How Augsburg College Helps Students with Disabilities Take Better Notes with Technology

We all assume education is harder for students with learning disabilities, such as dyslexia.

It certainly shouldn’t be.

At Augsburg College we are making additional investments in technology to support students with learning disabilities.

The decision for us to invest in Sonocent’s Audio Notetaker software was an easy one.

This software allows students to record lectures so they can focus on the content and discussion of a class, rather than write notes. Usually, this is a challenge for a student with dyslexia or ADHD.

In addition to recording the lecture, Audio Notetaker has tools to help visually organize their notes. Students can color-code recorded audio segments, prioritize information, tag, and save related presentations and data so they have all the information in manageable sections. They can interpret their notes on their own time, in their own preferred way.

These students’ level of intelligence may be above average, but because they struggle with the traditional college notetaking format, they may fail to reach their potential.

These students become increasingly frustrated because they struggle to access the course lecture material effectively.

Approximately five percent of our student body has a learning disability like dyslexia (dyspraxia) or ADHD. In addition to our college population, 15 percent of the US population has one of these disabilities too.

This is a large number of people that need additional support when it comes to reading and writing in school or in an employment setting.

 

Rachel Kruzel, head of the CLASS Office’s Groves Technology Lab, at Augsburg College, Minnesota. Her role includes coordinating all accommodations Disability Services including assistive technology. Rachel has helped grow the colleges’ assistive technology program vastly due to increased grant money given to department. Her current project is to create a new notetaker request system including the use of Audio Notetaker to help create a more efficient notetaker accommodation process.

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