- Title
- "So what have we got this semester?": dealing with diversity among enabling student cohorts
- Creator
- Bunn, Rosalie J.
- Relation
- 3rd National Conference of Enabling Educators. Proceedings of the 3rd National Conference of Enabling Educators (Toowoomba, Qld 25-27 November, 2009)
- Relation
- http://www.usq.edu.au/oac/projects/eec
- Publisher
- University of Southern Queensland
- Resource Type
- conference paper
- Date
- 2009
- Description
- The Open Foundation program at the University of Newcastle has always embraced students from a wide variety of backgrounds and potentially with a wide variety of disabilities and other problems that are likely to inhibit their learning. This paper addresses some of the problems encountered during fourteen years of teaching in the program, and lessons learnt in attempting to deal with diverse cohorts of students. Our job to act as a sorting mechanism for undergraduate programs carries a great amount of responsibility, not only to uphold the integrity and standards of the program but also to the individual students who risk a lot, including lifestyle, career, and relationship changes. When students are additionally burdened in this quest for change by learning disabilities, mental illness, physical disabilities, lack of confidence or over confidence, lack of Information Technology skills, no prior adult learning experiences, ESL issues, coming to terms with Indigenous, transsexual or gay identities or alternatively with discrimination based on these identities, it makes for very interesting adjustments for students and requires that staff are sensitive to all these needs and deal with them in an appropriate manner. While we have Disability officers, Counsellors and Learning Support officers, in the first instance and primarily in relation to their learning, lecturers are the initial and most immediate source of advice and encouragement. It is often to them that referring, guiding and facilitating adjustment to students’ new learning environment falls. How lecturers deal with it then becomes a matter of experience, insight and initiative. This paper unpacks some of the issues teaching to diverse student cohorts entails.
- Subject
- University of Newcastle, (NSW); Open Foundation; learning support; student cohorts; diversity
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/919325
- Identifier
- uon:8832
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781921420092
- Language
- eng
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