What is Accommodate?
IUPUI’s Accessible Educational Services (AES) has implemented a new method of communicating with faculty and students regarding approved accommodations. The new method of communication is as follows:
- The student receives an email message from AES via software called Accommodate. This message includes the student’s approved accommodations and the classes for which they have registered. It also includes instructions for students and faculty describing the methods of implementation for some of the most common accommodations. The message will originate from iupui-accommodate@symplicity.com (aes@accommodate.symplicity.com). Accommodate is the name of the software and symplicity is the name of the publisher.
- The student forwards this message to each of their instructors while also copying aesproj@iupui.edu on the message. This communication serves to notify faculty of the approved accommodations and also alert AES of the notification. Upon notification, the approved accommodations are considered “active.”
Explore Accommodate
Faculty are not required to use Accommodate at all. However, some faculty may find it helpful to have all their students’ accommodation information in one centralized location. If you are interested, you can explore Accommodate. Instructions for locating students with accommodations in your classes using Accommodate:
- Go to https://iupui-accommodate.symplicity.com/faculty and login using your IU login credentials
- Click on Courses in the short list on the left
- You will see your course catalogue that lists all the courses you are teaching. Scroll to the course you’d like to look at and click on the course title, this will open that course
- You should see three tabs, Course Details, Enrolled Students, and Room Booking. (We are not using the room booking feature currently)
- Click on the Enrolled Students tab
- Click on More Filters
- Click on Yes under Approved Accommodations for this Course
- Click the on Apply Search - - this will give you a list of all of the students in your course that have approved accommodation and what those accommodations are
If you want to check the Catalog # (nee “section number”) for the course you are viewing you can scroll back up and click on the Course Details tab. The Catalog # (a.k.a. section number) can be found at the bottom under Course Unique ID. The Catalog # (section number) follows a four-digit code that identifies the semester in our system.
Why the change?
This is essentially a paperless version of the flow of information that existed prior to the pandemic. When the university switched to remote instruction, our office had to immediately transition from an exclusive paper-based process to a completely paperless process. We chose to email accommodation information directly to each faculty member and to copy the student on each message.
There are advantages to this approach, but there are also disadvantages. The primary argument against emailing faculty directly is that it diminishes students’ agency in the process. It took away some of their control. We received feedback from some faculty to this effect.
The new process puts the student back in control of their accommodation information and gives them the responsibility of contacting their instructors. This is more consistent with our values of encouraging student self-advocacy.
