The City University of New York



Proposal Summary CUNY Start at Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) and the College of Staten Island proposes to develop Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Assistive Technology (AT) best practices to support successful outcomes for students while in CUNY Start and once matriculated in college. Through the support of the Strategic Technology Initiative (STI), CUNY Start will increase the ability of reading/writing instructors, math instructors and program advisors to provide differentiated instruction using AT and UD strategies that can be replicated at other CUNY Start programs and throughout CUNY. The STI will include a research-based, evaluation component that will support the collection of data on student and staff experiences, track the impact of the initiative for students over time, and provide information on “lessons learned” to University faculty and administrators. CUNY Start - BackgroundCUNY Start provides intensive preparation in academic reading/writing, math, and “college success” advisement to students admitted to CUNY whose scores on the CUNY Assessment Tests (CAT) in reading, writing, and math indicate that they are in need of significant remediation. Those who enroll in the program temporarily delay starting degree studies to participate in the 15-18-week program. CUNY Start seeks both to minimize the amount of required remedial coursework underprepared students must take, and to foster higher levels of persistence and graduation once students matriculate. Instruction in CUNY Start is intensive: 25 hours a week in the full-time program of math and reading/writing and 12 hours a week in the part-time program of either math or reading/writing. Instructional experts from the CUNY Central Office of Academic Affairs and participating colleges have developed curricula that can be regularly updated to meet the needs of students. Students are each assigned an advisor who provides individual support and teaches a required College Success Seminar during their CUNY Start semester. CUNY Start is offered at all of CUNY’s community colleges as well as at the College of Staten Island and Medgar Evers College. The program has served over 10,000 students since its inception in 2009, and will serve over 3,800 students in the 2015-16 academic year. CUNY Start is completing its final year of utilizing the consulting services of Landmark College, a leading professional development resource in the area of learning disabilities, to help instructors and advisors support students with multiple learning needs. The program’s work with Landmark in year one focused on training to teachers and staff to understand the nature of language processing and executive function challenges and in year two, on helping advisors to develop a flexible repertoire of strategies to support students’ executive function and to strengthen their self-advocacy skills. Landmark’s expertise would be requested for a third year for this grant, if funded by the CUNY IT committee.Assistive Technology and Universal Design for Learning NeedCUNY Start serves learners with a variety of needs, and campus programs are finding that obtaining specific accommodations for students with disabilities has become more of a challenge as the program has grown. At some campuses, we also see a growing number of CUNY Start students with disabilities who are in need of accommodations. In fall, 2014, for example, CUNY Start at CSI reported that of its 100 full-time students (those entering CUNY with significant remedial needs in writing/reading and math), 32 registered with their campus’ Accessibility Office and in the program’s part-time math program 11 of the 50 students were also registered.BMCC is CUNY Start’s largest campus and serves 425 students each semester. The program reports that 10-17% of students routinely identify as having had an accommodation while in high school, although not all students register at the campus’s Accessibility office. In fall of 2014, BMCC CUNY Start reported that 60 students identified themselves as having a learning disability and/or receiving an accommodation in school, with 40 of these students actually registering with the campus Accessibility Office. This spring, 40 BMCC CUNY Start students report they have a disability with 30 now registered with the Accessibility Office. The number of students with disabilities at these campuses and in CUNY may be even higher. According to research published by the National Center for Learning Disabilities, only about one in four (or 24 percent) of young adults who received special education services in high school consider themselves to have a disability and inform the school of their need for services in postsecondary education settings, and only 17 percent of young adults with learning disabilities received accommodations and supports in postsecondary education because of their disability, compared to 94 percent in high school (Cordiella and Horowitz, 2014).CUNY Start’s math and reading/writing curricula engage students with content and activities that can be challenging for students with disabilities and as the program grows, it has become clear that there is a need to develop tools, teaching approaches and resources that can help such students to succeed. Accessibility Offices on campus often have limited resources on-hand, and we recognize that the offices must prioritize the distribution of AT and labor intensive supports to matriculated students as well as to CUNY Start students. Because CUNY Start is an academically intensive program that meets for four to five days weekly and requires students to attend 12 or 25 hours per week (depending upon whether they are full or part-time), students with disabilities also require more time with a given accommodation. For example, a visually impaired CUNY Start student needed a Closed Circuit Television Magnifier (CCTV) and a note taker for classroom support; the campus accessibility office was able to provide a CCTV for Reading and Writing, but not for Math, and could not provide a note taker for the entire day. CUNY Start teachers have noticed that many of their students with learning disabilities struggle with visually or auditory processing issues. Teachers with such students try to serve them by producing enlarged PDF and Word documents and formatting them in such a way that they can be printed as worksheets. While the campus accessibility office can provide this service for the program, the turnaround time for receiving accessible texts is incompatible with the class schedule of CUNY Start. There is also a gap, due to lack of financial resources, in how the program strategically engages instructors, advisors, disability service leaders and AT specialists when it comes to accommodations. Finally, data about CUNY Start students with disabilities is limited and the program is still seeking a systemic plan for using technology to help students with disabilities.Because, as noted above, research suggests that the number of students who may actually have a learning disability may be much greater than actually reported, the STI project will also provide introductory training in Universal Design theory and approaches to teachers participating in the project. This training will help teachers to adjust aspects of their overall practice to reach students with a range of learning strengths and needs.Proposal Governance, Outcomes and Operational Plan CUNY Start has twelve full-time central office staff members, including: Mia Simon, University Director of CUNY Start; Gayle Cooper-Shpirt, Director of College Transition Curriculum and Instruction; and Zenobia Johnson, Assistant Director of CUNY Start. In addition, there is an administrative assistant, a research analyst who works within the Office of Research, Evaluation and Program Support (REPS), and nine professional development coordinators (PD) who support the campus-based advisement, math, and reading/writing staff. There are approximately 175 campus-based staff members who make up the program’s administrators, instructors, advisors, tutors, and writing assistants at CUNY Start’s nine campuses.Under the leadership of Gayle Cooper-Shpirt, CUNY Start will engage in a year-long STI program at two CUNY Start campuses, BMCC and College of Staten Island, using the CUNY Start collaborative team model, which includes coordinators, teachers, advisors, tutors and Writing Assistants. The campus coordinator for each campus, who also is the liaison with their respective campus Accessibility Office, will be the linchpin related to student matriculation and shared student learning at each campus. Throughout the life of the project, REPS will also conduct a robust evaluation based on qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis. The focus of the evaluation will be to gain a better understanding of 1) students’ knowledge of and likelihood to access resources, 2) teachers’ knowledge of and likelihood to implement differentiated learning activities, and 3) the frequency and content of meetings between instructors, advisors, disability service leaders and AT specialists. It is hoped that this research will provide useful information that can help guide similar initiatives across the University. A final report will be written by REPS and CUNY Start staff that will document outcomes and findings from this research. Training for staff at the two campus sites will be part of the program, and the project will coordinate and access skills from internal CUNY Accessibility experts as well as Landmark College consultants. Along with integrating UDL and AT approaches into classroom practice, areas of training will involve learning how to use equipment, troubleshooting common challenges a student may face and planning instruction and classroom activities.UDL Tool Kits and AT Expectations Based on CUNY Start experiences to date, we anticipate that each campus will create a “tool kit” comprised of UDL strategies to try out in classrooms, and also provide AT tools unique to individual students’ needs. We anticipate that each campus will implement UDL approaches in at least two classes at their campus, impacting 50 students per campus, or 100 at both campuses. In addition, the STI campuses will provide 25 individual students training and AT/UDL support based on their unique needs (or 50 students at both campuses). While we estimate our needs as listed below, we recognize these may change based upon the students who enter CUNY Start next year. Therefore, we reserve the right to modify the list based on technology changes/developments, campus-based needs (for example gaps between what the accessibly divisions can provide and what CUNY Start can provide) and based on choices by students themselves. Importantly, CUNY Start work with STI will mean staff can respond in a flexible, student-centered and immediate manner to meet students’ needs. Timeline expectations follow:July – August 2015PD team, BMCC and CSI select 8-9 STI team members. Each campus will target a reading/writing teacher and/or math teacher, advisor and writing assistant and math tutorAT/UDL contract with Landmark College is establishedPD and STI team will identify UDL practices and resources from the toolkit to pilot with feedback from Landmark and Accessibly Office representativeREPS begins to plan for data collection, which would include student and staff focus groups, interviews and academic administrative dataSeptember-January 2016 (fall semester 2015)Planning meetings with Landmark Landmark-facilitated training on UDL theory and practice and AT tool kit strategies is implemented Data collection beginsFebruary – July 2016 (spring semester 2016)Use of Assistive Technology with individual students begins Staff implements technology in the classroom (UDL) and for individual students (AT)Ongoing training based on individual needs continues STI teams present lessons learned at CUNY Start All-Staff Day for 200 plus staff at 9 campusesSummer/fall 2016CUNY Start creates a final report about the pilot, which importantly includes lessons learned, is shared with Accessibility staff members, interested faculty and other key stakeholdersEarly data is reported on related to CUNY Start proficiency gains for students working with STI teachers; matriculation and credit accumulation data is also sharedAlumni focus group is held to understand student experiences once entering collegeAnticipated Tool Kit:FM sound field: By amplifying the teacher’s voice above classroom acoustics and other noise interference, we can increase student attention, engagement, and focus. An FM sound field is a system of speakers placed strategically around a classroom that interact with a microphone that the teacher wears around his/her neck. The FM sound field is an assistive resource for students with auditory processing issues and hearing impairment, but benefit a wide range of learning needs including students with attention deficits. Smart pen (+ paid student note takers): Students who struggle with information processing will also benefit from the use of smart pens, that record everything that is said and written and transcribes it into a word document. This resource is a common accommodation provided to matriculated students who have auditory processing and communication disorders, hearing impairment, dysgraphia, and other learning needs. Video magnifier: An alternative to CCTV, a handheld video magnifier enlarges text and offers support to students who are visually impaired. The benefits of using a handheld video magnifier are many: students will gain instant access to classroom materials and requires no additional material preparation, and students would be able to carry the video magnifier from Reading/Writing to Math to Seminar, making any material they receive throughout the day accessible. I pad with apps (Goodreader, Access Note, Inspiration, Adobe Reader): Perhaps most valuable to the goal of student autonomy and independence, a handheld tablet computer with apps to support note taking, organization, writing, and reading is of most utility for students who struggle with a range of learning needs. Students would have the opportunity to utilize these resources while gaining academic proficiency in CUNY Start. If students have access to a smartphone, they would continue to use these learning aids in the credit-bearing classes. Miscellaneous - Low Tech Needs (TBD)Anticipated AT Need for 50 students (25 per campus): TBD based on individual student needBudget CUNY Start is requesting approximately $120,000 to support the STI project at BMCC and CSI. Please see attached budget detail for PS and OTPS breakdown.CUNY Start –STI Budget Proposal DetailPS (PT)Dedicated hours weeklyRate WeeksNo. StaffTotal CostCUNY Start -Continuing Ed Teachers 3$37.75326$21,744 Writing Assistant 2$21.34324$5,463 Math Tutor 2$15.00322$1,920 REPS PT Research Analyst18$40.00321$23,040 Subtotal$52,167 OTPSDedicated hours weeklyRate WeeksNo.Total CostFM Sound fieldNA$1,700.00NA2$3,400 Smart PensNA$200.00NA10$2,000 Video MagnifierNA$1,800.00NA2$3,600 I PadNA$500.00NA10$5,000 Good ReadersNA$25.00NA10$250 InspireNA$10.00NA10$100 Misc.NA$25.00NA10$250 Assistive Tech for Students (TBD)NA$20,000.00NA2$40,000 Student Stipends -focus groupsNA$25.00NA20$500 Landmark ContractNA$12,000.00NA1$12,000 Staff TravelNA$50.00NA13$650 Subtotal $67,750 TOTAL PS & OTPS Proposal Budget????$119,917 ................
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