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Help your students succeed by making your subject accessible. Learn why a student might need a notetaker and how to manage notetaking in your subject.
What is notetaking?
Notetaking services are provided to students whose disability or health condition impacts on their ability to write notes, for example: to assist with concentration or speed that may be affected by processing or mobility conditions, and those with hearing or vision loss.
Notetaking is available for scheduled class activities, most commonly lectures, but also seminars, practical classes, and field trips.
Who are notetakers?
Notetakers are casual employees of the university and are often students in the same, or a similar discipline to the student who needs the notetaker.
Notetakers are selected, employed, and trained by the Accessibility Service on topics such as disability awareness and confidentiality – so there’s no need to worry about misuse of materials in your lecture or subject.
Notetakers attend classes during the session to take notes. Scribes help students write during exams.
Find out if your subject has a notetaker in the list of confirmed notetaking subjects. The notetaker will also send the Subject Coordinator an introductory email at the start of session.
Notetakers in Canvas
If you have a student who requires a notetaker, the notetaker will be added as an Accessibility Support role to your Canvas course using their staff ID number. That way they will have access to the content on the site to help them with their notes.
Notetakers in Zoom and Teams
Sharing meeting links
If you are scheduling Zoom or Teams sessions with your students, please provide the meeting links for live classes via Announcements to enable notetakers to access the session.
To avoid confusion, view the Share your Zoom link with students resources to add links to your subject in a consistent way.
Breakout rooms
If the student has opted in for their notetaker to be in the same breakout room as them when you are running breakout rooms in your online sessions, the notetaker will need to be manually moved into the correct breakout room. Follow these steps:
- Hover over the notetaker’s name
- Select Move to
- Select the relevant break out room
Alternatively, you can preassign the breakout rooms when you are scheduling the meeting to make sure the notetaker is in the correct breakout room.
Don’t inadvertently disclose information about the notetaker and who they are taking notes for – even if there are breakout rooms. If breakout rooms are part of your class plan and you have not been notified by the student who their notetaker is, then you need to email the Accessibility Service directly to get their details.