Developing a Disabilities Information Management System

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Developing a Disabilities Information Management
System
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Project Group

• Colin Allison Senior Lecturer, School of Computer
  Science
• Bin Ling Research Associate, School of Computer
  Science
• Ross Nicholl Research Associate, School of
  Computer Science
• David Roberts Deputy Director, Student Support
  Services
• Luke Moodley Computing Officer, Library and
  Information Services

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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

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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

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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

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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)

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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
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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

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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

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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

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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

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Design
Maintain DT Local database
Query all
Add record
Disabilities Team Staff
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
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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

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Browser
WEB SERVER
Authentication Services
External Disabilities Information and Service
Repositories
Authorisation and Access Control
Resource Management
Files
Internal DB Identities, Roles, Modules,
Associations, Metadata
Information Import Control
Disabilities Information Flow System
Data warehouse, student records, Advisors
Database etc
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Overview of the System
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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 hasnt been
  previously available regarding roles of staff and
  meaningful statistics

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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

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Developing a Disabilities Information Management
System