Let's Talk Disability

Let’s Talk Disability Series 2, Episode 4

Host: Professor Jackie Carter
Guest: Janine Dixon
Guest: Helen Brewis

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JACKIE: Hello, I'm Jackie Carter. I'm a professor in Statistical Literacy and the Academic Lead for Disability Inclusion at the University of Manchester. I live with a disability and a long-term condition and often describe myself as deaf, dizzy and disabled. Here's a fact, well two. 24% of the working age population in the UK has a disability. 80% of disabilities are hidden or invisible as are mine. I started the Let's Talk Disability podcast series to provide a platform to raise awareness of what it means to be a disability inclusive university. The podcast is a series of conversations which I host on the lived and living experience of our colleagues and postgraduate students of being disabled or having a long-term condition. On each episode I host two guests. One is a senior leader at the university, a person with influence and responsibility. The other is a member of staff or postgraduate student who is open to sharing their disability or long-term condition. The aim is to demystify what being disabled means and create a culture of sharing. But, and this is important, each episode moves from dialogue to deeds, from talking to action. The senior leader is invited to commit just one thing, an action they will take away as a result of the conversation. The disabled guest gets to say what one thing would make the difference to their lived experience as a colleague or a student at the university. So let's dive in and find out what today's guests want to share and what they will commit to, to make our university more disability inclusive.
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JACKIE: Okay, good morning everybody. We are here in the lovely podcast recording studio at the University of Manchester and I have two guests with me in the studio today who I'm going to ask to introduce themselves to you, to the listeners in a minute. Umm, it's a lovely sunny day outside. I think we're all feeling very buoyant, aren't we today? And this will be episode four of series two of the Let's Talk Disability podcast. So if I can start please, Janine, by asking you to introduce yourself.

JANINE: Certainly. Hi, thank you for having me. Umm, so my name is Janine Dixon. I'm a Teaching and Scholarship Senior Lecturer in Fashion Technology, which is in FSE. And my scholarship research is in neurodivergent inclusive higher education and those social constructive pedagogy theories that lie within that. And I've recently completed an ITL fellowship project which looks at widening participation for neurodivergent students and it also happened to be neurodivergent.

JACKIE: Brilliant. Thank you very much. For the listeners who don't know what FSE and ITL is,

JANINE: Yes!

JACKIE: Can we fill in the gaps please?

JANINE: Absolutely. FSE, Faculty of Science and Engineering and ITL is the Institute of Teaching and Learning in the university. It's an amazing team who help run projects around developing the learning and the teaching at the university.

JACKIE: Wonderful. And you and I met, didn't we? At the Teaching and Learning Network recently.

JANINE: Yes! That's right.

JACKIE: That's how you're here today. Okay, lovely. And Helen, over to you, please.

HELEN: Thanks, Jackie. So I'm Helen Brewis. I'm Head of Colleague Wellbeing at the university. So, my role sort of sits centrally in the People Directorate and I'm responsible for our strategic approach to colleague wellbeing across the university.

JACKIE: Brilliant. So, wellbeing is such an important topic, isn't it? In terms of coming into work and studying. So where do you want to start today in terms of this conversation? Maybe you could start by telling us some of the work you've been doing, Janine.

JANINE: Yes, certainly. So the main part of the project that I've been working on started about three years ago. So, I put forward an idea to the Institute of Teaching and Learning for their fellowship projects. And it was an idea around how we can widen participation for neurodivergent students. And they very happily accepted it, which was wonderful. It was a... you get 0.2 contract buyout. So you get to do one day a week working on the project. You get a small budget to spend on the project as well, which is great. And you also get a student partner. So, I've been really lucky to have three brilliant student partners work along the project with me. And there's a report online, if anyone wants to look at it, on the Institute of Teaching and Learning website. And it also details the names of all the amazing staff, student partners, and everyone that collaborated on the project with me.

JACKIE: Great, fantastic. Well, we can put a link to that report on the podcast.

JANINE: That would be really nice, yeah, to show all the great work that they did on it. And yes, so I've been doing, so it's been three years, it's just growing and growing. So the idea initially when I started the project was I wanted to look at anything and everything to do with being neurodivergent in university. So the environment, the teaching materials, that we use, the way that we communicate, transitioning to university from further education. And there was so much that I wanted to cover. And I started by speaking to other staff, PGRs about, you know, what do you think we need this project to be? What do we want to achieve at the end of the year? And the more I spoke to people, the more I realized that people just wanted to understand what it means to be neurodivergent more. They felt that we couldn't move on to discussing transitioning or teaching or learning because there were so many stereotypes that needed to be addressed. People understanding what was acceptable terminology. And so, you know, what are the challenges of being neurodivergent? What are the strengths of being neurodivergent? So what it ended up being and growing into was that I developed an academic training workshop, which I've run it in multiple places now. So I've run it across several departments at university. It's been really well received. So the psychology department have done it. Let me think who else. Maths department as well have been great. And they run this amazing teaching and learning seminars that they run both here at Manchester and also with the Liverpool University, so that was really nice. I've also done it with the law department. And then externally, I've presented it at the teaching and learning, the Higher Education Academy, the Advanced HE Conference, that's what it's called. And then also at the British Academy of Management Conference as well. So, and what's been really nice is by doing it at those external places, I'm meeting more and more external collaborators. I've been on some really exciting training with the National Autistic Society. So it's been a really amazing journey for the last two years, just learning everything I could about not just my understanding of me being neurodivergent, but the wider understanding of the lived experiences. So it's been super exciting. And yeah, so it's ended up with this wonderful kind of package of this academic training workshop where we talk about what is neurodivergent, so understanding the umbrella of being neurodivergent. Then we take a real deep dive into autism, ADHD, and dyslexia. So strengths, challenges, acceptable terminology, and then we look at, okay, what does that mean for teaching and learning? How can we then adapt our teaching and learning? So yeah, it's been a really exciting journey. I went on maternity leave in the middle of that and took a four-month-old baby to a conference.

JACKIE: Ok!

JANINE: So it was great.

HELEN: That's impressive.

JANINE: Thank you.

JACKIE: Fantastic. I've got lots of questions, Helen, but what about you?

HELEN: Yeah, I'm really interested in the workshops. And I think we hear a lot from people who really likewise want to understand neurodivergence and how they can best support people. What was the kind of feedback that you were getting from those departments where you were delivering that training? What really resonated? What really helped them about the training?

JANINE: I think, first of all, there was the fear of, would they say the wrong terminology with a student or a member of staff? Would they assume something because if they knew, if someone identified themselves, maybe an academic advisor said, "Oh, I'm autistic", you know, are they going to make an assumption because of what they've seen in the media or their limited understanding? So I think people found it really enlightening, really helpful to feel like when discussions came up, they could much more embrace understanding it and go along with working out what potential solutions were because we've got some amazing teaching staff, we've got amazing PS staff here, and they've got great skills and resources. And it was about them needing to understand what the lens was to take from it rather than me saying, and this is how you teach someone that's autistic or someone with ADHD. They can do that. They just needed to understand what it means to have ADHD or be autistic. So they found that really helpful. And it brought on some really interesting conversations because what we typically do with the workshop as well at the end, it's because I've got my love of pedagogy. We bring it around to a case. So we've discussed all these ideas. We discussed what it means to be autistic, ADHD, what the trends are, motivations, challenges. And then we come around to, okay, so how are we going to collaborate and work with those people? And essentially what we come around to is this, the universal design for learning. The idea is let's design the learning from the beginning to be inclusive. And then we talk about, okay, what are the inclusive methods for someone who's autistic or ADHD? And then all these solutions we come up with go, oh, wait a minute, this works for someone if they've got caring responsibilities, if they've got anxiety, you know, anything else that might impact their engagement with learning. Oh, and it works for neurotypical learners. So actually this isn't a solution that only works for neurodivergent people. This is a collective one. And then, so in terms of education, we use the universal design for learning. And then because what I like to do is think of this, not just about the students at university, because it's the staff as well, is that I've coined this phrase universal design for collaborating because it's about us being a collective community and making that work for everybody.

HELEN: I think, and it's really interesting listening to you and the work sounds amazing. I think some of the challenges we see around mental health and the stigma and the stereotyping around that, I think we see with neurodivergence as well. So my daughter is autistic and she was telling me a story about how she told someone she hadn't seen for a while that she'd been diagnosed with autism. And they went, "you're not autistic". And she was like, why? "Well, you don't act like an autistic person". And so my daughter is fantastic at going, well, it's this and it's this and it's this and kind of challenging those assumptions that people have. And I think you get that, as I say, I think you get that quite a lot with mental health, that people make assumptions or the stigmas or the stereotypes. And this idea of kind of a universal approach seems like it would actually help a number of different scenarios. There's a wonderful phrase. Once you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person. There are, you know, in any part of life, in any idea like personality trait or anything about us, you know, no two people are the same and no two experiences are the same. So this idea that, yeah, and that's part of the thing. There's that stereotype that we see and it's challenging that in understanding. And there's so many people who are autistic who are high masking. And also, and so there's one in seven people are neurodivergent. And about of that, there's 10% of dyslexic, 10% of people are dyslexic, 5% of people have ADHD and 1 to 2% of people are autistic. But even in those numbers, 50% of people who are neurodivergent don't know it...

JACKIE: Yes.

JANINE: So when we're talking about, so one of my interesting things I like to think about is, you know, DASS do a great job of trying to...

JACKIE: DASS being the Disability Advisory Support Service.

JANINE: Thank you. We love an acronym, don't we at the Uni! ALL: (Laughter)

JANINE: They do a great job of supporting students who come forward, who choose to disclose, who have at least been diagnosed, if not, are on the path to diagnosis because we have those requirements. But there's people who know they're autistic. So you can identify as being neurodivergent without a diagnosis. You don't need a diagnosis to know who you are as a person. So it's people who identify who therefore aren't diagnosed. So they can't go to DASS for that reason. We've got people who are diagnosed, but don't disclose. They again, won't go to DASS because they don't feel ready to, they don't feel comfortable So we can't assume that DASS is able to fix the problem because they can't and we can't keep making amendments. So we need to think of those people who don't want to disclose, who don't know that they're neurodivergent, and we need to design it inclusively from the start to account for those people.

JACKIE: Yeah, I could not agree more. I'm going to chip in because you've touched something that I believe so passionately and strongly about and keep saying. So, you know, I'm talking to a lot of people in a lot of different places at the moment, including at the university, but not just at the university, about the need to recognise hidden conditions, hidden disabilities. I'm wearing my sunflower lanyard. We've just had a big campaign on campus to raise awareness of what the sunflower lanyard means and people who are wearing it could be neurodivergent, but they could have other conditions that they don't necessarily want to share, but they might need support. You know, their needs require certain support, sometimes adjustments, sometimes just kindness, sometimes just somebody opening the door or in my case, holding me if I go up the stairs because I'm very unstable because of my condition that I've been left with as a result of a neurological illness. And one of the things that I really, really love about this conversation, but I think we need to keep saying it in all of these spheres that we're in, is about if we design inclusively from the off in everything we do, then everybody benefits. So it's no longer taking an underrepresented or minoritised or marginalised group and doing something special for them. It's about considering everybody's needs from the off, just like you've been saying, designing for those needs and then everybody benefits, you know, because you don't need to be neurodivergent to sometimes need a quiet space.

JANINE: Yeah.

JACKIE: Okay.

JANINE: Absolutely. I love analogies. They're always a way that I can always get people to understand things and especially when I'm trying to understand the world, analogies always make it better. And when I'm trying to explain to people that giving the changes available to everyone is the solution, I always say, well, we put lifts in buildings. Yes, there's people who have physical disabilities who absolutely need to use the lift, but I'll use the lift. I don't need one, but I find it helpful because I'm not out of breath when I get to the third floor and I need to be going [panting sounds] before I have my next meeting. So, you know, make it available to everyone. Then everyone's on a level playing field. Like why would we not do that across the board?

JACKIE: Can you tell us a little bit more? I'm curious, you Helen, about what it means with regards to universal learning design. Can you tell us a bit about that?

JANINE: So it's so the idea of universal design is that from the beginning you design learning to be inclusive for all. So rather than saying I'm only going to teach in a lecture format, I'm only going to deliver the content. I'm not going to podcast it. I'm only going to teach you in or assess you in one type of set exam format. So in a closed environment, not open book. So universal design for learning is the idea of starting from the beginning of having these inclusive methods so that at the end we're not having to say, oh wait, we need to consider this student has this situation, this student has these situations and we're having to constantly make all these additional amendments at the end. So the idea is if you think about it from the beginning, being as inclusive as you can, they're thinking about how we teach or how are we engaging our students. So the variety of learning environments. So for example, what I will do, so I'm a big fan of active learning. So getting the students to engage and some people go, oh, but wait, no, students don't always want to engage. I'm like, but there's not the only way to engage is me asking them a direct question in front of the other hundred students. I can do a mentee. So I can have a mentee in the lecture. They can do it on their phone. If I'm doing a session where I'll be like, right, we're going to do a peer review of work. Let's sit in groups and review it. I'll always say to them, you know, aim to be in a group of two or four, but if you work better on your own, because I know I get distracted by the people, I'm not going to force you to sit with people. You can make your own decisions. So I don't ever say this is the only way I'm teaching you. This is the only work resource I'm going to give you. It's about having that variety, having that flexibility. And the same as when we're thinking about assessments, rather than our, you know, our go-to is a closed sort of almost like the sports hall is that GCSE image we've all got being in the sports hall. You sat on a tiny little chair and table. It's so brightly lit. You can hear every little squeak of a chair. Everyone's doing the same limited amount of time. It's about thinking, okay, how can we make that more inclusive? Let's think about doing open book exams. Let's think about letting them at least take in some handwritten notes. Let's look at the optionality of doing it on a computer. And specifically the computer ones are really, one of my favourite ones is using them in the computer cluster. Even if it's closed books, they've got no access to the internet because that's so inclusive for anyone who's perhaps English isn't their first language. People like me who are my thoughts don't come out in the order that they should do. So I'm sporadically coming out with things. The idea that I would need to write a report in order from start to finish, I would be terrible. So that idea of having computers is a brilliant one for the flexibility. So it's thinking what solutions can I put in place? Ideally optionality. That's a great one because what I get a lot of feedback in the workshops is well, if I change it to this one thing, then that doesn't work for everyone. I'm like, then don't change it to one thing. Change it to flexibility, have optionality. Like the way that we record our lectures now as podcasts, we've had students in our department who do so well and we're amazed by them. We might look at season and be like, they've not been in. And we'll ask them, you know, are you doing great? And they'll be like, oh, I listened to it as a podcast because I can't focus when there's a hundred people in the room. So I listen at home, I pause it, I make notes. I'm like, that's what you should be. You've worked out how you learn, how you work and you're embracing it and you're going to succeed because of it. Thank you for talking about sensory needs as well. You didn't call them sensory needs, but you were talking about the squeaking of the chair that's surrounded by lots of people. That is so important and so under considered.

JACKIE: It brings us to wellness as well. What, what wellness and wellbeing, what, what's your reflection on that in terms of, you know, anxiety, the levels of anxiety in the student population, are sky high, aren't they? We know that, you know, I've been on mitigating circumstances panels, I've chaired them. We know it's an issue. So in terms of this inclusive design that benefits everybody and gives optionality, what's your take, Helen?

HELEN: I think it's fascinating. I think it's really important. And it strikes me that, you know, you talked about kind of the school environment and exams and they seem like highly structured with a low level of flexibility. And I think people often exit those school environments and they've really struggled for their entire time there. And actually, I feel like we have far more flexibility here to do things in a way, which is more inclusive without people having to, having to ask. And I think that's the thing, is it not everyone always feels comfortable saying, actually, I need this or I need that. And for those people that do, that's great. But what about all those people that don't? So actually if it's there, that seems, that seems like a huge step forward. And I think I've become far more aware in recent years and just even things like when I'm running something at the start of the workshop, it's kind of like, anyone needs to step out, you know, for whatever reason, it's not working for you, go for it. And just setting that expectation really early on. So then somebody doesn't have to kind of say, please, can I step out? Because we've already done that bit. And I think it's, for me, it's like, how can I keep on doing more of that on a regular basis through all the work that I do? So it makes people's lives easier at work or as a student.

JANINE: Yeah. And in terms of like carrying on that discussion around sensory needs. So research has shown that autistic people take up to 40% more sensory environment. So when someone thinks the lights are bright, the person who's autistic will think the lights are extremely bright. I struggle with sensory issues. And I've got some amazing colleagues in my department that when we're having a meeting, they can see me going like putting my head down, putting my eyes, my hand over my eyes like a cap, and they spot it and they go, it's my, and they'll go and do the lights because I don't like always being the person that goes and turns the lights off and makes the room look almost like a cinema.

JACKIE: Yes because self advocacy is such a hard, draining thing to do.
JANINE: But I've got colleagues that go, right, I'm on it. And they get up and they go and dim the lights for me. And I just love it.

JACKIE: Do you cover that in your workshops?

JANINE: Yes. So we talk about sensory needs. We talk about, my workshops are very participatory towards the end. So a bit of me telling lots of information at the beginning about the different profiles, but then I start asking lots of questions. So do they know how many senses there are? Because it's, you know, it's beyond the five. We've also got all the other senses in terms of like particularly like lights, sound, touch, feel, all those things that are going on constantly. Like when I book a room for meetings, I would try and avoid a room that's got cold plastic seats because it throws me off because I'm so focused on it that I'll try and teach in a room that's comforting, or I'll try and find a room with natural light. So I work in a really wonderful department and we have an open plan office and I love that I get to see everyone. But I know that if I'm in, I won't get any work done in the office. So I go and book a meeting room and sit on my own because I know that that's what I need to do. If I need to actually know, if I've got an hour where I have to be responding to emails, I can't do it in an open plan office.

JACKIE: I love that you're so aware of your needs, but you're also advocating for everybody else.

JANINE: That's what you have to do as a neurodivergent person. You have to identify your needs and you have to lean into it. And I think for me as well, the wider piece is around creating the safe environments where people can do that and they feel able to say it without, because I don't always feel able to say it, but I've got the nicest team in department where they, I can tell a few of them and then they go, oh, I get it. And I'm sure there's a few who'd be like, Janine's fine. Like, what's her problem? Because I'm so high masking. And then I get home and I can't speak. I can't function because I've been near bright lights and an extractor fan's been on all day.

HELEN: And that is exactly what I would see with my daughter at home. And I don't think sometimes people realize what that sensory piece does. So I remember being on a tube train with her in London and the noise of the screen, the noise of the tube, literally, she was in pain.

JANINE: I don't know how it doesn't hurt people. It does hurt.

JACKIE: And it causes harm, doesn't it? My granddaughter, if you're in a bathroom and the dryer's on or something, or the head dryer.

HELEN: It's like a great thing. And I think it's hard sometimes for people to appreciate that, who just, those senses don't have that impact on them on a day-to-day basis. So I think that safe environment where you can talk. And I think, I often run workshops and I talk to people about thinking about what does a good day at work look like for you on a good day? What's it like? And I suppose there's an extension of that would be getting people to think about what is your environment like. And that would be really inclusive.

JANINE: That's my main thing is environment, to be honest. That's my main thing when I think about where my workday is. What room am I going to work in? How can I make it so that I get as limited, because I get so distracted. Anybody comes in, I'm like, I have to say hi to you. I have to have a chit chat. And then me gone for half an hour.

JACKIE: I was really fascinated as well when you said about, because we've got this approach at the university in terms of teaching, monitoring attendance. And you're saying, but we've got evidence that says that students are doing really well and they don't physically have to be in the room because they can catch up through podcasts. And we've got lots of academic work to show that people learn differently, have different preferences, but also going back over material in different forms can be hugely advantageous for those people who prefer to listen than write notes on the board. So I think there's probably an academic piece in that. There's a piece of research, isn't there, based on the work that you're doing and the impact of universal learning design. So people have that optionality, have that choice. Can we move on to the collaboration bit though? Because I think that's the bit we haven't quite talked about and I really want to get to, you're doing amazing work. Helen, you're tapped into some really important work. I'm sort of also thinking about 2035 and how we can persuade Duncan and the senior team to be thinking about designing inclusively for everything we do because it benefits everybody. How can we build, Janine, on what you've done, join things up and then create it at scale for the university?

JANINE: So there's a few things we get. So the workshop's been working really well. I get more and more interest every time I do it. There's always a follow-up of someone who's expanding its reach, people interested. So it's about how we can, first of all, embed that into more of a wider training. I hate saying training for staff because it's not really training. It's just helping them understand what it means to be neurodivergent. So how can we get that integrated more across the university and beyond, of course, as well? That would be one key thing. I also have something that I would really love to get started on. I'm hoping people listening to this podcast might be interested that I'd like to start some sort of neurodivergent training kind of workshops. And rather than that be me explaining to people what it means to be neurodivergent, it's about people who are neurodivergent or a neurodivergent ally delivering workshops. Okay, how do we lean into our neurodivergence? How do you learn? What's the environment that works for you? What's the study skills that work for you? Because we've got some brilliant resources like the library, some great study skills workshops. And as someone with ADHD, I have never been able to sit and revise. I've tried. I've followed all the rules and then I've sat there with a book and gone, what are we doing? How does this work? But I've learned to find ways that work for me. And it's about sharing those resources, sharing those methods. For example, some people say, oh, if you need to focus or de-stress, meditate. Meditating is the worst thing I could possibly do. You can't leave my brain alone for that long. The best thing for me to do is put on some very loud, like high beats per minute music, go crazy for a few minutes. And then my dopamine levels are up and then I can focus. So it's about going, okay, what works for me? Leaning into it. That's my thing. If I don't take anything away, yeah. Find out what works for you. I found out loads of things that work for me. And that's come from working in such an amazing environment. And I've had the best line manager of the past few years, Steven Doyle, who's so inclusive. He's been so supportive. And he's always like, Janine, do what works for you. And I wouldn't have been able to do these projects. I wouldn't have been so successful with all this stuff. I got promoted to senior lecturer within two years. And so I wouldn't have done any of that if someone had been, no, you have to sit in an office for five hours a day in the bright lights with everyone else here, because I wouldn't have achieved anything.

HELEN: And I think for me, that goes very much as when I'm thinking about wellbeing, I'm thinking about what is the role of our leaders, what is the role of our managers, and kind of what is a beautiful example, yours, Janine, of people not making assumptions about what the right thing to do is. Like, this is how we do things. Because I think that your vision example is a brilliant one. It's like, you've got to sit down with all your papers, get your head down, do a couple of hours, have a break. Actually, that doesn't really work for many people. And in the same way, when it comes to how you do your work as well, when you kind of move out of the world of being a student is what does that look like? And I don't think we always stop and think about that. Perhaps not even as individuals, but also as managers and leaders is, you know, what are people's needs and how do I best understand that? And I think it's really important that we think about in our development for leaders, for managers, that we get them thinking about that.

JANINE: Yeah, I agree. I think there's always been a concern. It's quite like that outdated notion, which I think we've completely moving away from here at the uni that, you know, if someone says, I want to work from home, are they being lazy? Or someone says, are people being difficult? But actually, if we embrace it and go, okay, you tell me exactly what you need. Let's try it. Let's see what happens. And suddenly they're like their ability to succeed. They'll have less time off because they're not burnt out and exhausted. They get to thrive doing projects they want. Like if we let people really lean into it, you'd be amazed at what they can achieve. And there's power in numbers as well.

JACKIE: And coming back to that collaboration piece, you know, there's a sharing systematically, if you like, across the university and within departments, within schools and faculties. But there's also, I think at Manchester, we've got this incredible opportunity now because we've got people coming together talking about being different or disabilities or conditions. We've got the staff networks, which are incredibly strong. So we've got the disabled staff network, which is brilliant. We've got the neurodivergent staff network, which is more recently set up. And that network is starting to talk, is starting to form a splinter group that's talking about supporting neurodivergent children. You know, so it's sort of having a knock on effect. And it's people coming together and doing exactly what you said and sharing what works for them in a way that others, so it's building that community of practice. It's that simple and supporting. But then it's mainstreaming that. The next step, and you've touched on this, Helen, how do we all do that? How do we get that across in a way that everybody, you know, thinks about the environment that they walk into before they even sort of put the agenda on the screen and say, you know, oh, just asking the question, if anybody's got any needs, please let me know and we'll make sure. Because it's really hard to constantly be the person, the voice in the room, in my case, not being able to hear and say, can people speak up and they do the first time and then everybody's voices drop. And we need everybody to sort of be consciously aware of that and not think about it. Because the most common comment on these podcast episodes has been, oh, I never thought about that.

JANINE: No. And I think if you're not exposed to it, if you're not constantly discussing it, then you wouldn't think about it because you only think about, well, this is my lived experience. This is what's happening with me. So this is all that's in my realm of thinking. And that's why we constantly need to be meeting people and understanding their experiences of the world so we can go, okay, I had never thought about considering that thing and this thing. So I'm amazing at thinking about things that do with being neurodivergent, but I'm sure there's plenty of groups of students who minoritize that I haven't yet approached in terms of my inclusivity and it's things that I still need to learn and develop. And it's about constantly having those conversations. And what I find difficult is the challenge, not challenging people, but sort of correcting people when they say something wrong. And I think I would look, if I said something wrong about any minority group or in terms of inclusivity, I would be very grateful if someone said, "Janine, sorry, wrong terminology" or actually, "you know, that's a stereotype" or "you know, you're actually incorrect there. Here's the correct"... I would be like, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. But unless I'm in the workshop environment, I struggle to correct people because I feel like I'm being rude. So when someone might say, "oh, yes, I've got a student, they've got dyslexia, yeah, learning disability". I'm like, it's a learning difference. It's not a disability. And it's really hard to do that without feeling like you're, you know, attacking someone and you don't know how well they'll receive it. And I think that's for all of us. It's just that learning curve of going, no, no, if you know what you're saying is best for everyone, you know, great or good, you've got to just do it.

JACKIE: I call it calling in, not calling out because educating people, there's a difference calling out. People feel put on the spot and they feel attacked. If you call somebody in with what they've said or their behaviour, you're doing it in a supportive, caring, do no harm way. Do no harm is my sort of underpinning philosophy. And it's a really, it's a distinct, well, it's a subtle difference, but it actually makes a difference between the person going away and saying, oh, thank you. You know, I've done it with very senior people when they've used the wrong language. And I've said what the correct use of the term is. And so I've given them something they didn't know before and they've often thanked me for doing that. So it can be done.

HELEN: That's a really important point, you know, I've had, you know, we've got some fantastic colleagues in our central EDI team, well in all our EDI teams and sometimes they've corrected me on terminology and I'm like really grateful. Yeah. You don't know, you don't know, but if somebody tells you that, so I think, and for me again, it goes back to that safe space piece that actually part of how we contract within our teams is that that's one of the things we'll do. We'll say like we're comfortable with people helping us better understand or get terminology right. So that we don't have to be concerned about how people might react. But I think it's expectations, setting those expectations really clearly, I think makes a difference to people feeling comfortable.

JACKIE: We're a learning organisation.

JANINE: We are allowing people to make the mistakes. So I have a bit at the beginning of the workshop where I say, okay, can you tell me what neurodivergent identities you know of? And I say, look, don't worry about if you're going to say the wrong term right now, just any terms that come to your head, say them. And then I will let you know if they're an outdated term, acceptable term. And I'm like, this is safe space. You can say it. And then we're going to work out and I'm not going to go, oh, you absolutely can't say that I can't believe you used that terminology. I'm like, no, actually, you know, I understand where you're coming from. And yes, in a way that is being neurodivergent, but we don't use that word for anymore. So and it's going to constantly change. So with the terminologies we use now, the more we're learning about how autism presents in women, in children, young girls, in non-binary people as well. Like we have such these outdated ideas of, you know, particularly like ADHD. We imagine that little boy being really squirmy. Don't we in school problematic causing chaos. And then we're not noticing the young girl that's having difficulties who has been called ditzy. And it's those stereotypes. And then if you present the non-typical type for your gender as a child, you then not noticed. So there's all these ridiculous notions and we're learning more and more about it. And it's going to constantly change our understanding.
JACKIE and HELEN: Yeah. Yeah.

HELEN: And I think I'm going back as well. I think we've seen in this country, a huge growth in people's awareness.

JANINE: I think, yes, absolutely.

HELEN: I'm not sure if that's mirrored across the world. And I think as well kind of understanding kind of different cultures, the intersectionality piece, what does that mean as well in terms of how we do things and how we talk in a way that kind of resonates with everyone.

JANINE: Absolutely. Yeah.

JACKIE: Oh, this is a fascinating conversation. We could talk all day, I'm sure. But I really want to get to that collaboration piece. And I don't know if the best way to do it is for you to ask each other the final question about the actions, Or if we can just maybe proceed that with your thoughts, because you came up with this term, and I love this term, about what it means to universally design collaboration.

JANINE: So it's the idea... So my love of the idea of universal design collaborating is that from the offset, we start to think about what can we do to be inclusive for all. So not just neurodivergent people, not just disabled people, so all people. So that everything works and there's optionality in things that we do flexibility. So people aren't having to come back and say, I'm sorry, I can't, you know, I couldn't be on campus for 9am because I have caring responsibilities. I couldn't be in that environment because the lights were so bright will say like, let's just think from the beginning, do we need to tell them you have to be in this certain environment? You have to do it this certain way? Or do we just need to say, this is what we need as an end result. You get there the way that you need to get there in the right environment, the right method. One of my favourite things is the idea of the way that we're assessing people. Giving optionality around assessment or giving flexibility around the way that as a member of staff might do a project, don't dictate to them the way that they're doing things. Just say, these are the output I need and let's then discuss how we do that from the beginning. So there's that flexibility for people to collaborate in different ways.

JACKIE: Love it.

HELEN: It sounds amazing.

JACKIE: We're nodding our heads! It sounds brilliant.

HELEN: I think if we could get everyone thinking like that, you know what I mean? I think that would be... It takes me back to when we wrote our well-being commitment, which is our strategic approach to colleague well-being. I had lots of conversations. We ran focus groups and there were three themes that came out really strongly and one of them was headspace. That was the word that people use. So how do I get the space to do my work in the best way that I can? And it was just such a reoccurring theme and that's what strikes me. I keep coming back to it in this conversation is designing environments, designing work, enabling people to have choice about how they do things gives people that headspace to work in their best possible way.

JANINE: And giving them that headspace to work out what suits them because sometimes people are just going along with the way, this is the way it's done and why am I terrible? Why can't I do it? And I think just take a minute to think, well, does that work for me or can I find a way that suits me better? And leaning into your natural ways of doing things and then you're just far more likely to succeed.

JACKIE: You're giving me so many ideas for so many different things!

HELEN: I want to do so many projects!

JACKIE: One of the things that this is making me think about is how rigidly we measure success. And you just said, what is the output? How are you going to get there? And there seems to be in higher education and other sectors, but definitely higher education, you know, this fixation on metrics that measure things. And actually what I think we're all talking about here is satisfaction in your role, okay? And doing it in the way that works for you, best works for you and getting to the end result and getting a good end result, okay? But giving people flexibility to do that. And that's really hard to measure, but that will come back to satisfaction surveys and so on, won't it? And happiness, better wellbeing at work, you know, coming to work and doing a good job because you feel that you're supported.

JANINE: And valued. And people have noticed that you've got these amazing skills. Maybe they're not, you know, they're not in the neurotypical skills, but you've got some incredible set of skills that you're bringing because you're neurodivergent, because you have this different angle and different perception of the world. That's an asset to a team. It's absolutely an asset.

JACKIE: Thank you for saying that because these conversations aren't just about the barriers and the obstacles, it's absolutely about what do we get out of having this diverse, amazing workforce and PGR population and student population. And you've just sort of...

JANINE: Oh my gosh, yeah, if you think about something that's autistic, you know, common strengths of an autistic person, attention to detail, ability to focus, a need for fairness, not their own fairness, but social justice. That's amazing. And if you think about someone with ADHD, problem solving. If you've got a problem, if something's happening, if there's a drama, get someone with ADHD. The clear vision they suddenly have in a moment of drama is amazing.

HELEN: And that's, I think that's really interesting because there's been some work that's been kind of happening over the last couple of years about strengths-based approach. So kind of, you know, using some tools to help people understand their strengths. I'm not sure we've yet taken it to that level of thinking about how do we play in the strengths of neurodivergence and understanding that within our teams as well. And again, so if you've got a place where people feel that they can be open and share kind of some of challenges that they have, but also what strengths they bring, that takes us to kind of like on again, doesn't it?

JANINE: I think in the way that you then like, for example, if you're building a team in a department, you'll say, oh, you know, if it's an academic team, I need someone that specializes in this topic and someone that's great at teaching this topic and someone that says, why aren't we doing that in the skillset? And say, I need someone that's good at problem solving. I need someone that can do attention to detail. Someone that's great at analysing policy. Like we should be doing that in those kind of soft skills, those attributes as well.

JACKIE: Yeah. And in a way, the university's doing that. I went to the Big Ideas event yesterday and one of the things it's asking people to do is identify with different parts of that skill and spectrum, if you like. I'm going to have to wrap this up because we're moving on rapidly, but there's so much more I want to talk to you both about. And I don't normally commit to an action, but I am going to just commit to bringing this conversation to the attention of PJ Hemmaway, who's been on one of these podcasts series. And PJ is our director for IT at the university. He's fantastic. He's spoken beautifully, eloquently about his dysgraphia and the way that he sort of processes information. And he's now using that on many platforms that he's on. But one of the things that I think is really going to be interesting is the tool, the workshops and tools and things that you've developed. So I'm going to commit to connecting you.

JANINE: I've got such a bank of resources now. And I'm like, where do I put them, how do I share them? I've got like, slides, like a presentation that works really well for neurodivergent students. So like dark backgrounds, more engaging layouts. So all these things I've prepared and created a whole bank of alternative assessment ideas, ways to engage in terms of teaching. So it's like, how do I get these out to everyone else? That would be great.

JACKIE: So that's my commitment. Right. So now I'm going to ask you each to ask the other your final question, please.

JANINE: Fab. So Helen, I'm going to ask you, what one thing will you commit to do as a result of this conversation?

HELEN: Okay. Thank you, Janine. I always struggle with one thing. Okay. So I think firstly, what you've just said about your bank of resources, obviously, I'm kind of connected with a lot of groups kind of centrally. And there's lots of conversations at the moment around how do we support our neurodivergent colleagues. So I'm really interested to look at how we explore that and kind of link up between our talent development teams and embed kind of within our learning, what you're teaching to other people, how that links with EDI, how that links with DASS, with wellbeing. So I think there's a whole connection piece we can do. And I'm also aware of some fantastic work that's been done in FSE as well.

JACKIE:FSE being?

HELEN: Faculty of Science and Engineering. Thank you, Jackie, for keeping me right! So I think that's kind of one thing we could definitely do. And I'm really excited about that. I think the other thing is for us is I feel like I'm doing some, but I think some of what we've been talking today, but I think there's still loads more. So like one example that sprung into my mind was, I don't know if anyone's ever come across the wellness action plans, the kind of MIND have a template, which is basically gets you to reflect on what does a good day at work look like for you when you're feeling mentally well? What are the characteristics around you? What are you doing? What are other people that might help? And what are the first sort of signs perhaps that you might be having not such a good day? So starting to have a bad day. And what are those early signs? And what do you need to do at that point? Or what do others need to do? And we work with a lady called Liz Mulhall Brewer externally, who has ADHD. And she's helped us design a version of that for neurodivergent colleagues. But what strikes me in our conversation today is we've now got two forms, which then requires a choice. Should I complete that one or should I complete that one? And actually, why don't we just have one form that works inclusive design for all? So that's kind of what, as we've been chatting, that's been at the back of my head. So it's about, that's one example of how many more examples are there of that, that we build it in as part of what we do. So you've sent my mind spinning with ideas.

JANINE: Yeah, that would be amazing to integrate into academic advising and management, getting students to think, right, what is, and that, you know, and that again, it's the universal design for learning collaborating. So it's not just if you're neurodivergent or if you've got mental health issues, it's if you've got caring responsibilities. If you're just, you know, a typical student who's just like, what does a good day at uni look like for me? How do I have a good day of study where at the end of the day, I feel like I actually learned something today. And if we just took the time with students and said, right, let's look at this. And then it's giving them that chance to reflect and go, okay, yeah, I'm in charge of my studies now. I'm in charge of my own time management, which is what a lot of students really struggle with. Giving them that chance to say, okay, identify for you, is a good day going to work in the library? Is it working at home? Is it making it to two lectures out of the three you were meant to? Is that a good day for you? It's a stepping stone. So maybe we can reuse those resources with students as well. That would be really good to get them to be reflecting a bit more.

JACKIE: I can see another conversation going on between you two. That's brilliant. So now, Helen.

HELEN: Okay. So I've got a question for you, Janine, which is what one thing would make a positive difference to your experience at the university?

JANINE: Okay. So again, like you, I wanted to do two. And my two that I was torn between was clarity and communication, because that's always confusing. One, trying to read between the lines of what's the person actually trying to get to? What is the point of this? Like having action points in emails. That was one. But if I can only have one, I would go with optionality. And that's optionality in environment, optionality in engagement, optionality in terms of how we run meetings. So hybrid on campus. And it doesn't mean that every meeting has to be hybrid. It might be that, okay, next week we'll do the meeting on campus. The week after it's online, you know, it's about getting that optionality around the way people engage, optionality in how we assess students, optionality in how they engage with their learning. So that would be my one thing, optionality.

JACKIE: Thank you so much. And if I may, I'm going to add something to what you've just said about those meetings. It's about clarity of communication in advance. So one of the things I really struggle with is when we've gone for one option and then on the day somebody changes it. And that really throws me, you know.

JANINE: And that throws so many people. Because what if you've got childcare plans? What if you've got a meeting at the other side of the campus? What if you weren't coming onto campus apart from this one meeting? You've paid for a train ticket and actually you aren't that well off and paying for that train ticket cost a lot of money. Now you didn't need to.

JACKIE: So many implications.

JANINE: So many for so many people.

JACKIE: That one thing that one person thinks is totally a reasonable thing to do, can throw some people back.

JANINE: They think, oh, I'm doing this for the benefit of everyone. I'm suddenly doing it online. Well, I don't know if that has a short-noted benefit of everyone. JACKEI: But also I think creating that safe environment where we can feed that back, including to seniors. So, you know, I'm finding the more embedded I get into my role, the braver I get. But the braveness is really just speaking truth, right? And speaking honestly about this has had an impact. And it's not always on me. I'm speaking on behalf of others. So this conversation, I would hope people are listening to it and take sucker from this, that they too have a voice. And the more of us that use that voice to reflect the impact on us when things happen or change or whatever, you know, the more we're creating that culture, that environment where it's okay to do that.

JANINE: And just have more discussions. That's what it comes down to. Just discuss things more, be more open to hearing other experiences, other views, other ideas around teaching, learning, working. That's the way forward.

JACKIE: Oh Janine, you've summed up the podcast absolutely beautifully. Because that's exactly exactly what this is about. Having more conversations, being more open to learning, unlearning, doing things differently. Oh, I've absolutely loved today. I didn't know really what was going to come out of this because we didn't pre-prepare. We haven't done an email. But thank you both of you so much. Is there anything you desperately want to say before we finish?

HELEN: I would love to be really bold and give to advice to anyone who is neurodivergent. Maybe neurodivergent is considering that might be. And what I would really like to suggest they do is to encourage them to invest time into understanding their neurodivergence or just their neurotype profile, whether they're neurotypical or not. Start to know what works for them, what learning styles, what working style works for them. Start to really work out what motivates them. Unmasked. Don't do things because other people are doing them. And the more you embrace your neurotype, whether that is being neurodivergent, autistic, ADHD, even neurotypical, the more you embrace it and understand it, the further you will succeed.

JACKIE: Oh, you can get a big hug at the end of this. Thank you so much, Janine.

HELEN: For me, along the same lines, it is, yeah, what is it that you need to have a good day at work and be your best? So, yeah, focusing on your needs and perhaps thinking about how you could have a conversation with those that you work with around those. So, you have that level of understanding between each other. So, your example, Janine, of somebody dimming the lights for you without asking, how great would it be if we all kind of got that about each other and we did that in a really supportive way? Yeah, absolutely.

JACKIE: Absolutely wonderful. So, we'll finish on Be Bold. Yes. Thank you both of you so much. Thanks, Helen.

JANINE: Thank you for having us.

HELEN: Yeah. Thanks, Jackie. Thanks, Janine. Thank you.