Heading off into post-secondary study is... kind of big, actually. 

Learners have left the classroom behind and are embarking on a different phase of their educational journey. It’s not going to be as structured or as educator-led as it has been before: assigned reading is going to get more intensive, as are the concepts. Learners in STEM and skilled trades subject areas need strong reading skills and will feel the changes over the next semester or two as academic study evolves from something that happens in books to something that happens on the go. 

So, it’s no wonder that after the dust has settled, learners with dyslexia and other reading differences might be feeling a little daunted by the whole process. 

And this means that support solutions need to be able to step up and transform with learners as they make the post-secondary move. 

Why is assistive tech for dyslexia so important in post-secondary? 

Assistive technology for dyslexia can mean anything from a screen reader to a reading slope. For most college and university readers, however, one of the best alternatives is a pen scanner that’s set up to deal with the huge number of printed materials. 

After learners leave secondary school and progress into further study, the reading game gets a lot more intensive. College and university students might suddenly find themselves dealing with as much as a three-fold increase in their reading workload: 

● Expectations of literacy are higher, so texts get more in-depth and complex, and there’s a greater incidence of subject-specific language

● The style of language used often changes from what learners have become used to in the secondary classroom, moving from something easily comprehendible to more sector-specific writing that’s written for people preparing to work in that field  

● The amount increases too: once learners might have spent a semester looking at the same textbook, now that volume could be the focus of just one or two weeks in a schedule of ten or twelve. 

An exercise in adapting

These are huge changes to adapt to, especially for learners who don’t find reading as easy as their peers. Support needs can grow as they find themselves faced with a more complicated reading regimen— whereas the last years of secondary education might have been manageable from a decoding and timing standpoint.

The first few weeks of post-secondary study can really decrease the time that learners have available to spend on individual texts, especially if they’ve got training or placement hours too, meaning that there’s a pressure to work through things much faster than they had been doing previously.  

Having the right assistive technology for dyslexia and college support is vital for students if they’re to navigate this transitionary period and go on to progress through higher study demands, achieve their goals, and end up in the jobs and careers that they’re studying for. 

Support vs. independence for college learners

Most college and university learners don’t necessarily want a ‘hand to hold’ anymore. They’re developing independence both as individuals and learners, and they’re becoming (if they weren’t already) increasingly aware of their image and how their peers view them. This is where we see the majority of those with reading differences pull away from human reading support as it can develop a negative set of associations: 

● Learners feel ‘policed’: sitting next to an adult makes them worry that it’s perceived as behaviour-based, as opposed to an academic support mechanism  

● They might feel infantilized, and come to worry that a human reader makes them look less capable than their peers or even like they’re failing the class  

● They perceive a risk of becoming singled out and isolated by their peers because of that human reader presence, which can lead to a rise in social anxiety 

● They begin to feel nervous about situations where human reading support won’t be available, like at home, post-qualification, or even just next semester if the departmental budgets don’t line up. Human readers can be kind of expensive, and a lot of post-secondary institutions are under pressure to be as cost-effective as possible.  

It’s evident that there’s a push-and-pull relationship developing between the concept of support and the prospect of looking and feeling like an independent learner. Academic freedom is the goal, but it can be difficult to achieve for the learner who relies on another human being for reading support. There’s real potential for friction and disengagement to develop when these arrangements are still necessary but are now unwanted by the learners themselves.  

💡❗Understanding older learners’ need for freedom is a vital part of any post-secondary support strategy.

College and universities are uniquely high-pressure learning environments— where else do you have to fit in multiple high-level academic readings a week with such a vibrant social life, training, placements, sports commitments and extra-curriculars, and somehow still find time to sleep? 

4 ways assistive tech can nurture college student freedom 

✅ It makes studying something that happens anywhere, not just in classes! 

When they’re in college or university, reading doesn’t just happen during instructional periods. They’re expected to go off and read a lot of materials independently, which can mean long reading sessions in the library, at home, between classes, as they’re travelling—the list goes on. Assistive technology for dyslexia, like a handheld pen scanner, takes reading support on the road and means that learning can happen wherever you are, whenever you get a moment: it’s all down to when and where it happens best.  

On the flipside, without agile support that’s portable and works independently of Wi-Fi, older learners can develop a sense that they’re still learning in the patterns that they were in school. It can create the feeling that they’re facing a large step up in expectation without the support mechanism to make it all possible. 

✅ Discreet, handheld tech also frees learners from the weight of observation.  

Nobody wants to be the learner in the classroom (or in the library, or on the ward, or in the resource center…) that everybody else is looking at. Unfortunately for those who currently get their reading support from human readers, this might be something that they feel like they’re experiencing every day, and it can impact confidence, peer relationships and self-image in a negative way.  

Putting reading support back in their hands with assistive technology for dyslexia means that learning becomes independent. When the ability to self-support and problem-solve are on the table, it means that they can work through reading tasks alone, so they don’t feel that they’re being singled out as somebody who needs to be ‘kept an eye on’. 

✅ Personal devices allow students to work in an agile and creative way. 

Sometimes, work leads learners where they want to go. That’s the nature of writing when they hit college and university: things can look entirely different when they’ve finished something compared to what they thought it was going to look like when they started. And that’s okay! It’s about discovery as much as it’s about assessment at this stage, and proving that they can navigate information.  

When learners are equipped and confident in their reading support, it means that these kinds of surprises don’t have to be nasty ones. Suddenly finding out that there’s a field-defining example or grade-saving hot take you can pull from a text you hadn’t opened before is simple when you can just plug in your headphones and listen. 

And it’s a lot less stressful than trying to find any other kind of reading support at 11 PM on a weeknight. 

✅ Assistive technology for dyslexia empowers learners towards the working world. 

As K-12 learners move into post-secondary study, they become more and more aware that what happens in the classroom has an impact on how they might enter the labor market later on. It can be daunting for them, especially in times of job precarity, and many will be feeling the pressure.  

This may be doubly so for those learners who need support to read with confidence. They’re likely to be worried about heading into a world of work that runs on reading, and those who receive support from human readers will be worried about departing from that kind of intensive support. Assistive technology for dyslexia can represent an important transitional phase that helps college and university students realize that with the right devices, they can read independently and tackle ad-hoc problems, helping them develop the support strategies that take them into a successful working future.  

…but what can happen when the right reading support isn’t in place? 

 Things might get difficult. If students aren’t able to access assistive technology for dyslexia in a way that breaks down the barriers that might be emerging, then that whole post-secondary education could end up compromised. Anxiety can take hold, and then the potential for academic disengagement can increase dramatically, leading to low grades, the need to repeat elements, and the potential for dropping out of courses altogether.   

This is a problem on two levels.  

When a lot of people hold post-secondary qualifications, the job market pays attention.  

Although experience plays a part, many applications now have minimum qualification expectations to narrow down their talent pool and ensure that applicants will be able to cope with the demands of the role. It’s competitive out there even for degree holders, and having those grades and qualifications locked in is a vital part of taking those first steps on the career ladder.  

It’s also important to note that when there’s been an educational ‘failure’ (i.e. a course drop-out, a grade barrier to progression, a pause in studies), it becomes harder for learners to develop a positive self-image in terms of the learning that they do, instead beginning to internalize education as a site of defeat. This developing shame can mean that they abandon goals and pull away from education, which unless there’s a process of reaffirming those goals put in place, leads to a narrowing of the choices they might have when it comes to the world of work. 

Leveraging assistive technology for dyslexia for post-secondary success

Like every riddle to solve in education, the solution to nurturing this kind of academic freedom has its roots in the stage that came before it.  

When learners have reading needs, K-12 might not have been the easiest ride for them: even when the right support is in place and they’re working with the right resources, things can still get tiring and higher study might often feel out of reach. That’s why it’s so important that we start having conversations with K-12 learners about ongoing support, and linking them up with support strategies that can travel with them into the post-secondary phase, instead of ones that might be difficult to access after high school. 

But even if this hasn’t happened, and learners have come to a post-secondary environment cut off from the programs, professionals and methodologies that have supported them previously, it’s not too late to implement assistive technology for dyslexia. What matters is that the devices that we offer are intuitive as well as support at the point of need, whenever that need arises, and they’re simple to slot into reading tasks with little to no prep required.

Taking on the challenge with C-Pen Reader 2! 

C-Pen Reader 2 is an assistive technology designed for a personal learning experience. It’s a reading pen that’s customizable, able to support multiple languages with different language dictionaries, and works without a Wi-Fi connection—meaning that reading can happen anywhere. Using it to support reading is as simple as scan, listen, and understand: simply move the pen scanner across the page to hear the words read back to you every time. 

To find out more about supporting older learners in college or in university, check out our Higher Education Resources Hub at the Scanning Pens website.