Brockelmann, K. (2011). Faculty members’ ratings of the effectiveness of academic strategies for university students with psychiatric disabilities . Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability , 24 (1), 43–52. https://www.ahead.org/professional-resources/publications/jped

[no doi reported]; also located on ERIC online database: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ941731

The accommodations reflected upon by participants included instructional and communication strategies, yet also included accommodations during course examinations, such as extended-time, individual space or testing room, read-aloud, dictated responses, and using alternate forms of exams.

Faculty members (N=107) at a higher education institution in the Midwest (U.S.) provided their perspectives on course-related accommodations use, including during course examinations. Demographic information such as sex, ethnicity, and undergraduate/graduate student teaching assignments, were also reported. The researchers apparently made efforts to identify whether or not the participants taught in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses or not; 27 taught in colleges with only STEM courses, 23 taught in colleges without STEM courses, and 57 participants were from colleges with both STEM and non-STEM courses.

The survey was adapted from the Mental Health and Illness Awareness Survey (MIHAS; Becker et al., 2002). Three of its five sections were analyzed in this study, and included comfort level and confidence about teaching students with psychiatric disabilities, and teaching strategies they use and see as effective.

The most broadly used assessment accommodations included extended-time for exams and using a private testing space, such as in the testing center, and the least commonly used assessment accommodation was alternate test format. Of the strategies rated as most effective, the assessment accommodation identified was extended-time for exams. When comparing the subset of participants who were STEM or non-STEM faculty, each group used a similar average number of strategies, but the types of strategies differed. STEM faculty members used the following significantly more frequently than non-STEM faculty members: extended-time for exams, using a private testing room, and changing the form or format of the exam—permitting read-aloud, dictated, typed, or scribed. When comparing the STEM and non-STEM faculty about their effectiveness ratings of assessment accommodations, STEM faculty members rated extended-time for exams as more effective than non-STEM faculty members rated that accommodation. Limitations of the study were reported, and future research directions were suggested.