Re: Administering accommodations in on-line quizzes

Hi everyone,

Thank you for this really interesting and very important discussion. And please do reach out to myself or our Executive Director, Brian Green with any questions or concerns you have about these specific issues around student accommodations or any other questions or concerns you have.

One small correction: please contact us at sfufa@sfu.ca. This will ensure the messages come to Brian and I directly.

Thanks all, and have a wonderful weekend.

Jen

Jennifer Scott, PhD (she/her/hers)

Member Services Officer, Faculty Association of Simon Fraser University

Visiting Research Fellow, Department of English, Simon Fraser University

Office: 778.782.4676

Mobile: 604.726.8140

SFU AQ 2035

From: Oliver Schulte <oschulte@cs.sfu.ca>
Sent: 22 January 2021 11:06
To: academic-discussion@sfu.ca
Cc: SFUFA Office
Subject: Re: Administering accommodations in on-line quizzes - has CAL changed its policy?

Hi all,

Thank you for the informative replies! To summarize a bit.

* Do quizzes require accommodations? Russell mentions that I-clicker quizzes have for some time required accommodations, thank you. I haven’t heard of any examples before 2020 where canvas quizzes required accommodation. Brenda also says accommodations for in-class quizzes is a change for her. James mentions that in general CAL’s expectations have gone up. So at least some of the requirements for accommodation seem to be new.

* Who administers the accommodations? Everybody seems to agree that there has been a change: CAL used to administer/invigilate assessments with accommodation and now expects the instructors to do this.

* Workload for invigilation. Thank you to Nancy for raising the increased workload for instructors. Anchorage to everyone who is concerned about increased workload to contact the SFUFA Office <sfufa_executive_assistant@sfu.ca>.

* Workload for data entry. Another source of increased workload is the data entry four assigning extra time for students. As Ronda notes, different students require different accommodations. Chris and Russ note that adding extra time for a single student to a Canvas quiz is easy, which is great, and nobody else has expressed concerns about data entry workload.

On the other hand, I have heard from my colleagues in computer science that they find the extra data entry burdensome. It probably depends on the scale: if you have 10 students requiring special accommodation each for 15 quizzes, the data entry and sap compare to just one student needing accommodation for one exam. I guess an indication that the data entry work go to significant is the fact that CAL thinks it's too much for them to do :-)

Regards,

Oliver

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oliver Schulte E-mail: oschulte@cs.sfu.ca

Simon Fraser University Phone: (778) 782-3390

Professor Fax: (778) 782-3045

School of Computing Science Web: http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~oschulte

TASC 1 Building 9021 Work Schedule: see home page

Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6

Canada

On January 22, 2021 at 10:25:10 AM, Brenda Davison (brenda_davison_2@sfu.ca) wrote:

I have observed the following:

In-class quizzes (10 min long) now have requested accommodations. Typically this did not happen pre-pandemic but did happen occasionally.

Nearly all accommodations are done by me, the instructor.

I have a single Zoom session and I move the CAL students to breakout rooms - one per student since not all have the same increased amount of time. When the exam ends, the regular students depart and I leave the meeting running and check in on the breakup rooms until the additional time is up for all the CAL students.

This most definitely has increased my workload (I had 7 hours of invigilating for ONE final exam) and I agree with Nancy; I am not sure why the CAL cannot handle exams themselves as before.

Brenda Davison | Senior Lecturer

Department of Mathematics - Simon Fraser University

[https://www.sfu.ca/math/department/faculty/davison--brenda.html]

My phone is currently non-operational. Please send email instead. I respond to email Monday through Friday, 8am to 4pm.

I work on the unceded ancestral and traditional territories of the səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ ( Tsleil-Waututh ), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) and kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem) Nations.

From: James Fleming <james_fleming@sfu.ca>
Sent: January 22, 2021 10:07 AM
To: Oliver Schulte; academic-discussion@sfu.ca
Cc: Michael Sjoerdsma; SFUFA Office
Subject: Re: Administering accommodations in on-line quizzes - has CAL changed its policy?

I have no perspective on the specific issue you raise, but I have found CAL's communications and expectations since the start of the pandemic to be more aggressive than they used to be. JDF

From: Oliver Schulte <oschulte@cs.sfu.ca>
Sent: January 22, 2021 8:01:03 AM
To: academic-discussion@sfu.ca
Cc: Michael Sjoerdsma; SFUFA Office
Subject: Administering accommodations in on-line quizzes - has CAL changed its policy?

Hi all,

I wonder if anyone else has experienced this change. I’ve been using short on-line canvas quizzes (15 min or less) for some years now. The Centre for Accessible Learning never required accommodation for students with special needs. Exams yes, on-line quizzes no. But this year the very same quiz requires accommodation that it did not require in 2019. Has there been a change in policy, or am I confused about something?

Puzzled,

Oliver

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oliver Schulte E-mail: oschulte@cs.sfu.ca

Simon Fraser University Phone: (778) 782-3390

Professor Fax: (778) 782-3045

School of Computing Science Web: http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~oschulte

TASC 1 Building 9021 Work Schedule: see home page

Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6

Canada