If you have volunteered to take notes for a student with a disability, this page will help you understand this accommodation, and will explain some alternatives for exchanging notes.

First of all, we want to thank you for your time! The note taking process is not meant to be cumbersome – if you think that you are fairly organized and do a good job with notes, we need your help!  We will work with you to make the exchange process as easy as possible. If requested, after a successful quarter of volunteer note taking, Student Access Services can provide you with a letter of recommendation.

Volunteer note takers are not asked to take notes in a certain format or to change the way they take notes.  Students with disabilities continue to take their own notes.  However, some disabilities mean that a student may have difficulty attending to a lecture and taking notes in the same way their peers do. For example, a student with a hearing impairment may rely on lip-reading to an extent – so they can’t watch a professor’s face and take comprehensive notes at the same time.  Other students may have mobility issues effecting hand functions; they may have visual tracking difficulties, or auditory processing difficulties – all of these disabilities mean that a student is not at the same “level playing field” when it comes to taking notes.

If the student for whom you have volunteered to take notes does NOT require anonymity:

• You will be introduced to the student and can talk about the best way to get copies of your notes to them. If you take notes using a laptop or tablet, it could be a simple matter of emailing these to the student after class.
• If you prefer to hand-write notes, the Student Access Services can assist in these ways:
  • You can bring your notes after class or the next day to the Student Access Services  (Wenatchi Hall 2133), and use the scanner to scan and email your notes to the student.
  • We can supply you with pressure-carbon paper at no cost; you take notes as you normally would, and tear out either the pressure-carbon copy, or the original, and leave this with the student.
• If you prefer to handwrite your notes, and have your own scanner, you can scan and email them yourself.
• You can also post your notes on One Drive, or another accessible site and share the documents with the student with a disability.
• You might come up with another creative way to exchange notes – if it works and it’s easy, that is great!!

 

If the student for whom you have volunteered to take notes wants to remain anonymous from the note taker:

• If you take notes using a laptop or tablet, you can email those to Student Access Services (sas@wvc.edu) and we will forward them to the student. Alternatively, with professor's permission, you can email notes to the professor, to email to the student.
• If you prefer to hand-write notes, Student Access Services can assist in these ways:
  • You can bring your notes after class or the next day to Student Access in Wenatchi Hall 2133, and use the scanner to scan and email your notes to our office, and we will send them on to the student.
  • We can supply you with pressure-carbon paper at no cost; you take notes as you normally would, and tear out either the pressure-carbon copy, or the original, and leave this with the professor to give to the student. If the professor doesn’t find it easy to pass along the notes without compromising the student’s anonymity, you can drop them off in our office in Wenatchee Hall 2133 and we will supply them to the student.
• If you prefer to handwrite your notes, and have your own scanner, you can also scan and email them to us.
• You can post your notes on One Drive, or another accessible site and provide log-in details to us, to pass on to the student with a disability.
• You might come up with another creative way to exchange notes – if it works and it’s easy, that is great!!

Thank you for considering this opportunity to help another member of the Wenatchee Valley College community!

Contact us if you have any questions! sas@wvc.edu and 509-682-6854