Creating Accessible Teaching and Support

The CATS project was initially funded by the Australian Universities Teaching Committee (AUTC) and the Carrick Institute to improve the quality of teaching and support for students with vision impairment.  The Australian Learning and Teaching Council has now funded Stage 2 of the project, which will broaden the focus of the resource to encompass the needs of students with other disabilities and implement an interactive audit tool to assist with monitoring compliance.

During the research phase of this project, the authors consulted with university teachers, disability practitioners and students, identifying a range of issues that are faced regularly by staff and students.  These consultations identified the potential for more consistent and systematic approaches to addressing the needs of students with vision impairments in universities and for supporting the staff who teach these students.

In response to this research, we have established a framework for good practice that identifies the main aspects of university life and defines benchmarks for good practice in relation to these.  Each benchmark includes practical teaching and support strategies and links to other useful resources.  The project has also identified a number of guiding principles on which provision for students with disability should be based.

The CATS project team has been funded to develop, over a two year period, effective strategies to further embed in institutional practice, use of the CATS resource and  quality assurance framework developed by the previous initiative and to ensure integration with other work in the area of inclusive teaching/learning and supporting students with disability.

The project team will work closely with Carrick Institute staff to model dissemination approaches that are successful in embedding good practice within universities.  It will also explore issues around the sustainability of resources of this kind with reference to related initiatives such as Carrick Exchange.

This proposal is framed in context of feedback from a national consultation workshop (funded as Phase 1 of this proposal and conducted in September) with learning and teaching leaders from a representative selection of institutions across Australia that focussed on identifying effective mechanisms for the identification, dissemination and embedding of good individual and institutional practice in learning and teaching.

Key features of the proposal are:

• Further development of  the CATS online resource to provide interactive functionality, update discipline based content and enhance the useability of the self assessment tool
• Undertake a cross institutional evaluation of the use of the self assessment tool and its impact on practice, to inform the embedding of good practice at the individual and institutional levels
• Facilitate a benchmarking exercise across these institutions to establish performance indicators and a set of baseline data for quality teaching and support for students with disability
• Identify and contribute to other Carrick funded initiatives that relate to inclusive education and collaborate with the Carrick Exchange with a view to embedding the resource and increasing the accessibility of resources
• Develop proposals to ensure the sustainability of the CATS  web resource and clarify  associated issues including intellectual property
• Evaluate the effectiveness of the CATS resource and quality assurance framework as a strategy to support improvement in the teaching and support of students with disabilities

For more information about the project please contact the project officer:

Melody West
University of Tasmania
Locked Bag 1313
Launceston
Tasmania   7252

email:  Melody.West@utas.edu.au

phone 03 6324 3900

In 2003 the AUTC funded a consortium of universities to identify strategies for improving outcomes for blind and vision-impaired students in Australian universities through the following methodologies:

• researching key issues (literature review and consultations with students, practitioners and academics)
• documenting innovative strategies for inclusive teaching practice
• identifying effective professional development practices to disseminate good practice in this area
• improving access to practical information and resources
• promoting Australia-wide guidelines and strategies for more effective practice teaching and support for blind and vision-impaired students.

The project report and literature review summarise the research undertaken and provide more information about related work under the auspices of the Australian Vice Chancellors Committee (AVCC) (now known as Universities Australia) and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC). 

Project Steering Committee

• Professor Denise Kirkpatrick - Pro-Vice Chancellor (Learning and Teaching), La Trobe University
• Ms Christine Goodacre - Director, Centre for Advancement of Teaching and Learning, University of Tasmania
• Dr Elizabeth McDonald - Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education
• Mr John Power - National Policy Officer, Blind Citizens of Australia
• Mr Timothy Hart - President, Australasian Network of Students with Disabilities (ANSWD)
• Ms Leonie Young - Chief Executive Officer, beyondblue: the national depression initiative
• Dr Pat McLean - Director, Equity, Language and Learning Programs, University of Melbourne
• Mr Tony Payne - Manager, Student Services, University of Tasmania

Project Team

Professor Denise Kirkpatrick, Mr Tony Payne, Dr Pat McLean, Ms Christine Goodacre.

In September 2004, the steering committee identified additional priorities for the project and agreed that a proposal would be forwarded to AUTC requesting additional funding to further develop the resource. It was proposed that the team would:

• develop the framework to encompass needs of all students with disabilities
• implement a self-assesment tool and action plan functionality
• provide individualised pathways into the resource for the major users including teachers, practitioners and managers.

Although the AUTC was not able to fund projects in 2005, it made recommendations to the Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education for further funding of this project and these recommendations were accepted at the first meeting of the Institute in 2004.

The inaugural  project steering committee was chaired by Professor Sue Johnston and the project was managed by Professor Denise Kirkpatrick  (Monash), Dr. Pat McLean (Melbourne), Christine Goodacre (Tasmania) and Tony Payne (Tasmania). This resource has built upon a number of earlier projects that are detailed in the project report. The original team appears below:

• Professor Sue Johnston - PVC Teaching & Learning, University of Tasmania
• Professor Ron McCallum - Dean of Law,  University of Sydney
• Professor Denise Kirkpatrick - Director, Learning & Teaching, Monash University
• Christine Goodacre - Director, Flexible Education Unit, University of Tasmania
• Dr Pat McLean - Director, Equity, Language & Learning  Programs, University of Melbourne
• Maryanne Diamond - Executive Officer, Blind Citizens Australia
• Bronwyn Pearson - Manager Equity Unit, University of New England
• Jane Evans - Chief Executive Officer, National Information Library Service
• Deb Warren - B Psych (Hons) Student, University of New England
• Tony Payne, Manager Student Services, University of Tasmania.