Reasonable adjustments - dissertation

[learningishard]

Can anyone share what reasonable adjustments are offered to autistic students for final year dissertations? Provider has no suggestions but struggling with understanding the parameters and what is expected of them. Also struggling to communicate with their allocated supervisor but told they cannot change.

Reasonable adjustments are usually personal but here are some suggestions to start with:
Extra time to complete
Extra support doing research should be available from student services and the library services
Student needs to talk to allocated supervisor and explain their specific needs
Extra supervisions over normal allocation
I would recommend recording all supervisions as it’s difficult to take in all the information at the time.
Speak to Learning support and ask what the uni guidance is and ask them to speak to supervisor.
If having problems with supervisor, speak to personal tutor and student services.

As @Rocknrollstar says, extra time would be usual. The student should have some sort of assessment document from the university’s disability service, which will have the details.

If they don’t have such an assessment of “reasonable adjustments “ for disability, they need to get one asap. There will need to be a proper medical diagnosis etc.

If the student is writing a dissertation, I’m assuming that they’re in their final year? The dissertation builds on all the learning in the degree and so should be scaffolded from that learning. It is a demonstration of near graduate-level independence: my place uses the term “graduateness” (whatever one thinks of the word, it describes the level of learning to be demonstrated).

About the supervisor and supervision, the student could be projecting general unease with the dissertation onto an individual. It’s pretty normal. Doing a dissertation is hard for many students- they have to be ready to go with the flow of their research and investigate and explore in ways that are often quite new - especially for less academic students, or those who prefer a very structured and specific assessment.

Doing a dissertation is a bit like learning to drive. It feels overwhelming at first, but you have to keep at it and try to trust to the process.

Hmm.. she has a student support plan and dsa. But the SSP is developed and amended each year and is based on lectures / seminars / labs. Not a dissertation which is very different. And autism related communication difficulties mean that meetings with supervisor is probably quite different to other students, but no consideration is given to this in terms of time available etc.

Possibly something to discuss with disability support.

What DSA provisions are in place? It's quite common to have both a mentor and a study skills support person - the latter in particular should be supporting dissertation work. If that's not in place, talk to whoever did the DSA assessment to get it added in.

The disability resource centre at the university will be able to advise and tailor any needs towards the format of exams/dissertation/coursework for the current year. Make them aware of the mode of assessment for the year. This will vary across subjects, so best to be proactive on this, rather than assuming the disability people will know, as there is still some settlement and changes taking place, following Covid.

But the best advice for a dissertation is to take it slow and steady and to build on it over the time you have. Too much extra time may impact on other exams you may be taking.

Like most disabilities some of the reasonable adjustments may be fairly generic, like extra time, and some maybe very specific to the person.

Start by checking the University Resources and even googling to find lists of suggested Reasonable Adjustments to see if any are appropriate.

Secondly rather than focusing on Autism think about the barriers that they face. Once you have identified these then look for solutions to remove the barriers. For example difficulty absorbing feedback from tutor might benefit from being able to record tutorials so they can be played back several times to help understand what is required.

And I would say further that extra time with the dissertation supervisor may not be a reasonable accommodation or adjustment.

But that support should be sought from the disabilities learning support team. The issue is presumably, the type of assessment it is, not a difficulty with the subject matter itself. It’s not appropriate to expect the supervisor to support that beyond the usual number of hours all students get for supervision. It’s much more appropriate to work with learning support people, who will have the appropriate skills at the level of supporting the style of assessment that is the dissertation. IYSWIM.

My son had extra time for exams but for coursework and dissertation he did not as this is counted as independent study which you timetable yourself. He could have applied for an extension if he needed to but would have had to submitted full written reasons why he needed one.