Instructor Guidance on Continuing Accommodations

Converting to an online format may change what accommodations are needed and how they are implemented. Not all students with disabilities and chronic medical conditions are connected with the DRO, and there may be students whose needs only become apparent with this transition to a new learning environment. If students reach out to you requesting an accommodation due to a disability, please refer them to the Disability Resource Office, 919.515.7653 or disability@ncsu.edu.

Testing Accommodations

If you plan to administer tests using an online module, the use of DRO Proctoring may not be required or necessary. 

Moodle allows instructors to individually set the amount of time available to complete tests (please review  Extending Time on Moodle Tests). If you have questions about how to set up your testing environment, please contact learntech@ncsu.edu.

• If you have concerns about academic integrity in the online environment, please review the alternatives below on how to ensure academic integrity.

1. • Designing Assessments That Do Not Lend Themselves to Cheating  
   • How to Stop Online Students from Cheating  

The extent to which accommodations in the online environment are necessary will, in part, depend upon your continuity plan. Our office has put together a short list of best practices to assist. 

Best practices:

• utilize Zoom and actively elect to record and have your Zoom sessions auto-transcribed;
• upload all slide decks, Powerpoints and course materials as documents to Moodle;
• test the effectiveness of device microphones. You may need to consider using a noise-canceling or lapel microphone for teaching. Microphones are available on loan from the Disability Resource Office and the NCSU Libraries.

Below are a few additional resources you may find helpful:

• Teaching Students with Disabilities
• Accessibility Information
• Teaching Effectively During Times of Disruption – Stanford University

Creating Course Materials

When creating new or converting materials to be posted online, you can create fully accessible materials using the following tools:

• Microsoft Office Documents 
  • Creating Accessible Documents with Microsoft Office
  •  Accessibility Checker in Documents 
• Google Suite Documents
  • Creating Accessible Documents with Google Suite
  • https://support.google.com/docs/answer/6199477?hl=en 
• PDF Documents
  • Create Documents in Office or Google and then choose “save as PDF”
  • If you have a PDF of a document, is it also available online? Post Link to the website and the PDF document.
  • If you must upload a scanned document, it will need to be converted from an Image to a text-based PDF.  
    • How to make a text-based PDF with Adobe Acrobat
    • How to make a text-based PDF with Snapverter.
• NCSU Quick Course Content Checklist

Contact learntech@ncsu.edu or the Office of Faculty Development for additional assistance.