Special Needs - 1- Accommodations in an Online Environment

Post in your blog: At least four well-developed paragraphs that address each of the four points:

• Describe student’s disability, special need and/or the extenuating circumstance, without including personally identifiable information.
• Student has Anxiety, hard time following the class timeline and is easily distracted by those around him. He is on the Autism Spectrum.
• Identify at least three specific aspects of the online environment you feel would be beneficial for this student’s situation or disability.
• Because of the Anxiety this student incurs he has a hard time, at first getting us to the online environment. After working with him, he started to see a pattern of lessons when looking at the LMS. This means that he knew how to find his lesson, the assignment and how to pass in work as the LMS could be set up to be very consistent
• The  timeline online could be massaged using conditions within the assignments. More/Less time, hints available, word banks, extra practice could all be programmed according to the students needs.  
• Student could work in class, at home, in the Library, in a resource room. We can provide him with headphones. All these things help him with the distractions around him.
• Explain why each aspect of the online environment you identified above would be advantageous to your student, using specific examples.
• A student that experiences anxiety is often less anxious when they know what to expect. By making the online lessons consistent in design and action the student can be come more confident.
• Anxious students are often so concerned about due dates that they cannot get the work done because the timeline is all they can think about. By allowing the student to learn at their own pace online, the student gains control over his environment and allows him to make his own decisions. 
• By allowing the student to choose the environment they learn in, at home in a quiet room. with headphone, to name just a few, this alleviates the distractions and anxiety many autistic students feel. This give control back to the students. 
• What challenges do you suspect your student may encounter in the online environment?
• Learning how to use it at first. This take training and patience of the parents and teachers. He may need extra support at the beginning when learning the pattern set up in the LMS.  
• If there is a deviation of service, such as internet goes down, keyboard has a missing key, headphones don't work, this may throw the student off.  Explaining to the student that these things may happen and are 'Normal' occurrences may alleviate the anxiety. Teacher and parents need to come up with a protocol that they teach the student introducing him to the LMS system.

All work should be FERPA compliant and protect student data and personal information.  Work that is plagiarized or copied from others may result in removal from the course and learning platform.