Accessibility in the Psychology Undergraduate Curriculum
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- 5.4. Lectures
5.3. Academic tutorialsStudents in Years 1 and 2 attend weekly small-group tutorials, covering topics related to lectures as well as feedback on coursework. Year 1 tutorials usually take place in seminar rooms in the Psychology building, which are reasonably accessible. Some tutorials take place in the student’s Personal Tutor’s office (see below). Year 2 tutorials usually take place in the tutor’s office. Most tutors are located in the Psychology building, which is reasonably accessible. A few tutors have offices in other buildings. Some of these offices may be difficult to reach for students with mobility impairments. If there is a difficulty for a particular student in getting to the tutor’s office, alternative arrangements are made (e.g. the student might be assigned a different tutor, or tutorials might be held in a more accessible room). Most staff offices in the Psychology building are very easy to find, since offices are just numbered down the single corridor on each floor. For example, room 7.10 will be on the 7th floor. Deaf students might need to use a portable radio aid and microphone to amplify sound. Flexibility. Students are ordinarily required to attend tutorials. However, this requirement might be waived where a reasonable justification exists (e.g. perhaps a student with a social phobia). Decisions about reasonable justification would normally be made by a student’s personal tutor in consultation with the Board of Studies and the Disability & Dyslexia Service. 5.4. LecturesLectures support students in learning from their reading and their practical experiences. The focus of lectures changes across the three years of the degree programme, as stated in the School’s Teaching, Learning and Assessment Policy. Level 4 lectures (autumn of Year 1) supply a framework and structure from which students can guide their studies. Level 5 lectures (through Year 2) encourage students to question the process by which specific knowledge arose, and what research needs to be done in the future. Level 6 lectures (Final Year) highlight what is not known as well as what is, and devote more time to discussion and questioning. Lectures are multimodal in the sense that they typically involve auditory information and visual information simultaneously. Sources of relevant auditory information include the lecturer, other students (asking questions or participating in discussion), and possibly recorded lecture material or sound demonstrations. Sources of relevant visual information include anyone speaking to the class, whether lecturer or student, lecture slides or other visual presentation, and possibly lecture materials that have been made available in advance on Learning Central. Lecturers will ordinarily be informed ahead of time about students in their class with a declared disability that might interfere with the student’s ability to follow a lecture (e.g. a hearing or visual impairment).
Induction loops. Most lecture theatres in the University have an induction loop system that helps deaf people who use a hearing aid or loop listener hear sounds more clearly. These systems have a mic located on a wall or ceiling. The sound signal from the mic is amplified and sent through a cable that loops around the room. The loop produces a magnetic field, and a hearing aid switched to the ‘T’ setting will pick up it up. This will reproduce the original sound for the listener, but with background noise greatly reduced. More information on induction loops can be found on the RNID fact sheet at http://snipurl.com/qj35 . Lecture recordings. Most lectures are recorded and made available to students online to support learning. These recordings can be an important aid to learning for all students, and may be particularly important for students with certain disabilities or for students who unavoidably miss a lecture.
Students are advised that a lecture is an introduction to a topic, and should not be taken as a definitive statement. Moreover, a lecture recording may contain accidental mistakes. Lecture recordings usually capture lecture slides and accompanying audio (i.e. the spoken lecture). Lecture participants are generally not captured on film. Slides. Lecture slides are ordinarily available online 24 hours or more in advance of lectures, though they are occasionally not available until some time after the lecture is delivered. Handouts. Handouts are not usually provided within lectures, but may be made available online along with lecture slides. The type of information provided on handouts for lectures varies widely depending on the module and the instructor (e.g. nothing, copies of slides, key points and diagrams, detailed lecture notes, or some combination of these). Accessibility issues related to lecture materials are discussed above in the section on the Curriculum. Lecture notes. Instructors have freedom over the content and format of their lectures, including the potential to conduct spontaneous or interactive sessions. Lectures do not necessarily follow a rigid plan fixed in advance, and lecturers do not necessarily prepare or follow detailed written notes. We often receive requests from the Dyslexia and Disability Service to provide “lecture notes” in advance to specific students who are likely to have difficulty processing or remembering interactive audio-visual information from lectures (e.g. dyslexic students and others might take longer than other students to read what’s on slides during a lecture; a deaf student and an interpreter might need to agree in advance on appropriate signs for technical vocabulary). Usually, what is required is for at least the main issues and specialized vocabulary to be identified in advance. Often, a specific advance reading will suffice. Lecturers are not expected to prepare bespoke detailed notes. Flexibility. Attendance at lectures is not an aim in and of itself, and is not monitored. Although lecture content is relevant to assessments (coursework as well as exams), in most cases the assessed portion of lecture content will be a subset of the relevant content from recommended readings and lecture materials. In this sense, lectures support the readings. If a particular lecture covers material not in the recommended readings, and if the lecture itself cannot be made accessible to a particular student (e.g. through a lecture recording, or by providing a note-taker, or a translator, etc.), alternative arrangements can usually be made (e.g. by identifying a suitable set of readings, or providing a personal tutorial). Download 160.33 Kb. Share with your friends:
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