Ůӟó

As a full time student, you’ll have your very own Personal Tutor who will meet with you to review your academic progress, provide support, offer guidance and encouragement to ensure that you successfully complete all aspects of your course. In addition to looking after your general welfare and becoming someone you can trust and rely on, they’ll also prepare you for you next steps at college, university or employment.

Every student at Ůӟó can use our libraries. Each is equipped with books, journals, eBooks and DVDs, and you can use PCs or connect your own device to our free Wi-Fi. Staff are on hand to help you find resources and access other services such as photocopying, laminating and binding, and our specialists can help you develop your literacy, numeracy and ICT skills as well as your study skills like understanding assignments, searching for information and meeting deadlines.

All student computers are equipped with accessibility software, including:

• Vu-Bar – an on-screen, slotted ruler that’s useful for dyslexic learners who skip lines or drop from one line to the next when reading.
• Thunder Screenreader – to help learners who are blind or partially-sighted to use a computer where the display is optimized for easy accessibility.
• ssOverlay – a coloured overlay for the screen where the colour and transparency levels can be adjusted to suit the learner.
• Balabolka – a Text-To-Speech program where you can copy and paste text into Balabolka and it will read the text back to you.
• Microsoft Immersive Reader – text to speech assistive technology, available in Word, Teams and One Note, and coming soon in PowerPoint.
• EdTech apps such as Canvas & Wakelet – look out for the Immersive Reader icon.
• Access assistive technology eBooks through the Learner Portal – ‘How To’ and ‘Information’ dashboards.  eBooks have a ‘Read to me’ function.

You may be able to get extra support during exams – just tell your Personal Tutor if you’ve been given exam access arrangements before (although arrangements awarded at school aren’t automatically given at college).

Access arrangements might be extra time, a separate room, access to a reader, a prompter, a scribe, use of a computer, or a combination of these or other recommendations.

For learners who have hyper-sensitivity issues, suffer from anxiety or find it uncomfortable to use busy canteen facilities, each campus has a quiet space to use at break and lunchtimes.