Son not allowed to continue to second year at uni

[PocketSand]

DS2 has just completed his first year in an engineering degree. His results are all over the place from 1st in maths to 2:2 to required resits. He exceeded the A level grade requirements for MEng. He is autistic and has ADHD. He was un medicated prior to and during most of his first year due to shortages followed by referral to cardiology.

His DSA support didn't start til the spring term and one support worker provided 1 hour support when 30 hours was approved. He constantly tells the one he has seen that everything is fine and they believe him.

He always says everything is fine and doesn't ask for help. He has never been to the library and relies totally on lecture notes. He doesn't know what independent study is. I have always been his advocate but now he is expected to advocate for himself. No one at the uni knows these issues - he has not even contacted his personal tutor let alone disability services and just thinks he needs to work harder.

He found out today that he has failed his third submission of a lab report he initially submitted in February. He did not have DSA agreed support at that time so he didn’t have his own laptop. He borrowed another student’s at the time but when he had to resubmit no longer had access to his results and so he tried to cobble together a report using specimen (and maybe someone else’s results - not clear). He had previously received an email saying he couldn’t proceed unless he passed resubmission. I assume that’s where we are at now.

His feedback is harsh - shouldn’t study for a degree if not prepared to use feedback to improve his work. Trouble is he often doesn’t understand the feedback and he is unwilling to ask for clarification as he fears tutor’s anger. He says he doesn’t know who marked the work so doesn’t know who to talk to and seems generally clueless about most administrative issues.

I feel completely in the dark and don’t know where to go from here. Obviously I don’t want to just give up and accept his journey ends here as it seems very unfair but don’t know what I can do to try and enable him to fix this or if it can be fixed.

Can anyone who knows the system provide advice on next steps please?

At the very least he did English and History at GCSE I think from what the op says.

I don’t understand why he’s being examined on year 2 work in year 1 coursework @PocketSand can you explain a bit more about that?

There isn't coursework for GCSE English Lit and Lang or History. It was removed ages ago, way before the new spec came in.

All bodies are different but that doesn’t stop us being able to define some as male/female or tall/short. Just like we also determine some people at diabetic for example but they will have varying levels of blood sugar, some very close to those not defined as diabetic. Neurodiverse conditions like ASD and ADHD are clinically recognised and in doing that psychiatrists, psychologists, speech and learning experts all recognise ND AND NT. Not sure what your qualifications are in relation to those disciplines?

No one has yet defined what a typical brain is as one doesn't exist. By all means share away what you think is a definition of a typical brain.

ND relates to all brains. Experts will say brains are diverse and differ and everyone processes things differently and that ND relates to all brains hence why the term was coined...to talk about all brains.

At a guess these questions may have required a higher level of thinking and understanding developed through the reading, experience and activities which ds may have perceived as optional.

Unless you’re willing to hold his hand through uni, he’ll need to actively engage with the support network and his course if he wants a degree. An option is to switch to an Open University course and do it at home. I did one and they’re fantastic. He could get a support worker for that but he would need to be fairly proactive

Fair enough I’m wrong on coursework. But he did computer science gcse. Surely one or more of his subjects will have had coursework.

I am really concerned by this:

Where he seems to have come unstuck is not being able to answer the ‘excellence’ questions where the content was not taught in the 1st year and questions are based on 2nd year syllabus/exam papers.

^this is unusual. It would be very strange for coursework to be based on a year of teaching that the students have not yet had. Are you sure this is the case?

He has previously relied on past papers and mark schemes to learn by his mistakes and wrongly assumed that he could guess what was required in his first submission to learn what was required. Hence his lecturers being pissed off he did not make sure he knew the requirements before making his first submission. He now knows the expectation is to make sure you get it right the first time and he has to change his way of learning. This may reduce the workload of staff but I’m not sure it teaches the valuable lesson of learning by mistakes and seeing ‘failure’ as a means to improve and learn to pick yourself up to continue toward success.

^this attitude that he and you have concerns me as well. University is not school with external exams. He really doesn’t seem to have ever had to do any kind of independent study and this is something he should work on with his support tutor and personal tutor. Learning by mistakes happens in seminars and small group work throughout the year, not exams and assessments that make up end of year results.

Does he have a module handbook or similar? (Apologies if you have answered that already and I’ve missed it.)

There are actually 3 accepted terms. Neurodivergent relating to those whose brains process information in a way that is not typical and includes conditions such as ADHD or autism.
Neurodiversity which relates to the need to treat all differences as just that differences not better or worse than others
Neurotypical referring to someone who processes information in a way that would be expected for their age, culture and environment.

These terms relate to the way a brain PROCESSES information and therefore responds to it. So yes all brains are different and a typical brain physical might not exist BUT there are accepted expected responses to certain environments and stimuli that neurotypical people (estimated at c80% of the population) will demonstrate.

I don’t expect to convince you and anyway this thread was supposed to be focused on providing support to someone who asked a question relating to her son who I believe she considers ND. That is frankly the important thing not you disagreeing with the semantics and terminology

It is odd that you speak out the need to treat all differences as that and then say that you do not support that idea.

There is no typical way of processing information. If we cannot prove there is a typical way of processing things. A response is an output and processing is an input. People with diagnosis can also respond in the exact same way as people without and people without can response in ways that differ...because that is the nature of brains.

You will not convince me as people without a diagnosis fit within both ND and ND labels. The whole reason people use these terms now is because they are being politicised and I know that the reason ND was created was to talk about all brains not exclude some. Which is ironic! Talking about inclusion while excluding the ones that it was meant to talk about.

Even if the experience is just a few days in different environments (private small firm vs big firm vs public) it might be really helpful and clarify things for your DS in terms of where he wants to end up - part of a team or working on his own for example, and to observe skills like team work, managing upwards and downwards, communication which are highly valued and can be learned. Sounds like you are doing a fantastic job (all of you!)

His A levels didn't require coursework - maths, further maths and physics.

He had a 1:1 specialist SEN tutor for GCSE english language and literature and history. He started off with unstructured stream of consciousness but she explicitly taught him how to structure and present his work. By the time exam came around he had learnt how to do this independently. These skills were not required at A level and he has not retained the teaching he received from his tutor as he has not practiced it.

It is quite common in STEM subjects for the questions to become increasingly harder with higher marks attached to them that most students will be unable to answer. His course has 'excellence' questions/marks that are above and beyond what has been taught.

I appreciate that there will be extension questions. But he should be able to pass the coursework with just the information that has been taught in the relevant year.

How did things go yesterday? Did you get any clarity?

Learning through mistakes is quite common in STEM. This is why in maths they are taught to set out and work out each part of the problem which generally has multiple parts where the answer to later parts depends on the solutions found to earlier parts. It is essential to be able to work out where you went wrong and correct that section rather than just look at the final answer. Programming requires ongoing testing during construction. You don't write the whole programme before running it! Multiple iterations and ongoing adaptation in response to something not working as anticipated is normal. The experiments carried out to replicate previous experiments often yield unexpected results and hence why detailed methodology is important and then discussing why results were not as expected. Theories are not junked because of single anomolous results - see Thomas Kuhn on scientific revolutions. So I can understand why DS2 assumed this way of working was acceptable.

He didn't get to learn how to write a lab report in a non assessed environment. He only did two in the first year and both were assessed. The first one he passed and the only feedback was 'good' so he thought he knew how to do it and approached the second one in the same way.

He will definitely have been given information on how to write and present a lab report since it’s essential marked coursework. That will have perhaps been in a seminar, perhaps covered in a lecture or a library session, or been in a textbook or been one of the core readings.

it’s like referencing. Students regularly tell me they haven’t been taught it. I tell them where to find the information on how to reference repeatedly in weeks 1-3, it’s in their course information, the library run 3 sessions per semester and it’s in their module handbook for every module. But every year I have students telling me they were never taught.

@Tippertapperfeet lecturer failed to make contact so DS2 has chased him again with another polite email.

@Tippertapperfeet I never said he wasn't provided information at some point. Just that he never had the opportunity to practise applying information provided to write a report which was not assessed.

Bear in mind that A level results come out on Thursday so the lecturer might be incredibly busy right now.

hopefully you’ll get clarity on whether he has passed or not soon.

He won’t be given the opportunity to practice that sort of thing in the way he would have been at school. We tell students how to lay out a piece of work and the referencing expected and they have to get on with it.

I do offer to read a first draft - I am rarely taken up on that. Do you know if he asked his lecturer or DSA tutor to read a draft to see if he was adhering to the standard expected?

Oh my days - this is UNIVERSITY! Not school.

The op talking to student support with her son, given the difficulties he has, is actually very reasonable.

The lecturer emailed DS2 on Friday evening to say it was time to talk about the lab report but has not followed it up. Hence DS2 having to chase him.

It would be normal for it to be down to the student to follow this up. It is an offer of help not an obligation. He needs to learn to take the initiative.

I think the op’s DS did email to follow up?

He did but op continues to use words like “chase” as if the lecturer is somehow lacking and should be more proactive.