Accommodating Special Needs Students

Many community colleges are currently developing
internal systems for identifying learning disabled and
other special needs students and then finding the most
appropriate accommodations to assist the student
academically and socially. For the most part, these
accommodations are extremely individualized and tied
to the nature of the identified disability. The process of
tracking the students, determining the accommoda-
tions, and providing counseling and advising involves
much clerical support. Frequently, institutions are not
able to add additional staff to accomplish these tasks,
so counselors are assigned the task of noting accommo-
dations and communicating this information to stu-
dents’ instructors and tutors. Such was the case at
Genesee Community College (GCC). Counselors
found themselves spending hours on the manual tasks
associated with communicating information to the
faculty and staff, and they were frustrated by their
inability to spend sufficient time with faculty to answer
questions or with students to monitor progress. A
system was designed to alleviate these problems.

SSCS

GCC’s flexible mainframe computer system allows
for user system development. The POISE DMS soft-
ware provides an automated system for tracking
student information and producing information sheets
for each instructor. The system is designed (1) to allow
counselors to have access to accommodations and (2) to
produce information forms without the intervention of
clerical or professional staff. The components of the
system include (1) a series of screens for data inquiry,
update, and addition; (2) a user-written batch that
takes information keyed into the file and uses it to
produce Accommodation Information Sheets.

Initially, students with learning and physical
disabilities are identified with a “Handicap Code.”
Then pertinent information—the student’s name,
identification number, advisor, and courses—is placed
in a file for counselor access. Counselors then flag
specific fields that possibly require accommodations.
By selecting from a “menu” of accommodations, the
data entry is reduced to a single keystroke per accom-
modation. The final screen shows the students’
schedules, the list of accommodations with appropriate
flags, and comment lines for additional information.

[A flag is also used to identify students who do not
wish that any information be divulged. ]

Then students for whom forms should be produced
are identified—a process accomplished with the POISE
sort routine, using either the date of last update or
updater’s initials for sort selection. The user-written
batch is run and creates a record in an intermediary file
for each instructor listed in each student record. The
form, a modified version of the screen used by the
counselors, is printed in the Computer Center and
mailed to campus faculty. [All the individuals in-
volved seriously respect the confidentiality of student
information.]

Counselors can retrieve the accommodations
information for an individual student at any time. Ifa
new student is identified, a record can be created easily
by any of the counselors. The data in the file can also
be used for tracking. For example, the file includes an
accommodation for use of a tape recorder. The coun-
selors can sort the file to see how many students have
been identified with this particular accommodation,
and that number can be compared to the available
inventory of recorders. In the same way, all students
with a need for test readers can be identified and the
appropriate number of readers hired. Perhaps the
most useful field is that pertaining to books on tape.
Since those requests must be processed well before the
beginning of the semester, the information can be
generated easily and in a timely manner. Book orders
can be managed without handling individual folders,
and this added efficiency has helped the staff serve the
increasing numbers of students.

CCC CES

The most positive advantage of automating the
system is that counselors have more time to spend with
faculty members and students, information is shared
across the system, and counselors need not worry
about security issues or access privileges. This concept
is one that may prove helpful to a limited staff grap-
pling with the problems associated with assisting
students with handicaps.

Donald Green, Vice President for Academic Affairs
For further information, contact the author at Genesee

Community College, One College Road, Batavia, NY
14020-9704.

 

Suanne D. Roueche, Editor

February 15, 1991, Vol. Xill, No. 5

©The University of Texas at Austin, 1991
Further duplication is permitted by MEMBER
institutions for their own personnel.

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