[Blindmath] Question about having an assistant in the classroom for stem subjects

Fri Nov 13 05:06:46 UTC 2015

In my experience, the role of an assistant varies depending on the
policies of a college's disability services office. Sometimes you
might be offered someone who will write down everything that the prof
writes on the board during a lecture. Other times, you might be
offered someone to give you a "play by play" of all the visual things
that are being presented during the lecture. In my experience, the
"play by play" is totally ineffective in most cases because, as you
suggest, it takes away from your ability to listen to what the prof is
saying. I personally don't even like having notetakers because you
will often get someone who is not even taking the same class and has
never had that class.

One note--profs are often clueless about how important it is to
verbalize things that are written on the board during lectures. I had
a calculus class during undergrad where that was the case during the
first couple of weeks, but after I politely reminded the prof (a
couple of times) that I needed to have things verbalized, the class
was a breeze from then on.

As far as PowerPoints that have images, it typically is the
responsibility of the professor to provide these things to you in an
accessible format. If you request them in accessible format and your
prof blows it off, you might try reaching out to your school's
disability resources office to see if they can provide the prof with
training on how to make documents accessible. That is another area
where brilliant profs are often completely clueless.

Best of luck,

Shickeytha

On 11/12/15, Sabra Ewing via Blindmath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> I think I get it a little bit better now.
>
> Sabra Ewing
>
>> On Nov 11, 2015, at 11:07 PM, derek riemer via Blindmath
>> <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>>
>> For example, in my linear algebra class, we would often have complex
>> matrices like
>>
>> 1 2 5 4
>> 4 5 0 0
>> 5 1 0 0
>> 4 0 0 0
>> and then the professor would say something like "now we will find the
>> determinant of this by blablabla" and show a formula without verbalizing
>> it. In that case, he had quite an accent, and a verry soft voice, which
>> meant hearing him correctly even in the front row was sometimes a bit
>> tough.
>> In many stem courses, they often would have complex rules on the board,
>> such as notation that wasn't necessarily easy for an instructor to speak.
>> For these kinds of classes, and for my coding classes, where lots of code
>> may be shown, but not articulated perfectly syntactically correct, having
>> the notetaker is essential to ensure the proper visual information is
>> written down. It shouldn't make you feel lazy or like you are a lesser
>> person because you aren't taking all the notes, some of these subjects
>> just aren't being taught in perfectly universally designed ways, and it's
>> not going to change just because there is a blind person in class, since
>> instructors often aren't used to teaching in this style. I agree. For some
>> classes I have been in, my instructors are great at adapting, but in many
>> subjects, especially upper division ones, the instructor unintentionally
>> may introduce ambiguity into the math or code. For example, in some random
>> math class, my professor often may say "x alpha plus phi of x plus 1 times
>> the quantity x minus mu" when she meant "x superscript alpha baseline plus
>> ..." and not getting those things down properly results in me thinking I
>> have a subscript when I should be raising something to a power. In some of
>> my classes the notetaker isn't an assistant, but just a random student who
>> volunteered to take notes, (the university compensates them usually in
>> some way I think). One of my friends who has been doing notetaking for a
>> while for coding classes I am in just places them into a google doc. She
>> basically gives me her copy of notes. In some of the classes like data
>> structures, is wasn't all that necessary, but in algorithms, many of the
>> algorithms had long proofs that had value in understanding. In short, she
>> found it useful to still give the notes to me because it helped her study
>> for the test by writing the notes again. If you don't find it necessary to
>> have an assistant, I would encourage you to let your disability services
>> office know, but I wouldn't close that door completely, because you may
>> very well need help in a complex course like linear algebra or
>> differential equations in the future, which is a perfectly reasonable
>> thing to request.
>> I hope this helps,.
>>
>>
>>> On 11/11/2015 3:21 PM, Sabra Ewing via Blindmath wrote:
>>> I am having trouble understanding the concept of using an assistant in
>>> the classroom for lecture style stem subjects as it relates to blindness.
>>> It is getting to the point where it is becoming a problem in my
>>> interactions with people who believe that blind people should have
>>> assistance for these subjects. I understand that if you are paralyzed,
>>> you would use an assistant in lecture to take notes for you because you
>>> can't write with a pencil and maybe you can't use an alternative device
>>> to take notes on a computer. I understand that if you are deaf, you would
>>> use an assistant to translate everything from English to sign language,
>>> you could have a condition that would make you run around for no reason
>>> or not be able to stay on task in an assistant would help with that.
>>> However, none of those apply to me. Let's say A blind student is in a
>>> lecture. It could be anything like math, science, or programming. If that
>>> person had an assistant in the classroom, what with the assistant do? If
>>> the assistant is supposed to be taking notes, why can the student not
>>> take their own notes and why has an assistant been chosen instead of
>>> removing excess ability barriers? I am just really trying to understand
>>> this, and I'm not going to go into details, but I am in a situation where
>>> I need a rational explanation for why I did not have an assistant in one
>>> of my stem classes. After fourth grade, I never really had an assistant
>>> in the classroom. If you are saying to just think about why I had an
>>> assistant in the fourth grade and before, I tried that, but I can't
>>> remember why. In the future if I am offered an assistant for class,
>>> should I just take it even if I don't know why so the professor can't
>>> blame any problems that occur in the class on the lack of an assistant?
>>> It would seem wrong to have an assistant just for that though. I had an
>>> assistant and my ceramics class who helped me find things in the room and
>>> know how to use the tools and glaze and keep track of my pieces, but I
>>> did not do any of those activities in a stem class. I have really tried
>>> to think very hard about it even though it doesn't seem like it, but I
>>> just get more confused.
>>>
>>> Sabra Ewing
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>>
>> --
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>   Derek Riemer
>>
>> * Department of computer science, third year undergraduate student.
>> * Proud user of the NVDA screen reader.
>> * Open source enthusiast.
>> * Member of Bridge Cu
>> * Avid skiier.
>>
>> Websites:
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>> Non-proffessional website.
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>>
>> email me at derek.riemer at colorado.edu <mailto:derek.riemer at colorado.edu>
>> Phone: (303) 906-2194
>>
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>
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