Because any learning space (or any group gathering, for that matter) includes people with diverse ways of knowing, processing information, and learning, all of these spaces will be neurodiverse. Meeting the needs of the neurodivergent, though, requires some awareness and intentionality.

Neurodivergent describes those who have some condition that impacts how their brains work; this might be a learning disability, attention deficit or anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette’s syndrome, bipolar disorder, and more.

Neurodivergent (ND) students like Emma can tell when you as a faculty member care about their success and when you don’t. They can tell when you genuinely welcome them into the classroom and when you see them as a burden. Of course you don’t always know whether you have ND students in your courses. Even when you do, you don’t always know what kind of support they’re getting from academic advising and disability services. And you don’t know whether they are even seeking help — or their reasons for not doing so.

In teaching neurodivergent students, the only thing you can control is what you do in your own classroom. Hence this essay on how to make your teaching more welcoming and accessible to them. The good news: It’s easier than you may think.

And as far as the course design itself goes, the fewer links that they have to navigate and have to make decisions on, the better off they are. Having everything that they need for a particular unit, module, chapter, whatever you want to call it, within that course site so that they don't have to go looking around for it is crucial. One of my participants actually mentioned his frustration several times that it's ridiculous for me to have to search around in the web the course site to find what I need to do, the resources that I need to do it and get the instructions; I need to spend that time on the assignment, not finding it and the resources. So they were all very... they all mentioned that the way that the course is set up and where stuff is located was key.

Several participants stated that they found group work valuable, because their peers would explain concepts at a level they could more easily understand compared with how their instructor explained concepts. Carson, an upper-division student with both ADHD and SLD, shared that he no longer feels motivated to learn in his courses by his own grades. He explained how group work provided him with a different motivation to learn...

Several components related to group work were perceived to hinder the learning of our participants. These barriers included instances when peers did not want to work with the participant, because the participant was thought to work more slowly than the class... Other participants explained that group work can create the potential for them to experience negative emotions during class, such as embarrassment.