Skip To Content Skip To Menu Skip To Footer

Faculty Guidelines for Implementing Academic Accommodations

Note-Taking Accommodations

Accommodating Students Who Request a Note-Taker

Some students have disabilities that necessitate the accommodation of receiving notes from a class note-taker. If after discussing your course plans during your Access Plan meeting with the student, they request a peer note-taker for your class, please review this
                               Guidance for Identifying and Setting up a Note-taker.

There you will find the instructions for...

  • looking at your class roster to see if any students have been a reliable note-taker in the past,
  • recruiting possible note-takers (there's a script that you could read and/or email),
  • assigning a class note-taker from your class roster in CLIQ. (If you'd like, here is a video tutorial on "How to Assign a Note-taker in CLIQ"), and
  • accessing the notes that your class note-taker has posted.

Please ask all who volunteer to be the class note-taker to show you their notes so that you can select a note-taker whose notes best reflect the lecture that you've given. If you only have one volunteer, you can use this opportunity to give any feedback you feel would be constructive and to express your appreciation for the volunteer's service. 

Thank you for remembering to keep the identity of the recipient of the notes confidential (unless the recipient indicates otherwise).

Once you’ve chosen a note-taker for the class and made the assignment from your class roster in CLIQ, you're all set! (ADS will receive an automated message alerting us to the assignment, and the note-taker will receive a message with instructions for how to scan and upload their notes.)

If you have any questions or concerns about setting up a class note-taker, please direct them to Susan Frommer, Accommodation Specialist, by emailing notes@dickinson.edu

Use of a Smart Pen

Please note that the note-taking accommodation allows for “Use of a note-taker or assistive technology (such as smart pen) to capture the sound recording of class.”

Access and Disability Services provides LiveScribe smart pens to eligible students. For your reference, here is a video demonstration of how the LiveScribe pen works. 

If a student chooses to use a smart pen to implement a note-taking accommodation, professors must allow the recording of their classes. To ensure our compliance with PA Wiretap Law, professors must then notify the students that the class may be recorded for accommodation purposes. This can be accomplished through a simple sentence, which professors can include in their syllabus, in an email message to the class, or as an announcement (with no fanfare): "This class may be recorded for accommodation purposes." 

It is important to keep the identity of any students recording the class as an accommodation confidential. Students with this accommodation do not need to receive permission from professors or other students to record the class. (Their accommodation is their permission.) If, however, your class is discussing something sensitive that you would not expect students to be taking notes on, it is perfectly acceptable to announce to the class, "For this discussion, there is to be no recording and no note-taking." 

Please note: There are restrictions placed on students’ use of a recording device in the classroom. All students with this accommodation are required confirm their understanding of the following expectations:

If you are using a smart pen or other device to audio record class, you may not share, send, post, publish, make public, or duplicate any recordings without the written authorization of each recorded person. Failure to abide by these rules would be a breach of Dickinson's Community Standards as well as PA wiretap and copyright laws.