Louise Dennis: Teaching Portfolio

Disability

As noted in several PGCHE workshops the disability issues that most frequently affect teaching staff are those to do with Dyslexia, Visual and Hearing Impairment.

Dyslexia

As a subject which does not contains a high essay-writing component the issue of the effect of dyslexia on the ability to do coursework does not arise much in Computer Science. In general we are more interested in whether the coursework is technically correct than in issues of spelling, presentation or punctuation. The same considerations hold true of exam performance and I, personally, actually dislike the dyslexic stickers currently in use by the University. I attempt to mark all papers a question at a time, randomising papers in between questions. This means that one student will not be consistently penalised by being the first paper marked when I tend to be unsure exactly how the proposed mark scheme is going to work in practice. It also prevents me forming an opinion about a students' competence early on in the marking of an exam script and then applying that to my marking of subsequent questions. When I have scripts with dyslexic stickers attached this singles them out and I find I do identify that script individually and do start to form a judgement of the competence of that student.

The other major day-to-day issue related to dyslexia is note-taking in lectures. At present I provide copies of all my lecture slides on the module website and I am working towards making sure there is a always textbook which can be referred to so that students do not have to rely entirely on recall and their own notes when it comes to revision.

From the perspective of pastoral care as opposed to module convener I have dealt with two students whose dyslexia has been diagnosed during the course of their studies. This so far has revolved around making sure that retrospective extenuating circumstances are noted for exams where they were not allowed extra time.

Visual and Hearing Impairment

Handling the issue of visual impairment has proved much harder than I anticipated. I have twice now had to increase the font size on slides following complaints, revealing that the default styles I had used throughout my PhD and PostDoc, while suitable for smaller rooms, were ill-suited to the large lecture theatres. Similarly it had not occurred to me, during programming demonstrations, that the default font sizes chosen by many applications were not suitable for lecture theatres. An associated issue is the provision of lecture slide print outs with an appropriate font. The support team within computer science recommend strongly that all lecture slides provided through websites are printed six slides to a page with obvious implications for font size. To date this has never appeared to be an issue but I do tell students that print outs with fewer slides per page are available to individuals on request.

Following the outcome of research published at the 5th Learning and Teaching Conference [Rutherford, 04] I also intend to make more use of the microphone facilities. In the past I have considered my voice projection skills sufficient for lectures and some bad experiences with feedback from microphones (especially in some of the large, non-lecture theatre, teaching rooms in the Exchange Building) had disuaded me from using them. However Rutherford made a good case that microphones, where available, should be used in all large group teaching contexts and I intend to assimilate this into my teaching in future.

The issues of font size are easily fixed once raised. Of more long term concern are issues surrounding the use of whiteboards. I find these an invaluable tool in the teaching of mathematics if only because the act of writing out a derivation or calculation takes longer than reading it from a slide and so gives the students more time to digest the material. However I have found the skill of not talking while writing and then turning to face my audience and speaking very hard to master since the temptation is to speak and write at the same time in order to explain what I am doing as I go along. So far there have been no complaints. I'm aware that a new technology is being placed in some lecture theatres whereby a lecturer can treat the computer screen like a whiteboard. This may be a solution although the screen area available may cause problems and, in particular, make it difficult for student notes to keep pace with the disappearance of details from the screen. Although I usually provide a copy of everything I write on the board in the lecture notes, I have found students seem to prefer to take down anything I actually write themselves. I'm not sure of the cause of this except, perhaps, anxiety that the provided notes may be incomplete. Another solution might be to use transparencies instead of data projected slides. This would allow me to easily switch between writing on a blank transparency and showing a slide - however in the past my use of transparencies has elicited complaints from the students and I do not feel strongly enough about the issue to feel it is worth creating them if the student body prefer information projected by a data projector. A final issue with the use of whiteboards is the choice of pen colour. In the large lecture theatres students clearly find both the green and red pens difficult to read, however by the end of a semester it becomes very difficult to find functioning black or blue pens in the lecture theatre (or associated store cupboards to which I once managed to gain access). In short the interaction between my use of the whiteboard and visual and hearing impairment is still an area in need of attention. The solution may come through better technique (and marker supplies) or it may come through a change in technology either to a virtual whiteboard or a return to the use of transparencies.

Reference

[Rutherford, 04] P. Rutherford, The acoustics of teaching facilities: a case study of the University of Nottingham. 5th Learning and Teaching Conference, University of Nottingham.