Think UDL

Engaging Alternative Grading with Joshua Eyler

Welcome to Episode 84 of the Think UDL podcast: Engaging Alternative Grading with Joshua Eyler. Joshua Eyler is the Director of Faculty Development at the University of Mississippi and the author of How Humans Learn: The Science and Stories Behind Effective College Teaching and the forthcoming book Scarlet Letters: How Grades are Harming Children and Young Adults, and What We Can Do About It. Josh recently has been raising the chatter about the usefulness and challenges of traditional grading and also bringing a lot of attention to alternative grading practices. Today’s conversation will focus on how the UDL guidelines dovetail with non-traditional grading, especially focussing on multiple means of engagement. In fact, we will look at the specific ways that alternative grading practices recruit learner interest, help sustain effort and persistence in multiple ways, and also serve to guide students through self-reflection. It is a veritable engagement smorgasbord and I am so excited to have this conversation!

Supporting Neurodiverse Learners with Chiara Horlin

Welcome to Episode 83 of the Think UDL podcast: Supporting Neurodiverse Learners with Chiara Horlin. Chiara Horlin is a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Glasgow and a founder of the Neurodiversity Network there. She is a developmental Psychologist with particular interest in Autism Spectrum Disorder and neurodiversity in general. In today’s conversation, we talk about why she founded the Neurodiversity Network and what it does for students, faculty, and staff at the University of Glasgow. We also look into the challenges that neurodiverse students find at universities and what strengths they bring! And finally we discuss what college instructors can do to support neurodiverse students on our campuses. You’ll find that’s where Universal Design for Learning comes into play a lot in our conversation.

UDL University with Nicole Brewer, Randy Laist, and Dana Sheehan

Welcome to Episode 82 of the Think UDL podcast: UDL University with Nicole Brewer, Randy Laist, and Dana Sheehan. Nicole Brewer is an Assistant Professor of Humanities and a Literacy Specialist at Ana Maria College in Massachusetts. Randy Laist is a Professor of English at Goodwin University and the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut. And, Dana Sheehan is an Assistant Professor of English and the Director of the Writing Center, also at Ana Maria College. This is my first podcast with three guests, and it is power packed with UDL ideas from their book UDL University: Designing for Variability Across the Curriculum. All three authors worked together at Goodwin University and through a great UDL initiative have incorporated UDL into their teaching. In this episode we talk about how UDL has transformed their teaching and hear several examples of how to leverage the diversity of learners for everyone’s gain. I also think it is a great encouragement to hear how UDL has been applied in a faculty learning community first, and then across the entire curriculum.

Thank you for listening and a special thank you to the folks at the UDLHE Network for their financial support of the Think UDL podcast!

Graphic Design for Course Creators with Dawn DiPeri

Welcome to Episode 81 of the Think UDL podcast: Graphic Design for Course Creators with Dawn DiPeri. Dawn DiPeri is a learning designer and graphic designer who has taught and worked in higher education and in the corporate sector. She has expertise in educational technology, new media literacies, and interpersonal communication and has published widely on gender and race disparity in the workforce and online pedagogy. Today we talk about her new book Graphic Design for Course Creators with a particular focus on accessibility and graphic design. Dawn saw the need for this book and set about to write and I am so glad she did! She incorporates Universal Design for Learning guidelines but goes even further to incorporate graphic design principles to help instructors be as clear as possible for our students. If you have any part of your course that exists online, even if you aren’t fully teaching online, you will gain some valuable insights from this conversation. Thank you for listening and a special thank you to the folks at the UDLHE Network for their financial support of the Think UDL podcast!

Neurodiversity Hub with Andrew Eddy

Welcome to Episode 80 of the Think UDL podcast: Neurodiversity Hub with Andrew Eddy. Andrew Eddy is the CEO and co-founder of Untapped based in Melbourne, Australia, a social enterprise that helps to develop job opportunities for Autstic individuals and he is the co-creator of the Neurodiversity Hub which provides resources and trainings to students, universities, and employers focussing on programs to benefit neurodiverse students and employees. Today we get the chance to talk about the many ways in which universities, students, and employers are collaborating in Australia, the United Kingdom, and in North America to provide training, programs, informational presentations, and plenty of ideas about how to best serve our Autistic students throughout their educational and career journeys. You can find all of the resources we mention on the website ThinkUDL.org for episode 80. Be sure to check out Neurodiversityhub.org as we will be talking a lot about what you can find there. Let’s change the way we think and talk about neurodiversity!Thank you for listening and a special thank you to the folks at the UDLHE Network for their financial support of the Think UDL podcast!

Higher Ed and K-12 partnerships with Mary Budzilowicz and Lauren Benfield

Welcome to Episode 79 of the Think UDL podcast: Higher Ed and K-12 Partnerships with Mary Budzilowicz and Lauren Benfield. Mary Budzilowicz is the Director of the Center for Universal Design for Learning Technology and Resources at Cabrini University and Lauren Benfield is a Project Consultant in the Office of Professional Learning of the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit in Pennsylvania. I usually interview just one person each episode, but today I am very glad to have representatives of both sides of this UDL partnership. My guests and I are specifically going to talk about the incredible work that Cabrini University and Montgomery County schools have forged in recent years to link UDL in their Higher Ed and teacher education programs with K-12 implementation by creating professional learning communities and operationalizing UDL in their local schools. This episode is chock full of resources that Mary and Lauren and their team have meticulously created and gathered over the past several years, so please be sure to check those out on the episode 79 webpage where you’ll see padlets, wakelets, curated resources, and original videos, infographics, and webpages to jump start your partnerships or perhaps start your own thinking about a UDL center on your campus! During our conversation, at one point Lauren mentions the 2018-2019 school year when the membership exploded with more and more attendees but was then interrupted by the pandemic. After our taping she corrected that to the 2019-2020 school year, and you’ll just have to stay tuned to hear how they handled, and even expanded, after that interruption! They are so creative and have so much to share! Thank you for listening and a special thank you to the folks at the UDLHE Network for their financial support of the Think UDL podcast!

Transformational Inclusive Student Input with Sara Schley

Welcome to Episode 78 of the Think UDL podcast: Transformational Inclusive Student Input with Sara Schley. Sara Schley is the Director of Learning Sciences, Wallace H Coulter Dept of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology (aka GA Tech) and is retiring from her position as Professor, Master of Science in Secondary Education dept (deaf education teacher training program), Rochester Institute of Technology, National Technical Institute for the Deaf. The research we are discussing today comes from her time in her previous position in Rochester. Today we discuss the terms access and inclusion to understand what we really want in the college classroom, and also disability as diversity. One of the main points of her research, too, is to include disabled students in faculty learning communities in order to improve accessibility and inclusive measures in teaching and learning settings. We will go over how she conducted her research and what transformational and beneficial results have come from her studies that center students’ experience and suggestions in creating positive change in higher ed settings. Thanks for listening to this conversation and a special thank you to the folks at the UDLHE Network for their financial support of the Think UDL podcast!

Intentional Tech Solutions with Derek Bruff

Welcome to Episode 77 of the Think UDL podcast: Intentional Tech Solutions with Derek Bruff. Derek Bruff is the Assistant Provost and Executive Director of the Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt University and Interim Director of Digital Commons as well as a Principal Senior Lecturer in Mathematics. He is also the host and producer of the educational technology podcast Leading Lines. Derek has recently written the book Intentional Tech: Principles to Guide the Use of Educational Technology in College Teaching. My colleagues and I at Appalachian State who are “faculty Champions,” faculty who help our peers with tech and teaching problems, have been reading his book together and discussing it asynchronously, so I am eager to talk with Derek today and get the answers to my questions! I am excited to talk shop with him about his book and how his principles relate to the UDL guidelines. And I thank you for joining me and Derek today for our conversation on UDL and Intentional Tech!

Transparent Design with Mary-Ann Winklemes

Welcome to Episode 76 of the Think UDL podcast: Transparent Design with Mary-Ann Winklemes. Dr. Mary-Ann Winklemes is the Executive Director at the Center for Teaching and Learning at Brandeis University and the Principal Investigator and Founder of TILT Higher Ed. TILT stands for Transparency in Learning and Teaching. Over the course of decades now, Mary-Ann has shared her model of transparent assignment design all over the world and has collected data about its effectiveness. I have been a big fan of the TILT method for several years and have taught our faculty about it and have another assignment design workshop coming up next month! I am delighted to get to talk with Mary-Ann about the connections that her TILT Higher Ed method has with the Universal Design for Learning principles, and am especially excited to share this with our Think UDL listeners. Thank you for listening to this conversation about an effective, data-driven, and tried and true method for how to make your assignments clearer and more equitable for all of your students!

Academic Integrity through Assessment Design with Mark Glynn

Welcome to Episode 75 of the Think UDL podcast: Academic Integrity through Assessment Design with Mark Glynn. Mark Glynn is the Head of the Teaching Enhancement Unit at Dublin City University. I have been wanting to talk to Mark for a long time about what he is doing with UDL in Ireland and beyond. There are so many things that he and his team are doing to help spread the word and train faculty in UDL, that it was difficult to focus on just one topic. Recently, he has been working on the intersection of UDL, academic integrity and assessment design which has really piqued my interest. And so today’s conversation centers on how to make assessments more “cheat-proof” and authentic, so as to work on the prevention of academic dishonesty rather than “catching” students cheating after the fact, so to speak. And the UDL principles are what guides this design! Mark has also graciously provided many resources that he mentions during our discussion and you can find all of those on our ThinkUDL.org website for this episode number 75. Thank you for joining us as we talk about authentic assessments, academic integrity and UDL!