TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY

Though not always visible and sometimes seemingly minor, brain injury is complex. It can cause physical, cognitive, social, and vocational changes that affect an individual for a short period of time or permanently. Depending on the extent and location of the injury, symptoms caused by a brain injury vary widely. Some common results are seizures, loss of balance or coordination, difficulty with speech, limited concentration, memory loss, and loss of organizational and reasoning skills.

Some considerations:

• A traditional intelligence test is not an accurate assessment of cognitive recovery after a brain injury and bears little relationship to the mental processes required for everyday functioning. For example, students with brain injuries might perform well on brief, structured, artificial tasks but have such significant deficits in learning, memory, and executive functions that they are unable to otherwise cope.
• Recovery from a brain injury can be inconsistent. A student might take one step forward, two back, do nothing for a while, and then unexpectedly make a series of gains. A "plateau" is not evidence that functional improvement has ended.
• Common accommodations for students with brain injuries are exam modifications, time extensions, taped lectures, instructions presented in more than one way, alternative ways of completing assignments, early syllabus, note-takers, course substitutions, priority registration, study skills and strategies training, and alternative print formats.

  Instructional Strategies

  Brain injuries often require instructional strategies similar to those listed for other disability conditions. The use of such strategies will depend on how the disability is manifested. If a faculty member would like more information about instructional strategies for students with brain injuries, he or she should contact Disability Services.