Supporting Students with Dyslexia

Main idea

Outline

Students with dyslexia can receive reasonable accommodations:

• more time to finish their exams,
• sufficient flexibility when being evaluated for language courses,
• reading software (Sprint+),
• the online version of course materials,
• the opportunity to take their exams on a laptop.

Additionally, there are two sessions for students with dyslexia. The first one takes place in the beginning of their first year. During this session, students are informed about the different types of support they can receive (e.g., reasonable accommodations, study coaching, language coaching…). The second session takes place during the year they do their first internship. During this session, they talk about how their dyslexia can lead to difficult situations while teaching and about how to handle these situations.

(Not) part of the curriculum

Students regularly meet with a coach as part of the course ‘professionalization 1’ in the curriculum. This line of communication is very valuable when it comes to helping students with dyslexia find their way to the right support.

Goals

• Increase the wellbeing of students with dyslexia
• Increase the progression of students with dyslexia
• Helping students with dyslexia feel understood and recognizing their efforts

Target group

Obstacles targetted:

• Disability

Students involvement

Students are not involved in the design or delivery of this initiative.

Inspiration and evidence

Giving students one third of the time it would normally take to finish an exam extra is based on research about how much longer it takes for students with dyslexia to read a text.

Success criteria

• Students regularly meet with a coach as part of the curriculum. This line of communication is very valuable when it comes to helping students with dyslexia find their way to the right support.
• It’s good that students receive information early on.
• Students hear from staff that their struggles are valid and that someone believes in them.
• The support and accommodations are reasonable and don’t impede on students acquiring the skills they need to become good teachers.

Points of attention

• Students receive an overwhelming amount of information during induction, so the video show during induction isn’t very effective.
• Many students suffer from fear of failure or feel like they are unfairly punished because of their dyslexia. This is partly due to lecturers who react poorly to their students’ struggles. Thus, there should be more trainings for lecturers in addition to the existing support for students.
• It would be beneficial to offer broad support for all students (e.g., more time during examination periods for all students).
• It would be nice to offer students with dyslexia more opportunities to meet each other and share experiences.
• The ratio students-lecturers should go down so that lecturers have more time and energy to help students with dyslexia or other specific needs.

Do you feel you can effectively provide the support that students require?

Would you recommend this to other institutions?

strongly agree

Communication

• Students can watch an informational video during induction.
• AUAS’ website mentions the different support options for students with dyslexia.
• There’s information on AUAS’ online platform (MijnDinar).
• Students can hear about it from a coach, lecturer, etc.
• There’s information about the different support options on info days for prospective students.

Timing

Language coaching and study coaching are available throughout the whole year. The reasonable accommodations are available throughout the whole year as well, but most are applicable to times of evaluation. Additionally, there are two sessions for students with dyslexia. The first one takes place in the beginning of their first year and the second session takes place during the year they do their first internship.

Resources

• Laptops
• Sprint+ web licence
• Dedicated staff and motivated lecturers
• Time

Transferability

We think it is quite easily transferable to other contexts or groups.

The needs of students with dyslexia are relatively straightforward, so it’s quite easy to offer the right support to them.

Universal Design

The needs of students with dyslexia are kept in mind when developing study materials for everyone, but there’s more work to be done.

Context

In Belgium, it’s required to offer reasonable accommodations to students.