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Guidance on providing ‘lecture notes’ to students
Based on work complied by Megan O’Neill, Equality and Diversity co-ordinator,
University of Salford
Many of us now find ourselves teaching students with Student Support Plans (also referred to
as Assessments of Needs). Many of the support plans stipulate that students should have
access to, and preferably advanced and electronic access to, ‘lecture notes’. As these support
plans are basically generic documents that are tailored to the specific student but not the
subject area, ‘lecture notes’ are not defined in support plans and therefore leave us staff with
the dilemma of deciding what this means for our lectures, seminars and workshops.
While we do not wish to dictate teaching practice to anyone, we all have a legal obligation
(under Part IV of the Disability Discrimination Act 2005) to meet any requests in support
plans for ‘lecture notes’. Many of our students take modules in more than one subject area
and working towards some commonality of practice would be a welcome achievement. This
applies to all staff – even those who do not usually employ visual aids in lectures/workshops
and new staff writing lectures for the first time.

Each lecturer should specify early in the module (in the module handbook and in an
early lecture) what he or she takes ‘lecture notes’ to mean, and therefore what students
can expect to receive, when and how (e.g. on the virtual learning environment (VLE)
in advance, in handouts the day of, etc).

Lecture notes should not be a complete transcript of the lecture. This is actually
unhelpful for students with dyslexia as too much information can be just as difficult as
too little.

It is recommended that staff draw up an outline, for example in bullet points, of the
main themes of the lecture in the order in which they occur. This should especially
include names of important people and places (spelled correctly!) and key terms and
dates. Some staff may find that their OHPs or PowerPoint slides will suit this without
much change. These do not need to be detailed. Dyslexic students can have difficulty
in pulling out the main themes of lectures, so this is really what they most need to
know.

If any student with a support plan finds the outline too brief, that student should be
able to speak to the lecturer outside of class time for some clarification.

Lecture notes should, wherever possible, be made available to all students in advance
of the lecture on the VLE.
There are several reasons for this:


By making the notes available to all students, the module becomes more inclusive: no
student is advantaged or disadvantaged over another and no special arrangements need
be made for SSP students (nor do they risk being stigmatised by getting exclusive
handouts every week).
Students with support plans will find the lecture much easier to follow if they know in
advance what is coming. Having to listen, write notes and think about the topic all at
ORIC – http://www.oric.brad.ac.uk
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.


the same time can be very difficult for some students, especially with dyslexia.
Advanced access alleviates this problem, especially if they can read up on the topic
beforehand.
Many students with support plans are not always able to attend lectures in person (due
to mobility or anxiety issues) and electronic access is vital for them.
Research on this has revealed that advanced access to lecture material does not reduce
attendance at lectures.
Staff who teach in interactive workshops or don’t use overheads or other visual aids in
lectures still need to provide ‘lecture notes’ to support plan students. The following are
suggestions for how this may be achieved, either for all students or just for support plan
students:



Prior preparation: Students who are given readings to do in advance of a seminar
could be provided with either guidance questions to consider whilst doing the reading
which address key themes or a brief bullet point list of the key themes of the reading.
This is because students with disabilities like dyslexia can struggle to pull out the main
themes from a large body of text. This may also work even if there isn’t a specific
text to read – just a list of topics to consider prior to the session.
Post-teaching summaries: The lecturer could type up and circulate a brief bullet point
list of the key themes which were covered in the teaching session. This list could be
generated at the end of the session itself but before it finishes, asking the students to
contribute their thoughts to the summary, or, the lecturer could do it in his or her own
time later.
Other ideas: Lecturers are free to address this requirement however they best see fit –
the above are just suggestions. The main idea is to capture in some way what
transpired in the teaching session if it is not possible to provide summaries/key points
in advance to SSP students.
Staff may wish to consider using other types of teaching techniques. Research suggests that
dyslexic students struggle when teaching occurs in only one format (e.g. auditory). Having a
range of teaching methods will greatly enhance their learning, as well as that of many other
students.
As mentioned above, the intention is not to dictate teaching practice, but to make staff aware
that we are all legally obligated to make reasonable adjustments for students with identified
needs, and to suggest the best ways to achieve this. By making small changes to our current
practice with all our students, we can meet this legal obligation rather easily.
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