Access, Programs and Services for Students with Disabilities
Report to the Chancellor’s Office
on
Technical Assistance Visits
College: Los Angeles Harbor College
Date: May 8, 2009
Team complement:
Bette McMuldren, The Galvin Group, LLC
Brian Brautigam, Alternate Media Specialist, Riverside Community College District
Bari and Jerry Rudmann, DSPS Counselor and Associate Faculty, Irvine Valley College
Los Angeles Harbor College SPS faculty/staff and college administrators present for the first
portion of the technical assistance visit, addressing technology issues, included:
Dr. Deborah Tull, SPS Director, Dr. Ann Tomlinson, Vice President of Administrative Services, Bobby
McNeel, Vice President of Economic Development, Sally Fasteau, LD Specialist and Director, Learning
Assistance Center, Dr. Bonnie Burstein, Director, SPS Counselor and Life Skills Center, Amarylles Hall,
Counselor/Director, Federal Student Support Services Grant Project, Sue Steele, DSPS/GAIN Counselor,
and Timothy Davis,
Los Angeles Harbor staff and other LA District personnel present for the second portion of the
technical assistance visit, addressing Student Learning Outcomes, included:
Dr. Deborah Tull, SPS Director, Bobby McNeel, Vice President of Economic Development, Sally
Fasteau, LD Specialist and Director, Learning Assistance Center, Dr. Bonnie Burstein, SPS Counselor
and Director, Life Skills Center, Amarylles Hall, Counselor/Director, Federal Student Support Services
Grant Project, Sue Steele, DSPS/GAIN Counselor, Timothy Davis, SPS Assistive Technology
Instructional Assistant, Lora Lane, SLO Coordinator, LA Harbor, David Ching, Dean of Admissions and
Records, LA Harbor, Nina Malone, Dean of Student Life, LA Harbor, Mercedes Yanez, Associate Dean
of EOPS/CARE, LA Harbor, Steve Swaim, DSPS Program Tech, LA Harbor, Joy Fisher, Counseling
Department Chair, LA Harbor, Elizabeth Colocho, Matriculation Coordinator, LA Harbor, Paul Grady,
International Students Program Director, LA Harbor, Yvette Moss, CAHSEE Director, LA Harbor, Karen
Crummer, Child Development Center, LA Harbor, Joan Chappell, Student Services Administrative
Assistant, Robbie Barker, Student Recruitment Coordinator, LA Harbor, Mark Wood, Chair of
Humanities, LA Harbor, Rhea Estoya, Research and Development, LA Harbor, Randy Anderson, Dean of
Special Programs, LA City, Patricia Schmolze, SLO Coordinator, LA City, David Green, DSPS
Coordinator, LA Valley, Darlene Wooten, DSPS Coordinator, LA Southwest, Adrienne Foster, DSPS
Coordinator, West LA, Donna Lichtman, DSPS Coordinator, LA Trade-Tech and Graciela Hernandez,
DSPS Coordinator, East LA.
Background
In October 2008 the Los Angeles Harbor College DSPS Coordinator (SPS Director) contacted the Galvin
Group to schedule a technical assistance visit for consultation on: Distance Education, Campus-wide
computer access, technology accessibility and Student Learning Outcomes development and
measurement. The first portion of the day’s activities focused on computer related access issues and was
attended primarily by the SPS faculty/staff and the college administration. The second portion of the
day’s activities focused on Student Learning Outcome Development and Measurement and was attended
by Harbor College SPS faculty/staff, members of the college administration, assorted Harbor College
student services managers and district-wide faculty/staff interested in SLO development and measurement
(including DSPS Coordinators from each campus). Dissemination of information on this technical
Technical Assistance Visit – Los Angeles Harbor College, May 8, 2009
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assistance opportunity and resultant broad based requests for admittance to this event occurred because
the Harbor College DSPS Director Chairs the District-wide DSPS Coordinator Group and co-facilitates
the Harbor College accreditation effort for Student Services.
Los Angeles Harbor College is the southern most college in the nine college Los Angeles Community
College District. Los Angeles Harbor College has been in operation for 60 years and has grown from a
technically oriented college into a comprehensive institution of higher learning with a broad spectrum of
transfer, vocational, and community services programs. Campus enrollment is approximately 9300, with
approximately 500 students receiving service from the DSPS program. The program at LA Harbor is
referred to as Special Programs and Services (SPS).
Los Angeles Harbor College takes pride in being a leader among community colleges in educational
applications of modern technology. The event was held in the new Technology Building which has just
recently opened. In fact, the TA presentation was the first event to use the state-of-the-art technology
meeting room.
The college also takes pride in the fact that Harbor’s DSPS Coordinator serves as the District-wide Chair
of the DSPS Coordinator Group and provides strong leadership as a college mental health services
program developer. She also serves as a Los Angeles County Mental Health Services Act Delegate and is
on the Workforce Education and Training Advisory Committee for Los Angeles County Department of
Mental Health. Also noteworthy, is the fact that Harbor College is the only college within the Los
Angeles Community College District which has developed a Federal Student Support Services Grant
Project which exclusively serves students with disabilities.
Technical Assistance Issue(s): The following is a list of issues sent to the team by the Center outlining
their technical assistance needs:
 Student Learning Outcomes
 Distance Education
 Campus wide computer access
 Technology accessibility
Brief analysis of issues:
Technology Issues:
The first portion of the visit involved a meeting with the LA Harbor SPS faculty and staff to discuss
technology issues. The meeting began with an update on development projects at LA Harbor provided by
the Vice President of Administrative Services. It was exciting to hear that LA Harbor is in the process of
rebuilding its entire campus. Currently work is being initiated on the third bond Project that has provided
funds to the college for this complete reconstruction. Special Programs and Services is slated to be
relocated to a new Student Union Building which will house several student services programs.
The team within SPS has long tenure at the College and it is apparent that they work well and closely
together and share a deep commitment to services for students with disabilities. The program’s LD
Specialist has begun to assume the position of the Director of the Learning Assistance Center. She and
the Assistive Technology Instructional Assistant are working closely in the area of distance education
accessibility. As the meeting began, the group was provided with a review of on-line classes that was
prepared by the Assistive Technology Instructional Assistant in consultation with the college
administration, Distance Education Committee and other SPS faculty/staff. He shared his findings which
included a careful review of 26 of the 63 on-line courses currently being offered. The links to these
Technical Assistance Visit – Los Angeles Harbor College, May 8, 2009
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courses had also been provided to the TA team prior to the visit and were also reviewed by the Alternate
Media Specialist participating on the TA team.
LA Harbor College is extremely fortunate that the Assistive Technology Instructional Assistant worked
previously in the Information Technology Services for the college. As a result, he not only has a broad
knowledge of technology, he also has long standing relationships with the personnel in the IT department.
These relationships have contributed in a positive way to the current state of adaptive technology
available at LA Harbor. These relationships will be instrumental as LA Harbor College continues to
strive for campus-wide access of their assistive technology programs.
The results of distance education course reviews were shared. The reviewers found a number of similar
problems, including absence of descriptive text and alt tags on images, courses that send students to
linked websites which may or may not be accessible and inappropriate use of color text. There were no
instances of multimedia/video with captions that were observed. The staff was reminded that College of
the Canyons holds a state grant to help pay for the captioning of distance education-related multimedia.
Most puzzling is the use of five different platforms for the courses. The discussion centered on
recommendations for addressing some of these issues. The procedures that have evolved at Riverside
Community College were shared. Their process involves sign-off by the Alternate Media Specialist at
two points during the approval process for on-line courses. First, a review occurs at the point that the
faculty is proposing the course and second, when the course is ready to deliver. A system that involves
accessibility checks prior to offering the course was suggested for LA Harbor as well. Because the
Assistive Technology Instructional Assistant sits on the distance education committee, this suggestion
was felt to be viable. Additionally, the LD Specialist serves on the curriculum committee and the SPS
Director serves on the Academic Senate. This is an important link for inserting an accessibility review
into the approval process for on-line courses. The suggestion to add intermittent checks while the course
is offered was also made.
Additionally, Riverside Community College has an 8 hour monthly training during which the Alt Media
Specialist has 2 hours to educate those attending on web accessibility. An invitation was extended for the
Assistive Technology Instructional Assistant to attend the next distance education faculty training to be
offered at RCC. This RCC course is actually being converted to an on-line course, which will be shared
with LA Harbor when complete. Because of LA Harbor’s proximity to Cal State Northridge, this college
may be an excellent resource for training and distance education procedures. Beyond the education and
training of faculty, the recommendation was also made that counselors within SPS and other Student
Services counselors may need additional training on available technologies in order to make appropriate
referrals.
While faculty sometimes complain citing academic freedom as a reason for their non-compliance, the
group was reminded that the federal laws supersede academic freedom.
LA Harbor reports few requests for alternate media. This is attributed to extensive use of Readings for
the Blind and Dyslexic (RFB&D). LA Harbor is also a participant college in the Universal Design project
headed by Stacey Kayden. Through this project two chapters of text books are being provided to
students. The recommendation was made to educate the students as to the capacity of e-text to provide
the entire book, without page-by-page scanning. It was recommended that LA Harbor enroll with the
Alternate Text Production Center (ATPC) so that they could begin requesting textbooks from them. While
RFB&D is often an excellent source for textbooks, they often lack the latest editions of necessary
textbooks. The ATPC could be an invaluable resource for filling this void.
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An assistive technology course is offered at the High Tech Center. It includes an overview of assistive
technology, internet, email, and other computer applications. New students who may benefit from
assistive technology are encouraged to take this course. The HTC offers four Kurzweil stations with flat
bed scanners. Dragon and closed circuit televisions, JAWS and ZoomText are networked throughout the
college’s academic network and are also among the adaptive software in the HTC. A recommendation to
add Deep Freeze software to the campus was made, to prevent issues from happening, such as disabling
the hot keys for JAWS and ZoomText causing difficulties in accessing these programs.
LA Harbor uses Rapid Text for live captioning and closed captioning services. At this time, they have
only one student who is utilizing the service and report satisfaction with the convenience and
responsiveness of this system.
While the Assistive Technology Instructional Assistant is not responsible for the college website, it was
suggested that Special Programs and Services have a direct link from the home page of LA Harbor’s site.
This was agreed to be an immediate action item following the visit.
As always, the HTCTU was recommended as a valuable resource for training, tutorials, and information.
ACC Monitor was specifically recommended as software that can be obtained through the HTCTU that is
server-based and can monitor website accessibility. Further consultation with Riverside Community
College was generously offered as follow-up to this visit.
An excellent document that was originally developed by Cal State San Bernardino and that has been
modified by RCC was offered. This document offers sixteen checkpoints that are interpretations of 508
Compliance.
SPS faculty/staff were urged to continue making use of the Director’s listserv, as well as the HTC listserv,
and specific Colleges with areas of specialty as various topics came up for discussion. The Galvin Group
online training was also suggested as a means for the faculty/staff to gain greater awareness of the field at
large and to develop some familiarity with resources available through other colleges.
Student Learning Outcomes:
The second portion of the visit addressed Student Learning Outcomes and was attended by 35 participants
from both LA Harbor and the other community colleges in the Los Angeles Community College District.
We were fortunate to recruit Bari and Jerry Rudmann from Irvine Valley College to offer this presentation
and lead a discussion of the proposed SLOs for LA Harbor College. The SLOs that LA Harbor has
developed were outstanding choices, very ambitious and creative. They obviously thought long and hard
about what their department does, how it helps students and what they wanted to ensure that students are
getting from the SPS program.
A PowerPoint presentation was given that outlined the process used at Irvine Valley for SLO
development. Key points were stressed that generated discussion with the audience. Jerry Rudmann’s
background as a research psychologist has enabled the Irvine Valley program to approach SLO
development in a professional manner, utilizing and modifying scales that have been developed to
measure student self-efficacy, self-regulation, goal clarity and dispositional hope.
The choice of these measures came as a result of examining the research that has been done on students
with disabilities coming into college and making some judgments about their needs. For example, because
the literature pointed to a connection between higher student attributes and higher achievements, Irvine
Valley chose to use some of the student attributes considered essential as pre- and post-test measures.
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This enabled them to develop a profile of students who will be high risk and so strategies can be used to
address their deficits as soon as they come into the program.
Examples of their pre- and post-tests were provided to participants, as well as a sample of the matrix used
to identify progress with SLO development and measurement. Copies of the publication titled, “Using
Cognitive, Motivational, and Emotional Constructs for Assessing Learning Outcomes in Student Services,
An Exploratory Study,” by Jerry Rudmann, Kari Tucker and Sharon Gonzalez was also distributed to the
attendees.
Points made during the presentation and discussion included:
 The clarification that SLOs are similar to course objectives, with the distinction being that the
course objective represents “what we think we are teaching” and the SLO provides “what the
student takes away from the course.”

When determining which SLOs to study, refer to your mission to help select SLOs that are truly
aligned with your program.

Importance of narrowing down the number of SLOs to be explored to avoid becoming bogged
down in data collection and analysis.

The process is dynamic and flowing and is not intended to provide measures over the long term,
but to make adjustments based on findings and then move to a new question.

After developing questions that need to be answered, prioritize the questions and address the most
meaningful first.

The availability of an efficient computer-based tracking system is essential.

For consistency, the use of five point scales in testing instruments is recommended.

Focus groups are an effective way to gather information if there are numerous issues to be
addressed.

When using a focus group, it is recommended that a set of questions be developed to prompt the
discussion.

Consider what data/information you are already collecting and consider whether it might be used
in evaluating an SLO.

The use of rubrics may be more efficient with some types of SLOs, such as making a rubric of
tasks that students are able to accomplish.

Evaluating your program is a different task than SLOs, so it is important that data collected not be
used to evaluate.

Particularly if an outside person is hired to collect data or measure SLOs, take precautions that the
information collected is not used for evaluation of the program and be very clear about what you
need.
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
Collaborate with other service programs and courses to maximize results.

Avoid vague terms such as “enhance” and instead use action verbs such as “demonstrate, utilize or
select.”

Help to structure your efforts by selecting a day of the week or month when evaluations are
distributed.

Support for your efforts throughout the college, particularly your administration, is essential!
The SLO discussion also included a review of the SLOs previously described, that were developed by LA
Harbor. These examples generated a lively discussion. The SPS program was generous in sharing their
initial work and the critique of these efforts provided very excellent and practical feedback that benefitted
all who attended. LA Harbor was gracious in sharing their work and very open and receptive to input
from the assembly.
In closing, the participants at the SLO presentation concluded that a state-wide tracking system to use for
SLOs would be advantageous for all community colleges. Currently, a variety of systems are being used,
including TracDat, eLumen and others. The group expressed the need for a website and accompanying
database that would have the capability of creating a repository of SLOS data from throughout the state.
This consolidation of information would render California in a position to become a national leader in the
SLO movement. The group requested that this information be provided to the System Office in the report
with the proposal that some action be taken to institute the use of a statewide data collection.
Technical Assistance provided:
1. Referral to Chancellor’s Office website
2. Referral to Galvin Group website
3. New Coordinator On-line Training links
4. Referral to HTCTU website and trainings
5. Program Plan and Program Review
 Program Plan Briefing Pages- Galvin Group 2009
 Program Review Briefing Book- Galvin Group- Nov, 2008
6. Distance Education Guidelines- Omnibus Paper, 2008
7. Section 508 Standards A-P (Manual Evaluation)- Cal State San Bernardino and Riverside
Community College
8. Student Learning Outcomes


PowerPoint- Student Learning Outcomes in DSP&S, Bari and Jerry Rudmann
Irvine Valley College Student Success Inventory
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



Irvine Valley Posttest questionnaire
Irvine Valley SLO Progress Report
“Using Cognitive, Motivational, and Emotional Constructs for Assessing Learning Outcomes
in Student Services, An Exploratory Study,” by Jerry Rudmann, Kari Tucker and Sharon
Gonzalez
CD Rom of samples from various colleges as well as hard copy notebook including samples
from the following colleges:
 Mt San Antonio
 Bakersfield College
 Butte College
 Cabrillo College
 Cerritos College
 Irvine Valley College
 Moorpark College
 Mt San Antonio College
 Santa Ana College
 Santa Barbara City College
 San Bernardino Valley College
 Santa Monica College
 Santa Rosa Junior College
 San Bernardino Valley College
 Santa Rosa Junior College
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