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Eagle Accommodate will streamline accommodation process for students, staff
November 6, 2015
In the Spring of 2016, the Student Disability Resource Center (SDRC) will launch Eagle Accommodate, a web-based disability accommodation software that will make it easier for students to find the accommodations they need, and for staff to process their requests.
“As the number of students that we serve increases, we have the same amount of staff,” said Debbie Perez-Lopez, associate director of the SDRC. “So this is really going to help us work more efficiently. I think we’re going to be able to work smarter.”
Perez-Lopez says the software, which features several different modules to handle student needs, will help her office serve more than 700 students with disability accommodations at Georgia Southern. In order to help students with the transition to online services, she says the software will launch with two main modules: online registration and a note-taker network.
“We’re doing one module at a time, since it does so much,” she said. “That way we can gauge student reaction, because students are really the ones that are going to be most affected by having to login and do things differently than they used to.”
The online registration module will allow students in need of accommodations to register through a secure website, where they can enter their information to request services. Before this software implementation, students and parents had to download the forms, fill each one out, and then send the information by fax or by “snail mail.” In either case, the process was time-intensive and required a lot of paper-tracking.
“We have a long-term goal of going as paperless as possible as a department,” said Perez-Lopez. “So the electronic version of this is very appealing to us.”
The note-taker network module will allow students and interested note-takers to be automatically matched inside the software, which retrieves class schedules from Banner. Previously, students in need of help would take an announcement to their professor in each class, and the professor would solicit note-takers to help, and then those interested note-takers would then get matched case by case.
Additional modules include appointment management, equipment and assistive devices checkout and more to be announced later. In the meantime, Perez-Lopez and her staff will be walking students through the software face-to-face, helping them with the transition.
“It’s going to be a time-saver for everyone involved,” she said.
To learn more about the SDRC and Eagle Accommodate, visit GeorgiaSouthern.edu/sdrc.
