Summary of Key Points

• The assessment process, regardless of the tools used, is not designed to diagnose an adult with learning disabilities but to help them understand the impact that the potential learning disability may have on their learning. The assessment is a process to determine adult learners' strengths and struggles to help practitioners' to develop teaching strategies and accommodations and help learners to understand what is required to reach their goal.
• Adults with learning disabilities state that the key to their success was their decision to take ownership of their disability and fully understand the impact it had on their learning and day-to-day functions. This highlights the importance of the learner being an active partner in the assessment process. The practitioners' role is to help facilitate the assessment process by providing guidance to the process.
• The assessment process is constant and flowing. Learners and practitioners need to note progress and struggles and gather more information as needed. This helps learners to understand themselves, reduces frustration, builds self-esteem, and facilitates the building of independence and ownership of their ongoing and future learning and coping strategies.
• There should be a focus on understanding the impact of the processing breakdown on academic, social and organizational skills. The processing breakdown can impact how one stores and retrieves information and/or how they organize the information that is taken in.
• Of the four kinds of informal assessment techniques (checklists, self-assessment, task demonstrations and observations), observations and task demonstrations were two of the best ways to determine learners' strengths and weaknesses.
• Assessment, whether it is initial or ongoing, should look at both the:
  • Process - how learners input and output the information
  • Product - how the information provided is organized and presented