Networking Day 2011 report
Embracing Diversity – A Decade of Difference : Reflections on the past and looking to the Future
Networking Day 2011 was a great success, attended by over 150 members, and included a celebration of the 10th birthday of ADSHE [with an enormous cake, organised by Sally] and addressed by several of the founding members. Ellen Morgan was presented with honorary membership (see “Latest News”)
We have heard about the beginnings of ADSHE and something about our future plans. It has been useful to reflect on the past and we’re grateful to those who had the foresight and the commitment to set up a professional association specifically for those working in higher education. I thought it would be useful to go back to the constitution, to the original objectives drawn up by the founders, to see how we measured up today.
Our first objective is to act as a forum for the professional interests of dyslexia specialists in HE. To this end we have our annual Networking Day, our increasingly active regional meetings and for the first time this year – an extremely successful ADSHE training day organised by Janet Skinner, Julia Kender and Sandra Falshaw. We hope to offer accredited training in the year to come and maybe even at the next Networking Day.
It is, however, jiscmail that on a daily basis meets this objective most closely. There are always some difficulties with jiscmail but John Conway manages the list closely and patiently and there have been some very useful discussions recently. The importance of jiscmail is not always apparent but frequently when people are retiring and ask to leave the list, they say that although they may never have contributed to the discussions they have found the jiscmail to be a lifeline, keeping them up to date and reducing feelings of isolation; it is a sad reflection on the difficulties within our sector that a significant number of members do not feel that is safe for them to contribute to jiscmail discussions because of their job situations. When things go wrong on jiscmail, which they do, we will always seek to restore a safe status quo as soon as possible as it is one of the most important things we do.
A major event of this year was the first meeting of the new Scottish regional group in April, organised very ably by Sandra Falshaw. I know there are several members from Scotland here today. It became clear to Sandra and I early on during that first meeting that Scotland was going to be different to our other regional groups – there is the sheer geographical size for a start and there are many issues specific to Scotland including important differences in the way DSA is administered. The executive recognised this and has therefore decided to co-opt the coordinator of the Scottish regional group onto the committee and we are delighted to welcome Kathy Smith who has ‘volunteered’ to take on the role.
Our second objective is to represent the interests of ADSHE members both within the HE sector and more widely at a national and international level and this is certainly an area of growth. At a national level, Sally Freeman represented ADSHE recently at the Disabled Students Stakeholder Group meeting held at the Student Loans Company in Darlington – the importance of having a voice in this forum cannot be underestimated. A week ago I travelled to Stirling to meet with the CEO of Dyslexia Scotland to discuss issues that are affecting freelance tutors in Scotland and there will be more discussions in the future.
Internationally – numerous ADSHE members gave presentations or delivered workshops at the BDA International conference two weeks ago which was a significantly higher profile than at the previous BDA conference. International specialists approached us enquiring about membership and our Guidelines are going global! Our website also comes under this objective but we nearly lost it last weekend – it had it’s tenth birthday too which unbeknownst to all of us meant the domain name came up for renewal and the website completely disappeared for a very stressful 24 hours; many thanks to Mary Kountouris for getting that one sorted out and to John Conway for keeping the website updated.
Our third objective is to share knowledge and disseminate good practice, including promoting and developing the understanding of all aspects of specific learning difficulties and primarily dyslexia within the HE sector. Sales of our Guidelines and mind maps have increased this year – largely to individual members who want to take them to their HEIs and say ‘This is what we should be doing!’. The Guidelines will be revised next year to include the Quality Assurance work Janet Skinner has just mentioned and we will be revising the Good Practice documents on the website as universities are increasingly referring to them and asking if they can have links to them. A very exciting new development is our electronic newsletter to be launched imminently. Atif Choudhury and Jamie Crabb have been working on this for some time and I have to say it’s looking very good indeed. The newsletter will be produced three times a year and whilst it will give a regular update to all members it’s primary purpose is to be a showcase for ADSHE that can be disseminated across the HE sector and should bring us to the attention of those institutions who are not yet members and where tutors quite possibly do not even know ADSHE exists.
Our final objective concerns the students we work with and is to clarify and promote students’ entitlement to specialist dyslexia support within individual HE institutions and throughout the sector. This is where we have faced our greatest challenges in recent years - the ten hour rule, the ILP, the ‘study skills versus specialist support’ debate all brought members, if not on to the streets, certainly to meetings across the country and eventually we have, alongside our stakeholder partners been listened to. We are actively involved (almost weekly) in regular consultations about all aspects of the DSA in England and we are now turning our focus to Scotland and looking to see how we can clarify and promote students’ entitlement to specialist dyslexia support there. We are looking to develop closer relationships with the National Union of Students and Atif Choudhury has been active in this area.
I hope that considering our objectives and our achievements in this way shows you clearly that ADSHE is very much doing what our founders intended. But I think its doing more than that, ADSHE fulfils another role too; many of us have found we can do things we never dreamed ourselves capable of – and I speak here from a very personal perspective – I believe one of ADSHE’s greatest strengths is that its a nurturing and enabling yet wholly professional association and I’m immensely proud to belong to it.
Download a copy of the 10th anniversary booklet
The Executive and organising committee (minus John!) ……
