First things first, while neurodiversity can bring its quirks and challenges to everyday life especially in academia, it does not subtract from the fact that YOU are still a student. A student with their own interests, aspirations, and strengths to bring to the ever-growing cycle of knowledge within an institution and beyond.
Navigating the process of learning can be difficult for everyone, especially in college where there’s less predictability and predetermined goals and checkpoints for you to accomplish. While there is a beauty to that freedom, there is also an underlying anxiety that can impact many students. Particularly Neurodiverse students, who may not have the appropriate accessibility to all the resources in place to assist them. College lectures, discussions, and laboratory can be a whole new process to what you may be accustomed to; and so here, I want to outline some resources and strategies that may prove beneficial in your day-to-day academic life.
Knowing your Outlets here at UCONN
1. The UCONN Center for Students with Disabilities is the hallmark for all accommodations, personal and general questions, as well as an informational hotspot for activities around campus and beyond. For the purposes of this article, I would like to highlight our Academic Accommodations, this can include but is not limited to:
- Academic Adjustments
- Alternate Assignments
- Deadline Extensions
- Reduced Courseload
2. Communicating with your Instructors: while it can be difficult to voice your concerns, it is never discouraged. If you sense that you are falling short in your capabilities to engage and interact with course material/discussions, speak to the instructor after class or during their designated office hours to discuss possible alternatives and alterations to better accommodate your needs.
2 Easy but Effective Learning Practices to Adapt to Any Course
- Scaffold Assignments: It can be difficult to start, finish, plan, organize, and multitask different assignments and responsibilities. This is common for students with autism, ADHD, and anxiety disorders; and that’s just to name a few. Therefore, it is important to provide structure when tackling these tasks. “A 2017 study showed that students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) benefit from scaffolded assignments. Indeed, it said, scaffolding “can lower the anxiety of students with ASD and play to their strengths of thriving in structured environments.” The key takeaway here is to break larger assignments up into smaller tasks, that can be completely over a reasonable time.
- Scaffold Readings: Decoding complex readings to prepare for a college lecture and/or assignment is always a difficult task. Rather than skimming or searching aimlessly throughout the text, it’s usually easier to identify a list of key-ideas from the reading and search for information accordingly; using the surrounding text to provide support and context for the main ideas. You can go about assembling this list by either reading the abstract of the text (Scholarly Journals and Research papers), skimming through the introduction of a reading or literary paper, or connecting with the professor to get a better sense of what information they would like you to pull from the reading.
These tips are just surface level strategies to apply to your everyday life in academia. However, everyone’s experiences and struggles are unique to them and require the appropriate daily accommodations to fit their lifestyle. More information about teaching and learning strategies can be found at the previously cited article here: https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-to-teach-your-many-neurodivergent-students
