Additional Requirement Adjustments

Owned by Michael Hughes
Last updated: Feb 17, 2022
4 min read

This article outlines how adjustments for additional requirements can be applied in Myplace

See Also How can I reset a Quiz Attempt for a Student?

Introduction

Typically additional adjustments are made on the recommendations of the student Disability Service following an assessment with the affected student. The service may suggest a number of recommended adjustments or requirements that departments should observe to support the student.

These may include adjustments to the length of time that students have to undertake activities, including final examinations.

Note that general good design for accessibility often benefits all students and advice can be sought from the University’s Disability Service. More information on providing for students with disabilities and contact details for the Disability Service are available via the following link: https://www.strath.ac.uk/disabilityservice/

Staff should check via Pegasus if there are any students in a particular class who have been granted disability adjustments. If using quizzes, those students with any time concessions should be given the relevant overrides to give them the agreed time concessions.

Myplace offers a number of ways in which these adjustments can be accommodated.

Note that the Disability Service will not apply adjustments to any of your activities or classes.

Other Considerations

Other considerations are that some students may require using headphones if a screen reader is required, and the general design of activities should be accessible; for example descriptions for images and links should be used as appropriate.

There may also be implications for auto marking of text answers such as poor spelling of dyslexic students resulting in a correct answer being automatically marked wrong as it does not match spelling, therefore manual checking may be required.  

Additional Time Adjustments

Both the Myplace Quiz and Assignment support overrides for both groups and individual users. 

An override allows you specify a different set of conditions to be applied overriding the defaults that have been set in the activity.

Assignment Overrides

In the Assignment activity you will typically specify some or all of the following dates:

  • Allow Submissions From date
  • Due Date
  • Cut Off Date

You may adjust all or some of these dates via an override.

Quiz Overrides

In the quiz activity there are a number of date properties that you can set, and a few other settings that relate to the behaviour of the quiz:

  • Open the quiz
  • Close the quiz
  • Time limit
  • Attempts allowed

All or some of these properties can be adjusted via an override.

Adding a User Override

This is illustrated using the Quiz activities override, but it is broadly speaking the same approach for the Assignment activity

1. In the Activity's administration menu select the User Overrides options

2. A list of any existing overrides will be displayed

3. Click on the Add user override button to display the override form

4. In the Search box enter the details of the user you wish to override, and then click on the matching student in the list.

The No Selection text should disappear and be replaced with the details of the selected student.

You can only override 1 student at a time with a User Override.

5. By default the overrides form will match the default values set in the activity.

You should amend the relevant setting.

Where an Enable tick box is shown, this will be checked if the default settings has been enabled. If you uncheck it, the setting will not apply at all to this user. 

Equally if a setting is not enabled, checking the enable box and setting an appropriate value will turn in on for this user.


6. Click on the Save button once you have amended the settings for the user, or you can click on the Save and enter another override if you have another user that you wish to give an override to.


7. You will return to the list of user overrides.

Only the settings that you have changed will be displayed in the Overrides column.

Adding a Group Override

There may be times where there a number of students who will all be given the same adjustment, or the same adjustments will be given in multiple activities.

In this case it can be more efficient to create a group in the class, and add the affected students to this group.

This approach can also be set up in advance of you knowing exactly which students will have adjustments, and the group, and the group override can be created in advance, with the students added to the group at a later date.  In addition the group will be emptied of students during the rollover over to the next academic year, but the override would remain configured.

Bear in mind that the names of groups will appear in different areas of the Myplace class, so consider what you name this group.

Once you have created the group, you would follow the instructions above, but using a Group Override, instead of the individual user override.

Which approach you take for overrides will very much depend on the number of students and activities that you may be having to create overrides for.