<p>Hey name is Cassidy. I'm from Mississippi. I attend a local community college here and I have Asperger's Syndrome. Next semester, I will be taking two classes on campus for the very first time and then two online. For the on campus classes, the instructors already said that I can record their lectures if I needed to. I asked them beforehand. I got a voice recorder to record them. Am I suppose to do this? Are they suppose to let me if I have a disability like Asperger's?</p>
<p>You should clear all accommodations well ahead of time through the ADA Coordinator. Professors are under no obligation to do this stuff unless it’s official. They might be nice, but there’s no guarantee. And you’d really be up a creek if one of those professors suddenly changed her mind.</p>
<p>Do you mean contact the disability office at the college? I asked my advisor who is also over the Office of Supportive Services/Disability Coordinator. He said it was fine. I will make sure before school starts though. Thanks!:)</p>
<p>It is important for you to officially register with the Office for Students with disabilities if you want to be sure that you have the accommodations you need. The school is obligated to provide accommodations for disabilities but they don’t have to be the exact ones you choose. They also have to be linked to the disability. Faculty members can still make a judgement to allow a student to record, take more time, or whatever even if the student is not registered and even if the student does not have a disability or has a disability that is unrelated to the request for different conditions (more time, recording lectures, etc) than typical. Sounds like that is what happened for you already. I don’t think that recording lectures would be an appropriate accommodation for a student with Aspegers because I can’t think of a symptoms of Aspegers that would make it more or less difficulty for you to take notes in class. Some people are not good at taking notes. A person with Aspergers may not be good at taking notes but that may have nothing to do with Aspergers. After all, everyone has things they are good at and other things they do less well. If, on the other hand, a usual class assignment is to participate in role playing, someone with Aspergers may request a different assignment because of difficulty with perspective taking-something very much related to the diagnosis. What about the diagnosis would suggest that recording lectures would be an appropriate accommodation?</p>
<p>OP, you may also wish to ask for a note-taker. A note-taker will highlight the parts of the lecture s/he thinks are important and will give you a second perspective on what is the most important part in each lecture.</p>
<p>@lostaccount, Asperger’s (or, more accurately, what used to be called Asperger’s and is now lumped into ASD) is a label for a collection within a constellation of symptoms, not a well-defined “disease state”: it is a syndrome. A common saying within the community is “If you’ve met one person with Asperger’s, you’ve met one person with Asperger’s.” This, of course, is meant to suggest that presentation among those with this syndrome varies widely (since a more familiar quote would be expected to end with “you’ve met them all.”</p>
<p>@collegecutie93 - I agree with the others that you should register with the Disability Services office. They may be able to offer accomodations for you (along with recording lectures and/or note-taking) that you haven’t yet considered. @lostaccount and @ItsJustSchool - my son has Asperger’s which affects his social interactions but also has issues with executive functioning which impacts his organizational skills. This is frequently found with Aspies.</p>
<p>Yes, the Disabilities Office is SO helpful! They gave my son a note-taker. He decided he didn’t need one after the first semester, but he could have had one if he’d needed one.</p>
<p>@mom4cw, what specific strategies have you found to be most helpful to address the executive function issues? How do you get your son to implement a calendaring discipline or any other system to assist him in improving outcomes? Is he using a coach? Is he cooperative, or does he think it is a non-problem?</p>
<p>@ItsJustSchool, he received a lot of help throughout h.s. so I think some of that has carried over to college. He does not have a coach but is taking advantage of all the accomodations his college can offer him. Keep in mind every college does things differently but his school has him take his tests (for all his courses) at the Disability Services office on their computers. Fewer distractions. They ask students to check in with them (Disability Svcs) on a regular basis but students are not required to do so. Also I think several of his professors would post their notes online - you should probably look into that. He has a problem with completely understanding what’s expected in assignments so he developed a habit of talking to his professors right after class to make sure he understands the assignment correctly. He also signed up with the school’s writing clinic and meets with his tutor there once a week. It helped keep him on track with his english class this past semester. He uses an ipad for taking notes and keeping his assignments as organized as possible. There are a lot of great free apps for this sort of thing. </p>