Tips for Tertiary Students
Struggling to keep up at uni? That’s understandable. Neurodivergent tertiary students often feel they are in a constant uphill battle with confusing assignments, readings and feedback that knocks their confidence.
Identifying ways to hack the learning process spurred Dr Ruth Gibbons into creating N@Skills, an online toolkit to empower neurodivergent students ‘to flourish in an environment that is not designed for you,” as she describes it. N@Skills also provides support for staff training.
Ruth is a neurodivergent researcher, anthropologist and entrepreneur who lectured for nine years at Massey University and now creates online courses for neurodivergent students.
All students face a huge leap from school to university where self-directed learning is required. As Ruth explains, one university paper is estimated to take 15 hours a week, but only two hours are lectures and tutorials – the rest is self-managed.
“You’re not necessarily taught how to manage that time, or what you’re meant to gain.
“As a lecturer, I saw a lot of people who were neurodivergent beating themselves up, believing that as a student at uni, you have to suffer and you have to struggle. So, they were studying, but they weren’t learning.”
Being able to move – to fidget, to get up and stretch – is crucial in the learning journey.
Here are a few simple tips from Ruth for starters:
- Ruth says neurodivergent learners can find visual cues useful – and building those into learning notes is a great tip for both absorbing and revising notes. “I teach a technique where, along with the reading, you do a visual summary of each ” She says, “It gets you to think outside the box, and learn more when you take something from one form to another because you have to analyse and think it through.”
- Ruth also addresses the ‘overwhelm’ that students can face, with tips on how to make it work for the neurodiverse brain and avoid disappearing into a rabbit blackhole – a frequent trap for the inexperienced. Ruth suggests breaks to manage the nervous system spikes. Rather than setting a timer to make you work, set a timer to help you stop and manage your adrenaline spikes.
- Ruth observed what many parents can vouch for… being able to move – to fidget, to get up and stretch – is crucial in the learning journey. “I did some testing with adults, and we found that made a major difference to people’s ability to focus. I’ve learned that for all neurodivergent (people) movement is incredibly important, because if they don’t move, they’re using up all the energy to stay still. So, if you think about the classroom environment where you sit still, you are actually switching off some of your ability to focus because of that.”
- Ruth recommends trying breathing techniques that calm the vagus nerve – a critical part of the parasympathetic nervous system that controls resting heart rate, respiration and digestion. If that doesn’t work, flick your hands like you’re shaking off water or try lifting and dropping your shoulders to help dissipate the built-up stress reaction.
Ruth offers free advice on lecture notes, handling academic reading and making sense of essay questions via her Dyslexic Collective videos on YouTube
For more in-depth support, see N@Skills or Ruth’s website.
Our thanks to contributor Wendy Colville
