Scottish
Disability
Team
Section 6: Strategies for Higher Education
Please click on one of the following links, or scroll down this page to find the relevant paragraph.
- What is the Higher Education context?
- Learning about learning!
- Why do you need strategies for learning?
- What is a strategy?
- So, what might be expected in Higher Education?
- Understanding the learning process
- Effective and less effective strategies
- Mind Mapping
- How to make a mind map
- Equipment
- Ways that other people can help
- Responsibility for your learning
What is the Higher Education context?
Entering Higher Education is a new experience for everyone. We have a sense of achievement when arriving on our course of choice - we have earned the right to be there. However, we are not always prepared for how different the experience studying in Higher Education is compared to what has come before, whether it is employment, school or another course. The new ways in which we are taught and expected to learn, can cause us difficulty.
Learning about learning!
Learning about how to learn is a fundamental activity for all. For a dyslexic person there can often be an even more pressing need to understand the learning process. This is often because the ways in which we have been taught to learn in the past are either unsuitable for Higher Education, or do not play to our strengths.
Why do you need strategies for learning?
We all have strategies for learning; without them we don't learn! However, we are often unaware of the fact that we are using them and what they are, because the process has become 'automatic' through use. It is easy to forget that as infants we have all had to learn to walk, just as we have had to learn to read and write. (See also: Section 3: Experiencing dyslexia)
Becoming aware of our existing strategies may help us realise that some of them are no longer appropriate or helpful and that another approach is necessary. (See also: Section 8: Stress and self-esteem)
Anyone studying in Higher Education needs to develop strategies for learning which suit them and are appropriate to the subject that they are studying. Your strategies for learning will also have to be appropriate to the ways in which you are taught. In Higher Education most students are expected to attend lectures and seminars, use the library and many do practical work. Some of your strategies for learning will support you when you are being taught and others will help when you are working independently in your studies.
You will also need to be adaptable to changing demands throughout the day. Knowing what is being demanded of you and which strategy for learning is most appropriate at a given time is a strategy in its own right.
What is a strategy?
A strategy, in the context of learning, is best described as a flexible plan of action. As we have said before, recognising and using your strengths, being aware of how you learn and applying that knowledge, is an essential part of an effective learning process. This includes understanding how your dyslexia can both advantage and disadvantage your learning process.
Strategies involve a flexible approach to learning tasks. Whereas a 'plan' is fixed, a strategy can respond to changing needs and circumstances. We all have strategies for the different learning situations we might face, for example, how we approach writing an essay. While writing an essay for coursework is quite a different process to writing one under exam conditions the strategies you choose to use should always take the particular learning methodology into account.
In practice you will use strategies in combination with each other. This means that you will use smaller strategies that overlap and influence each other as you develop a piece of work. For example, writing an essay may be dependant upon your strategies for using information from lectures, selecting relevant material from your reading, note taking and structuring your research and ideas. Using strategies in combination like this forms 'expanded' strategies. (See also: Section 4: Understanding your report)
So, what might be expected in Higher Education?
There are many aspects of studying in Higher Education with which you will need to be familiar, below are some of the elements involved in learning in Higher Education where strategies for learning will be helpful:
- Researching: How we access information and how we use it in practice. For example, attending lectures and gathering information from library research for the purpose of writing an essay.
- Remembering: How we store information for future use. For example, keeping a record of the information gathered during a whole academic year for the purpose of revising before an exam.
- Organising: How we manage the demands of our work at college or university on a multitude of levels. For example, organising notes from lectures or from reading, organising the week ahead in terms of knowing when a lecture or seminar is happening, organising any materials that you might need during the day and managing deadlines. It is also very important to know when to 'work' and when to 'rest'.
See also: Section 7: Organisation for life.
Understanding the learning process
Most of the tasks you will have to undertake as part of your learning will involve four essential processes:
- Synthesising: bringing together information internally.
- Organising: making sense and ordering this information.
- Memorising: holding on to this information in order to use it at will.
- Communicating: making your ideas available to others.
All these processes are common to most learning tasks and you will use them as you learn, as you are taught and as you are assessed.
Most dyslexic students experience difficulties with short-term memory. This, as you probably already know, can be quite frustrating. When it comes to the processes listed above, difficulties with short-term memory can affect our ability to carry out tasks as effectively as we might. Even more importantly, the ways we may have been taught to study or have used at an earlier stage might actually work against us, by putting too much stress on our short-term memory. When this happens it can make it much harder to feel positive about the fourth of the processes listed above: 'Communication'.
See also: Section 2: What is dyslexia?
Strategies for learning will extend your learning capacity because they can help you to take in new information and help to reinforce it in your memory.
We can use strategies to strengthen our ability to remember relevant information. For example, if we have the 'global' or 'bigger picture' in our heads, the 'detail' recorded for easy reference, we can then concentrate on the process in hand and develop our communication skills.
It is important to be realistic about the difference new strategies are going to make. We often feel that people who are not dyslexic have no problems when writing and they may not in the sense that dyslexic people do. However 'synthesising', 'organising', 'memorising' and 'communicating' are all processes which require hard work, a great deal of concentration and can be challenging for anyone.
If we are used to working in a particular way, learning a new strategy can, at first, involve a certain amount of 'unlearning'. It also takes a while before we feel comfortable with a new way of working. However, the strategies described below would not be worth mentioning if it wasn't known that they can make an enormous difference to many dyslexic students' experience of learning.
"I started using highlighter pens on my MPhil course to mark up the handouts we were given in seminars, I found that I would retain much more that way - especially new terminology."
Finding out which strategies will work for us and which won't, often involves a certain amount of trial and error. The process of trying out new ideas and adapting them to suit your own needs is, in itself, a natural part of the learning process. Understanding the learning process means that you can take ownership of your learning and by doing so you will be able to make use of strategies as tools in this process.
Effective and less effective strategies
There are obviously effective and less effective strategies. Less effective strategies can take up just as much time but will not be very useful in relation to your learning in the long term. An example of this is 'cramming'. Trying to 'learn' a whole year's coursework in a few days leading up to an exam, is not a strategy which most dyslexic people or anyone else would benefit from using, because it relies on using short-term memory to take in and retain large amounts of information in a relatively short time span.
'Cramming' might help you to remember it for a very short period of time but it is unlikely that you will be able to apply or use the information. Being able to synthesise, organise and then communicate information and ideas effectively means that you need to truly understand information and ideas in your own terms. Knowing facts for a short period of time doesn’t allow you to develop and apply your learning.
If you try to write a coursework essay in a single 'sitting' it could be said that you are 'cramming' the process. The opposite of cramming is 'chunking'. You can describe chunking as a 'global' strategy, one that is useful in many different circumstances. It involves breaking down a task, such as revision or writing an essay, into its component parts, rather than trying to tackle them all at once.
Mind Mapping
Just as equipment such as a digital audio recorder can be a useful tool for studying, study skills are also useful tools. Mind mapping is a means of handling information and ideas in a multi-sensory, non-linear way. It can help us record information and thoughts quickly and recognise the patterns and links within a topic. It is a good example of an 'expanded' learning strategy, which combines and overlaps a group of strategies.
Many of us have been taught to record information in a linear way, for note taking or for writing an essay. However, what happens when you leave something off a list or write down information in an incorrect order?
Mind mapping does not depend on you writing down information in the 'correct' order from the beginning, but it does involve you in being selective. It does not depend on you knowing the hierarchy of your ideas at the beginning, but it does involve you looking for the links between them. Spider diagrams and sheets of initial ideas are not mind maps, but they can be a stage towards them.
How to make a mind map
- Assemble your materials: 'poster-sized' sheet of paper, felt-tip pens, post-it notes, highlighter pens.
- You can start with a central idea in the middle of the page, adding points as 'satellites' around the page.
- Remember, this is not an activity that you need to be too cautious about, your mind map may end up looking 'messy', but this is very much part of the process - with your next mind map you will reorganise the previous mind map to clarify the links.
- Use different coloured pens, symbols, cartoon drawings, pictures to emphasise and clarify what the information means to you.
- Re-organising your map is essential and will help you find the pattern and structure of your ideas in order to prepare for: an essay, a presentation, a thesis or dissertation, an experiment report, a workshop, a 'crit' or tutorial, a group work session, exam revision.
- Starting with a new sheet of paper again put the central idea in the middle of the page, think about the key concepts which link the satellites to the central idea - add some linking arrows and write the linking concept along the arrows.
- Start to add some details to these key points, but stick to key words or phrases.
- Your map will contain all your important ideas in short, concise statements, visual and written, but with all the complexity that goes into the structure.
Here are four schematic diagrams of how a mind map might develop:
Stage 1
Start by putting your main 'idea' in the centre of your map - this might change as your map grows. Add 'satellite' ideas around the page.
Stage 2
Now begin to join your ideas together. You might work out from the centre or in towards the middle. Remember, this is a diagram and makes this process look 'neat' and ordered. Real mind maps can go through many changes.
Stage 3
Now that your satellite ideas are linked to the central idea of you map you can look for other links between them. You might number your ideas if you can see a sequence emerging or give them a modified title. At this stage, you may want to start to write on the arrows to describe how the ideas are linked.
Stage 4
You now have a busy map! You will already have a lot of information in your map, but you may have some more detail to add to this. You may find that you need to go over some of the links in a strong colour to clarify the connections. In the diagram above the map is symmetrical, but this is not the rule to making a good mind map.
Have a look at the following mind map and see how a map can appear to be very simple, yet contain a large amount of information - the visual information works in conjunction with the written information and the 'spacing' of the ideas to communicate complex statements and ideas. It shows a combination of all the essential elements of the process of mind mapping:
Equipment
A strategy can simply be a case of using the right 'tool' to complete a given task. For example, writing an essay on a computer instead of handwriting it. Useful equipment can be low or high tech. A diary is just as essential as a 'tool' for studying as using a computer might be for writing. Here are three key kinds of equipment which can help:
- Computer
- Digital audio recorder
- Stationery
Tools like these can be very useful in contributing to a wider strategy as well as being strategies themselves.
Computer
Computers can help with writing, researching, organising/storing information, organising time and calculating figures. However, in order to get the most out of any equipment you will need to invest time and effort. How can computers help?
"Computers make sense to me, 'cos it's like a visual tray - one you can see! One file leads into the next file, it's all icons and pictures rather than words."
- Writing - word-processing software can make an extraordinary difference to the way we write. It can help us input text, edit what we have written and proof the spelling and grammar. The facility to allow us to change the way we view text on the screen can also be important.
- Reading - with a scanner and the appropriate software you can use a computer to 'read' text aloud to you.
- Researching - software, which allows us to search through large amounts of information quickly, can be incredibly useful. The information you will find will already be in an electronic format. Good examples of this are internet search engines.
- Working with numbers - all computers have a calculator built into the system, but you can also obtain specific software to help you do more sophisticated work.
- Working with images - although we are now accustomed to using computers for writing we often forget how well they handle images. You may want to use this facility to illustrate and essay with a photograph, a diagram or a graph, prepare presentations or add images to your mind maps.
Digital audio recorder
Being able to record spoken information easily, so that you can review it at a later date, is fundamental. You can use a digital audio recorder effectively in the following situations:
- Seminars - you can record the replies to your questions.
- Lectures - you can feel more relaxed when taking notes, if you miss important information you can review your recording after the lecture and make additional notes.
- Workshops - the workshop may be 'hands-on' but there may be specific vocabulary which you will need to remember.
- Tutorials - it is often hard to remember everything useful that has been said in a tutorial; you will be able to reflect on the discussion.
- Ideas - we have ideas at the most inconvenient times! Using the digital audio recorder to 'note' your ideas quickly and conveniently can make a real difference.
- Writing - writing doesn't start and stop the moment you pick up a pen! Some of us find it easier to 'think aloud' and write it down later.
- Proof your writing - revise and prepare for a talk or presentation. You can record what you have written and the play it back as you re-read your text. Think about how it 'sounds'.
- Reading - reading an important text into a digital audio recorder and playing it back as you re-read it, can help you to deepen your understanding of the text.
Stationery
We are all used to the idea of buying cardboard folders, refill pads and pens for college, but we often resent having to do this because of the cost! Take a deep breath, this section will encourage you to spend more!
Here is a list of useful items:
- A4 coloured paper - you can use this to print and photocopy onto. This can make your work much easier to read if you experience the effects of Meares-Irlen Syndrome.
- Ring-binder folders, plastic pockets and dividers - colour-coded dividers can keep your notes in sections.
- Post-it notes - these are indispensable! Use them to mark out important sections in a book, to add quick references to the draft of an essay or to place reminders in your diary.
- Writing tools - don't just use any old pen, find one that you prefer writing with. If you will have to do a lot of writing in an exam, choose a pen with a comfortable 'rubber' grip.
- Highlighter pens - these can make note-taking and text proofing a lot easier. Instead of copying down quotations from a book, photocopy the relevant page or pages and then highlight the important text.
- Diary - you might already 'keep' a diary or own one in which you write appointments, but do you use a diary for planning your time? Being able to look ahead and plan your time can make a real difference. Choose a diary which shows you a whole week at a time and has enough space for you to write in more than just 'when, where and who'. You can also use your mobile phone as an electronic diary. You can enter regular appointments and enter 'alarms' for important dates.
These strategies might initially seem to involve 'extra' work. Keep in mind that any new strategy will seem to take longer than those with which you are already familiar. The most important thing to remember is that eventually these strategies will lead to less frustration and that cutting out those feelings of frustration in your studies and that cutting out those feelings of frustration will save you time and effort.
Ways that other people can help
Most of this information is about how you can help yourself and increase your awareness and competence in learning. It can also be helpful to have some ideas about the ways in which tutors are able to support you by teaching in ways that support you in your ways of learning. Most of the following would be appreciated by any student and constitute good teaching practice.
- Making notes available before a lecture.
- Displaying the main points to be covered.
- Explaining the purpose of what is being required or done.
- Presenting material in a structured way.
- Using visual aids.
- Giving examples to illustrate a point.
- Clarifying new language.
- Encouraging you in your ways of learning.
- Giving constructive and relevant feedback.
- Checking that you understand.
- Giving you time to think before you answer a question.
- Giving you enough time to read information before you are expected to use it.
These are some of the ways that individual tutors can teach to support different ways of learning. The design of a course can also help to support learning; good course design should take into account the following:
- Making sure that the workload is manageable and realistic.
- Making 'short-cuts' available - for example a brief selected reading list that will help you develop an awareness of the subject you are studying so that you can then explore in a more specialised and detailed way.
- Making sure that your coursework helps you develop the skills you need to learn and complete the course successfully.
There are many people in your institution who are able to help you become an effective, independent learner, equipped with the knowledge and experience you need to be successful. See also Section 11: Information and resources.
Responsibility for your learning
Remember that being a student in Higher Education requires you to take responsibility for your learning and develop independence as a learner. Part of your responsibility is to find out things for yourself, but taking responsibility also means asking for help when you need it. It also means giving feedback to your tutors so that they know what works for you and what doesn't. This will help them to give you even better advice in the future.
It is important to enjoy this process. Experimenting with the ideas in this section will involve 'trial and error', and this will help you to understand the ways in which you learn - knowing not just what you have learnt, but how you have learnt it.
Document Navigation:
Next page - Section 7: Organisation for life