There is a  critical national shortage of special education teachers. In response to this shortage the “Teachers in Hardhats” project, originally funded through the Ameritech distance collaboration grant, modeled one solution to the preparation of these teachers. The original grant allowed the University of Saint Francis, University of Evansville, Butler University, and Brescia University to build special education instructional modules developed, maintained, and distributed through distance learning technologies.

The second phase,  the IDEAL Partnership (Indiana Designs Equitable Access for Learning), has been funded through the Indiana Department of Education, Division of Exceptional Learners. The partnership is designed to launch unprecedented alliance to benefit children and youth with disabilities by creating new education pathways among higher education faculty. 

The main focus is now to create additional modules directly related to the Mild Intervention standards. These standard as defined by IPSB and INTASC have been mapped directly to each instructional module.
Two groups have been formed to help guide this process, Content Review Committee and the Stakeholders Advisory Board.

These modules are built adhering to the simplest of HTML/Web standards to help ensure their accessibility and fast downloading when possible. This site is also maintained to comply with the Web Accessibility Standards set forth by CAST as BOBBY WorldWide and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).