The student who I wanted to take notice, sits alone on a large table away from the other students, their arm sheltering, protecting their copious note taking. Their writing neat and organised, pages of it, a textual journal rather than visual. Speaking to them is a little different from other students, eye contact is made, but firmly locked even when you want them to look in the direction of the slides at the front of the studio, or the laptop that is in front of them. They stare, gesture to indicate they have understood the instructions that you have just given, ‘do you understand what you need to do?’ is met with an affirmative ‘yes’ but does the complete opposite which is nearly always the same, notebook drawn closer, pen poised and head down so low their nose touches the page, they begin to write their neat notes. ‘What are you writing?’ I ask, ‘I write a lot, about a lot of things’ they say without looking up.
The co-lecturer bellows the next set of instructions to the class, they are way ahead, I don’t want this student to fall behind, but we are behind. ‘Shall we log-on to Padlet so you can begin the task that’s been set?’ ‘Padlet?’ and so I explain again what today’s task is, to upload a picture of their personal object to Padlet and to write a list saying what it is, how they acquired it and what it’s used for, its sentimental value and so on.
Overall, it takes 40 minutes to navigate to the module page on Moodle to access the Padlet link. They had misplaced their student ID details, that then took a few minutes to find and quite a few further minutes to use them to log-in to Moodle. Once in Moodle, a long period of time was spent trying to find the correct page where the Padlet link was. The 40 minutes had been spent with the student intermittently throughout the course of the session as together with the co-lecturer we delivered the session to the rest of the cohort. It was a combination of me asking questions, giving instructions in bite sized chunks, conducting demonstrations using their laptop and or guiding them as they ‘attempted’ to do the same independently. As soon as we arrived at the correct page, the arrow poised over the Padlet link, somehow the student would inadvertently navigate away from the page where we were supposed to be. The process would then begin again.
I noticed that at any given point whether I was giving a demonstration or verbally giving instructions the student would continue to write in their notebook. I suggested they write some of the instructions, they responded intuitively, starting a new page, smoothing out the notebook flat and began writing in list form. It took a while. They never did upload anything to Padlet or catch-up with the remainder of the session or produce the required work for the session.
Can we provide alternative ways for them to express their knowledge?
During this session I had been made aware that the student didn’t have an ISA but that they required specialist support. I aim to use this experience as a way to explore what it means build an inclusive learning environment.
[548 words]