In the 1997 Ontario Provincial budget, the Treasurer of the Province announced the establishment of the Learning Opportunities Task Force to develop and administer a series of pilot projects to enhance the transition of students with specific learning disabilities into post-secondary education and to identify what supports, services and accommodations will assist these students best in meeting their educational goals. After a period of research and review, the Learning Opportunities Task Force has established 8 pilot projects in 13 post-secondary educational institutions, 9 community colleges and 4 universities, in the Province of Ontario. Students first entered these pilot projects in September, 1998. During the elapsed time close to 1000 students have participated in these pilot projects. The pilot projects are diverse in their content, specific program offerings, location and language of instruction. However, they all utilize the Task Force's student success indicators as an evaluation measure and they all determine student eligibility through the strict and rigorous diagnostic validation criteria introduced by the Task Force. The Task Force closely tracks and evaluates the activities of the pilot projects, with the students themselves providing much of the research information. This presentation will share some of the findings to date and focus on the challenges faced by the pilot institutions, their participating students and the researchers. *Please note that the criteria for determining the presence of a specific learning disability for the purposes of this project calls for at least average level of intelligence, in accordance with the North American definition of learning disabilities.

Learning Opportunities Project

CONESTOGA COLLEGE

FINAL REPORT, June 2002

Executive Summary

This report describes the programming activities and summative evaluation results from the four years of the Learning Opportunities Project (LOP) at Conestoga College. The main body of the report is divided into two parts: (A) the "Program Component Summaries" prepared by individual LOP staff and (B) the "Summative Outcome and Component Program Evaluation" prepared by the Program Evaluation Consultant. The following points are highlights from the evaluation portion of the report:

Community awareness

Student Transitions to College

• increased knowledge of LOP and College services, intent to use them, and awareness of how to access them;
• increased knowledge of appropriate accommodations and comfort level in accessing them;
• increased knowledge of student´s own learning disability and effective study strategies to help compensate for learning difficulties.

Adaptive Technology Support:

Employment Transitions:

• Students who took the "Employment Perspectives" course reported having more employment knowledge (as it relates to learning disabilities) than did students who did not take the course. An interaction approached significance, suggesting that in-course students gained more knowledge over time than non-course students.
  
• Job competence, a self-concept measure was related to the acquisition of key employment knowledge.
  
• In-course students displayed increases in "vocational identity" (an indicator of workplace readiness) while non-course students did not.
  
• Workplace readiness may be alternatively defined as having specific knowledge about how one´s learning disability (and learning disabilities in general) impacts employment, along with other relevant information about learning disabilities and employment. Given this definition, project students displayed increases in "workplace readiness."
  
• In-course students achieved greater gains in confidence in self-advocating with employers than did non-course students.
  
• Qualitative feedback demonstrated that, while in-course students increased confidence in self-advocating, many did not wish to disclose their learning disabilities to employers.

Self-awareness and knowledge of study strategies:

• Students enrolled in the "LD Strategies" credit course made significant gains in general knowledge and self-knowledge of learning disabilities, knowledge of study strategies and self-advocacy; these students were higher in the knowledge acquired in these domains than non-course students.
  
• Learning Strategies Training (LST) users experienced gains (though non-significant) in the above knowledge domains and in key LST outcomes, such as understanding one´s own learning strengths and weaknesses and their impact on school work, knowledge of when and why to use certain strategies, and attitudes towards the use of study strategies (i.e. belief in benefits).

• Increased knowledge of one"s own learning disability and knowledge of study strategies was related to high self-concept in a number of domains, including global self-worth, intellectual ability, and scholastic competence.

• After completion of the LD Strategies credit course, the acquisition of key knowledge was related to confidence in self-advocating. This pattern was not seen for non-course students measured during the same time periods.
  
• In-course students (LD Strategies course) made significant gains in confidence in self-advocating over time and were significantly higher than non-course students at post-test. Confidence in self-advocating was related to success in the "mock self-advocacy" assignment in the course.
  
• The majority of students expressed positive attitudes towards self-advocating and expressed self-confidence in doing so.
  
• Positive interactions with professors when self-advocating were the norm while negative experiences were the exception.

Greater academic success through programming: