Access and Accommodation Services for Faculty & Staff

The faculty at Genesee Community College is one of our most important assets in assisting students who receive accommodation services. To assist faculty in implementing accommodations in your classroom, please see our suggestions below.

Access Services at GCC will also meet with faculty individually, as well as in small groups and in department meetings to discuss utilizing accommodations in the classroom.

Accommodations

Academic Accommodations for students with disabilities, within Access Services are required in the college environment.  Accommodations for our students assist in leveling the field for students so as to provide an opportunity for all students to achieve their personal, social, academic and occupational goals.

To achieve the goal of creating equal access, colleges and universities utilize a variety of strategies in the learning environment. The accommodations below are not an exhaustive list as we must be creative in many instances to assist the student in their success.

• Washington University provides a wonderful Overview of Types of Disabilities & Potential Accommodations.
• CUNY has also created an extremely helpful document to assist their faculty in Developing Universal Design in each course, as well as to assist in providing creative solutions for classroom accommodations.

Typical Accommodations

Time

Students can be provided with extended time on their exams. They may be afforded time and a half (x1.5) or double time (x2). There are also many other variations of extra time, aside from what is mentioned here.

Location

There are some students who may need a separate location for their exams to minimize distractions.  Those students will take their exams in our testing center to facilitate an environment with minimal distractions. Instructors, along with Access Services, will collaborate to provide a time and location in our testing center to provide this accommodation.

Reader

Students, at times, require a reader in order to increase their ability to comprehend written information. There are also text reader programs to assist students in hearing their text and other written materials read to them. Instructors and Access Services will collaborate to facilitate the use of this particular accommodation.

Scribe

Access Services are unable to provide a scribe for our students, however, we do have technology that affords the student the ability to speak their written work and have their work dictated to a word processing program, such as Microsoft Word. Students, professors and Access Services can collaborate to assist in this process. Students may elect to record lectures instead of taking notes when writing is identified as a challenge. There are times when these services do not provide students the access to the course that they need. In those case, a scribe is provided to the student.

Recorders

Students may need to have lectures recorded for a variety of reasons. We do provide recording devices to students who need them to record lectures to ensure that they are not missing any information. Technology also exists on smartphones and laptops to allow students to record their classroom lectures. The use of EchoPens can also assist in this process. The student, the professor and Access Services can collaborate to determine what might work best for individual classroom situations.

Universal Design

Universal Design is a way of improving the way your classroom materials are presented to your students in order to optimize learning, regardless of your students’ learning styles and/or needs.

CAST is a nonprofit education research and development organization that works to expand learning opportunities for all individuals through Universal Design for learning. Their website provides many ideas on implementing universal design into your courses.

Universal Design was expanded with Seven (7) Principles in mind. These principles may be applied to evaluate your current use of universal design and to encourage innovation in utilizing universal design in your class.

Access Services is happy to work with faculty individually or in departmental groups by providing workshops on universal design. Please contact us at access@genesee.edu for more information.

Research

Interesting research can be found to support the use of universal design and technology to assist any student in your course. Here are just a few articles to assist you in thinking about integrating technology into your courses to facilitate your students’ work in your course:

• IPads in the Science Lab
• Learning & Assisted Devices for College Transition
• Technology in Action
• Qualitative Study on the use of IPads in the Classroom
• Applications to help Your Students