The relative effects of university success courses and individualized interventions for students with learning disabilities

Abstract

Little is known about the relative effects of post‐secondary learning services for students with learning disabilities. We compared outcomes for students with learning disabilities who selected to: (1) take an academic learning success course (course‐intervention), (2) have regular individual interventions (high‐intervention) or (3) use services only as needed (low‐intervention). Pre‐ and post‐test comparisons revealed improvements in academic self‐efficacy and academic resourcefulness for students in the course‐ and high‐intervention groups. The course‐intervention group also showed decreases in their failure attributions to bad luck and increases in their general repertoire of learned resourcefulness skills in comparison to the high‐intervention group and had significantly higher year‐end GPAs in comparison to the low‐intervention group. Here we find positive outcomes for students with learning disabilities taking a course that teaches post‐secondary learning and academic skills.

Keywords:

• attribution style
• learning disabilities
• resourcefulness
• self‐efficacy
• success course
• transition

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank assistants Alan Eng, Joseph Gajasan and Stefan Trohonel. We would like to acknowledge Trent and Ryerson University disability services programmes. This research was made possible by a grant from the Learning Opportunities Task Force, Government of Ontario.