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If you’ve taught in higher education for any length of time, you’ve probably had one or more students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, better known as ADHD, in your courses. You might not have known it, however, since some students with ADHD haven’t been diagnosed yet and some choose not to disclose it to their instructors. This type of neurodivergence can be a little invisible to instructors, which is why it’s important we learn more about it and how we can design and teach courses that support these students.

Cathryn Friel knows a lot about teaching students with ADHD. Catt is a senior instructional designer at Missouri Online, and she completed her PhD last year with a qualitative study examining the experiences of students with ADHD in online courses. I reached out to Catt to learn more about her study and her own experiences as a student with ADHD. I learned a lot from our conversation about how students with ADHD experience and cope with college courses and about how instructors can make their courses, especially their online courses, more welcoming to neurodiverse students.

Episode Resources:

·       “Experiences of students with ADHD in online learning environments: A multi-case study,” Cathryn Friel, https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/91567 

·       “What I wish my instructor knew: How active learning influences the classroom experiences and self-advocacy of STEM majors with ADHD and specific learning disabilities,” Mariel Pfeifer, Julio Cordero, and Julie Dangremond Stanton, https://www.lifescied.org/doi/full/10.1187/cbe.21-12-0329 

·       “Supporting ADHD Learners with Karen Costa,” Teaching in Higher Ed podcast ep. 384, https://teachinginhighered.com/podcast/supporting-adhd-learners/ 

·       Distance Teaching & Learning (DT&L) and Summit for Online Leadership and Administration + Roundtable (SOLA+R), https://conferences.upcea.edu/DTL-SOLAR2023/ 

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