Think UDL

New Paradigms in Course Design with Lee Skallerup Bessette

Welcome to Episode 71 of the Think UDL podcast: New Paradigms in Course Design with Lee Skallerup Bessette. Dr. Lee Skallerup Bessette is the Assistant Director for Digital Learning at CNDLS, the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship at Georgetown University. She also co-hosts the podcast “All The Things ADHD” and is an active presence on Twitter as @ReadyWriting. In fact, one of Lee’s Twitter threads prompted this conversation about assumptions we make about students, learning, universities, and course design. I wanted to bring a UDL lens to this discussion and talk about what those assumptions are, what options and pitfalls we might have, and just dream of a few solutions with Lee. This episode captures that conversation and pushes at the boundaries of UDL, current course design, and institutional policies. We don’t have all the answers, but we do wonder aloud what these new course designs might look like. Thank you for joining us as we discuss old assumptions and new paradigms in course design on this episode of the Think UDL podcast!

Culturally Responsive Choices with Courtney Plotts

Welcome to Episode 70 of the Think UDL podcast: Culturally Responsive Choices with Courtney Plotts. Dr. Courtney Plotts is an author, speaker and the National Chair of CASEPS, the Council for At Risk Student Education and Professional Standards. Today we talk about the intersection of Universal Design for Learning and Culturally Responsive Teaching, how to create a culturally inclusive environment both in person and online, the difference between collaboration and cooperation, invitational teaching, and the “Dos and Don’ts” of starting your journey in Culturally Responsive Teaching. We both mention plenty of resources and those will be available on our ThinkUDL.org website if you want to learn more. Thank you for joining us for this conversation on the ways in which UDL and Culturally Responsive Teaching work together on this episode of the Think UDL podcast!

Teach to Reach with Mary Ann Tobin

Welcome to Episode 69 of the Think UDL podcast: Teach to Reach with Mary Ann Tobin. Mary Ann Tobin is an Assistant Research Professor and Instructional Consultant at the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence at the Pennsylvania State University. Mary Ann has been up to great good at Penn State introducing UDL to faculty, administrators, and her fantastic colleagues in non-academic areas with great results. Today’s conversation takes us into a discussion about how to “sell” UDL to faculty, administration, and others on campus, how to present UDL if you want to get university buy-in, who to befriend, and why and how this might be beneficial to your faculty and your school as a whole. Along the way, we talk about how important UDL is for today’s students and how UDL has become the solution to problems we didn’t even know we were going to have! Thank you for joining us as we discuss how UDL transforms learning for the better.

Resources

Follow Mary Ann on Twitter @Matobincat or email her at matobin@psu.edu

And find out more about Mary Ann Tobin on her Penn State Website link

 

Check out the Teach to Reach website that Mary Ann mentions in our conversation and see the Schreyer Institute’s UDL website for Penn State, or watch the webinar Universal Design for Learning: It’s Just Good Design for more great UDL faculty Development ideas 

 

Here are some resources that Mary Ann has graciously shared with us, including UDL research she mentions in our conversation:

Student Disability Resources Survey Report: Spring 2021

 

ECAR Study of the Technology Needs of Students with Disabilities

 

ECAR 2019 Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology

 

Decoding the Disciplines

Don’t Forget we both highly recommend Thomas Tobin and Kirsten Behling’s Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education for a fantastic introduction to UDL for faculty and faculty developers alike. And she even knows the author!

Mindful Technology with Jenae Cohn

Welcome to Episode 68 of the Think UDL podcast: Mindful Technology with Jenae Cohn. Jenae Cohn is the author of the recently released book Skim, Dive, Surface: Teaching Digital Reading and is the Director of Academic Technology at California State University, Sacramento. In this episode, Jenae and I talk about using technology in the classroom and outside the classroom. What choices should we make for ourselves? And what choices can we give our students? This thoughtful conversation will help you think about the ways that tech can help you and your students more fully engage with materials and each other. We take a look at what has changed in the last decade or two and how, when, and why we can leverage tech tools to enrich the learning experience, or perhaps when not to use them, either! Thank you for listening to Jenae and me as we explore the use of technology mindfully and with UDL in mind!

Professors at Play with Lisa Forbes and David Thomas

Welcome to Episode 67 of the Think UDL podcast: Professors at Play with Lisa Forbes and David Thomas. Lisa Forbes is an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Counseling Program at the University of Colorado, Denver, and David Thomas is the Executive Director for Online Programs at the University of Denver. Together they are the Co-Founders of Professors at Play, a group of Higher Education instructors who incorporate play and playfulness into their teaching and their courses. In today’s episode, I talk with Lisa and David about how we as instructors can infuse play and playfulness into our college courses and what benefits this might bring. This leads us to discuss creating communities of trust and building relationships with students, what skills are learned through play, and how vulnerability, laughter, joy, novelty, anxiety, fear, stress, and feelings of belonging and connection all play out within a course and how these feelings can be mitigated through play. Thank you for playing along at home as you listen to this conversation about engaging students through play!

Reflection Makes the Implicit Explicit with Erik Blair

Welcome to Episode 66 of the Think UDL podcast: Reflection Makes the Implicit Explicit with Erik Blair. An educator for over 20 years, Erik Blair is currently a Senior Lecturer in Health Professions Education in the Institute for Health Sciences Education at Queen Mary, University of London. I first ran across his work on the OneHE website which is full of fantastic courses to learn more about teaching and learning and faculty development. I was especially interested in his work on reflection. In today’s conversation, we discuss what reflection-based activities are, how to incorporate reflection activities into your classes, what different kinds of reflection activities there are, and what might work in different circumstances. We also talk about the benefit of incorporating reflection-based activities for students and instructors alike. Erik is also the author of several books including his 2020 publication Independent Thinking on Teaching in Higher Education. You will find a link to his author page and other information on reflection and OneHE on our website for episode 66 if you would like to learn more about Erik’s work. Thank you for reflecting with us today as you listen to our conversation on this episode of the Think UDL podcast.

Relational Cultural Theory and UDL with Harriet Schwartz

Welcome to Episode 65 of the Think UDL podcast: Relational Cultural Theory and UDL with Harriet Schwartz! Dr. Harriet Schwartz is the author of Connected Teaching: Relationships, Power, and Mattering in Higher Education and is the Professor of Relational Practice and Higher Education at Antioch University’s PhD in Leadership and Change Program. As the episode title implies, we will be talking about RCT, or Relational Cultural Theory, and Universal Design for Learning (UDL). We discuss several ways instructors can engage students through the lens of Relational Cultural Theory, and that leads us into a discussion about authenticity. We also talk about the role the instructor-student relationship plays in sustaining student effort and persistence, and how power and relationships within the learning environment affect student learning. Harriet has also provided many excellent resources that are listed on the ThinkUDL.org website accompanying episode 65, so please take a look and dig deeper into this topic to increase your understanding of RCT and thank you so much for joining me and Harriet Schwartz for this engaging conversation.

Engaging Ungrading with Susan Blum

Welcome to Episode 64 of the Think UDL podcast: Engaging Ungrading with Susan Blum! Susan Blum is the editor and author of several chapters of the book Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead). She is also Professor of Anthropology, Fellow, Kellogg Institute for International Studies, Fellow, Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, Fellow, Institute for Educational Initiatives, Fellow, Eck Institute for Global Health all at the The University of Notre Dame. In this episode, Susan and I explore the connections between “Ungrading” and Universal Design for Learning principles, especially focussing on how “Ungrading” engages students, reduces threats and distractions (yes, grades are distractions to learning) and fosters community. Ungrading can also provide multiple options for action and expression, so we will be covering quite a number of the UDL guidelines today. 

 

At one point in our conversation, you may hear a difference in sound quality on my audio as we had to revert to our backup audio for the last half of the interview.

 

Near the end of the episode, Susan mentions the book Minding Bodies: How Physical Space, sensation and movement affect learning by Susan Hrach, and indeed I had just interviewed Susan Hrach the day before our recorded conversation. If you would like to hear that conversation, you will find it listed just before this episode. It is Think UDL’s Episode 63: Minding Bodies, Senses, and Perception with Susan Hrach. But for now, thank you for joining me for this very thoughtful conversation with Susan Blum on “ungrading.” 

Minding Bodies, Senses, and Perception with Susan Hrach

Welcome to Episode 63 of the Think UDL podcast: Minding Bodies, Senses, and Perception with Susan Hrach.  Susan Hrach is the author of the book Minding Bodies: How Physical Space, Sensation, and Movement Affect Learning and the Director of the Faculty Center for Enhancement of Teaching and Learning and Professor of English at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia. In today’s episode, we talk about the content of her Minding Bodies book as it relates to perception, specifically the UDL guideline to provide multiple options for student perception which often include alternatives for auditory and visual information. We also talk a little neuroscience and brain efficiency, multi-sensory learning, how emotions influence learning, how important really noticing is, and questioning or interrogating our own perceptions. Aside from a reference to The Princess Bride, we share some really helpful resources along the way that are listed on the ThinkUDL.org webpage for episode 63, so please peruse those at your leisure. Now, go out and take a walk, move your body, smell some flowers, put your feet in a creek or some other form of bodily or sensory stimulation while you listen to this episode of Think UDL.

Ethical and Accessible UDL with Ann Gagne

Welcome to Episode 62 of the Think UDL podcast: Ethical and Accessible UDL with Ann Gagne. Ann Gagne is an Educational Developer at the Robert Gillespie Academic Skills Centre at the Institute for the Study of University Pedagogy at the University of Toronto, Mississauga. She is also my friend on Twitter and a colleague in our #UDLHE community which is where I have come in contact with her brilliance in the last few years. She has taught me so much about accessibility, she’s my Alt-Text guru, and she has gently pushed me to widen my lens about ways to think about accessibility and that is why I wanted to interview her for the podcast. She is a UDL specialist as well and teaches faculty about UDL and accessibility in both formal and informal settings. In today’s conversation, we talk about accessibility on social media and in educational settings, and I really appreciate that she gets into both the “how” and the “why” of these things. In fact, she has provided a ton of great resources about Alt-Text, and making your own accessible documents that you can find on our resources page for Episode 62 on ThinkUDL.org. So listen in now and check out the resources to find out how, why and what it truly means to be accessible.