Title: The Higher Education Academy - enhancing the student experience
1The Higher Education Academy - enhancing the
student experience
- Teaching, learning and
- the disability agenda
-
- Yvonne Dickinson
- Adviser Disability
- NADO Annual conference
- July 5 2006
2Aims of the presentation
- Update on the national partnership arrangements
for embedding disability support across HE - Consider the role of the HE Academy re disability
issues and learning and teaching - Re-visit the manifesto for mainstreaming
Inclusive practice (an NDT legacy) - A to do list for embedding disability in the
learning and teaching agenda.
3National arrangements for disability support in
HE
WP
DEP
Equalities
L T
4Early outputs and outcomes of the new DEP
arrangements
- Outputs
- Publications
- Presentations and workshops
- Content for websites
- Joint briefings
- Bi-annual bulletin
- Helpdesk facility and FAQs
- Direct support to HEIs re DED preparations
- Survey/questionnaire on DES
- Outcomes
- New partnerships and collaboration.
- Sharing of expertise, ideas and resources
- Improved understanding of legislation and
equality and diversity issues. - Raised awareness of disability issues across the
HE sector - Agreed joint themes and priorities
5The Higher Education Academy What are we doing?
- Disseminating good practice in Learning and
Teaching across the sector - Raising the profile of inclusive practice and
supporting staff to embed this in all aspects of
their work within the Academy - Working with Subject Centres and their discipline
communities - Working with key stakeholders who may have a
common interest eg PDP and disability issues - Supporting the transfer of good practice from
funded initiatives such as - CETLs, FDTL, NTFS
6The Higher Education Academy What are we doing?
- Engaging with other Academy related activities
that are progressing work in areas of widening
participation and assistive technology (WP and
TechDis teams) - Contributing to National, regional, local and
Institutional events and meetings to maintain the
profile of disability in HE - Working in partnership with ECU, Action on
Access, and other key stakeholder groups such as
DRC, Skill, NADO.
7A manifesto for mainstreaming inclusive practice
National
- Undertake strategic thinking and strategic action
- Harness the sense of social justice, equality and
fairness that motivates most higher education
practitioners - Recognise the fuzzy and complex nature of
concepts of disabled and disabled
student/learner which makes inclusivity
challenging on occasions - Capture and effectively disseminate good
professional practice - Recognise the considerable achievements to date
in improving inclusive practice.
8A manifesto for mainstreaming inclusive practice
Institutional (1)
- Build credibility through creating a rigorous and
evidence-based pedagogy - Promote pragmatic and engaging academic/staff
development - Actively engage in research into inclusive
learning and teaching - Balance the need for subject-specific materials
and case studies with generic approaches - Use technologies in support of inclusive practice
effectively - Engage disabled students in a debate that goes
into curriculum design - Maintain a focus on learning from a learners
point of view.
9A manifesto for mainstreaming inclusive practice
Institutional (2)
- Think inclusively when designing assessment
instruments - Ensure that standards are maintained in terms of
the quality, scale and scope of work expected - Embed disability matters into the curriculum for
all students - Recognise that the same kind of issues and
challenges are often faced across an institution - Continue to reflect regularly on our practice to
ensure continuous improvement - Recognise that there is a good business case to
be made for actively recruiting students as
disabled people.
10A manifesto for mainstreaming inclusive
practice Disability Practitioners
- Stop adopting practices which predominately focus
on adjustments and start thinking about
supporting inclusive curriculum and assessment
design which offer all students choices that
align with their abilities - Recognise that disabled students, like other
students, are consumers of higher education - Look for synergies between different types of
disability practitioners and make use of
constructive partnerships between staff in a
range of roles across HEIs. - (Adams, M. and Brown, S. (Eds), (2006) Chp16.
p.187 Towards Inclusive Learning in Higher
Education Developing curricula for Disabled
Students, London, Routledge).
11Engaging academic staff To do list
- Think subject discipline
- Build on the credibility of academic champions in
your institutions, subjects - Engage with the Higher Education Academy
priorities and themes - eg. CETLs, FDTL, NTFS, Accreditation,
- Change Academy, commissioning of research,
- Subject Centre work
- Attend staff development programmes
- Consider inclusive practice at curriculum design,
accreditation, validation and review of
programmes - Engage with institutional practice in areas such
as using External examiners effectively, QA
committees and groups.
12Engaging disability practitionersTo do list
- Think Out of the office!
- Connect with WP teams, HR, Staff development,
Student services etc - Inform strategy use the DED as a tool
- Get senior staff on board and keep them engaged
- Engage in Induction for new staff
- Use your champions within your institution
- Use nationally available resources and good
practice - Use each other effectively.