ADSHE Midlands Region Meeting

ADSHE Midlands Region Meeting

Wednesday 27th January 2016

The University of Nottingham 12.30-4pm

Present: Karen Boulton-Lear, Polly Brighton, Christine Chadwick, Rachel Davies, Judy Fessey, Liz Gurney, Jackie Hatfield, Gemma Holtam, Tina Horsman, Christine Jackson, Pauline Killoran, Caroline Kordecki, Jacqueline Szumko, Kim Lawson, Antony Martin, Lindsay Nova, Lynette Outram, Nuala Robinson and Barbara Taylor

Apologies: Donna Melia, Tizzie Frankish, Caroline Mansell

Minutes

1. Judy opened the meeting and welcomed us to The Helmsley, the University of Nottingham’s staff club. She outlined the afternoon’s proceedings and introduced her colleague Kim Lawson.

1. Kim presented ‘The Issues of Placements’: This session provided an overview of a staff training workshop recently run at the University of Nottingham. She outlined the workshop’s aim to develop a deeper understanding of the issues faced by students with SpLDs in placement settings, and to share resources from both the University of Nottingham and other institutions for good practice in teaching and supporting students. Kim’s presentation summarised the content of the staff training workshop and she shared the resources with the group. Packs of resources were distributed around the room for us to examine and discuss in relation to our own contexts. Kim rounded off by asking the groups to share their thoughts on the resources and any issues their discussions raised:

•Some SpLD students have problems with orientation and map reading.

•Placement policy for all students should be more focused on treating all students as reasonable human beings. If this approach was taken all students, including SpLDs, would be accommodated and the issues identified would be significantly reduced.

•Filling in paperwork is a recurrent issue for students and this could be alleviated if students could be given access to it before they embark on their placement.

•The on-going issue of confidentiality when using recording devices, in a medical setting, was raised. It was felt that this is an issue that needs to be investigated further and that ADSHE should become involved with.

•The presentation and examination of the resources highlighted an area that some members of the group felt they needed to investigate within their institution. They also felt that they could use the resources with students in their 1:1 sessions in anticipation of them going off on a placement year.

•The resources had a strong focus on medical courses.

•It was identified that students and mentors would need to individualise strategies to ensure issues were addressed.

•The group was impressed by the quantity of documents. As well as how comprehensive some of them were.

•It was recognised that these documents, although targeted at SpLD students, may well have relevance to all students going on placement

Kim’s Powerpoint hand-out provided a comprehensive list of the resources and included website links.

3.Judy introduced session 2: ‘The 7 Underlying Principles of ADSHE’. This session focused on giving participants the opportunity to tell stories or share resources which address any part of the 7 Principles.

•Gemma Holtam: Shared with the group her plans to develop a community website based on SpLD students’ stories. The intended audience will be student and staff focused. The content will concentrate on the topics/issues that students struggle with and it will present solutions to help them to overcome these issues. Gemma explained that the website will be a collection of videos and associated help guides. Gemma played an example video to the group and asked for feedback via a questionnaire.

•Tina Horsman: Tina shared her adaption of Cornell Notetaking. She presented a paper copy of her resource to demonstrate its flexibility and adaptability. She explained the components of the table and how these can be adapted to suit the individual student’s needs to support reading and also revision. Tina explained that students could either use a paper version or an e-version. The resource used colour to support multi-sensory learning and that it also supported meta-cognition.

•Jackie Hatfield: Jackie’s contribution related to preparing students for 1:1 tutorials with academic staff. She recognises that students often feel intimidated by these meetings and this manifests itself in them losing their way in these sessions. Jackie had created a template for students to compile before they attend their meeting

•Rachel Davies: Shared how her communication of the 7/11 breathing strategy to a medical student made her recognise the importance of using language that was relevant to the student’s own scientific/medical language e.g. diaphragm and not ‘pink & fluffy’ words. The group discussed other situations where relating an explanation to a student’s interests or course of study had been valuable e.g. Art and Design relating writing to sketching out ideas in a sketch book and developing them into the final piece. Using technical language to help students understand English. Also using language related to mindfulness such as setting an intention etc.

•Kim Lawson: Introduced the group to the Anxiety Bell because of its relevance to the number of students we work with who have stress and mental health issues. Kim had recently attended a mental health and counselling training session where this had been presented. The Anxiety Bell graph demonstrates how helping students to push through periods of anxiety and stress leads to reduced anxiety over time and stops them from entering a cycle of repeated avoidance and hence failure.

•Judy Fessey: Judy presented her student friendly guide to using apostrophes. She simply, but effectively, substitutes the word ‘arrow’ for apostrophe and asks the student a series of questions which allows the student to position the arrow (apostrophe) in the correct position.

4.Tina Horsman closed the meeting by thanking Judy and her colleagues for hosting the meeting. She then welcomed new guests and explained that our intentions are for them to become full members of ADSHE once they had experienced the benefits of attending ADSHE regional meetings (once they had attended 2 regional meetings we would require them to become members in order to attend further meetings).

Tina passed on some headlines from the last ADSHE Exec Meeting:

•Regional meetings should not use the term CPD within their marketing and agenda. Instead they should re-term this content as ‘Action Learning’. The group discussed this and felt that ‘Professional Action Learning (PAL)’ might be a more suitable label.

•Executive are working with BIS on Quality Assurance development and are discussing the role ADSHE may play in the auditing of QA on behalf of BIS. The Executive want all members to be quality assured.

5.Next meeting at Loughborough University Tuesday 10th May 12.30 – 4.00pm. The provisional outline for this meeting:

• Quality Assurance: A presentation by the ADSHE Quality Assurance Officer followed by a Q&A session (attendance of AQ Officer TBC)

• Professional Active Learning session:

Translating the EP report to a working Academic Plan

The Academic Plan (AP), at Loughborough, has become a tool to acknowledge the student’s strengths and weaknesses. It is a springboard to better self-understanding, self-esteem, self-advocacy and developing metacognition.

The AP was developed to bridge the gap in the student’s understanding of their EP report. The tutor, in collaboration with the student, unpack the EP report and distill it into a document that summarises the student’s individual profile in a way that they can understand and makes it meaningful. Ultimately this process and the AP document aims to empower the student academically, in the workplace, socially and emotionally therefore becoming a ‘Living Plan’ for life.

The plan supports ADSHE’s view, stated in the Guidelines for Quality Assurance in Specialist Support for Students with SpLDs in Higher Education, that ‘it is essential that the student understands the report findings and its implications’ (ADSHE, 2009: 5)