Disabilities and Distance Learning during COVID 19- What This Means for the Future

by Joanne Tyrrell

Distance Learning offers challenges and supports for the learner with disabilities that schools, teachers, and case managers must manage. If you look at the whole system nationwide in the U.S., you find that many public school systems were not sufficiently prepared to go entirely online quickly during the pandemic. Some systems were farther along, already offering some online courses and using some online systems, but these ranged from separate courses and systems to fully learning management systems. My own school district changed its LMS (Learning Management System), speeding up a 5- year plan integrate the Canvas LMS, to using Canvas by November of the pandemic as our means of providing educational services during COVID19 (see figure 1). The variety of online integration as well as the need for training educators, students, and parents created more challenges than benefits. However, the promises of better learning through online ecologies do exist after the initial disruption caused by COVID 19.

The first hurtle in providing instruction with supports for learning disabled students is describing what services will be provided and in which settings the students’ Individual Education Program, IEP, will take place . Prior to the COVID 19 break out, some school districts already included distance learning plans in IEPs. The law states, “IEP teams may, but are not required to, include distance learning plans in a child’s IEP that could be triggered and implemented during a selective closure due to a COVID19 outbreak. Such contingent provisions may include the provision of special education and related services at an alternate location or the provision of online or virtual instruction, instructional telephone calls, and other curriculum-based instructional activities, and may identify which special education and related services, if any, could be provided at the child’s home” (Department of Education 2020). However, the use of a distance learning plan really became a necessity with the pandemic. So for school systems like my own which did not already have distance learning as a part of the IEP, this one thing was a major challenge to schools and case managers. First, since this is a legal document wording had to be crafted and approved by the legal department. Then a method for holding meetings during the pandemic had to be decided upon which needed to address privacy issues and access issues. Next, case managers needed to hold IEP meetings and explain to parents how services and settings would change due to being online, as well as, should things change how it would be handled. Then came the actual building of online courses that were inclusive of learning disabled students by addressing the IEP goals and supports adequately, separately and in conjunction with the curricula development and delivery.

Once services in the online environment had been decided upon then the next hurdle was building the classes that addressed the curricula and the needs of the disabled students. From my personal experience during the COVID 19 school years (spanning from the second semester of one public school year to the second semester of the next school year) from March 2019 to March of 2020, I can say that the ability to go back and correct work along with my school system’s policy of continually updating grades benefitted many learning disabled students. However, these same students were faced with other challenges and limitations in educational opportunities. Not only was the learning curve for using the new online platform one that consumed valuable time for the teacher but also valuable learning time for the students. Online learning also addressed content to a greater extent than the soft skills. High school teachers also embed in their lessons such soft skills as time management and social skills. Time management, in particular, is a skill that is often taught indirectly. While the ability to redo work and have the teacher update a student’s grade allowed students who required more feedback, time to process, or who had deficits in time management skills, to improve their grades, it did not help those with time management deficits to improve those skills. Additionally, some students who feel at home on a computer were able to learn how to operate the new system quickly and did very well with the online format, but others who were less comfortable struggled with simply accessing the coursework. The same variation in experience is true for the learning process and environment. Some students did well online while others missed the in-person experience both for learning purposes and socially. Clearly, not every student had the same experience switching to distance learning from brick and mortar learning. A United States Government Accountability Office study into distance learning during Covid19 states, “At the same time, officials from all four school districts as well as some researchers told us that some students with disabilities thrived in the virtual environment. For example, an official from one district said some students, such as those with social anxiety and other mental health conditions, were better able to focus outside a classroom. Officials from several school districts told us that future special education and service delivery may include additional elements of virtual learning” (The Government Accountability Office 2020). However, this does not carry over to students with other disabilities.

Many learning disabled students benefitted from the teacher’s ability to differentiate instruction through online tools without making the disabled student feel it is obvious to everyone that they have a disability. Teachers were able to offer choices in project based lessons, support collaborative learning through structured lessons assigning roles that suit each students’ abilities, encourage the use of online readers, embedding videos, notes, and audio clips in lessons as tools that could be referenced easily while students produced their own projects (see figure 2 for an example from the Canvas platform). Teachers also employed the use of discussion forums for sharing of knowledge and questions and holding individual conferences in breakout Zoom sessions. Yet some still struggled with project based learning and personal learning in being able to follow through online. Many of these students did not know when or the best way to ask questions for clarification.

In order to adequately deliver instruction that meets the needs of disabled learners you need to provide adequate training to teachers that includes accessibility for a variety of learners, in-depth training on how to use whichever platform is chosen and you need to have collaboration among the users. As a special educator I not only had small group classes consisting entirely of learning disabled students, but also general education classes with a mix of students ranging from learning disabled to gifted. Collaborative work with my colleagues, both general educators and special educators, was necessary and invaluable in helping me structure my online course work. This need for collaboration is supported by the Government Accountability Office study on Distance Learning which states, “Researchers from professional organizations as well as officials we interviewed from all four selected school districts said that increased collaboration among educators was critical to delivering quality education that met students’ needs while trying to minimize the stress on students, parents, caregivers, and teachers” (The Government Accountability Office 2020). It is clear, that teaching communities for students and teachers are necessary to provide the proper resources and support for distance/online learning.

So what does this mean for the future of distance learning in K-12? Distance learning, e-Learning, or online learning if you prefer, has great potential for giving teachers and students access to information and tools. The catch is harnessing that potential effectively and efficiently. One can go down the rabbit hole, so to speak, looking for the right technology for an online lesson. A great deal of work is added to the teacher’s workload for the initial set up of an online course. This means school systems need to provide their teachers with adequate training and also, devise a system for sifting through what is available and presenting it in a concise format that cuts down on the time teachers put into finding the right technology. Beyond the instructional technologist assigned to a school or a department, faculty need to share what has worked for them with each other. Specialists need to share technology which provides support in disability areas with faculty. School instructional technologists need to identify the technologies that work with the specific platform teachers are using from the beginning, so they have time to learn how to use them. Expectations for how to deliver accommodations should also be made clear - what accommodations need to be available in a teacher’s classroom, what technologies exist to supply these accommodations online, who is responsible for creating these accommodations and providing them to the student. Creating a culture in which students feel comfortable in asking for an accommodation is also important. If a student needs a test or quiz read to them and audio has not been provided, he or she needs to feel comfortable with asking for the audio or what tools he or she can use. We must also make sure that we are providing the instruction and supports for technology usage. Students must be taught how to use the technology first thing, too often we make assumptions about the ability of our students to use the technology. Furthermore, if the shift to distance learning from traditional brick and mortar includes a shift in pedagogy from the traditional didactic, teacher driven learning environment to a student driven project based learning pedagogy of the ecologies of learning, then students also need to be taught those expectations and procedures. So many students are still used to the didactic pedagogy used in the traditional classroom that they have difficulty navigating personal learning and project-based assessment effectively.

Figure 1 Sample Canvas Dashboard showing the menu icons used to navigate the Canvas platform (“How do I use the Course Home Page as a Student?” 2021)

Figure 2 Shows the icons used to embed various types of media. This feature can be used by both teachers and students. The figure shows the icons in the immersive reader used to embed various types of media. (“How do I embed Canvas Studio Media in a Course…” 2021)

References

The Government Accountability Office. Distance Learning Challenges Providing Learning to K-12 English Learners and Students with Disabilities during the COVID19. GAO Report to Congress. November 2020. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED609664.pdf.

Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services and Office of Special Education Programs. Questions and Answers On Providing Services To Children With Disabilities During The Coronavirus Disease 2019 Outbreak Washington, D.C.: Mar. 12, 2020. https://sites.ed.gov/idea/files/qa-covid-19-03-12-2020.pdf.

“How do I embed Canvas Studio Media in a course?” Instructure Community. 2021. https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Studio/How-do-I-embed-Canvas-Studio-media-in-a-course/ta-p/1699.

“How do I use the Course Home Page as a Student?” Instructure Community. 2021. https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Student-Guide/How-do-I-use-the-Course-Home-Page-as-a-student/ta-p/504.