What colleges do to support students: My role as an Inclusive Learning Assistant

As we begin the 2018/19 session, many new students will be coming to Ayrshire College straight from school, while others will be returning as mature students – eager to return to education in order to gain the skills they require for their dream career.

Whatever your age or background, coming to college can be a lot of things to everyone. Exciting. Uncertain. Even daunting.

Thankfully there is a team in place at Ayrshire College who can help you learn in the best possible way for you, straight away. That team is the Inclusive Learning team.

Over the next two weeks on this blog, you will be able to get to know everything you’ll need to know about the Inclusive Learning team, through written blog posts, podcasts, and videos.

We start by talking with two of the Inclusive Learning Advisors at the College – Beth O’Neill (left)and Lorna Wales (right) at the Ayr Campus – to find out how they help students.

What the role involves

Lorna: My job is to assess students and put arrangements in place for any student that needs additional arrangements. A lot of the students that we have, have been out of education for a considerable amount of time. That can be quite challenging, especially for some mature students. Assistive technology, like the text-to-speech software that we use, might be a new thing to them. So we help students in how to learn.

Beth: We have a busy role at the College. As Inclusive Learning Officers, we needs-assess and support students. We can put loads of different types of support in place, such as putting Learning Assistants into class with the students. They can be there to read, scribe or just prompt them, giving them general assistance in class. If a student needs extra time in exams or a reader/scriber in an exam then we would arrange that as well

Putting a plan in place

Lorna: If a student identifies themselves as needing additional support – they come into us and we give them an online needs assessment which asks for lots of information like: How are they at reading? How is their concentration? How’s their mental health? How’s their notetaking?

They score themselves, we take that score and from our experience, we can pick up on things. We might be able to say ‘look I think you might have a touch of dyslexia, let’s do some dyslexia screening.’ What we then do is make recommendations to the curriculum staff to advise that maybe they’ll need handouts in advance of a lesson, or they need handouts online as they’ll struggle with notetaking. Or it might be that they’ll need additional time, they might need adapted materials, these recommendations are put to curriculum and they’ll put them in place.

Beth: There doesn’t tend to be any problems putting a plan in place for a student’s needs. It’s a student-centred approach. We like to work collaboratively so we do work very closely with curriculum. I would say Inclusive Learning works closely with curriculum and Student Services to make sure the students are supported in all aspects of their course.

Rewarding job

Beth: It’s so rewarding to see a student progressing and becoming more independent. It might sound complicated to say we’re promoting independence, but you do see students take ownership of their learning.

A great example would be that I supported a student who came from school, he was with us for around eight years in total. The student had a very bad accident when he was younger, leaving him disabled, partially blind, and with quite a few learning difficulties. He tried a few different courses but near the end he stuck at Business & Computing. He’s now into his third year of university – and recently came back to tell us he’s had all As and Bs in his exams.

He’s had a lot of barriers but having that support in place, he’s said himself he didn’t think he could do it without the support of Inclusive Learning. He’s a major success story. He’s loving every bit of it.

Another student I worked with years ago was autistic and severely dyslexic, and at one point he was close to throwing in the towel, but with a good bit of in-class support from us really helped him, and he’s now a trained nurse and is going on to do his Masters.

Lorna: There’s a student I had who is autistic and was in Supported Learning. He made no eye contact at all and would stand in the corridor with his back to the wall. He struggled extremely badly socially. He chose not to go onto university, he felt he’d reached his level when he left at HND level, but now he sells his own artwork. We have a piece of his artwork up in our office that is absolutely superb! He’ll come in and speak about his experience of college, He’s a completely different character. The transformation in him is incredible.

I support care experienced students at the College. A lot of these students have had very little education, and it’s scary for them. Even if a student comes and doesn’t present themselves as needing educational support, I always make sure I let them know I’m here for them regardless. College can be a scary place. Transitioning into an adult environment when they’ve maybe had a negative experience with adults, it really helps if they know there’s one person here who they can go to with anything.

Up until now, we’ve got 179 referrals for the Ayr Campus for care experienced students. We’ve noticed having just one person identified to support that role has resulted in a lot more referrals.

Challenges

Lorna: I think a lot of students, when they come to the College with a negative experience from school, come with a negative outlook to what college life is going to be. In Inclusive Learning we work with students. We don’t work for them. Anything we put in place has to be agreed by the student. We don’t dictate to them, we agree a plan. I think when you give learners ownership of their learning they automatically develop.

We try to install in them that college is completely different to school – they’re not here because they have to be, they’re here because they’ve chosen to be. I might put something in place, and I’m relying on the student to let me know if that’s working. But like I said, we also work closely with our curriculum managers and lecturers and they too can let us know if they want to look at something else for the student.

Changes

Beth: I started as a Learning Assistant in the classroom. And I’ve been an Inclusive Learning Officer for four years. I’ve been here for 12 years in total. We were called note takers when we first began. There wasn’t as much one-to-one support I would say. But through the years it’s become a lot more student-centred. There’s a lot more support available.

The workload has increased dramatically. I think that’s because more people are aware of who we are, where we are and what we can provide. There’s not so much of a stigma now of people backing off and not asking for support. They identify that they need that support. It’s trickling in from school, they’re receiving support at school and taking that into college.

Lorna: It’s completely different from when we started. I’ve been in education for 19 years, I started in Supportive Education before coming to Inclusive Learning five years ago. I think one of the major things I see now is that years ago it was very rare for people with additional support needs to be in mainstream courses. There wasn’t the possibility of progression as there is now. We see a lot of students come from Supported Learning into mainstream because there is that resource there that provides the additional support. They’re not as pigeonholed as they maybe were before.

If you believe you would benefit from additional support at the College, get in touch with the Inclusive Learning team.