So I recently finished H880 Technology-enhanced learning and one of the things we talked about was teacher presence and being open and honest with our students.
I post my introduction thread before term starts on the tutor-group forums and while I don't share my laundry list of issues I am honest about my autism diagnosis and the issues that created for succeeding at university the first time around. To 'celebrate' World Mental Health Day on 10 October I always share some mental health resources for students and mention that I have personal experience of poor mental health derailing my studies.
There's always a danger that being that open is going to cause students to be dismissive of me as a teacher ("those who can't, teach", right?). But to be honest, those sort of students generally have the benefit of an unhindered education and they probably don't need me much except as someone to mark their TMAs. Certainly some students don't seem to want to interact with me much, and that's fine.
What is interesting is some of the conversations I am having in private. I noticed at the beginning of the term that for the first time since starting at the OU I had no autistic students.
I now know that to not be the case. I have a number of students who are diagnosed with autism or waiting for an autism diagnosis. But they hadn't disclosed it to the university. Some of them have disclosed a disability but haven't said what that is, others haven't mentioned that they even have a disability (you can disclose having a disability without mentioning what it is or having DSA).
And I don't know, but I wonder if this doesn't feed into some of the group work issues that we tutors find on SM123. I know that lots of my AL peers have issues with getting groups going. In my emails and my introductory tutorial I always mention that there is group work in week 3. And here's where I diverge a little from the 'suggested plan' provided by the module team in-house. The suggested format is that I assign students to group from before the course, so they have time to get to know each other. It makes perfect sense. For a neurotypical.
I openly discuss my late diagnosis. And I tell them that because of my own experience I now treat every student as a potential undiagnosed autistic.
There is actually an alternative activity for students with anxiety or autism, etc. But it's not made clear on the module materials. So I tell them that there is alternative available. Most students want to do the group project, but there are always a few with perfectly valid reasons who don't.
I think ideally the students would be brave enough to declare their disabilities, especially since I suspect that the average AL is not autistic themselves (or at least they all seemed to be extremely loud and sociable at the STEM AL development day I attended) and hence not able to coax a private confession out of them as I can. I don't know what the answer to that is.