To think this university marking criteria is discriminatory?

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'Discriminatory' might be too strong a word, but I think it's not very inclusive.

We have a presentation coming up, and we are specifically graded on the way we present the material. This includes non-verbal communication, making eye contact with the audience, and speaking at a slow and clear rate with good tone of voice. It's for an NHS healthcare degree, so obviously clear and efficient communication is really important. However, the professional body has made it clear that they want to encourage a diverse workforce, including having practitioners with neurodiversity such as autism and ADHD.

I don't think the marking scheme is reflective of that and goes against it, as I think, for example, that autistic students will receive a lower mark because of difficulty making eye contact with the markers, etc.

AIBU?

Agree with PP. If you can't make eye contact - choose another jobs. Plenty don't require it. I wouldn't be reassured if I was being treated by someone gazing off in another direction.

I think they are an excellent set of criteria and whoever came up with them is to be congratulated.

I wish communication and presenting skills were a bigger part of other degrees. It’s something many of our graduate intake struggle with.

I'm an academic and I totally agree with you. I've tried introducing different types of assessments that demonstrate/develop different types of communication skills because these are needed in real life.

But I keep getting knocked back by what-about-ery from colleagues, and when they do sneak through, I get absolutely drowned in individual student requests for adjustments. In the end, I gave up to save my own sanity. I know its a disservice to students but I just don't physically have the time or headspace.

Blind people can’t drive
thats not discrimination

If you are able to effectively communicate in a healthcare context and you are autistic you will need to have learned how to overcome your natural reluctance to eye contact, we can't have healthcare practitioners who can't do their job.

I don’t think you need to worry. I am sure the necessary adjustments to the assessment will be made for those that need them.

It also isn’t relevant.

Indeed. We're in 'blind brain surgeon' territory if we have make every assessment 100% "inclusive".

If this were the only assessment method for the whole course, or there are absolutely no adjustments available, then I think you'd have a point. But if it's a fairly small element then you just need to take the lower marks, with any reasonable adjustments if possible.

It's accepted for reasonable adjustments to have mark penalties sometimes. Eg a student can have a scribe for an English Language exam - but they score zero for spelling and punctuation unless they dictate them in full. In this case if passing the presentation element is a requirement for the course then a reasonable adjustment might be not having to do it, scoring zero but being allowed to pass the course anyway if the rest of your marks are sufficient. Other adjustments might be doing it to a smaller audience, maybe with a mark penalty, or cut the presentation short without being docked marks. But I would focus on getting though it, accept it'll be a lower grade than your usual standard because it's not your forte and work hard on the other elements.

This kind of stupidity is what makes my annoying DH have a point. I am truly for inclusivity and equity.

my DH says “I want to be a footballer but I’m not very good, so is it discrimination that Man Utd won’t hire me?” Of course it isn’t, but these sort of things are important.

Yes you need to be able to communicate and this is what is being tested.

Ive know the issue of a blind social worker wanting a job in the child protection team( as it was then). Quite how they were going to manage since they couldn’t see if the child was covered in bruises or the house was covered in shit I never did work out.

I agree. I have lots of good techniques/ masking that means in most normal 1-on-1 situations it is not obvious I am autistic/ struggle with eye contact.

But I find masking a lot harder in a high pressure environment like a job interview or an assessment. This would mean I am less able to maintain good eye contact, even if there is usually no issue with my communication style and technique.

I am.puzzled that this has not been considered in theaing criteria.

This makes sense to me.

I don't have autism but do have ptsd and GAD, when I've had to give presentations I look above people's heads. In day to day life I've had to learn to do this, masking is exhausting, and I'm sure most anxiety and autism people have had to as well. In healthcare especially it's a key personal skill.

Won't their ILP give any adjustments needed?

Surely the reality is that if you’re not up to the job, you’re not up to the job. So the powers that be can’t let you do the job!

Thats how it was I’m my day training anyway.

But equally healthcare staff need to learn that not all their patients are neurotypical and want eye contact. We had to place a big sticker on the front of my ds' medical notes saying "Austistic: please do NOT get down to his level and make eye contact" in the end because they kept getting in his face.

so That’s also part of the degree then.

Adapting to the needs of the patient

This attitude is the main reason I’m veering sharply away from clinical teaching, despite loving teaching, loving the subject, and getting good feedback from students. The point of a clinical course is to turn you into a competent clinician. The NHS is probably heavily subsidising your studies because you are training to do a valuable job. There is room for so many different people within that - in my field (which I suspect is also yours) we are currently very homogeneous and will be a better workforce with more diversity. BUT it’s not like an academic niche where you can be great at one thing, specialise in just that and ignore the areas that don’t come so naturally. We have to be well rounded, and meet certain basic criteria across a huge range of hard and soft skills and areas of knowledge. The point of your course is not for you to get the highest possible grade, but to train you to do the job that you will be qualified for at the end of it.

The thing that drives me mad about this is that people are not getting the help they need to develop their weaker areas. If I give feedback or offer one-to-one support (on my own time) to a student who is struggling with structuring their writing, then they are more likely to complain that I might be discriminating against them in marking than to accept the help and improve on a skill they will need to write reports and communicate in future clinical roles. It’s such a shame. We all have strengths and weaknesses, it’s a good thing for universities to make adjustments to make courses more accessible to a wider range of people, but that has to be separated from the parallel growing expectation that students should be litigating their way through university, rather than taking every opportunity to develop themselves.

yes, one is an indication of the ability to do the other. Completely fair and transparent grading criteria and directly relevant to the qualification.

Lots of people cant do lots of aspects of lots of qualifications, hence not everybody has all of them

This is interesting.

I've seen superb presentations done by an autistic colleague who'd come a long way from starting out mute in special school. She was part of why we fought so hard for my son to go to special school - they have the will and resources to work on missing skills, whereas autistic kids just surviving in MS often just get an "out" because it's cheaper than helping them. Bit of an aside.

Eye contact doesn't need to be prolonged, plenty of patients wouldn't like that! Just long enough to be recognised.

Even better in a group of 50 people, because obviously you wouldn't hold eye contact with any one person very long. Sounds like perfect opportunity to demonstrate these skills in a comfortable way.

I had a colleague who was (is) probably on the spectrum. I could list a lot of his quirks. Anyway, he worked very hard to become a good public speaker & do things like full eye contact. He relished the challenges.

On all my uni assignment cover sheets it asks for any special needs that should be taken into account (I’m doing a senior healthcare leadership post grad course with Exeter university). But eye contact is important. That said, I usually blur my audience so they feel I’m making eye contact but I’m not focusing - from what I gather most of us do this so would that work for you?

I think it’s a good thing. Unlike the doctor who told my dad in a very matter of fact way ‘‘…it’s terminal. No remission’’ then turned around and wandered off…