Become a Volunteer Note Taker for a Student with a Disability
Earn service hours and contribute to campus accessibilityb by sharing your class notes with a student with a disability. Receive support to strengthen your note taking and demonstrate career readiness skills for your future employment.
Being a volunteer notetaker requires consistent class attendance and a willingness to share your notes after every class if there is a student in your class who receives peer notes as an academic accommodation. If your services are needed, you will be eligible for service hours for the time you spend taking notes. D&A will provide verification of service hours at the end of the semester.
Support and Professional Development for Note Takers:
- Sign up for a Learning Specialist appointment at Sanger Learning Center to strengthen your note taking skills. Select the appointment topic of ‘study effectiveness’ and indicate in the comments that you would like to work on notetaking in particular.
- Notetaking is a great way to build career ready skills in: Communication, Critical Thinking, Professionalism, and more! Build your resume while ensuring accessibility on campus; meet with a Texas Career Engagement Career Education Specialist to learn more.
- Receive monthly note taking resources and tips from Disability and Access.
Interested? Here are your next steps!
- Sign in to the D&A Student Portal with your UT EID and password.
- Build your profile with the required information.
- Choose the classes you are available to provide notes for (You must be registered for the course. You can add a course after Add/Drop if necessary).
- You will be asked to upload a sample of notes. You can also accomplish this step after the first class day with your lecture notes.
When you are selected as a note-taker, you will get an email notifying you. You should then upload notes as soon as you can after each lecture. While typed notes in Word documents are preferred, you can also take pictures of handwritten notes and upload the notes as photos. However, your writing must be legible and the pages must be numbered. We prefer if you compile the pages of notes for each lecture into one document. This could be done by adding the images into a single Word document. Note: Peer notes do not extend to textbook readings or external sources. The notes uploaded should only cover lectures and any discussion sections.
Within the D&A Portal, your identity will be hidden from students- they only will see your notes, not your name. Important: Your note documents may contain your name by default. Follow this help page to remove information from your shared documents:
Help protect your privacy – Microsoft Support
If you are unable to serve as a notetaker for the remainder of the semester, you are asked to log in to the D&A Portal and remove your availability immediately so another notetaker can be assigned.
Taking notes in class provides access for students with a variety of disabilities including:
- ADHD
- Learning Disabilities
- Visual Disabilities
- Deaf/ Hard of Hearing
- Psychological Disabilities
- Traumatic Brain Injury
- Autism
- Medical Disabilities
Want to learn more about the various disabilities of students who are registered with Disability and Access? Visit our About Disabilities Page.
Thanks for helping to make UT an accessible and welcoming environment for students with disabilities!
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