Facilitating the Course

After you review all of the Facilitator notes, read the 14 email messages (13 lessons and an evaluation) line-by-line to ensure that the content is appropriate to your audience. You can use the lessons as they are or customize portions of the lessons to include information specific to your campus.

Create a list of participant email addresses in a listserv discussion list for the course, or simply create an address list in your own email program. Use the list to distribute the 14 course email messages and facilitate discussion. If you decide to use a discussion list, set it up with the appropriate staff at your campus, learn how it works, and subscribe all of the participants. You will need to subscribe new participants each time you run the course.

Consider including a paragraph stating that the list will remain open or will be closed as of a certain date. You may want to ask participants if they wish to remain on the list during the next offering of the course. or, perhaps you will want to use the list as a means for the participants to keep in touch with one another. Keeping the list open provides many possibilities for continued awareness building on your campus, but does create work for the facilitator of the list.

Regardless of whether you choose to use the discussion listserv, or email communication method, give directions on how to use the selected method.

  1. Consider sending an email message to the group that lists all of the participant's email addresses, including your own, to encourage ongoing communication. This message could include specific content information regarding campus services for students with disabilities as well. You may also send them a participant summary (e.g., number of participants and departments represented in the course), to encourage discussion.
  2. During delivery of the course, if you receive a message from a participant addressed only to you that should be viewed by all participants, forward the message to all participants.
  3. Set an approximate schedule for sending out email lessons. For example, you could send a lesson each Tuesday and Thursday; or you could space lessons according to interests and discussion of topics. For example, send the Accommodation: introduction message; during the discussion that follows, send a biography about yourself and encourage others to contribute to the discussion, then after several days of discussion, send the next lesson. It is not necessary for you to respond to all discussion messages, but participate enough to keep the conversation going. Continue in this manner through lesson 13. Completion of the course in 6-8 weeks is a reasonable goal.
  4. To create an email message, copy all of the text from the Web page link and paste it into an email message. Put the title of the lesson (e.g., Accommodations 1: Introduction) as the subject line. Then send the lesson to your group of participants.
  5. After sending Accommodations 12: resources, send a message that summarizes resources, policies, and contact information for students with disabilities on your campus.
  6. At the start of the Accommodations 13: Conclusion, thank your participants for their involvement and remind them about the end date, or continuation of the discussion list as applicable. Inform them of the importance of swiftly completing and sending the course evaluation. Send the course evaluation as the 14th message.