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Here's my advice on how to design your course to be more ADHD-friendly. Many of these tips will help students regardless of #ADHD diagnosis: scaffolding large projects and being abundantly consistent about instructions.

#Academia #UDL #HigherEd #AcademicChatter #DisabledInSTEM

theadhdacademic.weebly.com/tea…

in reply to theADHDacademic

Why should it be up to the teacher to break large projects into chunks? Isn't that a skill that the student will need to learn to do for themselves when they want to take on a large project in the workplace?
in reply to Matt Campbell

@matt 1) Having assistance breaking large projects into smaller tasks is something that ADHD people can often receive as workplace accommodations, so this is an acknowledged problem in the work world rather than something exclusively expected of individual employees themselves. (See askjan.org/disabilities/Attent… as an example.) Workplaces, like many instructors, are invested enough in people's success that they will work with them to help make it happen.

2) Just like any other skill, most learners will acquire the ability to break things down into smaller chunks if they have it explicitly modeled for them, rather than absorbing it through osmosis.

3) Almost all learners—ADHD or otherwise—will produce work that's more what the instructor has in mind if they receive some degree of formative feedback along the way. Chunking projects helps this feedback be more manageable / useful for everyone.

in reply to Matt Campbell

@matt Why should it be up to the student to learn how to do this without guidance? Isn't that a skill that a teacher could scaffold and explicitly teach them so the process and expectations are clear? Isn't managing a project something *managers *in a workplace should do for/with their reports and teams?
in reply to B Haas

@belehaa Because employers want people who can manage themselves. Less overhead. We may disagree about whether that's reasonable (I personally think it is), but surely it's important to set up students for success in the world as it is.
in reply to Matt Campbell

@matt Validating students' needs and supporting them as they learn will set them up for success far better than leaving them to struggle. Abandoning people to figure it out on their own because "everyone else" can do it is ableist
in reply to Matt Campbell

@matt @belehaa Setting students up for success in the world "as it is" means setting them up for burnout and mental health issues including a higher risk of suicide.

How about we create learning and working environments that support everyone's talents and allow everybody to thrive?

in reply to Kit Muse

@KitMuse @matt @belehaa Yeah exactly. Expecting people with ADHD to live without accommodations rests on the belief that either:

-ADHD is not a "real" disability or;
-Disabled people do not deserve accommodations

Both are ableist.

in reply to Nic, Gently Salting the Vibes

@PacificNic @KitMuse @belehaa I don't believe either of those things. But I wonder if ADHD requires accommodations from teachers, employers, etc., or if it only requires the people who have it to know how to work around their own disability.

I'm legally blind. I understand why a sensory disability requires external accommodations. I just wonder if the same applies to ADHD. I should probably go off and learn more about this on my own before I say anything more.

in reply to Matt Campbell

@matt @PacificNic @belehaa I appreciate your willingness to learn. Speaking only as someone who wasn't diagnosed until they were 48 and in the final semester of a dual major bachelor's (I'm now a graduate student), learning that I was ADHD changed me from believing I was broken to someone whose mind worked differently. It literally facilitated the healing journey I'm on, moving it from fumbling around feeling like I was broken by trauma to understanding why it happened.
in reply to Matt Campbell

@matt @belehaa Employers also want people with functioning vision, hearing and movement. Every disability – be it blindless, deafness or ADHD – puts demands on employers. What you are saying implicitly is that disabled people have no place in the working world.
in reply to Matt Campbell

@matt Why should it be up to the teacher to teach how to write a project proposal, how to evaluate a project's success, how to work as part of a team? Aren't these skills that the student will need to learn to do for themselves when they want to take on a large project in the workplace?

Read more about scaffolding as an educational term. It's about gradually removing support over time so that the students work independently eventually rather than chuck them off the deep end and see who swims.

in reply to Matt Campbell

@matt No worries. It's a term with a specific meaning in education. There's a range of strategies between "chuck them off the deep end and see who swims" and scaffolding, but scaffolding generally leads to a greater number of successful students and is more equitable, in my opinion.