>> Previous videos have provided the opportunity to learn a little bit about the QIAT, Post-Secondary
website, the QIAT Post-Secondary Assistive Technology Services indicators and the campus
self-evaluation tool which is available on that website. In this video, we'll learn a
little bit more about how one program used their self-evaluation ratings to create an
action plan to improve their assistive technology services. Beverly had completed the campus
self-evaluation matrix and brought her self-rating with her to a meeting of everyone on the staff
in her office. In this instance, everyone on the team had all ready completed the self-rating
for their program and came prepared to discuss it with the group. In some places, this entire
self-rating process is done by the entire team in one sitting. The team spent time reviewing
their ratings. They shared their individual ratings and discussed areas where their opinions
about their services differed significantly from other team members. They also discussed
the priority areas that they had determined in advance and came to agreement on some areas
that they felt they should address as a program to improve their assistive technology services.
Here's an example of the priorities that one team set as they began to make an action plan
for improving services. I've compressed the table a little bit here and made the font
larger so that you can more clearly see the priorities that this team set. They set goals
in the Awareness and Eligibility area, in the Planning and Implementation area and the
Evaluation of Effectiveness area. These three areas were the ones where they felt they needed
to do some work at the time of the self-rating. We're going to use the Evaluation of Effectiveness
indicators as an example of how they created action plans in each of these three areas.
In order to do that, the team went back to the actual self-evaluation matrix and looked
at the range of service descriptions in evaluation of effectiveness. They did that for Indicator
1, for Indicator 3 and for Indicator 4, which were the three indicators where they had the
lowest ratings. In each of those indicators, the team had a discussion that addressed questions
like the ones you see here. They asked themselves, what are the critical elements of this indicator?
What are the important pieces that need to be in place in order for us to give ourselves
a higher rating in this indicator? What are the ways we do things now in this area, which
is evaluation of effectiveness? And how do other people do this same thing? In order
to find out how other people do the same kind of activities, they looked at sample documents
and got ideas from a variety of offices of disabilities services around the country and
they compared what other places were doing to the work that they were doing in their
own college. Once they had done that, they were able to identify some specific steps
and ideas for action in a brainstorming activity that had them discuss each indicator, answer
those questions, and then come up with ideas of things that they felt they were able to
do at that time in order to improve their evaluation of effectiveness. In the next video,
we'll learn more about the specific things that this team planned and the results they
saw at the end of a year of using the QIAT-PS self-evaluation matrix as a tool to improve
their assistive technology services.