Wondering if any #ActuallyAutistic or #ADHD people have ideas that I'm missing.
My day job is supporting disabled university students. We have increasing numbers of autistic/ADHD students who are too anxious to attend classes. So they miss class 1, and then can't understand content of classes 2 onwards so get more anxious - and it spirals.
It's HUGE uni, often 100+ in class. Most buildings are HUGE, with vile acoustics and visual stress - can't change those. We do have quiet/sensory spaces.
@NatalyaD you have a typo in that first hashtag BTW, which I only mention in case someone is following the hashtag. I have thoughts about this, but I think it ultimately depends on a few things.
What is causing that initial anxiety about going to class? Is "going there" the problem or is "being there" the problem? Is there a way for attending students to go back and find information they missed? Can they make recordings? Do the slides get published? etc.
Also, I think you're right that a lot of students go to university because "That's what people do", or because that's what their parents want. I know AutDHD can make information absorption more difficult but it can also just murder the motivation to learn. So I think it's important to identify whether the students do have a reasonable way to access the information they missed and are just struggling to find motivation, or whether there is a genuine barrier to information access.
Sorry for the premature send; that's what using a keyboard gets me, I guess.
@simon I really don't know what causes the initial anxiety. I often only come across the student 3-6 months in.
I would like us to do an auto-buddying system like Cambridge does. A named yr3 student is linked to each named yr1 student for the entire term and meets them in Fresher's week. That might help, unless students don't click...
50% of the time the student has a disability plan but didn't respond to any pre-communication. 50% of the time student didn't tell anyone they were disabled.
NatalyaD
Simon Jaeger