Developing a Disabilities Information Management System

1. Developing a Disabilities Information Management System

2. Project Group • Colin AllisonSenior Lecturer, School of Computer Science • Bin LingResearch Associate, School of Computer Science • Ross NichollResearch Associate, School of Computer Science • David RobertsDeputy Director,Student Support Services • Luke MoodleyComputing Officer, Library and Information Services

3. Overview • Background • Introduction to DIF • Context Analysis • Who is involved? • Problems Identified • Concerns about introducing new DIF system • System requirements • Design • Implementation (key features) • Overview of the System • Successes and Further Work

4. Background • New legislation (SENDA September 2002) • Anxieties regarding teaching students with disabilities • Increasing need for reducing administrative duties on Academic/teaching staff • Confidentiality and quality issues associated with the current practices for disseminating information about students with disabilities • Disability information spread across a number of unrelated systems

5. Introduction to DIF • Disabilities Information Flow (DIF) is a project designed to; “Review and enhance communication systems that support flow of information about disabled students’ needs throughout the University” • A project focused on pre-teaching strategies for dealing with students with special needs providing them greater access to the Higher education curriculum through: • Timely and accurate dissemination of information to teaching staff • Quality data that is distributed on a “need to know” basis • Institutional commitment to an efficient disabilities information flow service

6. Context Analysis • System analysis and requirements gathering • Identify principal stakeholders disabilities team, disabilities coordinators, teaching staff • Interviews with individual stakeholders to establish current issues • Identify disability disclosure routes (see diagram) • Model current processes (series of UML diagrams)

7. Disability Disclosure Routes VIT Program (Computer Science) Contact individually and interview more serious disabled student in summer UCAS Individual DS visiting to DT Send Accommodation requests UCAS form in Admissions Office Maintain Access DB Keep files locally Junior Year Abroad form Collect and check through stated UCAS paper form and sign Disabilities Team (DT) in SSS Students without normal matriculation (ELT) Online Pre-advising, student portal Prospective student visiting day form Evening Degree Program Matriculation paper form Entrance pack sent with offer of place A staffed table at the matriculation process

8. Who is involved? • The Disabilities team (DT) Staff within Student Support Services working with students with disabilities • The Disabilities Co-coordinators Group Group of academic staff responsible for teaching arrangements of disabled students within their School • Disabilities Advisory Group Small High-level group focusing on implications of SENDA throughout University • Library and Information Services (LIS) and Business Improvements (BI) Units involved in embedding DIF into the institutional information services infrastructure • Students with Disabilities

9. Problems Identified • by Disabilities Team (DT) • Too few staff to handle workload • Increasing number of students with disabilities • Difficult to maintain accurate data with large number of module/student changes • by Disabilities Coordinators Group (DC) • Difficulties in keeping staff updated with recent changes • Duplicate information being received at school level • Difficult to manage and usefully catalog large quantities of paper based data • Non-teaching units have no access to student disability information • Dissemination process is generally slow and in some cases does not allow for adequate adjustments in teaching arrangements to be made

10. Concerns about introducing new DIF system • Disabilities team • Reliability of electronic methods for notifying staff of changes • Possible loss of control over data flow • Concerns about access to more confidential information by multiple users • Disabilities coordinators Group • Concerns regarding usability of online system • Stability and availability of an online system • Quality of data and timely distribution of updates

11. New DIF System Requirements • Common expectations of an improved DIF System • Information available on-line • Restricted access to student information available only to relevant staff • Information continually updated from existing institutional information base • General Information available online to staff regarding dealing with disabilities • Automated email notifications sent to staff regarding student/module changes • Replacement of paper-based methods • Information readably editable by Disabilities Team members

12. <<use>> <<use>> <<use>> <<use>> <<use>> <<use>> <<use>> Design Maintain DT Local database Query all Disabilities Team Staff Add record Edit comments & generate e-memo User Verification School Teaching Staff School Disabilities Coordinator Download record Read DS special Teaching & exam needs in the module Query school DS info & read memos School Secretary Read Special exam need info in the School School Examination Officer Exam Invigilator

13. Implementation (key features) • Actual data is held on secure website (https) • Authentication uses institutional LDAP service • Class lists and student information updated every 24 hours from other parts of the institutional information base, or, on demand • Previously private disabilities data become a sharable data set • Notifications of changes in the system are sent via email to relevant staff

14. Dynamic User-centric portal Maintenance Browser WEB SERVER Authentication Services External Disabilities Information and Service Repositories Resource Management Authorisation and Access Control Files Internal DB: Identities, Roles, Modules, Associations, Metadata Information Import Control Disabilities Information Flow System Data warehouse, student records, Advisors Database etc

15. Overview of the System

20. Successes • DIF increases the competence and confidence of academic staff in understanding the needs of students with disabilities • Enables teaching staff to prepare teaching materials well in advance of teaching of students with a variety of learning disabilities • Provides good quality data while respecting confidentiality • DIF helps academic staff to understand the issues relating to the development of an accessible learning environment • Provides information to schools that hasn’t been previously available regarding roles of staff and meaningful statistics

21. Conclusions & Further Work • DIF aimed to understand and document the current state of play with regard to information flows about students with disabilities throughout the institution • Entering role information into the system proved to be a very useful tactic, but proved significantly time consuming for some large units - an administrative task which it is felt should be done elsewhere in the university • Next phase of DIF: institutional embedding of the new service • Accommodate feedback from the evaluation and move towards a full institutional deployment

22. Developing a Disabilities Information Management System