ADCET webinar — COVID-19 and beyond: Perspectives from university students
Event Details
Online via Zoom
2 September 2020
Overview
On Wednesday 2 September, NCSEHE Equity Fellow Professor Tim Pitman and NCSEHE ‘Student Voice’ vlogger Ashley Willcox joined a panel of university students with disability share how COVID-19 disruptions impacted on their studies.
The students shared their challenges, the successful strategies and coping skills they used, the unexpected benefits they discovered, and what they want to take forward. Students also shared their thoughts, insights and suggestions for online learning.
The webinar began with a brief presentation from Tim Pitman on some of the key findings from his research on the impact of COVID-19 on university students.
The panel was facilitated by Debbie Hindle.
Webinar recording
View the webinar recording and transcript on the ADCET website
Presenters
Debbie Hindle has been coordinating the University of Tasmania’s Specialist Peer Mentoring Program (Speerment) since its inception in 2017. She was also the Project Officer responsible for compiling the resource: How to Transition to Tertiary Education: Helpful Hints for People with Autism Spectrum. Debbie is appreciative that a key part of her knowledge in this area has been informed by nearly a decade of experience as a mentor to someone on the Autism Spectrum.
Tim Pitman is a Senior Research Fellow at Curtin University in the School of Education. He has worked in the Australian higher education sector since 1996 and his PhD in Education was completed at The University of Western Australia in 2012. His research focus is on higher education policy, with a particular focus on increasing the representation of disadvantaged students. He has researched and published widely on these and other topics. In 2020 he joins the NCSEHE as an Equity Fellow. His Fellowship will focus on how universities can best support people with disability, who come from regional, rural and remote Australia, in their higher education studies.
Ashley Willcox is currently studying a Master of Teaching in Secondary Education majoring in English at the University of Technology Sydney. In 2019 she completed a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Writing online through the University of New England. Ashley has had a recuperation from an acquired brain injury that occurred in a car accident in 2005 when she was half way through a Journalism Degree at UTS. After the accident she studied education majoring in Kindergarten to Year 12. For the past 3.5 years she has tutored adult Brazilian migrants in English as a second language. Ashley aspires to be a teacher and also work in disability advocacy.
Fabian Jones is a vision impaired first year student at Griffith University, currently studying a double degree of a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Business. He hopes to possibly enter the legal profession in the areas of either sports or consumer law, and is also somewhat interested in corporate law and how this relates to daily business operations.
Damon Tyerman is a student of the CSU Bathurst campus studying the Bachelor of Social Science (Psychology) and is nearing the end of his 2nd year. Damon has been diagnosed with ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Tourette’s Syndrome. He is aiming to become a psychology researcher, particularly in Jungian psychology and the theory of the collective unconscious as he finds it truly fascinating.
Rachel Brooke is studying a Bachelor of Information, Communication and Technology at the University of Tasmania. She is I am hoping to get into a career of Software Engineering after her studies. Rachel has dyslexia, and also has an inability to retain information.