Thread Subject: Timed responses

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From: Cyndi Rowland
Date: Wed, May 23 2007 11:05 PM

I thought this would be a good time to chime in on the issue of timed
response. I'm going to use situations that come to my mind from
education. I'm thinking of situations like registration, testing,
and library searches. Of course since we are tasked to refresh 508,
our focus should be in federal governmental procurement. Frankly I
could provide analogous agency situations; if anyone would like me to
I would be happy to do that for the sake of a discussion.

I think allowing the user to indicate more time, as stated in the
standard, is important in many contexts yet there are instances where
this becomes silly since we would know that an individual needs
additional time a priori. In these instances there should be a
mechanism in the application for a user preference of timed responses
to be set and supported. In doing so I think it could go a long way
to provide independence and avoid the irritation of having to
indicate repeatedly the need for additional time. However, I don't
know the appropriateness of including such a solution in the
standards.

Since timed responses are used in varied ways and contexts I thought
it would be good to share just a few of the most often used
educational scenarios (testing) so the rest of the subcommittee can
put their thoughts together and perhaps provide a workable solution.
By the way Travis is correct in that the timing provision was not
present in the software standards (I got that confirmation from
Allen):

1. Please remember that some standardized testing occurs (e.g.,
online SAT or GRE testing) for which the administrator of the test
would need full control of whether and how an accommodation would be
made (per 504 regulations). Of course it would be important that an
accommodation of -- or approval for -- timing could be made within
the application by some central administrator. If this could happen
the user could then take the test online, like their peers. (Often
times the provision of any accommodation -- including additional time
-- during testing throws the tester out of the online process and
into an alternate testing process altogether such as having a reader
administer the test and mark responses.). To me this is ridiculous
as the fix could be made within the software (and or the user agent).

2. Other times teachers and university faculty (or for Fed
government biz let's say "trainers") administer tests or quizzes that
are not intended to be standardized. Sometimes the control of timing
is an issue, other times it is not.

a. When testing and timing is an issue for an instructor-administered
test, provisions of Section 504 still come into play. A student
identified (i.e., registered with their disability service office) as
needing additional time for an accommodation will get it and one who
does not will not get additional time. In this instance it would be
nice for either the instructor or someone from a central disability
office to enable the software to provide the approved additional time
rather than the user having to indicate repeatedly that they need it.
Again, if someone cannot enable this feature, the student will have
to take the test in some other form (e.g., in a separate office with
someone administering it to them).

b. Finally, some tests are given by instructors for which time is
simply not an issue. In this case it would be nice for either the
instructor or student to disable the timed response all together.

Currently in education many course management systems do not have
these features. Moreover, some users may need more than 10 times the
default time. As I think of course management systems used in
education & training it would be nice to make sure that the timing
provision could support (1) the administrator, (2) the instructor,
and at times (3) the user, setting the timing needs that are known
before testing. Perhaps this is beyond the scope of the standards
but I thought I would toss it out just in case.

Thanks

Cyndi Rowland
--
< = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
Cyndi Rowland, Ph.D.
Technology Director, National Center on Disability and Access to Education
Center for Persons with Disabilities (UCEDD)
Utah State University
Logan, Utah 84322-6800
(435) 797-3381
FAX (435) 797-2044
<http://www.ncdae.org>

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