Essential Course Requirements
Essential course requirements are the core competencies, and fundamental skills students must demonstrate in order to receive a passing grade or complete a program of study. These requirements often intersect with learning outcomes, course objectives or technical standards. While every student may not use accommodations, all students must achieve the same outcomes. It is important that instructors are able to thoroughly articulate course/program objectives. Failure to provide a reasonable accommodation to a student with a disability is a violation of law, which could jeopardize an institution's ability to receive federal funding. However, the law also requires that students with disabilities meet the essential, academic and technical standards of a class, program, or college.
Determining Essential Requirements of a Course
Instructors define essential requirements by identifying what is indispensable to the curriculum's integrity while insuring fairness in accommodation and focusing on what must be achieved, without fixating on how it's achieved. When making a determination about essential course requirements, consider the following:
- What is the overall purpose of the course? Is the purpose clearly articulated in your syllabus?
- What knowledge, principles, skills, and concepts must students demonstrate in the course?
- Does the learning you are trying to assess need to be demonstrated in only one specific way or with specific equipment? If yes, what evidence or justification have you articulated that the outcome must be demonstrated only one way?
- Is the requirement established deliberately through consultation (i.e., not arbitrary)?
- Is the learning you are trying to assess connected to larger course requirements? Are the course requirements connected to larger program requirements (as opposed to habit, tradition, ease)?
Determining Fundamental Alteration
There may be times that the student and the ACCESS department request an accommodation that you believe may potentially compromise the academic integrity, or create a fundamental alteration of the course or program. In order to determine whether a requested accommodation alters the nature of a course, faculty should be able to do the following:
- Identify the essential academic standards of the course (i.e. course/program requirements that go to the very nature of the subject matter, or that are of the utmost importance in achieving the course/program objective);
- Articulate specific requirements that are believed to be fundamental to teaching the course/program (taking academic freedom into consideration);
- Identify the unique qualities of the course/program in relation to its overall objectives and any program in which the course is required;
- Engage in "reasoned deliberation" as to whether modification of the course/program would change the fundamental academic standards;
- Determine whether there are any alternative options to the fundamental requirements of the course.
Communicating Requirements and Expectations
By establishing clearly defined essential requirements for courses and programs of study, students are able to discernibly understand learning expectations. By communicating expectations around assignments, assessments, attendance and other course requirements, students not only receive transparency in the expectations and professional standards of their discipline, but are also afforded a measure of informed decision making as it applies to the functional limitations of their disability and how they may fit into a specific academic program.
Transparently providing information about essential requirements either in a course syllabus, Blackboard site and other course materials will help minimize confusion, while providing opportunities for students to seek clarity. It is also highly beneficial to share this information at a departmental level to ensure consistency, while scaffolding expectations and outcomes throughout the duration of a degree program.
The following professional schools and departments have made their Essential Course Requirements or Technical Standards available online:
Additional Resources
- Understanding Essential Requirements, University of Waterloo - Includes information about how to consider essential requirements together with learning outcomes and examples of how to determine what is essential versus non-essential.
- Determining Essential Requirements for Courses/Programs, Stanford University - Includes additional prompts to identify essential course requirements and examples of how to integrate flexibility without compromising essential requirements.
Questions adapted from the University of Waterloo, University of Minnesota, and Stanford University
