Students with special needs

Lund University have published a collection of short videos about academic writing as open resource.  You can use some or all of them in your teaching. 

Students with dyslexia are often granted additional time for written examinations. Here are the instructions for how to set up a Canvas Assignment so that some students are alloted some extra time. (Swedish language only.)

It can be difficult to criticise someone’s writing. And perhaps even more difficult to be at the receiving end. And it will not be made easier if it concerns a course that does not revolve around language at all. Here is some advice on how to increase the chances of successful feedback.

In the pedagogical conversation with UPE under the heading “How do you discuss language difficulties with students?” in Zoom 17 May 2022, over 60 members of teaching staff gathered to discuss students’ language difficulties and how it affects teaching.

A student with generally weak language skills is not likely to solve the issues over the time period of one single course. Measures to strengthen a student’s language skills therefore need to be planned using an overall approach that looks at the entire study programme.

If you arrive at university fresh out of upper secondary school or after several years in working life, it can be difficult to approach the task of reading large quantities of text. How would you – the teacher – describe your target group? Do they need the support of reading instructions and study techniques?

Some students need special arrangements to be able to participate in teaching and examination. If the needs are due to a permanent disability, they are entitled to such support. The teacher/examiner must, however, not decide for himself whether the student has needs that entitle a student to support. Such assessments and decisions are made by Enheten […]

It’s about books in audio format. Students with some form of reading impairment due to, for example, dyslexia, ADHD or visual impairment, have the right to borrow course literature in audio format.

Here is an example of how systematic language training – reading, writing, managing academic texts – have been implemented in all courses of a 1-year study programme that concludes with an independent project. We hope it will inspire you.  

Examining essays create troublesome extra work for tutors and examiners when the essay is carelessly proofread, with formal errors of various kinds. Here is an example of how to use a checklist to support students’ proofreading, reduce extra work for the teacher and get better essays.

The assessment of whether a student has reached the examination requirements in an exam of the essay type normally refers to the qualitative value of the solution, not the quantity. For reasons of assessment, we still often set an upper limit (and sometimes a lower limit) in the number of words/number of pages for the […]

With the canvas tool Study Planner, you can help students create structure in their study work and in their planning. In addition, the tool helps you assess how your course structure will affect the students’ workload. Have you created a reasonable structure?

Prevent cheating at take-home exams, where fast students help students with extended writing time.

The Karlstad University Library has collected material on how students write an academic text, for example a scientific essay or report.