Academic Skills Level 2

[Carmen Kalua]

TheSASS Office ensures that students with documented disabilities receive appropriate academic accommodations based on their individual needs with access to all approved accommodations, assistive technology, and use of the testing center. The SASS office is available to students at all academic levels for no fee, and includes:

The SASS office offers a variety of service program options for in-depth and comprehensive services to ensure student success. By working closely with the SASS Office, each student's unique needs are met through a variety of programs, social events, and mentorship.

The Academic Skills Program (ASP) includes weekly one-on-one sessions with an academic counselor who will provide intensive support in academics, time management, organizational skills, and self-advocacy techniques, weekly support sessions with graduate assistants, and priority registration ahead of their classes are included. The Academic Skills Program is available in three levels based on academic year.

In addition to the all-inclusive Academic Skills Program, students can select just the services they need with the Mentorship Advantage Program (MAP) and the Providing Academic Support for Success (PASS) program. These programs are available alone or as add-ons to ASP.

The Step Ahead summer experience at McDaniel College anticipates challenges that first-year students with disabilities may encounter and provides strategies for students to become strong self-advocates. Specifically, Step Ahead participants sharpen their skills in note-taking, reading comprehension, time management, study strategies, assistive technology, communicating with professors and roommates, college-level writing, independent living skills, and interacting with peers. Though summer bridge programs are offered nationwide, Step Ahead is distinctive in its broad applicability (in contrast to programs that focus on a specific diagnosis, such as Autism Spectrum Disorder). Step Ahead is intended for students with any type of diagnosed disability who are registered with the SASS Office.

As part of our ongoing efforts to ensure all students take advantage of McDaniel's distinctive educational opportunities, SASS is proud to offer unique Jan Term opportunities. These trips include various study abroad and local options, providing supportive environments for students interested in expanding their academic experiences. Jan Term fees vary depending on location.

Students who are requesting support services are required to submit documentation to verify eligibility under the ADA of 1990 and ADAAA of 2008. The documentation must include medical or psychological information from a certified professional. This documentation assists our office in responding appropriately to the individual needs of the student. For the most accurate assessment of current level of functioning, the SASS office encourages psycho-educational documentation to be no older than 3 years. Student Accessibility & Support Services reserves the right to determine eligibility for services based on the submitted documentation. All documentation is confidential.

Student Accessibility & Support Services works with each student on a case-by-case basis to determine and implement appropriate accommodations based on individual needs and documentation. Accommodations are provided to assist the student in achieving the intended outcome of the course, as long as the accommodation does not alter the fundamental nature or requirements of the course or program.

The Director of Academic Skills Nancy C. Kraybill and Professor of Law and Writing Specialist Clare Keefe Coleman work with students individually, in small groups and in workshops on core academic skills such as legal writing and analysis, study skills, time and stress management and exam-taking skills. Accomplished upper-level students provide first-year students with supplemental instruction in core subjects through our Dean's Scholars Program.

Academic Skills Courseware is a self-paced course in which learners will develop the foundational workplace skills required for most jobs from entry level to professional. It is made up of three modules: Work Ready Math, Work Ready Reading, and Work Ready Data. Each module contains a placement test and five course levels, each with a pretest, instructional content, practice exercises, and posttest.

Certificate of Completion LevelsAchievement Level 5: Pass the posttests for Ready 5 in all three modules and earn a certificate of completion that indicates you are prepared to pass the National Work Readiness Credential - Academic Skills at Achievement Level 5, demonstrating foundational skills to pursue career pathways for O*NET Job Zones 1-5 occupations, which make up 100% of jobs.

Achievement Level 4: Pass the posttests for Ready 4 in all three modules and earn a certificate of completion that indicates you are prepared to pass the National Work Readiness Credential - Academic Skills at Achievement Level 4, demonstrating foundational skills to pursue career pathways for O*NET Job Zones 1-4 occupations, which make up 83% of jobs.

Achievement Level 3: Pass the posttests for Ready 3 in all three modules and earn a certificate of completion that indicates you are prepared to pass the National Work Readiness Credential - Academic Skills at Achievement Level 3, demonstrating foundational skills to pursue career pathways for O*NET Job Zones 1-3 occupations, which make up 60% of jobs.

Achievement Level 2: Pass the posttests for Ready 2 in all three modules and earn a certificate of completion that indicates you are prepared to pass the National Work Readiness Credential - Academic Skills at Achievement Level 2, demonstrating foundational skills to pursue career pathways for O*NET Job Zones 1-2 occupations, which make up 35% of jobs.

Academic Writing

Writing classes are designed to help students develop their written English in preparation for college-level courses. Students focus on learning the elements of effective essay writing: outlining, organizing, composing and self-editing.

Academic Reading

Reading classes help students improve their reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. Students focus on academic reading strategies including: skimming, summarizing, reading for detail and reading for inference.

The development of core academic skills is the traditional focus of primary, secondary, and postsecondary general education curricula and coursework (Nelson Laird, Shoup, Kuh, & Schwarz, 2008). These courses are limited to a small number of academic disciplines that provide a necessary foundation for future learning. Specifically, students need some level of proficiency in reading, writing, and mathematics in earlier stages of learning to be prepared for more advanced learning in subsequent grades or for specialization in postsecondary education and employment (Allen & Sconing, 2005; Handel, 2010).

ACT has long employed an expanded model of college and career readiness that incorporates scientific skills and knowledge in addition to ELA and mathematics. This focus on scientific reasoning and practices is significant because these evidence-based reasoning skills are central to many fields of study and have wide applicability on the job (Jonassen & Kim, 2010; Windschitl, Thompson, & Braaten, 2008). In addition, ACT assessments have long included science as a separate academic domain because the skills and interest in science are not totally subsumed by mathematics or ELA. With the increased demand for STEM skills, direct measures of science are critically important to prepare students, and use of math or ELA as proxies introduces construct irrelevance and does not provide a substantive validity argument to support inferences about science skills and readiness. The core academic skills framework (presented in Table 2) expands on the current ACT College and Career Readiness Standards (ACT CCRS) by adding STEM and cross-cutting concepts to the current science framework.

The achievement framework also expands on the current ACT CCRS in ELA by adding speaking and listening skills to the English language arts domain (see Table 2). In the United States, oral communication has not traditionally received as much attention in the curriculum as written communication skills, yet it is universally acknowledged as critical for success in both academic and organizational settings (Carnevale, 1990; CCSS, 2010; Darling & Dannels, 2003; Maes, Weldy, & Icenogle, 1997). The practical challenges involved in standardized assessment of speaking and listening may be partially responsible for this narrow accountability focus. The framework emphasizes the important role of language in communication by including a fourth strand that focuses on the linguistic resources necessary for learning and communicating in a range of school and work contexts. This strand extends the focus on Standard English in current ACT assessments to cover knowledge about how language functions to support a broad range of communication activities, such as interacting with classmates and coworkers, expressing opinions, and engaging in dialogue and argumentation. Other leading literacy scholars and frameworks have proposed similar integrated approaches (Derewianka, 2012).

The core academic skills framework outlined in Table 2 is hierarchical; at the highest level, it includes the three academic subjects (ELA, mathematics, and science), each of which is organized into a set of academic domains specific to each subject. Most of these domains are so large they might be the focus of an entire course or sequence of courses. Each of these academic domains is then broken down into large strands and more focused substrands. To provide an example, Figure 3 illustrates this hierarchical breakdown for mathematics. Importantly, the terminology of strands and substrands is meant to emphasize the connected, progressive nature of their content. Substrand topics in particular were chosen to highlight distinct progressions of understanding identified in the literature and by expert panels. Each substrand focuses on a sequence of skills, but these skills are supplemented by a comprehensive list of related knowledge, misconceptions, common errors, and strategies in order to provide a richer picture of student learning. The learning information in each substrand is organized into fine-grained progressions that can be aggregated upward to form coherent learning sequences at any desired level of specificity.

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