Personal Tutoring and Accessibility

1. Personal Tutoring and Accessibility

2. Personal Tutoring • Engineering academics who are subject experts in their own area of the discipline often find themselves also fulfilling the role of academic advisor and/or personal tutor as part of their employment duties. • The extent to which they feel comfortable in this pastoral support role with students is variable and often dependent on their own personality and experience. Eng Subject Centre Teaching Guides http://www.engsc.ac.uk/teaching-guides/personal/

3. Issues Specific to Engineering Students? • 86% of engineering students in the UK are Male providing a gender imbalance • Depression occurs as frequently in men as in women; but women get diagnosed and treated twice as often as men. • Suicide is the biggest killer of young men in England. • Men are less likely than women to recognise that they are under stress or unhappy.

4. Men are significantly less likely than women to go to their GP with emotional and psychological problems. • Alcohol and substance abuse is five times more common in men than in women. • Male students are significantly less likely to access university support services than female students, and the dropout rate is much higher among male students.

5. Signs of Developing Mental Health Problems in Students May Include: • The student appearing tense or unhappy; • The student being loud, agitated or aggressive; • The student being withdrawn or unusually quiet; • An obvious change in the student’s personal appearance; • Changes in the attendance pattern or cessation of attendance.

6. Minimum Requirement of Academics • Academic staff do not need to become expert counsellors nor do they have the time to assume this extra burden, • They do need to be able to deal with an immediate situation that arises and know when, how and to whom they should refer the student. This requires judgement and knowledge of key referral contacts in their institution and in external agencies.

7. More Facts • Any students studying for a degree from your institution are covered by the Equality Act regardless of whether they are UK or international students. • In 2008/09, 7.5% of undergraduates in the UK were known to have a disability.

8. Important Facts about Disability • ‘A person has a disability if they have a physical or mental impairment, and the impairment has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on his or her ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.’ (Equality Act 2010, Section 6) • The Equality Act 2010 is replacing the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA).

9. Sources of Information • “Staff involved in the delivery of learning and teaching have a shared responsibility to support disabled students and should work in partnership with them, and with central services, to achieve this” • “Feedback from students should be used to further adapt methods of teaching and learning”. QAA - Code of practice for the assurance of academic quality and standards in higher education http://www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/codeOfPractice/section3/Section3Disabilities2010.pdf

10. The Nature of Disabilities • Learning Difficulties 60% • Background Health Issues 14% • Mental Health 6% • Sight/Hearing Impairment 5% • Mobility 3% • Autism 1% • More Information and guidance can be found at http://www.techdis.ac.uk/

11. Students who are dyslexic may have difficulties with: • Visual processing • Phonological decoding • Analysis and processing • Reading and comprehension • Auditory processing • Short Term and Working Memory • Structure and sequencing • Planning and organisation • Physical Coordination • Handwriting • Numeracy

12. Famous People with Dyslexia • Alexander Graham Bell – Inventor • Leonardo da Vinci – Artist • Thomas Edison – Inventor • Albert Einstein - Scientist • Michael Faraday - Chemist and Physicist • Bill Gates - Microsoft Chairman • Steve Jobs – Founder of Apple • Source - British Dyslexic Association

13. Activity - Individual, Anticipatory and Inclusive Approaches in Practice • Your group will be given a case study. Identify the potential barriers for the student and define reasonable adjustments for this student. • Discuss the impact of the student joining your class on: • How you teach • How you assess • The other students

14. Case Study A • Jack has Asperger Syndrome (AS), a form of autism. It is defined as: ‘a pervasive developmental disorder characterised by an inability to understand how to interact socially. Other characteristics of AS include clumsy and uncoordinated motor movements, limited interests or unusual preoccupations, repetitive routines or rituals, speech and language peculiarities, and non-verbal communication problems.’

15. Case Study B • David is a final year MEng. (Masters in Engineering) Engineering student. He has been deaf since birth and uses sign language and he lip-reads. He is accompanied to classes by a signer.

16. What shouldn’t we assess? We shouldn’t assess the following unless they are a specified learning outcome: • Speed? • Spelling? • Manual dexterity? • Visual acuity? • Auditory perception? • Short-term memory? • Physical endurance?