DAC for Faculty and Staff

DAC Letter to Faculty for AY 2024-25

Fall, 2024
Dear Faculty and Staff:

In spring 2024, DAC was serving 992 students with disabilities. A portion of these students graduated, but we anticipate the number of students actively using accommodations this academic year will continue to remain at approximately 30% of the student body. As such, managing academic accommodations will continue to be very prevalent, and important to keep in mind.

The myDAC Faculty Portal is an invaluable resource to help you keep track of each of your students’ individual accommodations. Tutorials for using myDAC can be found on our DAC for Faculty and Staff webpage.

Additional things to remember for the 2024-2025 academic year:

1. General Reminder on Accommodations: If a student requests you to make an accommodation for them and you haven’t received an official accommodation letter from Disability and Access (DAC) please refer the student to DAC’s Getting Started page to begin the process for requesting reasonable accommodations. If the student qualifies and accommodations are determined at that point, you will receive an official Accommodation Letter via email from DAC staff, as well as have access to the information through the myDAC Faculty Portal. If any accommodation listed in your letters would result in a fundamental alteration of your course, please contact the listed Access Specialist immediately! Together, we can determine a better way to accommodate the student which does not change the essential elements of your course.

2. Consider alternatives to in-classroom exams: This may not be possible for all disciplines, but with roughly 20% of students with accommodations requiring extended time and a reduced distraction testing room for a traditional exam, many professors are finding it more sustainable to set their exams in a take-home manner, or using other ways to assess students than the traditional in-classroom/timed exam. If you will be giving traditional in-class exams,  please use R25 to reserve a room nearby your classroom for your students with testing accommodations. DAC has a limited amount of testing space available, and on very busy days (especially Thursdays and Fridays) we quickly run out of space. Please send no more than 8 students from your section to DAC for testing rooms. If your section has more than 8 students with testing accommodations, please work with DAC to stagger the students’ test times, or to reserve a room in R25 near your classroom for your students with testing accommodations. DAC cannot support requests for non-disability related reasons or for online exams.

If you would like DAC to administer your exams for your students with testing accommodations, please enter an Alternative Testing Contract for each section you teach in the myDAC Faculty Portal. (See tutorial on the DAC for Faculty and Staff website.) The Alternative Testing Contracts should be completed by the end of the first week of class, if at all possible.

3. Moodle exams: If giving timed exams in Moodle, please ensure that the time allocation for the exam is changed to 1.5x or 2x time for students with those accommodations.

4. Honor Code/AI Concerns: Please note that the St. Olaf Honor Code applies to all students, including those using accommodations. Some students are eligible to use a computer to take their exam with respect to their accessibility needs, and they are held to the same academic integrity standards. Academic dishonesty should be reported to the Honor Council just as it would be for students without accommodations.

5. Video Lecture Recordings: While not a long-term alternative to attending class in person for any student, video recordings are an excellent way to make sure students who are experiencing a disability-related flare up can still have equal access to your course as their non-disabled peers. If you can create recordings for class, please consider using Panopto and turning automatic captioning on for accessibility.

6. Deadline Extension Consideration: Small extensions to due dates may be an accommodation for some of your students. Students with this accommodation are instructed to contact you in advance to request a reasonable extension and to determine a new due date. If you cannot consider extensions to a deadline in any instance, please contact the student’s Access Specialist. Please note that this accommodation is only appropriate for disability-related reasons. Also, this accommodation is specific to coursework due dates, and does not apply to the rescheduling of exams.

7. Attendance: Regular attendance is expected of all students. Some students experience disabilities where a flare up might cause them to intermittently miss class and, if appropriate, may be approved for the Intermittent Adjustment to Attendance and Due date Parameters accommodation. DAC will communicate suggested default parameters in the student’s accommodation letter. If these parameters cause a fundamental alteration to a course, please use the link in the letter for outlining those that are reasonable for your course. We ask that you do this as soon as possible so that the new parameters can be emailed to the student. Absences that are extensive, or due to non-disability related illness, family emergencies, or extracurriculars are not covered by this accommodation, and should be referred to the class dean promptly via the Early Alert System.

8. Accessible Texts: If possible, please select textbooks with an option for an electronic version as well as a physical text.. For students who rely on accessible, electronic text (students with vision impairments, reading disabilities, etc) accessing their text using assistive technology allows them to use a format that is accessible to them.

9. Scanning and uploading PDFs to Moodle: Please ensure any scanned PDFs are accessible. To check, use your mouse to try to highlight or select text on your document. If it can be selected, the PDF is accessible to a text-to-speech reader.  If not, DAC can help you to convert them! Please email them to us as far ahead as possible to dac@stolaf.edu. If providing an electronic scan of an article for your class, please scan in one page at a time (in portrait orientation so text reads left to right) for the cleanest capture. Text to speech software cannot interpret and read text that falls in the shadows, appears wavy, or obscured with highlights or underlines that cross into the letters. Sometimes, the only version of the text you have falls into one or more categories above. If this is the case, DAC can “repair” and make accessible any scanned/photocopied readings you plan to upload. Please email them to dac@stolaf.edu with as much lead time as possible. We will email the copy to you after repair for you to upload to your Moodle page.

If we can be of further assistance, please email your student’s Access Specialist, as listed at the bottom of their Accommodation Letter: Kristen Dobosenski (dobose1@stolaf.edu), Laura Knobel-Piehl (knobel@stolaf.edu), Terri Rosen (rosen4@stolaf.edu), or Kendra Weinrich (weinri1@stolaf.edu). Or, by emailing our general alias: dac@stolaf.edu.

Additionally, we are available for appointments by using our calendar link:
stolaf-dac.youcanbook.me

Thank you, and best wishes for the year!