Course Syllabus
LDN 642—Understanding Disability Documentation, Accommodations, and Legal Compliance
This course is the part of the online professional certificate program in Learning Differences and Neurodiversity (LDN) offered by Landmark College, with specializations in “Executive Function,” “Autism Online and on Campus,” or “Post-Secondary Disability Services”.
This is an 8-week course, consisting of modules for each week. Each module includes several micro-units. Micro-units are subtopics within the modules. Each micro-unit contains learning activities (various types of independently accessed content) and a variety of activities designed to get you thinking about the topic, activate background knowledge, and opportunities to provide thoughts and insights.
The course also includes online video conference synchronous sessions, scheduled primarily in the evenings (Eastern Time). We will make every attempt to accommodate individual schedules, but opportunities to watch recordings will be available for those not able to attend live.
Week/Module | Topics/Subtopics |
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Week 1 The Changing Landscape of Disability Documentation | • Legal underpinnings of DRO/DSO work • The meaning of disability in the eyes of a DRO • The meaning of documentation in the eyes of a DRO • Primary, secondary, and tertiary documentation • Recognizing the value of various sources of information in the eventual decision-making process |
Week 2 Frameworks and Approaches for Documentation review | • The triangulation approach to accommodation decision-making • The Big Two: The Interactive Process and Fundamental Alteration • Helft and Harwell’s 3-Step Accommodation Decision Making Framework • Adam Meyer’s 3-Linear Step approach to differentiating between “what’s appropriate” and “what’s possible” |
Week 3 Documentation Policies on Higher Education Campuses | • Identifying contextual factors of various institutions and how this impacts office approaches to documentation policies and procedures • The importance of consistency in decision-making processes • Formulating a personal stance on documentation guidelines |
Week 4 The Intake Meeting | • The value of an intake meeting • Important aspects to incorporate into an intake meeting • Observations made during intake meetings and student interactions |
Week 5 An Introduction to Psychoeducational Evaluation Reports | • What is psychoeducational evaluation? • The flaws of psychoeducational evaluation • The anatomy of a psychoeducational evaluation report • Percentiles versus percentages • Converting Standard, Scaled, and T scores • Finding meaning in scores/numbers |
Week 6 An Introduction to the Basics of Cognitive and Achievement Batteries | • Common psychoeducational evaluation tool “families” and the tests that make up their batteries • Assessment goals of cognitive evaluation versus achievement evaluation • Descriptions of common indices and subtests • Connecting scores and subtests to one another to help understand potential student impact |
Week 7 Accommodation Decisions | • Categorizing accommodation requests • Collaborating with and/or coordinating accommodation implementation with campus partners • Applying frameworks to the decision-making process • Verbiage for approvals and/or deferrals |
Week 8 Putting it All Together: Applying Personal Approaches to a Decision-Making Scenario | • Large scale application review with final decisions and identification for next steps, if appropriate |
2 Technical specifications include: Edition or most current version of test; when the test was first published; purpose of test , including whether it is diagnostic or screening; age group; what is measured- including any subtests; scoring; reliability and validity (if provided).
Alignment of Weekly Course objectives with AHEAD Professional Competency Standards
The Association of Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD) has a set of 9 Professional Competencies that are considered to be essential within the field of disability services. The objectives of this course are aligned to the AHEAD professional competency standards. The following table shows the competencies associated with each course module.
AHEAD Competencies by Weekly Topics Table
Course Objective | Module Objective |
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Describe the role of documentation in the accommodation decision making process |
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Generalize an accommodation decision making framework to real world scenarios in order to inform next steps in the accommodation review process |
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Analyze various types of documentation in order to make informed decisions regarding accommodation requests. |
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Justify accommodation decisions and/or necessary next steps in an accommodation-request scenario |
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