Learning Difficulties Australia

Learning difficulties and tertiary students

Author	Comment
Helen Donovan 3/03/09	Adult learners and learning difficulties are evident at tertiary institutions. The university where I work offers many support services for all students to access. As a teaching staff member I would like strategies to be able to meet the needs of all university students.
Margaret Cameron 3/03/09	This is also an area of interest for me, and I have spent a great deal of time on the issue at the tertiary college where I am involved in pre-service Teacher Education. It is by no means a solved issue at this stage, and is not only the concern of students with 'learning difficulties' - there are also many gaps in learning for a variety of reasons. We have restructured our teacher ed. courses to include a component of 'English Literacy' that goes right back to the basics of spelling, grammar and study of a range of genres, including multimodal texts. I have found it beneficial, with the advantage of a small institution, to also offer small group tutorials in English grammar, spelling and academic writing for those who don't pick up all they need in the whole class setting. Another strategy I have tried with some degree of success is to spend a tutorial with students peer-conferencing their planning for an essay - on a topic where original case-study research minimised the chances of 'cheating'. This provided an audience for their work, which is often helpful in both stimulating clear communication, and collaborating on error-correction.
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