Think UDL

Grace-Full Online Teaching with Emory Maiden

Welcome to Episode 47 of the ThinkUDL podcast: Grace-Full Online Teaching with Emory Maiden. Emory, now the Associate Director of Online Learning, and I have worked together at Appalachian State for many years and he has always been my go-to instructional design confidant and guru whenever I have had questions, even questions I was afraid to ask for fear of being thought, well, stupid. But Emory has made me feel like my questions were valid and has helped me to improve my thinking every time. Today’s conversation is about moving online and what things we should be mindful of as we plan a course or as we are in the thick of a semester. We will talk about his philosophy behind using tech tools and how online courses really open up our teaching flexibility. We will also go over some things to avoid as you teach online, and Emory gives us some sage advice as someone who has helped hundreds of faculty move their courses online over the years. This was such a therapeutic conversation for me and I hope will be for you as we learn to trust the process, be patient with ourselves, and offer ourselves grace along the way (and don’t we all need that in our lives)! I was so glad to be able to talk with Emory and I think you’ll find this conversation insightful and helpful on your teaching journey.

Collaborative Learning and Student Engagement in Every Modality with Claire Major

Welcome to Episode 46 of the ThinkUDL podcast: Collaborative Learning and Student Engagement in Every Modality with Claire Major. Claire Major is the co-founder of the K. Patricia Cross Academy, editor of the journal Innovative Higher Education, and a Professor of Higher Education at the University of Alabama. She is the author or co-author of several books on teaching and learning including the recently published second edition of Student Engagement Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty with Elizabeth F. Barkley. Today’s episode is chock full of collaborative learning and student engagement techniques that can be used in land-based face-to-face or online learning classes. Claire offers the myriad resources of the K. Patricia Cross academy which has helpful blog posts, a video library, and downloadable resources of teaching techniques with in-person and online applications. We talk about how to transition a favorite in-class technique of jigsaw collaborative learning into an online version that works in both synchronous and asynchronous settings, plus a lot more! It was such a pleasure to talk with Claire and to listen to her pull from her copious storehouses of effective teaching strategies for our episode today!

Maybe It Doesn’t Need to Be a Video with Clea Mahoney

Welcome to Episode 45 of the ThinkUDL podcast: Maybe It Doesn’t Need to Be a Video with Clea Mahoney. Clea Mahoney is an instructional technologist at New York University in New York City and also a facilitator in the Online Learning Toolkit’s Camp COOL and Fall of Call. If you are interested in getting support for online teaching, you can find links to the Fall On Call program in this episode’s resources on the Think UDL.org webpage. In today’s conversation, the last of our Summer 2020 series on UDL in online environments, Clea and I talk about multiple ways of representing information in online classes. How can we customize the display of information, offer alternatives for text or auditory information, and guide information processing and visualization for our students? And if that sounds like way too much, we also discuss how to make online teaching simple and sustainable because, well, maybe it doesn’t need to be a video!

Your Humanity is an Asset: Instructional videos & Trauma-aware pedagogy with Karen Costa

Welcome to Episode 44 of the ThinkUDL podcast: Your Humanity is an Asset: Instructional Videos & Trauma-Aware Pedagogy with Karen Costa. Karen Costa is a writer and faculty development and online learning professional. Her book 99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos came out in April of 2020, just in time to help all of us faculty who are trying to learn as much as we can about transitioning to online and hybrid formats! In this episode, part of our Summer 2020 series on UDL in online environments, Karen and I discuss what trauma-aware pedagogy is and how instructional videos can help with the effects of trauma on executive functions and self-regulation. We also talk about balancing structure and flexibility in online design and videos as conversations rather than presentations. In addition, Karen explains the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model of learning which focuses on teaching presence, social presence and cognitive presence and how videos help with each of these presences, along with creating an emotional presence as well. It is such a pleasure to have this chance to speak with Karen and learn from her insights into both trauma-aware pedagogy and how and why making instructional videos can improve any course!

UDL can Save Us All This Fall with Judith Dutill

Welcome to Episode 43 of the ThinkUDL podcast: UDL Can Save Us All This Fall with Judith Dutill. Judith is an online educator and the co-founder of the Online Learning Toolkit. She brings a wealth of knowledge about Universal Design for Learning principles to all of her faculty development endeavors. In this episode, which is part of a Summer 2020 series on Universal Design for Learning in online environments, we talk about how to give space to our students and perhaps give up some control this coming semester, and how to keep our students excited about learning in this new environment. In addition, we discuss the importance of NOT putting technology first, even in online courses, and we delve into a few pivotal questions instructors should ask of themselves and of their students and why we shouldn’t be afraid of the question “why.” I was fortunate to partake in one of the Online Learning Toolkit’s programs this summer where I was able to virtually meet Judith. Camp COOL, or Camp Operation Online Learning, with over 100 other instructors across the country and world, not only helped all of us to design online courses for the coming fall semester, but created a wonderful community while doing so. The Online Learning Toolkit also offers a “Fall On Call” option to support faculty over the course of the fall 2020 semester and you can find more information on that in our resource section. You will also see a self-paced course called DRIVE on the resources for a self-paced version to get your courses on-line ready!

Whole-Student Learning Online with Michelle Pacansky-Brock

Welcome to Episode 42 of the ThinkUDL podcast: Whole-Student Learning Online with Michelle Pacansky-Brock. In this episode, which is part of a Summer 2020 series on Universal Design for Learning in online environments, Michelle discusses the importance of the affective domain in online learning, how to create community and humanize your course from the beginning, the merits of totally asynchronous online learning environments, liquid syllabi, and the use of VoiceThread and asynchronous tools for equitable participation in an online course. 

Dr. Michelle Pacansky-Brock, also known on Twitter as @Brocansky, is a noted leader in higher education with expertise in online teaching, course design, and faculty development. Her work has helped online instructors worldwide understand how to craft relevant, humanized online learning experiences that support the diverse needs of college students.  She is the author of Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies and has received national recognition for her excellence in teaching and faculty development from the Online Learning Consortium (OLC).

Currently, Michelle is Faculty Mentor for Online Teaching and Learning with the California Community Colleges’ California Virtual Campus-Online Education Initiative (CVC-OEI). She is a generous and prolific scholar who shares her love of teaching, innovative skills, and ground-breaking ideas liberally with the scholarly community and I am so thankful to have the opportunity to talk with her in this episode!

An Online Pedagogy of Kindness with Cate Denial

Welcome to Episode 41 of the ThinkUDL podcast: An Online Pedagogy of Kindness with Cate Denial. Cate Denial is the Bright Distinguished Professor of American History and Director of the Bright Institute at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. In this episode, which is part of a Summer 2020 series on Universal Design for Learning in online environments, I ask Cate about how she applies the concepts in her 2019 article (and forthcoming book) “A Pedagogy of Kindness” to online courses. In this conversation, Cate explains how her ideas about trusting her students, believing them and believing in them, and employing an ethos of care are utilized in specific online design principles and actions. Along the way, Cate and I connect these ideas to Universal Design for Learning principles to provide our listeners with opportunities to implement not only well-researched and neuro-science based UDL principles in online or hybrid courses, but also --as Cate so eloquently writes and speaks about-- a pedagogy of kindness as well. 

I just wanted to add a short signpost here before the interview. Cate mentions the term LMS several times in our conversation and this refers to a Learning Management System. An LMS is a technological platform managed by the college or university where the instructor and students can access the course content and communicate with each other throughout the course. I am thankful for Cate’s thoughtfulness and, yes, kindness, in wanting us to define our terms for our listeners.

Epic Meaning in Online Learning with Michael Kocher

Welcome to Episode 40 of the ThinkUDL podcast: Epic Meaning in Online Learning with Michael Kocher. Today’s episode is part of a Summer 2020 series on UDL in online environments. Michael Kocher is a UDL consultant at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. There he has created many faculty development opportunities to introduce instructors to Universal Design for Learning principles and help others implement them in seated and online environments. In today’s episode we talk about how to create “epic meaning” for students in online courses by valuing student choice and autonomy, and creating assessments that are authentic and worthwhile for students. Michael shares many other tips to make your online teaching experience a value-added class for both instructor and student, and I am excited to share this conversation with our listeners!

Radical Hope for Online Teaching with Kevin Gannon

Welcome to episode 39 of the Think UDL podcast: Radical Hope for Online Teaching with Kevin Gannon. Today’s episode is part of a Summer 2020 series on UDL in online environments and I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak with Dr. Kevin Gannon today. Kevin is the Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) and Professor of History at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa. His book, Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto was released in the spring of 2020 and has already become a “must-read” in academic circles and faculty book clubs throughout the United States and beyond. In Radical Hope, Kevin notes that UDL is one of the most important topics in higher education today and so I was happy when he agreed to speak to me about UDL at this particular moment as countless instructors are moving their courses online. His book deals with both seated and online courses, as his teaching manifesto is modality agnostic. However, our conversation focuses on how to implement the ideas he offers in his book specifically in online courses. Kevin has been a generous scholar and faculty developer in the several years that I have come to know him through the Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network and I am so thankful for his time to talk to me about Radical Hope for online teaching.

Online Faculty Learning Communities with Christina Moore

Welcome to Episode 38 of the ThinkUDL podcast: Online Faculty Learning Communities with Christina Moore. Today’s episode is part of a Summer 2020 series on UDL in online environments. Christina Moore is the Virtual Faculty Developer at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. In today’s episode we talk about faculty Online Learning Communities, also known as Personal Learning Networks. In this time of separation, how can colleagues come together and share ideas? We will discuss organizing resources around teaching topics with multiple formats that include podcasts, articles, videos, and even people to follow on Twitter, plus “Mobile learning” and accessibility in online environments. I have learned so much from Christina in her role as a Virtual Faculty Developer and I am excited to share this conversation with our listeners!