August 10, 2006 Source: :
http://www.ryerson.ca/news/news/General_Public/20060811_st_onlineto.html Online to Success If you were to ask Hillary Sampliner a few months ago if she was feeling a little nervous about starting her first year at Ryerson, she would have said yes. But the Fashion Design student is now confidently looking forward to her first day, thanks to an innovative summer orientation program for students with learning and other disabilities launched by Ryerson's Access Centre. Sampliner is one of six students enrolled in a pilot six-week program, Online To Success, which enables students to identify their learning challenge and pick the best strategies to help them improve their academic prowess. The students can also find out about the support and resources the Access Centre offers and how to advocate for themselves in a university environment. "It provides [the students] with an increased sense of self awareness of their academic strengths and weaknesses," says Carolyn Stallberg, coordinator of the unique program and a learning strategist at the Access Centre. "And that's absolutely critical for being able to deal with the demands of their first year." Launched in July, the small group of students first stayed in one of Ryerson's residences for a fun-filled weekend meeting the Centre staff, taking seminars on different adaptive software that helps them learn more effectively and going on a tour of the campus. For the past five weeks, the students have been completing weekly modules that enable them to identify their learning difficulty, determine if they are an auditory or visual learner and fine-tune learning strategies on note-taking skills or how to structure an essay - essential skills they will need in the classroom. Stallberg has been sending the students feedback every week and the students also chat online through a discussion board, providing input on each other's assignments. At end of the program, students will gather together for a graduation dinner. Hampliner, who has reading difficulties, has found ReadPlease, a software program that reads text out loud to its users, particularly helpful because it helps her understand the content of a passage. She has been using this software throughout the course and plans to continue during her school term. The Fashion student says without Online To Success, adjusting to the academic rigours of university would have been more challenging, but the Access Centre and the program has taught her how to approach professors to ask for special accommodations and to advocate for herself. "If they didn't understand what your disability is, then they wouldn't really know where you're coming from," says Hampliner. "It's much easier when you can let people know about yourself and [that allows you to] get the help you need."
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