Arriving and thriving: Student research results
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Slide deck from webinar with Alistair McNaught of McNaught Consultancy, Amy Low, Adam Tweed and Helen Wickes of AbilityNet. The webinar took place on Tuesday 27 October and provided an overview of the Higher Education Commission's 'Arriving at Thriving?' report into the experiences of disabled students, the challenges and potential solutions offered that may help your institution or organisation. Find out more at: https://abilitynet.org.uk/news-blogs/new-research-reveals-tough-situations-many-disabled-students
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Arriving and thriving: Student research results
- 1. Thriving or diving? Key findings from the Higher Education Commission and their implications for practice
- 2. Welcome • Live captions are available through Teams (click on the ‘…’ and you should see an option to ‘Turn on live captions’) • Please mute your mic if you’re not speaking • If have any questions or comments, please use the chat window or come off mute • We will be doing polls throughout, they will appear in the chat window
- 3. Reasons to be cheerful - 1
- 4. Reasons to be cheerful - 2 • A “reasonable adjustment” is defined as meeting “the accessibility requirement” – making the concept of reasonable adjustment objective and measurable for the first time. • Office for Students commitment to “be uncompromising in intervening to prevent poor quality provision, behaviour or performance that damages students’ or public interests.” • Attainment rates for disabled students are rising (and the gap is not increasing). • 49% of respondents to HEC study rated the accessibility of their course as 4/5 or 5/5. 4
- 5. Some missed opportunities? • Access and participation plans – digital accessibility? • NSS (National Student Survey) – digital accessibility? • TEF (Teaching Excellence Framework) – inaccessible Gold? • Student experience and ability to make informed choice • 26% rate accessibility of resources as 1/5 or 2/5 • Disabled students feel frustrated by the possibility that their experience of higher education might have been significantly better at a different institution, but they feel there was no way for them to have known this. 5
- 6. Report Highlights - Four key issues • Teaching and learning • Bureaucracy and finance • Social inclusion • Information and advice 6
- 7. Issue 1- Teaching and learning • Accessibility • Unreliability • Variability • Accountability 7
- 8. Teaching and learning recommendations • Review of disabled students’ access to teaching and learning, strategic group including disabled students, student services, academic staff, and senior leaders. • Access and Participation Plans should include info on training provided to staff to address disability inclusion. How consistent is the teaching and learning experience for disabled students in your institution? (poll) 8
- 9. 2 - Bureaucracy and finance • Application • Equipment • Financial extras • Complaints bureaucracy 9
- 10. Bureaucracy & finance recommendations • The recommendations are primarily to government and Office for Students, but institutions can make the student experience much more streamlined by • reducing barriers, more universal adjustments • targeted training for students • Availability, visibility and guidance regarding ubiquitous assistive technology / productivity tools? (Poll) 10
- 11. 3. Social inclusion • Isolation – • Inaccessibility of union events/activities - 26% always or often felt excluded • Accommodation issues. 11
- 12. Social inclusion recommendations • Focused funding for unions to prioritise inclusion • Monitoring of student accommodation • OfS should tweak Access and Participation Plans • Consider how these needs are affected by the move to online / blended learning What are you doing to support social inclusion online? (text chat) 12
- 13. 4. Information and advice • Good information and advice are key. • 25% experienced pre-enrolment targeted support. • Outreach is critical – reassurance of knowing • what help available, • who to contact. • timeliness of provision depended on quality of outreach. 13
- 14. Information & advice recommendations • Government information and awareness campaign. • AbilityNet/McNaught advice - how much information do prospective students get on • Lecture capture? • VLE accessibility? • Assistive technologies and productivity tools? • www.mystudymyway.com What does a disabled student learn about the accessibility of your courses from published course information? (text chat) How easy was it to find information before you started studying there about how your institution supports disabled students and their access needs?’ 14
- 15. The accessibility maturity lens • Ownership (accessibility belongs to all) • Vision (accessibility benefits all) • Coherence (poor practices can negate somebody else’s good practices) • Training (lack of training or unhelpful training leaves people confused) 15
- 16. A virtuous circle of digital accessibility Accessibility is an emergent property of excellent teaching and learning. Good accessibility practices make teaching and learning more effective.
- 17. Maturity models – the Russian doll • Freely downloadable guidance document. • Interactive tool for self-assessment. • Online training on evidence and prioritisation. • 1:1 support for sustainable skills transfer, badging and verification. 17
- 18. Demo of the interactive version
- 19. Drilling to the details Objective self assessment with practical pointers
- 20. How does bespoke / badging work? Focus on being accessible by design - institutional level but also at module level 1) We provide training to evaluate institution and modules against the frameworks 2) We provide planning day using the maturity model to provide a starting benchmark at institution level and action plan 3) We provide planning day spot check a subsection of modules and provide benchmark and action plan 4) Annual review with spot check and re-evaluation of badging level as appropriate
- 21. What are the benefits? • User experience - more meaningful for more staff. • Organisational skills & resilience: • Skills transfer, • Institutional culture, • External validation. • Compatible with quality assurance. • Marketable.
- 22. What next From AbilityNet / McNaught • Online training pilot (spaces limited) • Download the DIY version (includes link to interactive DIY version) to get a feel for the process • Paid-for small group online training (from January) • Paid for institution level planning /evaluation days (from January) Wider sector • National Student Survey stakeholder survey – please fill in and ask for specific digital accessibility questions. • Join the communities of practice Jisc Teams site - Digital Accessibility Regs mailing list. 22
Notas del editor
- Key findings from the Higher Education Commission and their implications for practice
- Welcome Live captions are available through Teams (click on the ‘…’ and you should see an option to ‘Turn on live captions’) Please mute your mic if you’re not speaking If have any questions or comments, please use the chat window or come off mute We will be doing polls throughout, they will appear in the chat window
- Alistair Reasons to be cheerful include a wide range of recent initiatives at both higher and further education levels. At higher education, the office for students have a strategy document (2018 to 2021) where they claim they will be uncompromising in intervening where poor quality provision exists. It is to be hoped that this would include poor accessibility since this provides a poor quality experience for disabled students. The access and participation plans could potentially be a vehicle for improved accessibility with digital accessibility a prerequisite. The National student survey could be a vehicle for finding out more about levels of digital accessibility in an organisation. The Department for educations Teaching Excellence Framework could easily be tweaked so it was impossible to get a gold if levels of digital accessibility were poor. The higher education commission report "arriving at thriving" identify specific recommendations needed to reduce the gaps between disabled and non-disabled experiences. The IES (Institute for employment studies) report for disabled students commission reviewed support for disabled students in higher education in England and made many recommendations. Government digital services are involved in website audits and monitoring website accessibility statements. A further education level, the Association of Colleges has produced a free e-book on "Creating a post Covid 19 Ed Tech strategy with no one left behind" with several sections that are specific to disabled people and digital accessibility. The Department for Education has funded a number of Head Take demonstrator schools and colleges programmes where assistive technology is being evaluated. The Education and Training Foundation have a comprehensive Enhance programme with a wide range of short, bite-size self access resources on accessibility and inclusion.
- Alistair Reasons to be cheerful - 2 A “reasonable adjustment” is defined as meeting “the accessibility requirement” – making the concept of reasonable adjustment objective and measurable for the first time. Office for Students commitment to “be uncompromising in intervening to prevent poor quality provision, behaviour or performance that damages students’ or public interests.” Attainment rates for disabled students are rising (and the gap is not increasing). 49% of respondents to HEC study rated the accessibility of their course as 4/5 or 5/5.
- Amy Amongst the really positive signs, there are some areas where it would be possible to create better accountability and momentum in achieving an inclusive learning environment and these are not being leveraged as they could be. The A&P plans would be the ideal place to be documenting commitments and activities relating to digital accessibility but I spent 20 mins searching under accessibility and digital accessibility on the OfS website and most of the plans I searched had no reference at all to either term (I will pop the link in the chat so you can check for your institution). https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/the-register/search-for-access-and-participation-plans#/AccessPlans/ The NSS, whilst the answers are provided by split metrics for underrrepresneted groups including disabled students, it is hard to get a clear picture of the digital accessibility situation. This feels very pertinent in these times of blended learning.The OfS are running a survey about the future of the NSS. Fill out the survey and be sure to make this point that we need visibility of student experience here https://survey.officeforstudents.org.uk/s/Q21DJ5/ It is also quite feasible to be Gold for TEF and have a really inaccessible digital estate – this like another missed opportunity Then we come to student experience. The report itself states that 26% of the 500 students surveyed rated resources at 1 or 2 out of 5 for accessibility and there was a sense that lack of visibility of institutional support mechanisms made making an informed choice very difficult
- Amy The report breaks out the key issues and recommendations under 4 headings T&L Bureaucracy and finance Social inclusion Information and advice We will delve into each of these and also ask for you to share your own insights and experiences via a couple of polls and online chat
- Alistair Accessibility to physical spaces and learning materials; Unreliability of promises (eg lecture capture) or adjustments (eg assessments). Variability in level of support and accessibility between courses, modules and teaching staff. Accountability - some students feel no one is accountable for their access to teaching and learning. Recommendations relevant to providers: a review of disabled students’ access to teaching and learning, carried out by a strategic group with representation from disabled students, student services, academic staff, and senior leaders. OfS should require Higher Education Providers to include information in their Access and Participation Plans about the training they provide staff and how this training addresses disability inclusion. How consistent is the teaching and learning experience for disabled students (poll)
- Alistair Recommendations relevant to providers: a review of disabled students’ access to teaching and learning, carried out by a strategic group with representation from disabled students, student services, academic staff, and senior leaders. OfS should require Higher Education Providers to include information in their Access and Participation Plans about the training they provide staff and how this training addresses disability inclusion. How consistent is the teaching and learning experience for disabled students (poll)
- Amy It probably comes as no surprise that the students surveyed for the report stated that applying for, being assessed for, organizing and chasing up the support they need is too difficult and not joined up. The report states that DSA equipment/support sometimes is of poor quality, provided extremely late, or not provided at all. Many disabled students also struggle with the financial burden of extra costs relating to their disability. The report also highlighted that the complaints processes inhibit disabled students from complaining, with one of the reasons for not complaining being lack of support to cope with the bureaucracy of the process.
- Amy The recommendations from this section of the report are primarily to government and Office for Students and relate to creating a much more joined up approach to support which is well overdue. But if this is addressed in isolation via DfE and OfS, there is the danger of DSAs remaining as a medical model driven individual support programme that is at risk of all the challenges Alistair mentioned in the last section. Institutions have a role to play in reducing the reliance on personalised support and individual reasonable adjustments by zoning in on commonly experienced challenges and reducing barriers at source. Applying the principles of digital accessibility and universal design for learning are key. Improvements can be achieved through the provision of accessible course materials and also by providing targeted training to help students to be digitally agile in personalising content. With the advances in mainstream technology these skills will then carry through into the workplace enabling success and independence as they transition on from university. Availability, visibility and guidance regarding ubiquitous assistive technology / productivity tools? (Poll)
- Amy The report made tough reading when it came to the findings relating to social inclusion. Students often felt socially isolated from peers due to lack of understanding or awareness of their needs with 26% always or often feeling excluded. This was often due to practical issues with events and activities such as inaccessible advertisements or poor access arrangements preventing people from participating and building their networks. The same was true of online welcome events that were not designed in an accessible way. The report also stated that accommodation is sometimes unsuitable for disabled students’ needs and is too expensive, increasing the financial burden. A student that came for a DSA assessment at AbilityNet recently did not have suitable options within his university halls so had to be placed in an alternative building which made it more difficult to make connections with people as they weren’t on his course or at his institution.
- Amy The report recommends block grant funding for student unions focused on increasing accessibility for disabled students. It also calls for Unions to take on the access and inclusion of disabled students as an institutional priority. It also advocates monitoring of student accommodation to ensure accessibility appropriate for disabled students. Recommendation that OfS introduces a requirement for HEPs’ Access and Participation Plans to report on the training provided to staff around disability inclusion. In the current online and blended learning environment which looks set to continue for a while, the way social inclusioncan be impacted may be slightly different. I asked Kate Lister from the OU about the findings from her doctorate on engendering mental wellbeing in online learning. The study showed that a sense of belonging in these contexts is often more linked to study competencies and having someone supporting and celebrating successes so tutors and study support staff have a real role to play here. Another enabler is creating accessible online spaces for learning based collaboration at course and module level. What are you doing to support social inclusion online (text chat)
- Alistair 4. Information and advice Good information and advice is key to transitions – both into HE and onward to employment. 25% of students had pre-enrolment transition support specifically for disabled students before the course began A recurring theme throughout the report has also been the importance of having equipment, support, and reasonable adjustment needs identified and set up before term begins, A key factor was the work of support services departments reaching out to prospective students before enrolment to discuss and arrange support as far in advance as possible. Students described how beneficial they found this communication, explaining that it was reassuring to know what help they could receive and to get to know members of the support services department. A recurring theme throughout the report has also been the importance of having equipment, support, and reasonable adjustment needs identified and set up before term begins, which was enabled by the outreach work of these support services professionals.
- Alistair Information & advice recommendations A recurring theme throughout the report has also been the importance of having equipment, support, and reasonable adjustment needs identified and set up before term begins, Government should launch an information and awareness campaign for schools and colleges about ‘disabled student’ status, disclosure, and the DSA. This should include working with disability charities to create a disability services handbook with clear and practical guidance and information. AbilityNet/McNaught advice - how much information do prospective students get on Lecture capture? VLE accessibility? Assistive technologies and productivity tools? What does a disabled student learn about the accessibility of your courses from published course information? (text chat)
- Alistair The accessibility maturity lens Ownership (accessibility belongs to all) Vision (accessibility benefits all) Coherence (poor practices can negate somebody else’s good practices) Training (lack of training or unhelpful training leaves people confused)
- Alistair A virtuous circle of digital accessibility Accessibility is an emergent property of excellent teaching and learning. Good accessibility practices make teaching and learning more effective. OFSTED 2010 The special educational needs and disability review - A statement is not enough p31 In the schools where the best teaching was seen, the need for excessive additional interventions was reduced, enabling the most specialist staff with additional qualifications and experience in teaching pupils with special educational needs to have more time to provide additional support for the smaller group of children and young people who were the most in need.
- Alistair The Maturity Model support we’ve put together can be conceived as Russian dolls – with broad sector wide support gradually shrinking to more intense and focused support for individual institutions. Freely downloadable document describing each lens and each level with tips on moving from one level to the next and links to a wide range of support resources. Interactive tool that helps you rapidly evaluate where you might be and what you might focus on next. Small-group online training exploring sources of objective evidence for each lens with interactive spreadsheet to score and badge progress. Bespoke 1:1 support engaging directly with key people in the organisation to transfer skills for self-assessment and badging with annual external verification.
- Alistair introduce (but Amy demo) A simple model of accessibility maturity Screenshot shows the 5 stages of the accessibility maturity model. These run from "luck" to partnership, each with a typical quote. Quotes are as follows; stage I: Luck - "with luck we won't have any disabled learners" stage II: tokenism - "contact us and we'll help get you DSA funding" stage III: standards - "all our systems are built to WCAG 2.1 AA" stage IV ownership - "staff use digital resources to maximise learner independence" stage V: - partnership "disabled students codesign courses and assessments"
- Alistair
- Amy A constant theme from the report was that there was a substantial burden on the students to come forward and request support which was then inconsistently provided. What we are looking to do with the badging frameworks we have designed is to create structures and frameworks to make it easy to be inclusive by design. The frameworks can help institutions to self evaluate both at the overall structural level but also at module level with the goal of removing that burden from the student so that their experience becomes as seamless as possible with needing to request individual adjustments being occasional rather than the norm. The process we have put together is as follows: Training on how to self evaluate Institutional level planning day when we work with you to set your benchmark and build an action plan for improvements Module level planning day where we dive into some modules and build action plan Annual review with spot check and re-evaluation where appropriate
- Alistair What are the benefits? Focus shifts to user experience rather than standards, making the process more meaningful for all staff. Increased organisational skills & resilience as accessibility becomes: Sustained from within, Part of institutional culture, Externally validated. Compatible with wide range of quality assurance processes. Marketable badging demonstrates value and helps students make informed choices
- Amy So we are in the process of kicking of a pilot of the frameworks – the training sessions are booked in for 11th and 24th November and we will provide details of how to express an interest in participating (we already have a really good range of types of institutions in the mix which is fantastic ) To find out more you can download the institutions level maturity model. If you follow the link in the chat you will get the static doc to download and be emailed a link to the interactive version For those that are unable to take part in the pilot, we will be running further sessions of the group training from January as well as the institution level planning/evaluation sessions. A couple of other items we have already mentioned the NSS survey. Please fill this out and make the point about digital accessibility and online learning experience Also if anyone on the call is not already signed up to the Jisc Teams Site for accessibility collaboration or the mailing list we would urge you to do so. (pull out links into the chat)