Paiewonsky, Maria

This Grab and Go Fact Sheet summarizes best practices for coaches and mentors who support dually enrolled students with intellectual disabilities and autism on college campuses. Students who receive transition services and attend college have many opportunities throughout the day to develop and use life skills. In fact, the more students stay on campus, the more opportunities they have to use these skills in natural contexts and with natural cues. Sometimes, IEP teams are tempted to address learning goals in high school settings where these skills were traditionally taught.

The Think College Transition (TCT) project is an inclusive dual-enrollment transition model designed to improve post-school outcomes for students aged 18-22 years who have intellectual disability and autism. The key feature of this model is assisting students to be involved with college classes, work experiences, and social networking opportunities on a college campus with their same-age peers, rather than having typical transition services in a high school.

Think College Insight Brief #34 features information about the Think College Transition (TCT) Project. This project focuses on the dual enrollment for students with intellectual disabilities (ID) or autism. Typically this model is used for students seeking to take advanced placement courses so they can seek college credit and high school credit at the same time. TCT has found that dual enrollment is a promising practice for students with ID and autism. 

This introductory chapter in Think College! Postsecondary Education Options for Students with Intellectual Disabilities provides readers with a description of the students and postsecondary education (PSE) services that this book focuses on, a historical and philosophical basis for why students with intellectual disabilities (ID) desire postsecondary opportunities, and changes that have occurred in special education that have led to this desire. Some of the relevant advances in research and practice are also discussed.

Staff from the Institute for Community Inclusion, at the University of Massachusetts Boston, asked 50 students with intellectual disabilities who have participated in inclusive college experiences to share how they perceive they have benefited from attending college. This article compiles some student responses on six different aspects of college life.

In this Guide, we break down how to engage college students with intellectual disabilities in every step of the research process: finding relevant topics, using new technology to research them, and sharing their findings and recommendations.

This table provides recommended transition activities and outlines the role of the student, family, transition teacher and special education administrator for each activity to assist students to prepare for transition into college.

Students with intellectual disabilities are taking the lead conducting participatory action research (PAR) to chronicle their college experience as part of a national college access initiative. This research currently involves college students with intellectual disabilities documenting their experiences using multimedia tools. These data are then shared via a digital storytelling website, VoiceThread. This article presents an overview of PAR, digital storytelling, and the methodology used to implement PAR with students with intellectual disabilities.

Think College Insight Brief #20 offers tips for effective communication with key partners when working to establish an inclusive dual enrollment program on a college campus.