NAIT’s Learning Services has a new service for students who require accommodations. The Accommodation Dashboard, which launched on May 1, is a streamlined online resource for instructors and students to find information about accommodations — and it is completely unique to NAIT.
Gifty Amakye, manager of Learning Services, leads the team that supports students with learning disabilities and barriers to learning. Her role at NAIT is to ensure students get help with accessing resources to make learning more accessible.
“The accommodation process itself involves the entire NAIT community. So whether you are a student, an instructor, work within Learning Services or not, you still fall under the broad umbrella of the accommodation itself and collaborating with it,” says Amakye. “So we got a lot of feedback.”
According to Amakye, the origins of the Accommodation Dashboard started about three years ago, after students and instructors expressed the need for accommodation resources all in one place.
“We realized, ‘Oh, the information that students are seeing and also instructors are seeing is not sufficient enough to help them understand what’s supposed to happen next or what they should or shouldn’t do,” she says.
Now, students and instructors can use the dashboard to get information, send or view accommodation service plans and book exam accommodations. For students with disabilities like ADHD, the dashboard also helps prevent “next step” emails with key information from getting lost in their inboxes.
“What we’re hoping this does is give a really smooth, central place to access that information again.”
Renata Medeiros, the student academic rights advisor at NAITSA, thinks the Accommodation Dashboard will be great for students if it meets the gaps the previous system didn’t, like finding everything in one place and adding resources.
Because of its centralization, Medeiros thinks the dashboard will make processes faster for students and prepare them to see a learning advisor within the time they need.
“They will be able to create their profile first, and once they see the learning advisor, if it’s just a drop-in or a booked appointment, [the advisor] will already have some understanding on what the case is, what the student needs and what accommodations they need,” she says.
“I just think it’s a really good tool that will improve the experience of students that need accommodations and that they should be excited to use it.”
‘A unicorn’ of a system for NAIT students
Learning Services worked with NAIT IT for a total of eight months to develop the custom-built, accessible learning software, which Amayke calls “the brainchild of the NAIT community.”
“It’s like, yes, you can buy your car off the lot, or you can go to the factory and speak to the designer and get exactly what you want. And that’s what we’ve done here.”
“It wasn’t given to us by somebody who doesn’t know our programs, our students, our processes,” Amakye explains, adding that IT put in countless hours creating the Accommodation Dashboard “from the ground up.”
She says this in-house technology makes it easier for Learning Services to adapt the dashboard to institutional needs without relying on third-parties. It also makes for a more secure, synchronized system.
“There are other systems, but not quite like this. This is the unicorn,” says Amakye, who is familiar with systems like Clockwork or Accommodate. “It’s like, yes, you can buy your car off the lot, or you can go to the factory and speak to the designer and get exactly what you want. And that’s what we’ve done here.”
Amakye says Learning Services and IT are currently developing how-to videos and documents on the Accommodation Dashboard to guide students through academic challenges like requesting extensions.
The dashboard is accessible for all students to view through their MyNAIT Portal, even if a student doesn’t have a learning disability. Amayke says this removes the mystery behind accommodation processes and resources.
Students also get to decide which courses or instructors can see their accommodation service plan — something students new to post-secondary learning might not be used to coming out of high school.
“Once you move to post-secondary, that information is yours, and you share it with whomever you would like to share it to,” says Amakye. “So a student can write in that system, view their accommodation service plan, say ‘send it’ and type in the name of any staff member that they want to send it to. And that’s their choice, not our choice as Learning Services or even their program’s choice.”
Amakye says she feels pride and gratitude towards the team behind the Accommodation Dashboard — especially the IT developers, who she says took the time to understand the nuances behind accommodations — but also to the students and instructors who have provided feedback.
“The accommodation process itself involves the entire NAIT community. So whether you are a student, an instructor, work within Learning Services or not, you still fall under the broad umbrella of the accommodation itself and collaborating with it.”
“I took that on board as like, this is an opportunity to actually build something people really want.”
Students can still access Learning Services in-person on Main Campus in E105 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays or visit their website for more information.
