Creating Supportive Classrooms for Disabled Students
The Disability Resource Center is helping faculty to better serve disabled students, which can help other students.

By La Monica Everett-Haynes, University Communications
Nov. 5, 2007


Two key approaches usually emerge when it comes to creating inclusive environments for those with disabilities.

One is the government-mandated accommodation model, where support is deemed “special” and often offered by an entity outside of the regular teaching environment.

But The University of Arizona's Disability Resource Center is encouraging the second approach – universal design.

The history of universal design is rooted in trying to make building structures more accessible, said Sue Kroeger, the center’s director. But within the last eight to 10 years, people have begun to apply those same concepts to other environments – such as the classroom, she said.

"It’s almost like you have to have a mixture because it is hard to imagine an environment that is designed to work for everyone all the time,” Kroeger said. “What you try to do is to design something that works for the most people possible and be prepared to individually accommodate.”

Carol Funckes, the UA center’s associate director, is working with a team of consultants to aid faculty and departments – the math department being one of the most recent to inquire – on ways to make a shift to the more inclusive model.

“We know disabled students still need to be accommodated,” Funckes said. “We’re trying to change our accommodation processes to remove the problem from being a student problem. We don’t want them to jump through more hoops than the able-bodied student would.”

What traditionally has happened is faculty would rely on a program or site similar to the Disability Resource Center to provide tests, exams and support services for disabled students, especially those who needed additional time, visual aids, a reader, a scribe or anything else.

The center is helping faculty to figure out ways to avoid situations where students must take those extra steps.

But this is not only about getting away from the timed, 50-minute pencil-and-paper exam. It is also about the structure of the classroom – what types of assignments are required, the note-taking process, how group work is handled and other issues.

A positive change often requires educators, webmasters, textbook publishers, teaching centers and others to shift their thinking and actions in a way that creates an inclusive environment for individuals with disabilities.

In lifting the burden for disabled students, faculty may find that they are not only helping disabled students, but also English language learners, older and nontraditional students who may be having a difficult time with course material, Funckes said. Those with learning disabilities and students who simply need a more flexible learning environment may also find the learning environment to be more supportive, Funckes said.

“What we’re trying to do is to streamline for the students as much as possible and to minimize the extra effort,” she said.

Tree-Ring Lab associate climatology professor Katie Hirschboeck incorporates some of the same universal design concepts in her classes. Her priority is collaborative learning.

“I had been doing the standard straight lecture business with the projector for years,” Hirschboeck said.

But she eventually began experimenting with a sort of scratch off form that gave students automatic feedback about their correct and incorrect answers and alsoinvolved her students in team-based learning with active discussion.

John J. B. Allen, a distinguished psychology professor, has also used the universal design approach, most recently during a large course during the spring geared toward freshmen.

Instead of simply taking the lecture-style approach, Allen began using podcasts and posted his lecture notes in a downloadable form on the Internet.

“It was so simple,” he said. “I thought it would help all the students.”

But he had one concern: Would students bother to show up if much of the course material was on the Web?

To get around that challenge, Allen infused more in class interaction and told the students “this was to their benefit,” he said. “It worked.”

Funckes said the center is seeing progress elsewhere on campus, and that it must continue.

“It’s a huge mental step,” she said, “but universal design is one of the ways to meet the accommodation issue while being more inclusive.”

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Sue Kroeger

Disability Resource Center

520-626-7674