ADSHE Networking Day 2008

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The ADSHE Networking Day 2008 was held on 18th June 2008 at the Friends House in Euston in Central London, and was themed, 'Assessments, Reasonable Adjustments and Academic Standards.'

Dr Margaret Herrington, Visiting Professor in Education, University of Wolverhampton, gave the keynote presentation:

Dyslexia Support and Inclusive Practice:
Concepts, Relationships, Questions, Answers
This session will attempt, in the first instance, to deconstruct a commonly held position that some ‘reasonable adjustments’ for dyslexic learners may threaten HE standards. The underpinning narrative about this position includes particular concepts of academic standards, underdeveloped ideas about ‘inclusivity’ and relatively narrow concepts of dyslexia. The argument here is that the challenge to such a narrative must be rooted in an informed theoretical and practical critique. The second part of the session will then consider the implications of such a critique for the theory and practice of dyslexia support. Key questions are raised about the nature and location of support among different groups of HE staff and students.

WORKSHOPS

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) for Study Support Tutors
Host: Chieko Tateno
NLP technique is useful not only for dyslexic students but also for their supporters.
Experience and learn what it is and how it works.
At this workshop, you will find what 'the state' means in NLP, what language does to our state, how you develop rapport with students, and how you can use timeline.
Let's think how we can help students take responsibility of their own lives together!

EDEN: Education, Dyslexia & Electronic Needs - Study skills through Assistive Technology Training
Hosts: Atif Choudhury and Joseph Aquinas
This session will include a demonstration and discussion about how the software can be taught using study skills techniques and multi sensory teaching methods and how this can leads to much stronger support potential.
EDEN is run by two Assistive Technology Trainers who are study skills trained and dyslexic. EDEN has first hand personal experience of the shortfalls in some of the current AT training methods and is working to standardise a guideline and training curriculum to ensure that both aspects of IT expertise and dyslexia support skills work together as a package. This session will combine up-to-date assistive software training and dyslexic specific study skills knowledge to offer a new source of learning facilitation!

Cognitive based thinking skills with 1-1 dyslexia skills
Hosts – Tanya Zybutz and David Petherbridge
Emotional states and learning is an area which has been receiving increased attention recently but like much of the literature on dyslexia the focus tends to be on the experiences of children not adults.
Funded by the Centre for Excellence in Theatre Training, Tanya Zybutz and David Petherbridge are currently engaged in a one year research project at the Central School of Speech and Drama. This specialist HE institution has a student body of whom approximately 25% are registered as dyslexic learners.
The psychological distress caused by producing written work to deadline particularly in the more academically weighted postgraduate courses is being addressed by provision of a skills based psycho-educative group. The group integrates the teaching of study skills with the practice of mindfulness techniques adapted from Dialectical Behaviour Therapy.
Tanya and David will discuss the curriculum being developed, student feedback and explore with participants how this work might be relevant to the enhancement of dyslexia support for adults in non specialist as well as specialist HEI's

All you ever wanted to know about diagnostic assessments:
Hosts: Claire Jamieson and Ellen Morgan

Participants will be encouraged to submit advance questions about current requirements for assessments, including clarification about on-going CPD. The workshop will also examine report writing, including interpreting test data and drawing conclusions.

Supporting Medical and Dental Students with SpLD
Host: Kate Dresser, Cardiff University

Following the recent consultation exercise on Student Fitness to Practise by The Medical Schools Council and the General Medical Council the aims of this workshop are:

• To outline the impact of SpLD on students in Medical and Dental Schools

• To offer colleagues an opportunity to discuss issues such as fitness to practise and reasonable adjustments to assessment

• To pool information re reasonable adjustments currently in place in ADSHE members’ institutions and to circulate this information

Visualising Academia: How to make Academia Attractive
(A teaching case study highlighting the visual essay as a creative means of teaching academic practice)
Leslie Arthur, Phillipa Martin

ABSTRACT
The central focus of this paper is concerned with the visual essay case study, as a means of teaching academic practice to students, whilst sustaining a design culture within design education.

Visualising academia reflects a different approach to the production and demonstration of critical and theoretical work, whereby students produce and present a visual essay as opposed to a traditional written format. It maintains the core values of academic practice, where the content is validated and contextualised, following standard academic means. However visual essays also offer students with a means of representing their work in a structured visual format and articulate this using various forms of multi-media.

There are a wide ranging number of reasons why this work is important. Firstly, the visual essay was developed because some students within Art and Design get frustrated with academic tasks. What they want to do is design. By having such variety and scope provides students with the opportunity to develop and enhance a variety of skills; not simply their writing abilities.

The Art and Design subject area has the highest number of dyslexic students, so, the visual essay offers curriculum and educational practice which is more inclusive to a wide variety of learners’ needs. It is not simply the production of the visual essay which offers these opportunities for academic learning, as students are asked to present these to a student audience. Having these peer-review opportunities during the presentation of the Visual essay widens students’ awareness and understanding of academic essays further and encouraging debate and discussion.