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Home Blogs Going the Distance: Online Strategies for Helping Students with Disabilities
As schools across the country physically closed this spring, educators and students shifted to online and distance learning. This swift and unexpected change forced educators to rely on different—and sometimes new—approaches to support students' learning. Finding effective practices that advance distance learning for students with disabilities, who represent one-fifth of our nation's school-age learners, is a critical concern.
In response, many organizations are offering resources, tools, and support to educators, parents, and students. For example, Google; Microsoft Education; and Educating All Learners, a coalition of national organizations committed to education equity, are reaching out to educators during this challenge. Decision makers need to know how to choose tools that will work for this group of students.
At REL Mid-Atlantic, our mission is to partner with educators to apply evidence and prepare students for success. Although rigorous, experimental research on this topic is difficult to develop, research on online learning for students with disabilities suggests a number of promising practices:
The following are some suggestions education leaders should consider when working online with students with disabilities based on research findings.
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Professional development and teacher support8 | Family engagement2 | ||||||||||||||||||
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Accessibility | Instructional strategies to support personalization | ||||||||||||||||||
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Notes: According to the Interactive Design Foundation, design thinking “is a non-linear, iterative process which seeks to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test.”9 Booth et al. 2020 describe Universal Design for Learning as “evidence-based educational framework that supports the needs of all learners through the use of multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression.”10 |
Online education for students with disabilities offers many potential benefits, including the ability for students to work at their own pace and review the material as many times as they need. At REL Mid-Atlantic, we are continuing to partner with education leaders to ensure data and research help improve outcomes for these students.
1 Greer, D. L., Smith, S. J. & Basham, J. D. (2014). Practitioners' perceptions of their knowledge, skills and competencies in online teaching of students with and without disabilities. Journal of the American Academy of Special Education Professionals, 150–165. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1134799
2 Smith, S. J., Burdette, P. J., Cheatham, G. A., & Harvey, S. P. (2016). Parental role and support for online learning of students with disabilities: A paradigm shift. Journal of Special Education Leadership, 29(2), 101–112. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1118423
3 Crouse, T., Rice, M., & Mellard, D. (2018). Learning to serve students with disabilities online: Teachers' perspectives. Journal of Online Learning Research, 4(2), 123–-145. Retrieved from: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1184994
4 Rice, M. F. (2018). Supporting literacy with accessibility: Virtual school course designers' planning for students with disabilities. Online Learning, 22(4), 161–179. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1202365
5 Betts, K., Cohen, A. H., Veit, D. P., Alphin, H. C., Broadus, C., & Allen, D. (2013). Strategies to increase online student success for students with disabilities. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 17(3), 49–64. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1018265
6 Connell, M. W., Johnston, S. C., Hall, T. E., & Stahl, W. (2017). Disconnected data: The challenge of matching activities to outcomes for students with disabilities in online learning. Journal of Online Learning Research, 3(1), 31–54. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1148588
7 Richardson, J. T. E. (2016). Face-to-face versus online tutorial support in distance education: Preference, performance, and pass rates in students with disabilities. Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 29(1), 83–90. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1107475
8 Smith, S. J., Basham, J., Rice, M. F., & Carter, R. A. (2016). Preparing special educators for the K-12 online learning environments: A survey of teacher educators. Journal of Special Education Technology, 31(3), 170–178. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1119798
9 Interaction Design Foundation. (n.d.). Design thinking. Retrieved June 12, 2020, from https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/design-thinking
10 Boothe, K. A., Lohmann, M. J., & Owiny, R. (2020). Enhancing student learning in the online instructional environment through the use of universal design for learning. Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research, 22(1). https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1243073
Author(s)
Emily Vislosky
Joey Hunziker
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