Improving the college experience for students on the autism spectrum
Smith College is considering trying to make itself more attractive to smart students on the autism spectrum. I would be grateful for suggestions on how to do this from autistics who read LessWrong. You can write comments here or if you wish to remain anonymous send them to me at Jdmiller@Smith.edu
1) Reduced dependency on the telephone and, if possible, on in-person consultations for bureaucratic purposes. There is no technological reason why monitoring an e-mail or IM account in real time should be any more difficult for a competent staffperson than monitoring a telephone and a physical desk in real time. (If it increases the volume of incoming requests to the point where one staffer can’t handle them, this reflects a demand for an additional staffperson, not a need to bottleneck the communication.) I would have had an easier time making use of my school’s campus services if I didn’t have to use the telephone or take a hike to get attention from them.
2) This.
3) If complicated forms are necessary for whatever reason, attach a diagram or a glossary or something explaining what each field in the form is for.
4) Encourage the distribution of written materials to accompany spoken lectures. I have enough audio processing trouble that I was often lost save for the out-of-context bullet points on my teachers’ slides, or if it was a small class so I could ask for things repeated, I wasted everyone’s time asking for repetitions of sentences that I would have been happy to just read on a handout.
“4) Encourage the distribution of written materials to accompany spoken lectures. I have enough audio processing trouble that I was often lost save for the out-of-context bullet points on my teachers’ slides, or if it was a small class so I could ask for things repeated, I wasted everyone’s time asking for repetitions of sentences that I would have been happy to just read on a handout.”
I emphatically emphasize this
This may be a little tricky, since it still has to project the “university website” image. A fancy university site at least needs an attention-getting slideshow with the pretty pictures and links to press releases.
Why? Does this attract alumni donations? Prospective students? Why exactly do you have to project the university website image?
I’d guess increasing your apparent value to prospective students and their parents is the main value of having shiny fluff on your front page. But I may not be separating the fluff-ass-marketing from the fluff-as-cultural-norm : there is an expectation of what a university page looks like, and people are uncomfortable when their expectations are violated too radically. It’s possible that there’s no intrinsic value to sticking a slideshow with pretty pictures and links to press releases on your website, but because of our current expectations it just looks bad not to have something like that.
At least some universities these days have a separate, more useful, site for the actual students to log into.
I think this would be helpful generally.
If you’re going to improve forms that way, test what you’re doing on people, don’t just guess about what’s needed.
Thanks, these are excellent ideas.
Make it acceptable to skip a good portion of classes. Yes, some attendance at some classes may be important, but there are many cases when we just zone out and get absolutely nothing out of class (this is especially important for foreign language, although my university has been kind enough to give me a foreign language requirement exemption), even though we would do perfectly well (and learn even more efficiently) if everything was just distributed outside of class.
Some of the accommodations are not especially helpful—tape-recording lectures, for example, means that you often have to listen to the entire thing again and use up even more time, when in reality, we could learn the material in a fraction of the time (at a time when we are alert—the problem is that it’s hard to predict periods of alertness and periods of unalertness, and their periods vary from day to day) if we were given written access to the material at a time when we were alert.
My problem may be more related to ADD, but I have both, and there is said to be a large comorbidity between Asperger’s and ADD.
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Also—more class discussion over class forums and less class discussion in class. Also, a school-wide online forum (or mailing list, or at least one for particular majors) would REALLY help for making connections (I know that some schools, like Wellesley, have school-wide forums, and other schools, like Caltech, have house-wide mailing lists). I have no friends here, and part of the reason for this is because there’s simply no online way for me to approach anonymous people in my major or school. This is especially relevant when you have the social skills to only be friends with, say, 0.01% of the population, and are trying to find ways to identify that small percent. Also, people with social anxiety also partake better in forums, and it would make it easier for us to meet those with social anxiety.
Basically, make as much content online as is practically possible. That is the single-most important thing, IMO.
Modernizing classroom instruction as well (more emphasis on interactive simulations when available, rather than on blackboard). I’ve made a list of them here: http://physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=470676
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Also, some system to control variance in GPAs. A lot of us have higher GPA variances than others. The problem with this, though, is that an isolated 0.0 could totally destroy our GPAs (a 0.0 does far more damage than a 1.7, even though there is really little difference between the two), even though we may otherwise have very strong grades. And autistics are probably more likely to get these isolated 0.0s due to issues that arised in one quarter, or communication breakdown between student and professor.
This is very interesting. Aside from specific class/professor problems, I wonder if another cause of this is the challenge of multi-tasking a variance of courses.
It might help if each semester could be structured so that it contained related or complementary courses. Or better yet, have the option of taking double credit-courses. So, a full course load of 2 or 3 intensive courses would be the same amount of hours as 5 or 6 regular courses.
I had this happen unintentionally in my sophomore year (computer engineering).
In 3 different classes (MechE, DiffEQ, and circuits) we happened to be going over very similar material from different angles (under/over/critically-damped systems).
I learned those concepts pretty well, with less effort than other quarters.
Oh yeah, this is very interesting too. Personally, I really cannot fully participate in each and every class when I’m taking 5 classes a quarter. I can only mange to do this by intensely focusing (and going to class) on 2-3 courses, and then practically skipping all the lectures for the other courses (but still managing to do quality work in them relative to the rest of the class)
Thanks, very good suggestions.
If communication with the instructor is expected in order to do well in the class or to get a good grade in the class allow as much as possible that communication to occur online. Also communicate that emailing the instructor outside of the class period is expected.
Provide opportunities to test out of classes or sections of classes and make sure that such opportunities are stated on the syllabus.
Not only having handouts for lecture notes but also having the handouts available online. If attendance is mandatory have it available by the day before, if it is not mandatory then wait until after the class period is over to post it.
Provide social activities that are geared toward such people. High functioning Autistic people really are sometimes social, but extremely differently so. Boardgames such as settlers of Catan or other German style games are good as they give social events with a minimal amount of uncomfortable interactions, if that makes sense (Apples to Apples and other such social board games are not good).
I think one should distinguish between making the college experience easier (less group work, fewer spoken communication requirements) and helping autism spectrum students progress towards high social function. It is possible that the former will inhibit the latter. I hope you will find a balance between the two… it would be very sad if autism spectrum students left the comfort zone of college daycare and were unprepared to be harshly thrust into social reality where the boss really wants you to be a team player.
I don’t know if this has anything to do with autism (I’m not autistic), but I would like for schools to allow students to focus on one subject at a time. Instead of four semesters where they have to simultaneously study language, math, science, and history, have one semester devoted exclusively to each of those.
There are several colleges that do this, calling it the block plan. The ones I know of are Cornell College, Colorado College, and Quest University.
I matured a lot during my college years. I think I have a poorer understanding of subjects I studied as a freshman that weren’t reinforced later when I was older than I do of subjects that I studied as a junior or senior that weren’t reinforced later.