Five sentence summary Learning environments are often not created with ADHD learners in mind; struggles with working memory, regulating attention, and executive functions create different challenges for us. Making your syllabus (and other key course materials) as concise and clear as possible goes a long way. UDL can work really well for ADHD learners, you'll want to provide materials in advance, and review your assessment policies to ensure they're not ableist. Large projects should be assessed to determine if they can be broken into chunks and scaffolded for more guidance. If you're rethinking your syllabus, designing a course or workshop for the first time, or just want to look over your course materials before the semester starts to check for ableism, this post is for you.
ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder that has a lot of heterogeneity within it, so what works for one student may not work for another. It's also a disorder or neurotype that most folks misunderstand, including the very folks in your institution who are supposed to act as experts and who gatekeep disability accommodations. So how does one even begin to design a course that is accessible for ADHD folks? Let's start by identifying the potential barriers folks with ADHD face.
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Five sentence summary A good syllabus can make life easier for ADHDers and help them navigate important course components and policies, whereas a bad syllabus can create additional barriers and be a navigational nightmare. If we're forced to navigate a convoluted maize of instructions spread out over different documents and with inconsistent wording, you're not testing us on whatever the task is, you're testing us on our ADHD. A syllabus should be well-organized, consistent, and simple. Important information like deadlines or policies you're strict on should be made incredibly obvious. Reduce the number of steps it takes for ADHD folks to find the information they need and consider using a scaffolded syllabus. There are a range of ways to approach a syllabus. There are the parts required by the university. There are folks who update their syllabus regularly and have their students annotate the syllabus. There are folks who treat a syllabus as a living document and those who have a syllabus, a course calendar, a course roadmap, and other documents that all cover the same material in the syllabus but in different formats. Your "syllabus" might be one document or it might be two documents and a poster. This post is meant to clarify how ADHD folks struggle with important course information and how some of the more common types of syllabi can be problematic or helpful for ADHD learners. Where the struggle is ADHD folks have trouble with organizing and sorting information, so the syllabus can really set the tone for the course and make life easier for ADHDers or it can be a huge mess that is a headache for us to navigate. We also often have trouble with transitions (they require executive functions), and the syllabus is usually given to us at the start of a course. A good syllabus can ease the transition process, whereas a bad syllabus can throw up an additional 3 barriers to the 2 others we started with. If a student constantly has to struggle to remember where due dates are posted, and some are posted in the lab manual and others are posted in the syllabus, you're creating additional work for the student. I know this is one barrier that still drives me bonkers whenever I'm taking a workshop or whatever: I cannot handle when resources or modules are inconsistently organized. My brain already takes extra time to sort information, so when you haven't bothered to include a table of contents for the packet of materials you just handed me, I am not going to be impressed. We also struggle with our brains jumping ahead or from idea to idea, so it's easier for us to completely miss the details. In a syllabus, this can translate to missing the last three sentences printed on the reverse side or the Nov 13th in bold in the middle of a bunch of text. It's easier for our brains skip right by it, which could be a very big problem if that bold was meant to indicate the last and final day to drop the course. I know this seems really simple! "Why can't students remember to check both the calendar and the syllabus for each writing assignment?!" Remember that ADHD folks struggle with executive functions, like prioritizing information, sorting it, organizing thoughts, task initiation, etc. If you ask us to navigate a maize of dense course documents to find different readings, instructions, and assignment submissions, you're creating barriers. If you're placing some deadlines in a table and others within the text, you're creating a barrier. The ADHD learner spends more time trying to ensure they've followed every instruction and haven't missed an important guideline posted elsewhere whereas the non-ADHD learner focuses on the actual material. You're not testing us on the content. You're testing us on our ability to manage our ADHD. Guess what? We probably won't excel because we have ADHD. Five sentence summary It is not at all uncommon to present ADHD folks with choices and/or flexibility and have it overwhelm them. Demonstrate the decision making process to teach learners how to think through the different choices and their possible outcomes. Limit the number of choices given and include a "design your own" option to allow for more freedom for those who need it. Build in check in throughout the learning experience to detect problems early on, give learners opportunities for reflection, and determine if students have the appropriate resources and support to achieve their goals. Choices are often a disabled person's best friend exactly because we choose what works for us. For ADHD folks, there's less of a chance we will feel pigeonholed into something we will inevitably become bored with. Flexibility allows for creativity, innovation, personalization, and endless opportunities, but all of that freedom can overwhelm. Sometimes ADHDers need fewer choices and less flexibility. Choices and flexibility require us to identify goals, prioritize outputs, make a timeline, and identify steps needed to achieve success and these are executive functioning skills. How do we ensure choices and flexibility lead to success? By giving guidance, having a healthy balance of choices (not too many but not too few), and by scaffolding and checking in throughout the process. Guide them through the decisions Don't assume folks understand the nuanced differences between their options. Those students who are outside of their typical realm of study may be particularly lost and need more time to consider their options. Demonstrate how you would make a decision. Outline how the different options could affect their experience: this choice requires a lot of writing, the second option will mean you learn more about forests, this choice will likely require a lot of effort initially but less towards the end, etc.
For the ADHD learner that has no idea which option to work with, they may want you to give recommendations. "If you're low on energy and time right now, you may want to stick a familiar option and write a traditional paper." You could offer to meet individually with students, discuss their strengths and weaknesses, and then guide them towards an option. For larger classes, you could create some sort of Google form or flowchart that guides them through a similar, reflective process. |
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