The Drake Center for Academic Support

The Drake Center for Academic Support stands ready to assist students with a comprehensive range of services. Our team of dedicated professionals provides both in-person and virtual support to cater to each student's unique needs. Over 50 percent of our student body actively utilizes our services, underscoring the invaluable contribution of Drake Academic Support to the enhancement of the academic journey.

We help students:

  • Organize and plan time.
  • Understand and respond to reading.
  • Organize and produce writing.
  • Prepare for tests, projects, or presentations.
  • Discover and use Assistive and Educational Technology.

Educational and Assistive Technology

One-on-one support with tools to enhance learning

The Drake Center provides assistance in the exploration and learning of:

  • Multimedia software programs, such as XMind, PowerPoint, MS Word, OneNote, and more
  • Landmark College-specific administrative programs, such as Outlook and Office365
  • Course Management System (Currently Canvas)
  • The MS Windows operating system
  • Assistive technology programs—Kurzweil 3000 (text-to-speech) and Dragon NaturallySpeaking (speech-to-text)

Assistive Technology

Students use Text-to-Speech (such as Kurzweil 3000) to:

  • Improve decoding and fluency
  • Hear text spoken aloud
  • Read back their own typing, predict words, and spell check as they are typing
  • Strengthen their active reading using the Study Skills Toolbar

Students use Concept/Mind-Mapping (such as XMind) to:

  • Generate and develop ideas for the writing process
  • Organize thinking
  • Create outlines
  • Test their memory
  • Increase independence

Students use Speech-to-Text (such as Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred) to:

  • Free up cognitive working space
  • Eliminate handwriting & spelling problems
  • Brainstorm and turn oral language into text
  • Produce large amounts of writing
  • Spell check documents they created in a different application
  • Increase independence

Digital Text Services

Digital Text Services (DTS) provides Landmark College students with a digital version (Kurzweil and PDF formats) of all their course texts once they purchase the print version.

Digital Text Services:

  • Acquires accessible digital formats of primary course texts (texts chosen by instructors) either from the publisher, or by scanning
  • Grants student access to digital copies of course texts, with proof of ownership
  • Helps students find digital copies of other books
  • Helps faculty obtain clean hard copies of chapters and/or articles for course packs