Growth in Accommodated Testing helps campus growth
This past year UW–Madison experienced tremendous growth in the number of students who requested and were approved for accommodations for exams in their courses. Although an overall increase in the number of students on campus may have partly contributed to this, there has been a multi-year trend of increasing numbers of students with disabilities seeking accommodations. This has been the case not only at UW–Madison but across UW System (despite a trend of decreasing enrollments at many other campuses). Systemwide, the most common accommodations provided to students with disabilities are testing accommodations. These commonly include extended time, testing in a distraction-reduced setting, and/or small-group or individual testing environments. Accommodations can also include assistive technologies like reading or writing software.
After several years of steady growth in students seeking accommodations and in the provision of accommodated testing, this past academic year saw a very steep increase. Specifically, Testing & Evaluation Services (commonly known as T&E) saw a nearly 80% increase in the number of students seeking testing accommodations over last year. This produced tremendous strain on central resources for accommodated exams such as coordinating staff, proctors, and testing space. Departments and schools/colleges that have historically managed their own testing accommodations also have reported being overwhelmed by the dramatic rise in requests; some of them have resorted to referring students to T&E, further increasing demand there.
To address this, a working group was convened by the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning (VPTL). Members included representatives from the VPTL office, T&E, the McBurney Center, the Space Management Office of Facilities Planning & Management, the School of Education, and Academic Services in the Registrar’s Office (Will Lipske and Jeff Armstrong). The group has been operating on two parallel tracks: one to address immediate and shorter-term needs for this past year and upcoming year, and one to address longer-term solutions. For many years Curricular Services staff have worked with T&E to reserve overflow testing space in General Assignment classrooms in the Education Sciences building (where T&E is housed) during peak testing times (such as the last week of instruction when many midterms occur as well as finals week) – this year, as a stop-gap measure, we also reserved additional classroom space throughout the entire fall and spring semesters.
The RO is grateful for the collaboration with our campus partners to ensure we can support students who need accommodations, and we look forward to the ongoing discussions and planning that will continue over the coming months.