Ease autistic students’ transition to university with low-stimulus videos

By Laura.Duckett, 16 September, 2024
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University communications are often high impact and visually appealing. But this can be the opposite of what some of our students need
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Changes are difficult for many autistic students, and the transition to university is particularly challenging, involving major adjustments to both study and home environments. 

The methods institutions use to present information, particularly videos packaged in a high-stimulus format, are not attuned to the needs of some neurodiverse students when they are making this change. Just as a noisy seminar room can quickly become overwhelming for some students, a “noisy” (both auditory and visual) video can have unintended negative consequences.

To address this, we piloted a series of low-stimulus videos aimed at students with autism spectrum conditions to help ease their transition into higher education. In this resource, we discuss the videos, the feedback we received and some hints and tips for those who wish to create a low-stimulus video library.

Our process

We created four videos for the pilot: an introduction to Manchester, an introduction to the University of Manchester’s disability service and its support for autistic students, a short introduction to some well-being facilities and an introduction to the department of physics and astronomy. 

We posted these online in 2011, and some years later, we rerecorded some and refined others using more professional methods such as autocue. 

After close consultation with students, we filmed an introduction to the main university library, updated information about quiet spaces and well-being facilities on campus and a short video on a specific, smaller on-campus library with a room that students identified as being particularly quiet and that operated with an easy booking system. 

The aim was to produce the videos clearly and logically with no unnecessary background noise or visual effects. Everything in the video had to be in there for a reason. It required considerable thought and consideration.

At the time, one of the co-authors of this piece, Norman Darwen, a recently retired autism transitions officer, regularly provided support to undergraduate and postgraduate autistic students, so we decided that he would be the face and voice of the videos to provide a level of familiarity for students. Norman evaluated the videos using his experience working with autistic students. 

Student feedback

Student feedback was positive. Some students and parents told us they had viewed the videos before making their applications (we posted them on our disability service website and student advisers sent them around. Some students shared links to the videos on social media and we played them at the university’s welcome day events. Interestingly, some non-neurodiverse students also said they found them useful (remember, some students may not yet have a diagnosis). We’ve noticed these videos being watched throughout the academic year. The only criticism was that there weren’t enough of them.

Tips for making low-stimulus videos

  • Do involve current students in the production development. Ask them what they would have liked to have known. Ideally, show first drafts of the videos to current students for feedback
  • Do keep noise and visual effects to only those that are necessary
  • Do present information in a logical order, for example, if you are showing a route into a building, then show images of the actual route as if you were walking it
  • Do make sure what is appearing on screen is what you are talking about
  • Do add interesting facts about what you are talking about
  • Do think about who will provide the voice-over. A staff member with whom students are familiar is ideal
  • Do keep videos between approximately two and a half to five minutes long. Student feedback suggests this is the most effective length
  • Do provide information that will help address concerns about the unknown. Examples include: “Between lectures, the foyer becomes noisy, but there is a quiet room at…”, “The office closes at 4pm…” and “This is an image of a typical lecture theatre, it holds 260 students.”
  • Don’t worry if some people find the videos boring. This is about doing the best for our students
  • Don’t worry about making all your videos at once. It is better to build up a library of videos slowly, evaluating and learning from each one.

Suggestions for further videos 

  • A breakdown of the structure of the academic year, since a major stress factor for many neurodiverse students is the timetable changes that each new semester brings. 
  • A video outlining and explaining the definitions of university-specific terms, such as: “semester” and “term” and differences between “school”, “department” and “faculty” for example.

Low-stimulus videos are underused in higher education. They are initially challenging to make because each image and sentence needs to be carefully thought through to ensure their clarity, succinctness and value. Our experience is that they can be extremely useful to students who need them.

Norman Darwen is a recently retired autism transitions officer and Mark Hughes is senior lecturer in physics at the University of Manchester.

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University communications are often high impact and visually appealing. But this can be the opposite of what some of our students need

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THE_comment

1 month ago

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3455135
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Guy Hickling - Accessibility Consultant
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Autistic students still need all the same information that is given to their peers. Creating a few extra videos specially for them is good, but does not solve the problem of basic information supplied in unsuitable format. However, the solution is simple. Take the original high-stimulus each video as you are making it, and make a second copy by simply removing (or not adding in the first place) background music, other unneeded sound effects, and visual animations just there for effect, to leave just the spoken content and any informative visual stuff such as the person speaking, diagrams and images. Many (most?) videos are just spoken audio content with these other effects added in to liven them up, so a version without them will still contain all the important information. Then publish both versions side by side, and allow all students, not just the autistic ones, to choose which one they want to listen to, the high-stimulus one, or the plain version. We might be surprised how many want just the plain version.
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THE_comment

1 week 1 day ago

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Mark.Hughes_1
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(From the authors). Thanks for your helpful comments. Our experience was that additional thought before producing the videos was an essential component in their production and welcomed by the students who used the videos. An example was the introduction to a departmental building - for the video we paid greater attention to the detail showing the route to the building, we took care to show the size of a lecture theatre, highlighted how noisy the foyer can get in-between lectures and identified a potential quiet room. Most of these considerations probably wouldn’t have been incorporated in an existing ‘high stimulus’ video (and in our case, one didn’t exist). Comments from neurodiverse students  - particularly those with ASC - stated that they have appreciated the opportunity to be involved  either directly or indirectly in the making of these videos, something that also might not occur in other videos. In a way, ‘low stimulus video’ doesn’t quite capture the essence, as really they are ‘low stimulus + additional thought about the needs of the audience’ videos. We agree that if a high-stimulus version already exists, then a ‘low-stimulus+extra thought’ version should be produced. We did produce some videos that were ASC-specific though, such as introducing the support sessions for ASC students.   We absolutely agree about making both types of video  available to all, we also found the low-stimulus versions were welcomed more widely.
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