ADHD in tertiary education organisations

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ADHD in tertiary education organisations

If you’ve already identified (or suspect) that you have a learner with ADHD in your lesson then you’ve come to the right place.

Here, you can discover:

1. Understanding learners with ADHD.

Find out what ADHD is and how it affects learners.
Read relevant research about tertiary learners with ADHD.
Hear from learners on how they believe ADHD affects them while undertaking tertiary study.

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Students on stairs looking at lecture notes.

2. How to effectively engage learners with ADHD.

Find out how to get, and hold, the attention of learners with ADHD, as well as the rest of your learners, with these crowd-pleasing tips.

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3. Strategies to optimise the tertiary outcomes of learners with ADHD.

Understand how the working memory of learners with ADHD performs to optimise their productivity.
Hear tips from post-graduate learners with ADHD, and tertiary staff, on successful strategies that they employed.

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A young woman interacting with a hologram.

4. Tips for developing inclusive lessons and integrated learning strategies.

Find a myriad of tools to support learners with ADHD in lessons and to get assignments done on time.
Hear more tips from tertiary staff on strategies that worked for them.

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Complete all four modules, and provide some feedback on how you found this course, to get a certificate of completion. You can put a printed copy on your wall to let learners know that when they're in your office, they're in a safe space.

Developed with the support of the Tertiary Education Commission.

Do you have a learner with ADHD (or you suspect they have ADHD)?

Depending on where you teach, you may or may not know whether you have any learners who have ADHD. While some tertiary education organisations ask learners to disclose an ADHD diagnosis during the enrolment process, only a few pass that information onto the relevant faculties.

Alternatively, this may sound familiar to you (press 'play' to hear the audio):

“It’s the audacity that they feel that they have to minimise my achievements or belittle how much effort I’ve been able to put into being able to get this far without knowing anything about me; without knowing the challenges; and being unwilling to have conversations like that. That’s what I really despise in education” - learner.

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“A typical presentation is a really hard-working student who just tries and tries and tries, but they can’t get a handle on it and then they feel overwhelmed” - Learning Advisor.

The best way to find out if someone has ADHD is to ask, such as:

in your first lesson, let everyone know that you designed your course to be inclusive
invite anyone with disabilities, differences or learning difficulties to tell you privately and suggest ways they might do that, and
best not to ask for a public show of hands - that could be embarrassing.

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ADHD is real

ADHD impacts the functioning of the Pre-Frontal Cortex (part of the Frontal Lobe).

So, for people with ADHD, automatically controlling and filtering attention, behaviours, and emotions, which come more naturally to others, is so much harder.

Neurodevelopmental impairments in the Pre-Frontal Cortex of someone with ADHD:

executive functioning - which includes our ability to plan and organise
filtering and controlling attention
energy or motor control
emotional regulation
judgement, and/or
behaviour.

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Without a diagnosis of ADHD these impairments are often interpreted as:

emotional outbursts
wilful laziness, forgetful
unorganised, often late
hyperactive, fidgets a lot
easily distracted, inattentive, day dreamer, and/or
acts before thinking; disruptive; misses social cues when interacting with others.

Because of misinterpretations, many will have had a range of unhappy experiences during school or at home, but the good news is that there is support available.

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