Warwick LLB students Olivia Cooper and Leo Rudd have been working to develop a written resource to help staff better understand, support and accommodate the needs of our neurodivergent students.

EDI reps Olivia and Leo are working on this really important issue to ensure Law School staff are fully equipped to offer the right support. The resource will provide information on a number of areas including:

• Understanding neurodivergence
• Ideas on how to support neurodivergent students in the classroom (lectures and/or seminars)
• Best practices for communication
• Making reasonable accommodations

We caught up with them to find out more about the resource, their reasoning behind setting it up and what they hope it will achieve.

Can you tell us more about the resource?

Leo: This booklet will help educate staff members to become more accommodating to neurodivergent students. It will provide comprehensible introductions about different conditions, alongside practical advice and links to additional resources which can be used to help guide staff members as they work with students. With the vast amount of information already available online, we hope that this guide will provide at least an introduction towards supporting neurodivergent students as we aim to make the law school more accommodating. While it is targeted to staff, I think that it also has a lot of potential to help support students, as it can help them to learn more about their neurodivergent peers or find resources which they can use to support themselves.

Olivia: It will educate staff on how the conditions can affect learning at a university level and simple accessibility measures that can be put in place to support students. The resource focuses on the differences between ASD, ADHD, Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, Dyspraxia, and the subsequent links to anxiety and depression, while finding common simple solutions to enhance the classroom experience for most neurodiverse students. This is just the first step in what will hopefully become a much wider movement that considers every student’s learning journey. This resource cannot cover everyone’s individual needs, but we hope it will spark a process that will empower and equip staff to support neurodivergent students and in turn encourage students to speak up and ask for help.

All the information is already out there but it is not getting to the right people, the educators who can actually make a difference, that’s where our booklet comes in. Using both outside expert resources, condensing and compiling the disabilities team’s advice, and utilising relevant societies, our booklet aims to compile available advice in a digestible form that staff members will actually have time to read. It also aims to bring the silent struggles of neurodiverse students out of the shadows and into the forefront of educator’s minds - creating a supportive community that enhances the university experience.

Through understanding we hope to build patience and compassion, bridging a gap between staff and neurodiverse students, and creating effective communication to offer the support lacking in many education establishments.

Why did you decide to set this up? What was your reasoning behind this project?

Olivia: I wasn’t diagnosed with dyslexia until university and suddenly the difference in the way I thought the abilities I seemed to be lacking all made sense, however the inability to ask for support remained. Throughout my time at the law school I have met so many wonderful compassionate members of staff who provided an inclusive environment actively engaging and enacting my reasonable adjustments. However, my time at university has also been filled with “I don’t know”, “I’ll have to ask” and “Let me check that”. The knowledge base is simply not available in a way that busy members of staff can interact with or learn from.

The extent of the problem was made apparent at a neurodivergent focus group where students with all different conditions related to the same problems. Problems that have simple solutions, such as recording lectures, including PowerPoints and releasing exam questions on time. The central issue was a lack of understanding of the realities of completing a university degree with neurodivergences. This is symptomatic of the education system systemically ignoring those who don’t fit the neurotypical mould. Our booklet aims to challenge this barrier by raising awareness. No student should feel inadequate, be ignored or lost due to systemic deficiencies.

Leo: After publishing our first booklet, ‘Law School Essentials Handbook’ which aimed to support students as they navigated through their first year of university, we realised that guidebooks can be an effective resource to condense and share information, so why not do the same for staff? We understand that staff members are extremely busy and so they may not have the time to research these topics. So, condensing this information into a comprehensible booklet can be an accessible and effective approach to implement practices to support students. We also think that this booklet can be used as a long-term resource.

Starting university can be intimidating for anyone, especially for neurodivergent students. But if students are aware that there are structures and practices in place which are designed to support them whilst they study, we hope that this can provide some reassurance that they will be surrounded by staff who can understand and support them.

What do you hope it will achieve?

Leo: I hope that this resource helps staff members to become more accommodating towards neurodivergent students. But I think that it’s also important that it helps to remove any stigma or confusion towards certain conditions, having a better understanding can help to create a more supportive environment for students to learn in. Ultimately, I want this resource to make support for students to be more easily accessible and ensure that all students are able to thrive at Warwick Law School.

Olivia: Simply put, we hope this booklet will educate staff while providing them with simple methods to support neurodiverse students, creating education equality and a productive learning environment for all students.

To elaborate further, we hope this tool will be the first step in a continuous effort to address the educational limitations against those who are neurodiverse. Amplifying the student experience to give already supportive staff more resources to fully engage as many students as possible. The creation and interaction with this resource is a refusal to follow the trend of ignoring those with differences. This is not the full solution but hopefully it will drive a conscious effort to make the law school an even more inclusive environment for future students.

The Law School is eager for student feedback, this is our response to that. Without the willingness of staff to engage with constructive criticism and the support I have personally received this resource would never have been created. We hope this booklet is received with the same enthusiasm!

Congratulations to both Olivia and Leo on creating such an important resource for our staff. We hope it will help to support our neurodiverse students in their studies, and assist staff in better understanding their needs.

The resource is due to be completed at the start of term three.

Leo and Olivia would welcome any staff questions or student suggestions to further enhance the resource. They would also be interested in collaborating with different societies at Warwick, to assist with promotion of the information. Please email Olivia.cooper.1@warwick.ac.uk or Leo.Rudd@warwick.ac.uk