I note the following comment

 

Emma - this issue - 'Not all lecturers make adjustments to their teaching practices to enable students with certain disabilities to follow any of what they are saying/doing in the session.  This has left some students, myself included, very reluctant to attend , and at times I have left mid-session because of this.

 

I may be wandering off here because you may be talking about accessibility of the lecture room etc. in which case I apologise for changing the subject. However I have long thought that insufficient attention is paid to the question of the teaching approach used by a lecturer. Most audit tools that I am aware of relate purely and simply to the delivery of a course and not the teaching model employed by the lecturer. I am talking about issues such as: “does the lecturer ascertain the prior experience of the students first”, substitute prior knowledge and prior skills in that question and you can see that unless these issues are addressed then many students will not be able to follow the lecture. An audit tool should invite the lecturer to examine their own methods by explicitly asking about such issues, followed by questions relating to what steps are taken in the lecture to address any difficulties foreseen by earlier answers. There are more issues relevant here also.

 

It was this neglect of a vital area that led me to devise what is now an online audit tool which has a phase specifically using a teaching model, it takes an individual lecturer down the path of examining their own conscience in relation to it. Without such attention paid to the teaching method employed in devising a module I think that issues such as “inability to follow a lecture” will inevitably arise.

 

If anyone agrees with this I can supply details of my audit tool that the NDT reviewed in its infancy.