Streamlining overrides (extra time) for students with learning disabilities

Streamlining overrides (extra time) for students with learning disabilities

Cris Fuhrman གིས-
Number of replies: 9

Hello,

At the start of every semester, I get a confidential list of students in my class who are allowed extra time (e.g. 33% or 50%) on any timed evaluation (e.g., Moodle Quiz), because they have diagnosed learning disabilities.

I know how to do this per person, per quiz. Overrides seems to have been designed for the "grandmother's funeral" use-case, and it's a great feature. However, since in the case of LD students it applies to the whole semester for the same students, it's an annoying amount of clicks. 

I imagine more and more universities have such policies to allow extra time to a set list, and so I wonder if Moodle has a feature for this (or if it can be achieved with existing features).

I thought about groups, but wasn't sure if it would always apply to every (new) quiz. The idea is that each each and every quiz automatically gets the same override for all students in the LD group (I could create eventually a group for 33% extra time, another for 50%, etc.). 

Then again, are groups confidential? 

Would groups save me clicks in the case of LD students?

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In reply to Cris Fuhrman

Re: Streamlining overrides (extra time) for students with learning disabilities

Tim Hunt གིས-
Core developers གི་པར Documentation writers གི་པར Particularly helpful Moodlers གི་པར Peer reviewers གི་པར Plugin developers གི་པར
You may have to be careful with the privacy aspect, but can you achieve this using a group? Put all the students that need extra time in a group, and then add a group override? (The potential privacy issue is checking who is able to see the list of groups that a student is in.)

Alternatively, someone could create a new plugin to do exactly what you say (a central place to input a standard override for some students, and then whenever a new quiz is added, it could create the required overrides). I just checked the plugins DB, and no-one has done that yet.

I suppose the other thing someone could develop is an upload option for overrides in a quiz, so you can keep your overrides in a CSV file, or similar, and just upload that to each quiz.
དཔྱ་སྙོམས་ཀྱི་སྐུགས་ཚུ།:Useful (3)
In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Streamlining overrides (extra time) for students with learning disabilities

Sharon Strauss གིས-
Testers གི་པར
This is a big problem. When someone alerts me to the issue in their course, I resolve it by hiding the participant list from students and turn off the ability for students to view each others' class profiles. However, I don't really know who is using this feature. There should be a way to make override groups private. I'd like to put in a bug report, but I'm not really sure how to describe this.

I'm not sure why a plugin would be better. This is a serious issue with a feature in core Moodle. The solution needs to be in core Moodle too.
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In reply to Sharon Strauss

Re: Streamlining overrides (extra time) for students with learning disabilities

Sharon Strauss གིས-
Testers གི་པར
I found tracker 68093 (opens in new window). Please vote it up or, if you can, draft a fix.
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In reply to Cris Fuhrman

Re: Streamlining overrides (extra time) for students with learning disabilities

Rick Jerz གིས-
Particularly helpful Moodlers གི་པར Testers གི་པར
Chris, the way that I solved this problem is to increase the quiz time by 50% for all students. Then you don't have to mess around with exceptions.
དཔྱ་སྙོམས་ཀྱི་སྐུགས་ཚུ།:Useful (1)
In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Streamlining overrides (extra time) for students with learning disabilities

Cris Fuhrman གིས-
At the start of the pandemic giving everyone extra time was tolerated by my administration. Sadly it is not acceptable anymore, since LD students don't get any true help relative to their peers.
དཔྱ་སྙོམས་ཀྱི་སྐུགས་ཚུ།: -
In reply to Cris Fuhrman

Re: Streamlining overrides (extra time) for students with learning disabilities

Rick Jerz གིས-
Particularly helpful Moodlers གི་པར Testers གི་པར
Interesting, Cris. I teach at a U.S. university and I have always thought that it is the instructor, not administrators, who design course exams, content and time allocations. Why is it unacceptable to give regular students more time?
དཔྱ་སྙོམས་ཀྱི་སྐུགས་ཚུ།:Useful (1)
In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Streamlining overrides (extra time) for students with learning disabilities

Cris Fuhrman གིས-
I believe the official policy for LD accommodation for extra time (eg 33% more) is relative to the time given to other students. I'm in Québec and as far as I know this kind of accommodation is standard for diagnosed disabilities, even in secondary schools. My university recently broke the 10k student threshold, so it is positioning itself to accommodate.

It's different than before (say, 10 years ago) where a student with an LD would show me his medical diagnosis for ADHD or dyslexia and make demands (sometimes reasonable, sometimes not) for what I should or shouldn't do with respect to grading. Once, after getting a graded report back, a student insisted I was not allowed to remove points for spelling, because he had dyslexia and it took him too long to use a spell check tool (!). I pushed back when he went to the administration to complain and now there's a policy about it. In another case, I had a blind student in my programming course and was unsure what was reasonable. The administration had no clue either, but there's now a protocol in place.

It's much better now that a part of the administration handles the accommodations.
དཔྱ་སྙོམས་ཀྱི་སྐུགས་ཚུ།: -
In reply to Cris Fuhrman

Re: Streamlining overrides (extra time) for students with learning disabilities

Rick Jerz གིས-
Particularly helpful Moodlers གི་པར Testers གི་པར
Yes, I understand, but none of it makes any sense. This is all pandering to the student.

So really, let's say that you design an exam to take 1 hour, and you decide to give not only LD students two hours, but everyone else two hours. Then, your administration says, "Nope, you need to give LD student 3 hours." So you give them 3 hours, and everyone else the same. As you can see, this goes on and on until you decide that there is no time limit. What would your administration then say? That you can't give unlimited time to everyone because there is no way to make LD students feel like they are getting something extra?

My real point is that all kinds of things can pop up for all kinds of students. Why not simply solve the problems by giving all students 50% (or whatever) more time, to accommodate every situation? And why not allow the instructor to design the length of an exam, that is reasonable based upon the content.

As you somewhat point out, more and more students are coming up with reasons for needing something extra. What happens if every student in the course has a condition that requires 50% more time? It might get to this someday?  It might appear to some that the appropriate accommodation is "Every student must get an A, or 100%, on every exam. If they are not getting an A, it's because of some condition that has to be accommodated."  And, this makes life easy.  If every student gets an "A", why give an exam?
དཔྱ་སྙོམས་ཀྱི་སྐུགས་ཚུ།: -
In reply to Cris Fuhrman

Re: Streamlining overrides (extra time) for students with learning disabilities

Tim Hunt གིས-
Core developers གི་པར Documentation writers གི་པར Particularly helpful Moodlers གི་པར Peer reviewers གི་པར Plugin developers གི་པར

From what you say, my feeling is that the best solution to your case is a custom plugin:

  • There would be screens where Administrators could set which policies apply to which students (e.g. Student X always gets 33% extra time.) (If I was building this, I would either store this info in custom user profile fields, or create a new DB table for it.)
  • Then, the plugin would ensure those policies are automatically applied throughout Moodle (this could either be a Scheduled task, or an event listener ... actually now I think about it, and event listener ... so that every time a quiz (or other activity) is edited, or any time a user is enrolled in a course, it looks to see if any setting overrides need to be created or updated, and does that.)

I am not sure if your institution has the resources to develop a new plugin, but this one seems relatively doable, particularly if you start with a few simple cases (+33% time for some students). It could always be made more sophisticated later.

དཔྱ་སྙོམས་ཀྱི་སྐུགས་ཚུ།: -