ISP-related reasonable adjustments

Students with Inclusive Support Plans are sometimes entitled to reasonable adjustments to assessments. These adjustments reduce the level of disadvantage experienced by disabled students and students with other needs which affect their experiences of education and assessment.*

In autumn 2021, a survey of HSS staff revealed that there is wide variation in the ways staff approach these adjustments, and that many staff wanted more insight and advice.

The following recommendations have been developed in consultation with the Inclusive Support Service, Wellbeing and the Centre for Academic Development.

• When introducing a new assessment form, it may not be immediately clear how to apply the adjustments in an ISP. When designing assessments, try to think through the kinds of adjustment that could allow students to meet the same assessment criteria in different ways.

• Explain to students the rationale behind the assessment design (i.e., in relation to what the module leader is trying to assess). This helps students understand that there are good reasons for the assessment being designed in the way that it is. This also helps students to work with staff in identifying ways in which particular adjustments may allow the same things to be assessed.

• Have positive, disability-confident interactions with students with ISPs early in the module, clarifying whether or not ISP extensions can be used, what kinds of adjustments may be available to them, etc. Invite students with ISPs which specify assessment adjustments to discuss their preferences with you, if they want to, to help you make informed decisions about appropriate adjustments, making clear that this is not compulsory. Try to ensure that students with ISPs have the same level of clarity about their assessments, including adjustments, as other students, and by the same point in the semester (or as early as possible after receipt of ISP information).

Case study: Audio-recordings as an alternative form of submission

One kind of accommodation which can be offered to students with specific learning difficulties is an audio-recorded output, in the place of a written output. This can be particularly appropriate as an alternative for very long written assignments, such as dissertations. This has been trialled successfully.

Why offer this kind of adjustment?

While the marking adjustments entailed in the blue card allowance, and deadline extensions, often do work towards levelling the playing field for students who are traditionally disadvantaged by written assignments, the act of organising thoughts into writing (with correct spelling, grammar and punctuation), and the structural organisation of written material, often takes students with specific learning difficulties a lot longer and causes more stress, while the quality of written expression is often only a small element of the assessment criteria.

Providing feedback: A small written submission can be submitted to Turnitin to facilitate feedback as normal (see next point).

Managing references: A written Turnitin submission can usefully contain a bibliography for each chapter. Bibliographic information can include additional details of individual page numbers of all citations, to help work around the lack of footnotes. The student can introduce and signal the end of quotes with ‘quote’ and ‘end quote’, and provide basic reference details verbally, as per a standard conference paper.

Length: As a guide, a 10 000 word dissertation can be recorded at a reasonable pace within 55-60 minutes. This can be helpfully broken down into a separate recording for each chapter.

Submission: The audio recordings can be submitted to a folder on Google drive.

Checking word count and plagiarism: If the student submits a rough script, this can be put through Turnitin and the word count tool in Word can be used (using ‘find all’ to find and discount all uses of ‘quote’ and ‘end quote’ if the student has presented quotes in this way). Some software (e.g. otter.ai) provides audio transcription, which could be used to transcribe the recording in cases of suspected plagiarism.

If you feel that the adjustments on a student's ISP don't seem adequate, to contact the Inclusive Support Service. It may be that the student's situation has changed, or the Inclusive Support Service only had limited information. The observations of academic colleagues can be vital information to support additional adjustments.

*Use of the term 'disabled people' is based on the social model of disability, which asserts that people are disabled by barriers in society, not by their impairment or difference.