's comment is that they are saying much. They even mention the "one size fits all" approach in accommodation documents at their institution, so they're not making the plan so much as working with the student to practically apply and interpret it for a specific class.
The "one size fits all" approach is common, from what i can tell. Standard lists of accommodations seem to be used, adjusted based on ADA compliance officers' assessments. That's likely the result of underfunded and overworked ADA compliance personnel. I know my institution has a very hard time retaining ADA compliance personnel, and my understanding is that they're asked to process a truly staggering number of requests.
posted by kewb at 6:23 AM on August 16 [2 favorites]
At least where I'm at, these conversations happen about the accommodation plan a student gets from our ADA compliance team. Their accommodations tend to be "one size fits" all stuff, almost always extra time and access to instructor notes. Our documentation is explicit that how -- not whether! -- the accommodations apply to a specific class involves a conversation with the instructor.
My reading of Genjiand Proust's comment is that they are saying much. They even mention the "one size fits all" approach in accommodation documents at their institution, so they're not making the plan so much as working with the student to practically apply and interpret it for a specific class.
The "one size fits all" approach is common, from what i can tell. Standard lists of accommodations seem to be used, adjusted based on ADA compliance officers' assessments. That's likely the result of underfunded and overworked ADA compliance personnel. I know my institution has a very hard time retaining ADA compliance personnel, and my understanding is that they're asked to process a truly staggering number of requests.
posted by kewb at 6:23 AM on August 16 [2 favorites]
I'll add that I sometimes have students who don't want to use their accommodations. Sometimes it's because they seem to have internalized some ableist ideas -- "I want to make it on my own." -- and sometimes it's because they feel they did not need the accommodation in the past.
In either case, I emphasize that the accommodation is there to ensure they have a true opportunity to succeed, and I ask them to keep it mind and talk to me again if they decide it's appropriate. (I can't actually make someone finish an exam in more time or turn an assignment in later if they don't want to.)
posted by kewb at 6:27 AM on August 16 [3 favorites]
In either case, I emphasize that the accommodation is there to ensure they have a true opportunity to succeed, and I ask them to keep it mind and talk to me again if they decide it's appropriate. (I can't actually make someone finish an exam in more time or turn an assignment in later if they don't want to.)
posted by kewb at 6:27 AM on August 16 [3 favorites]
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Funny how, when it comes to new-in-the-last-40-years services that Universities are legally obligated to offer, the students are doing without.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:55 AM on August 13 [21 favorites]