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. Regardless of the format, commit to consistency & simplicity No matter what your syllabus style is, you will help your students if you make a commitment to -BE CONSISTENT. -BE OBVIOUS. Other ways to reduce the cognitive load required to navigate your syllabus or important course documents include:
Keep your syllabus simple, be consistent, and really pay attention to the organizational details. If you refer to "optional readings" in the syllabus, don't call them "supplemental readings" in the course management website. Try to keep the really important information away from blocks of text (or at minimum ensure it doesn't come close to blending in with the chunk of text). For example, consider having a table with all of the key deadlines rather than only incorporating deadlines in blocks of text, requiring students to search for them. If you're giving students links to more information, have those open in a new tab so they don't need to backtrack and find the original syllabus. This also lessens the likelihood they will lose the place in whatever task they were doing if the accidentally close a tab. You may end up with an "ugly" syllabus but this doesn't matter if your students actually use the syllabus. Important information needs to be really obvious, which may mean using very large font, highlighting in yellow, etc. This doesn't always look "pretty" but what is the point of your syllabus anyways? If you choose to have a single document... If you're going with one single document, it needs to be very well-organized, you need to use informative headings and subheadings, consistently highlight the important information, like deadlines, policies you're very strict about, etc. Use huge font, highlight in yellow and use bold, and give us signposts to cut through all of the text. Remember, large chunks of text are generally a pain for our brains to navigate. You'll want to constrain your syllabus to the most relevant and crucial information, limiting the chunks of text as much as possible. Using a linked table of contents can lower the cognitive load and is another strategy that might help students actually use the syllabus. If they open the syllabus and the first thing they see is the table of contents, they just click "Final Project Guidelines" or "Email Policy" and then they are directed exactly to those sections, you increase the likelihood they will do so. Remember, you want to reduce the number of steps they take to arrive at the information. You also want to remove any sorting and searching they have to do. Graphic syllabusI really like a graphic syllabus, but other folks disagree and find them too hard to navigate. Keeping them simple and well-organized will help. Don't overpopulate them. I would hesitate to rely solely on a graphic syllabus, as there's no way to include all of the necessary and required information in such a small space. That said, you could certainly include a graphic syllabus with a regular syllabus and/or other course materials. Keep it simple and keep it organized. Perhaps the graphic syllabus has all of the course assignments mapped out, how you'll reach course outcomes, and your expectations for students. Everything else, your attendance policy, your disability statement, your office hours, etc., you save all of that for a syllabus that is a document. One of the strengths of the graphic syllabus is that it's typically more engaging, which can help ADHD students. Smart use of flowcharts and diagrams can cut down on the need for text, which can help ADHD folks understand concepts more quickly. A graphic syllabus can be helpful if you want to provide a road map of your course or if you want students to have an idea how how the course is structured. Sometimes a graphic syllabus is a flowchart, illustrating how different modules contribute to the course objectives. Other times a graphic syllabus contains a flowchart, a timeline, and a graph showing grading breakdown. With a graphic syllabus, I can see how the materials we cover will contribute to the learning outcomes of the course, and I understand how everything connects. The more approachable feel of a graphic syllabus can also show your students that you're thinking about their needs and how to reach them. The Centre for Innovation Teaching and Learning at Memorial University, which I also linked to earlier, has some good guidelines to keep in mind when creating a graphic syllabus. A closely related idea is the interactive graphic syllabus. These build on the idea of the graphic syllabus, but students can click on sections and they're transported to more information. There's an article on Faculty Focus from a professor with ADHD who used a graphic interactive syllabus and found it to be successful. I have not tried an interactive graphic syllabus, but I would encourage the same type of caution as with any other syllabus: be consistent and well-organized. Too many clicks to get to the information and you've unintentionally added a barrier for the ADHD students. Scaffolded syllabus A scaffolded syllabus can do wonders for ADHD students. ADHD folks need things broken down for them. With a scaffolded syllabus, you break deadlines and steps down further for students, helping them with time management and giving them more guidance about the different components needed to complete their work. You're making explicit parts of each process that may seem obvious to you, but that many ADHD students will need help with. Deadlines in a regular syllabus might look like this: Oct 15-Project proposal due Nov 24-Project presentation due Dec 5-Project final report due Deadlines in a scaffolded syllabus might look like this: Sept 30- Project proposal outline due Oct 7- Submit 1st draft of project proposal for peer review Oct 10-Class discussion on project proposals Oct 15-Project proposal due Nov 20-Submit project presentation slides for peer review Nov 24-Project presentation due Dec 1-Identify one weakness of your project based on presentation questions & address it (submit brief write-up) Dec 5-Project final report due You'll include more support, more opportunities for feedback, and check in on students more frequently early on in the course. As students learn and progress, you'll gradually provide less and less support. Lindsay Masland has a section on the scaffolded syllabus with a nice example in her book chapter that I highly recommend reading for more information. Living documentMy syllabus inevitably ends up being a living document, meaning I update it regularly or as needed. This is partially because I have ADHD and will forget something. It's also because I modify my course as it progresses and as I work with students. If I discover instructions aren't clear, I update them. If we decide a lab is too challenging and they need more time, we move things around. A living syllabus allows me to show students that making mistakes is okay and that adapting our strategies as we go makes sense. Personally, I use a Google Doc and I highlight any changes in yellow and describe them at the very top of the document. Yep, they open the syllabus up and a dated description of the most recent changes are the first thing they see, above the table of contents. By using a living syllabus that's a Google Doc, students can see previous versions, they don't need to download the latest syllabus-just save the link, and they can easily see when it was last updated. I also tell them verbally any time I update the living syllabus, because I know some will need multiple reminders. This is part of not hiding important course information. The goal is to learn. The goal is not to become an expert at navigating a syllabus maize. Key points
2 Comments
bcb
7/17/2023 12:59:20 pm
Thanks for this, this is really informative!
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the ADHD academic
8/7/2023 08:22:05 am
Glad it was helpful!
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