Now You Can Set Student Accommodations in the Brightspace Classlist

Even after assigning an accommodation in the Classlist tool you still need to perform the necessary action of assigning each student with their associated accommodations to each and every quiz (or assignment if necessary) within the Special Access feature.

This is how it works…  

You receive a letter from Disability Services regarding a student on your roster who has an accommodation. A common accommodation example may state, “Extended time on written assessments, such as exams, tests or quizzes; 50% extension” .

Prior to the addition of this new Classlist Accommodation feature, you would need to reference the student-specific accommodation letter outside of Brightspace throughout the semester in order to add extra time in the Special Access section within Quizzes or Assignments settings. Now, you can file that letter and keep the accommodation criteria assigned to the student in the Classlist tool. 

Once the accommodation is set up properly for the student in the Classlist, it will remain there as the associated accommodation configuration, saved for the duration of the course. You may ask, can I change the accommodation for special circumstances? Yes, the setting can be modified, but beware, any new modifications will take precedence over the existing settings and new configuration will then remain as the new student’s default. If you need to change the accommodation back to the original at some point, you will need to update the accommodation settings again.  

Special Note: The new Classlist Accommodation feature serves only a convenience purpose at this point. The feature falls short of executing accommodation automation across the pertinent course tools. The instructor is still required to perform the extra, necessary steps of manually assigning the accommodations for all quizzes. D2L made a positive effort in allowing the accommodation to attach to the student but failed to follow through with automation of the assignment process. 

So in a nutshell, D2L designed a way for you to store associated student accommodations (for reference purposes) yet requires essential actions from you to manually add students with these accommodations in the quiz settings. The new feature may seem insignificant but at least the Classlist Accommodations offer a bit more convenience for term accommodation tracking purposes. I guess we’ll take what we can get! D2L has indicated plans for “further accommodation options and enhancements are planned for this year.”

See Knowledge Article for Details: Set Student Accommodations in the Classlist