This article describes how instructors can add the new Approved Student Accommodations Dashboard external tool to their courses. This tool provides a convenient listing of any students who are approved for academic accommodations for a particular course including the course-level accommodations as well as the specific exams the students have registered for in order to access their accommodations.

This custom tool, developed as a collaboration between eClass and the Academic Success Centre, is being released for Fall 2021 as an open beta, so feedback is welcome. Please note: Accommodation dashboard information is confidential and is intended for the sole use of instructional staff who require the information in order to facilitate students’ accommodations and should not be distributed in any form.

New in Fall 2024, the accommodation dashboard can now also be added to Canvas courses.

To add the Approved Student Accommodations Dashboard to a Course:

1. In any content section area, click Add an activity or resource.

2. Click on the External tool activity, then enter the tool settings:

• Give the tool a name (which will only be visible to instructors/TAs).
• Select Approved Student Accommodations from the 'Preconfigured tool' dropdown:
  
  
  
  
• Under ‘Common module settings’, set the 'Availability' to Hide from students. (This is only required to prevent confusion - any students accessing the tool will see an error message and not be able to access any information.)
• Note: All the main instructional roles in a course can see the tool (including the Non-editing Instructor and Non-editing TA roles.) If an instructor chooses, they can customize the permissions for the tool so that any of these other roles will not have access (this link shows how to do this in a different context but the basics of editing permissions is the same.)
• The settings under ‘Privacy’ should be left alone - these are defined by the tool configuration.
• Then click Save and return to course:
  
  
  
  

Adding the Approved Student Accommodation Dashboard to Canvas

In Canvas, instructors can select the accommodation dashboard from the list of external tools available when adding content and then click Add Item to add the tool into a module:

By default, this tool is unpublished for student access and it should be left that way. (The tool will display an error if students try to access it.)

Viewing Accommodation Information

Once the external tool has been added, instructors and TAs in the course can open the dashboard by clicking the link on the course page:

The dashboard will open in a new window and display the list of all students who have been approved for accommodations in the course on the right and the list of their specific accommodations on the left. Instructors can sort the column headers to browse the list or search for individuals via the search field at the top.

Information for each specific exam registered per student are listed one per row showing the in-class exam schedule along with the student’s particular accommodation details: