Category: accessibility

334. Journey Toward UDL

Posted in accessibility, classroom community, diversity, engagement, equity, higher education, inclusion, learning, pedagogy, professional development, social justice, stereotype threat, teaching
March 27, 2024

Most faculty begin their teaching careers with little preparation in effective teaching practices. In this episode, Jeanne Anderson joins us to share her journey toward inclusive teaching practices and universal design for learning. Jeanne is a faculty development coordinator at Waubonsee Community College, and an adjunct faculty member in the English departments at Elgin and Waubonsee Community Colleges, and the College of DuPage. She teaches a mix of online, face-to-face, and hybrid writing courses.

Show Notes

  • Tea Tree
  • ACUE
  • 4 Connections Curriculum
  • Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILTHigherEd)
  • Behling, K. T., & Tobin, T. J. (2018). Reach everyone, teach everyone: Universal design for learning in higher education. West Virginia University Press.
  • Tobin, Tom (2020). Pedagogies of Care: UDL. Tea for Teaching podcast. Episode 138. June 3.
  • Angelo, T. A., & Cross, K. P. (2012). Classroom assessment techniques. Jossey Bass Wiley.
  • Darby, F., & Lang, J. M. (2019). Small teaching online: Applying learning science in online classes. John Wiley & Sons.

Transcript

John: Most faculty begin their teaching careers with little preparation in effective teaching practices. In this episode, one faculty member shares her journey toward inclusive teaching practices and universal design for learning.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

[MUSIC]

John: Our guest today is Jeanne Anderson. Jeanne is a faculty development coordinator at Waubonsee Community College, and an adjunct faculty member in the English departments at Elgin and Waubonsee Community Colleges, and the College of DuPage. She teaches a mix of online, face-to-face, and hybrid writing courses. Welcome, Jeanne.

Jeanne: Thank you, John.

Rebecca: Today’s teas are:… Jeanne, are you drinking tea today?

Jeanne: I am. I was out and about today, and I stopped at the Tea Tree in downtown Batavia and told them I needed something tasty that would give me some endurance, because I’m a little tired today. I just got over COVID. And so they actually made me a cup of endurance tea.

Rebecca: Oh, look at that.

John: Excellent.

Rebecca: Who knew? [LAUGHTER]

Jeanne: It’s a mix of herbs that have been traditionally used for increasing stamina.

Rebecca: Well, I hope it works.

John: I do too.

John: And I have English breakfast tea today.

Rebecca: Oh, it must be a theme. I have Scottish afternoon tea. We’re all looking for a little energy. [LAUGHTER]

John: …which is a little more appropriate because we are recording in the afternoon, at least here on the East Coast. We met at the POD conference back in November and we sat at the same table at one of the sessions. And we talked a little bit about your practices. And we’ve invited you here to talk about how you’ve integrated inclusive teaching practices, including UDL into your writing classes. Could you tell us a little bit first about what prompted you to adopt a UDL approach in your classes?

Jeanne: Well, John, I have four kids between the ages of 14 and 21. And three of them are neurodiverse. And my 21-year old has autism. My 15 year old has dyslexia and my youngest has ADHD. I started teaching in 2000. I became a mom in 2003. And autism was a word that was introduced in my life in 2005, when my son was 21 months old. So throughout the time that I was starting to teach, and also then throughout the time that I was raising my son, there was a constant theme of having to meet him where he was at, because most normal kids, babies, you would put them in a stroller and go to the mall, and they’d sleep, where my son would cry and scream. But if I brought him home, and he went in his little swing, he was quiet and he was content and he was happy. And so there were just a lot of things that I had to give up at that time to be able to meet his needs. So I had an interview for an adjunct position while I was still in graduate school, at a college in Chicago on a Tuesday afternoon, right after Labor Day. And by mid-afternoon, they were walking me to HR, and I was being told that I would have a class very soon. And then the man I interviewed with, Mr. Haynes, he turned out to be one of my mentors, he came back and he said, “Oh, can you sub tonight? You get paid $150, all you have to do is pass out the syllabus and turn on a video.” And I was like, I could watch a movie for $150.” So I go down and I do my subbing thing. And he knocks on the door, and he hands me a set of books. And he says, “Okay, your class is Monday, Wednesday (it’s Tuesday night I won’t be home till 10). your class is monday, wednesday at eight o’clock in the morning, and you’re teaching Comm 101. And I’m thinking “this isn’t even my discipline.” And so I kind of got thrust in this classroom, not knowing how to teach, as many of us are, and we rely on the good or bad practices of our previous instructors in college. Really, one of the first principles that I talk about, one of the first things that I have to be intentional about, is meeting students where they’re at. And I do that because, at the time, I didn’t know what else to do with them. And so I would just gauge who they were and what their needs were and I would try to meet those needs. And so that’s really the first seven years of my teaching career, I kind of relied on that principle of just doing what my other teachers used to do, and meeting my students where they were at.

Rebecca: Definitely a good way to get involved in inclusive teaching and a good framework to dig into a lot of models that are out there.

Jeanne: Definitely, and this college, they didn’t have any remediation. And they really took a lot of students from Chicago Public Schools who truly needed the remediation. And so as a faculty member in these classes, I really had to figure out what their needs were. I couldn’t fix them, but I could give them the best college experience that I could in the courses that I was teaching. And so that’s really what I sought to do. It was also a very diverse group of students. Most of my students were either Hispanic or black. And so, again, another reason to just meet your students where you’re at, get to know them and make them feel comfortable. They’re in a setting where they feel like they don’t belong. And so years before I knew about imposter syndrome, I’m in a classroom having a severe case of impostor syndrome with a group of students who also have impostor syndrome, and that’s really been the bedrock of how I started working with students in the classroom, is making them feel comfortable. Some of the professional development that I’ve done has really informed my teaching practices in a new way over the last few years. The first third of my career was me just kind of figuring out how to teach and also having a child with autism, and using some of the skills that I picked up by raising him, applying those things to the classroom. Whether it’s slowing down my speech and being more intentional and direct in the things I say, that was one thing that I did with him. The second third of my career, we adopted two children, and so I kind of took a backseat. I was still teaching an insane amount of classes, but I wasn’t really making much movement in professional development. And that’s where I was working on getting diagnoses for dyslexia and ADHD, and trying to figure out in their education, like how does trauma inform their education? How are learning disabilities informing their education? How does the fact that they grew up in a Spanish speaking home for the first four to six years impact their education? These are all things that I can think about when I’m talking to my students, because as a writing instructor, especially since my first assignment in English 101 is a literacy narrative, they’re very open about if they grew up in the Spanish speaking home, or if they had a learning disability and they hated school, and the fact that they know that I have this background kind of fosters that engagement and connection. So the last five years, I’ve really focused more on professional development. And I took the ACUE courses. And then I became a Faculty Development Coordinator, and at College to DuPage, they offered a paid course for adjuncts. The curriculum was 4 Connections, that’s what the course was called. 4 Connections comes out of Odessa College in Texas. And the 4 connections are checking in with students regularly, practicing praxis (which means maintaining rigor, but also having flexibility), one-on-one check-ins, and learning students’ names. And so as far as inclusive teaching practices are concerned, again, these are all things that when I started teaching, they were almost frowned upon. You don’t want to engage with your students too much. You’re there to lecture, they’re there to learn, and there’s no late assignments, and if you plagiarize, then you’re out of here. And these were all habits of faculty back in the early 2000s that I grew up under, but that didn’t work for me. And so I looked at these 4 connections, and all of a sudden, it was very validating, because it was like, “Well, I’ve kind of been doing this all along, checking in regularly, that’s something that I do with students, the one-on-one meetings, that’s the one that always kind of enrages faculty, especially adjuncts because of how thinly we’re spread. But if you can get past the I don’t have to meet with every student one on one, I started that process by saying, Okay, we’re post pandemic, I’m comfortable with Zoom… I went from “Why are you taking an online class, if you want to talk to me, you should take an in-person class,” that was kind of the mentality of the early 2000s and mid 2010s. I went from that to, “Hey, it sounds like you could really use a zoom call. Let’s get together. Let’s have a one on one, let’s talk” and really just students getting to know me and me getting to know them a little bit really helped get them on track. They needed that engagement to get on track. The practicing praxis, I used to be told in my early years, “Oh, you’re too flexible. If it’s past the deadline, you shouldn’t take it, it’s a zero.” And in the culture that I was working in, nobody was turning things in on time. There were so many obstacles to the students I had in the beginning. Being a writing instructor, students definitely walk into your classroom not wanting to be there, and believing that you are judging them from the get go. And you kind of are. And so it’s always been my intention to make students feel comfortable so that I can get the best writing from them as well.

Rebecca: What are some of the strategies that you use to make students feel comfortable?

Jeanne: I was thinking about my teaching style, and how I would talk about it. I came up with four principles that I really follow: being intentional about meeting students where they’re at, so getting to know your students and meeting them where they’re at while also maintaining rigor and meeting those learning outcomes on the syllabus, because those are two very important components of getting your students through your college courses. I’m also very intentional about engagement. So when I start a class, whether it’s online or face to face, I want my students to know that they’re making friends in this class, and that they and their peers and myself were all part of a learning community, and I’m learning from them. I don’t necessarily call myself an expert. I have so much to learn. And a lot of things that I learned, I learned from my students. I give them an assignment, and they give it back to me, and then I learn about what are the good aspects of that assignment, and what parts of that assignment really need to go. My students teach me that. I can’t learn that on my own. And so having that rapport and that engagement in the classroom is very important to me, especially since the majority of the courses I teach are online. Being transparent is also very important. And I was introduced to the TILT framework (Transparency in Learning and Teaching). And as an English instructor, and as an online instructor, I have to give very clear guidelines to students, because I’m not in the classroom with them. So they have to be able to read the guidelines and follow them. And so I’ve always been pretty good at writing those assignments and getting that across. I’ve tweaked it over the years, being more intentional about letting them know the reason why we’re doing this assignment. I’ve never been a teacher to have like a bunch of readings just because we should have a bunch of readings. Whatever unit we’re in in the English 101 class, I want the exercises that we do in these classes to help them in their final destination of that research essay that they’re putting together for the course. And then the fourth principle has to do with the UDL implementation. And that’s really having that plus-one mindset. Adopting a plus-one mindset is really important, because there’s always one thing that I can do, maybe I’m just doing one thing this week, maybe I’m doing one thing a day, maybe I’m doing one thing a semester, but there’s only one way to improve my curriculum. There’s always one way to improve meeting students’ needs.

Rebecca: So for folks that are interested in that plus one mindset, it’s introduced in Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone by Tom Tobin and Kirsten Behling.

John: And we do have a podcast with Tom that we’ll share a link to in the show notes. Maybe you could talk a little bit about how you’ve implemented some of those UDL principles in your class, as you’ve continually done the plus one thing.

Jeanne: Well, they talk about multiple means of representation, multiple means of expression and multiple means of engagement. So I’m always looking at my curriculum and thinking, how can I better represent, how can my students better express what they know? And how can we improve engagement? For multiple means of representation, I started revising my syllabus, first of all. I tried to use more inclusive language, a little more colloquial, a little more warm, not having these really strict rules, but kindly sharing what was expected of students in a tone that reduced that imposter syndrome, telling students directly in my syllabus “you belong” is important. Another thing that I did, I learned about how to create like a visual graphics syllabus. For example, for my English 101 class, we have four papers that students write. And so on one page, I outline the entire course with what the whole course will look like and some of the things that they’ll be learning. Under each paper, I would talk about specific skills that they were going to pick up under that paper, during that unit. So they could see the entire class on one page. It will list the papers and what percentage they’re worth. And it’ll list a little description of what is involved. Our final paper in the English 101 class is a career analysis project. And so day one, I want them to know, “Hey, you’re going to be writing a paper about the career you’re interested in.” So let’s start thinking about that. And so a lot of the scaffolding that I put in place from paper to paper helps students follow the general outline of the course. I also use a skeletal outline. When I teach a face to face course, I actually set it up on whatever learning management system I’m using in the class. I set it up the same way I would an online class. I do that because I don’t want to forget anything. But at the beginning of class, I can go over the page and say, “Okay, these are all the things that we’re going to get through today.” And students know, and they’re not getting restless in their seats, especially because I mostly teach night classes. And you can just imagine By seven o’clock how much they want it to be over. And thankfully, I don’t have a ton of content that I have to get through. And so it’s like a half discussion/lecture, half of the class is us working together. And the other half is lab time. And as part of like an inclusive teaching practice, during lab time I meet with students regularly, one on one. And again, I’m getting to know them, I’m finding out “How was work today?” But I’m also finding out “Where are you at with your writing practice today?” And if you put something in place for one student, every student can benefit from that. So like if I have a blind student who needs her readings to be audio, the mother who is driving her kid to soccer practice can also benefit from having an audio version of the text. I’ve really embraced that idea of, when I put something in a course, trying to give them a graphic, trying to give them the text, and then trying to give them an audio or audio-visual component. I use Zoom a lot to create my videos. And so we have the closed captioning, they have the PowerPoint, they have the option of reading the transcript, maybe all those things can be overwhelming, but then turn off the closed captions and just have the PowerPoint and the talking. A lot of times I don’t even have the PowerPoint, I just have the screen for the learning management system, which is not always smart, because I use three different learning management systems, so that I have to keep re-recording those videos.

Rebecca: It sounds like those alternative formats are really helpful for students in giving options to explore the content and giving variety. And it sounds like you’re guiding them through picking and choosing which format works best for them.

Jeanne: Absolutely. And in 2010, when I got my big start in online teaching, I had completed a master’s certificate in online learning through Illinois Online Network. And actually, that was the first time I had ever heard about things like summative and formative assessments. So I was using classroom assessment techniques or CATs to check in with students. So those were things that I was learning in this class that I didn’t know about, then fast forward to last semester, and now I want to learn more about universal design for learning. So I started a digital accessibility for educators certificate. And we had a course for the foundations, we had a course where we just learned the basics of manipulating documents and making them accessible. I did another course that did the same for videos, and then the full eight-week UDL course, but the videos was interesting in that they actually recommended that your videos only be two to three minutes long, which if you’re used to teaching an hour and a half class, how do you get a two-minute video to educate your students. And I think part of that is students are used to watching shorter videos. And so if you have a 20-minute lecture, chunking it into four different videos can be very useful, because even when they have to go back, they know that that information that they want to review comes from video two, or video three, and it breaks things up for them. And you can set them up where one flows into the next

Rebecca: You were just summarizing the different ways that you were implementing multiple means of representation. You’ve talked a little bit about multiple forms in your syllabus, you talked about skeletal outlines, and then you were just talking about multiple formats for lectures. So one of the other UDL principles is thinking about multiple means of expression or ways that students can demonstrate their learning. Can you share some of the ways that you’ve implemented that into your teaching?

Jeanne: Sure, well, again, because I teach primarily online, I rely very heavily on the discussion boards. And so I do definitely start out with the icebreakers. And it’s not a best practice to answer every student on the discussion board, but for the icebreaker I do, because I want them to know that I heard them and that I have a response for them. And so I really tried to be very intentional. And then as the discussion boards increase throughout the semester, I back off and let my students engage with each other. But what I love about the discussion boards is it democratizes the classroom, because if a student is put on the spot right there in the classroom, they can’t always process the information quickly enough. They might be shy, they might feel like they just can’t come up with the answer right then and there. But when you’re on a discussion board, a student has the opportunity to read the question and thoughtfully respond in their own timing. And that really matches the work that I do. I’m definitely better at creating courses in writing and using instructional design techniques to lay out my classes and have everything set up, do all the writing of assignments, I’m much better at the organization than I am at getting up in front of students and lecturing. That’s just what I’m better at. And so I can really understand the idea of having a new concept introduced to me, and then having the opportunity to really think about it, maybe do a little research and pull my thoughts together before I respond. And so I think having those discussion boards, sometimes I even integrate them in my face-to-face classes just to give students other opportunities to engage. I have a literacy narrative assignment, where I allow students to either write the essay, or use another modality. So like, every once in a while, I’ll have a student who will want to make a video, I don’t have all the techniques of what video software you should use. Sometimes having all that information can be daunting. In today’s age, you know, my son, he’s 21, so he’s a junior in life and he’s working in the trades. So he’s not in college. But he started using a Chromebook in sixth grade. So we have students now who have capabilities in video production that I don’t have, just because they’ve been doing it in their elementary, middle school, and high school classes. So I also have an option for them to create a comic. Because we have an example in our textbook where somebody wrote a literacy narrative,as a graphic comic. Every once in a while, I get the drawers who want to have their literacy narrative that way. And so again, there’s just multiple ways. Writing class, you can’t always have a video, students have to write. But I can sometimes give options, the literacy narrative is a great place to give students the opportunity to showcase their story using another modality. I provide examples whenever possible. I ask my students “Can I use this?” and I get more and more questions from students about, “Can I have an example?” And sometimes I don’t want to give them one, I just want them to respond. It’s a low-stakes assignment, and I want them to think. I don’t want them to see somebody else’s response. I just want them to tell me what they know. But especially for larger essays, I want to make sure that they have those examples. We read a lot of essays from published authors, but having examples from their peers, and especially examples from peers that had me as their instructor, can be very helpful to students being able to then turn around and express their thoughts in writing. And this is also where that TILT model comes in, because I want to tell them why they’re doing the assignment, the literacy narrative, the purpose is for me to get to know you as a student, as a reader, as a writer. It’s an opportunity for you to tell me your story, and what the actual prompt is, what the skills they need, there’s always a rubric for them to follow to guide them. I give them an idea of what I expect in the final product. And sometimes I’ve been learning more and more that sometimes, using specifications grading, it’s either you met the objectives, or you didn’t can be very helpful in some of these writing assignments. One of my favorite writing assignments is… I got this at a conference at College DuPage, like maybe in 2016, and I adopted it, and I’ve been using it for years, but only in the face-to-face classroom. It’s students pairing up to groups of two or three, and they choose a movie and they do their own version of “At the Movies with English 101.” I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember this, Rebecca, I know John is, but Siskel and Ebert At the Movies on Sunday afternoon, I watched it with my dad every week and so I get to nerd out a little bit and do things I love and show them all these different clips of Siskel and Ebert. And then they get to pair with somebody and watch a film and write a script that they present to the class. And so what I’ve learned over the years is that it’s not even really necessary to grade this assignment, because I’m really only grading on grammar and punctuation because they work so hard on it because they’re presenting it to their peers, and they’re working with another classmate that it’s a pure learning experience. And last semester, I had a student who was talking to her partner, and she said, “This is so fun. This is like doing a podcast.” And I thought, oh my goodness, I can bridge. I tell them to write a script and they look at me like a deer in headlights. But if I say they’re gonna do a podcast about their favorite movie, now I’ve reframed the assignment in terms that they understand. So that’s what I’m going to do next time. And like I said, if you’ve done the assignment, you get full credit because I’ve never had a student not do the assignment. I do have a rubric for the person who takes advantage, just in case they’re out there. And really the only way to lose points is if you don’t present your individual reflection on the entire process. So I feel like that is just one of those ways to meet students where they’re at by giving them the freedom to work with somebody else and see what kind of writing they can produce without too many parameters. And they’re almost always successful.

John: You had mentioned something about a career analysis project. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Jeanne: Sure. That came out last spring, I had a late start class. And they were supposed to be writing an editorial and I was barely getting film analysis and literacy narrative essays from them. They were really struggling as a class. And I was trying to figure out a way to motivate them. And I’m thinking, if I have them write an editorial, that’s not going to work for this group. And so I scrambled, and I thought, well, as a freshman in college, most of the students who take English 101, this is their first time in college, and thinking about the TILT model, what can they write that gives them purpose? And so I came up with “Well, every student’s going to want to get out of college with a career, and we can still meet the learning objectives in the class.” So the final product is the actual essay, and that is totally graded with a rubric and they have to meet all the learning objectives, work cited page, introduction, thesis statement, all those components of a basic essay, source integration, synthesis. We’re in the early stages of getting them ready for that English 102 class. And so they can write an essay about their career meeting all those objectives in the same way that they could write an editorial meeting those same objectives. And so I always start a paper like that with an annotated bibliography. And so I got the librarians to help me find websites where students could research their careers. And so the librarians put together a page for me that students can refer to, and I’ve since created short videos, where I explain the different databases to them. Right now, I think I have like a 12-minute video that I did. So the next step is, instead of talking about all the databases in one video, talk about different individual databases in two to three minutes, breaking that down and meeting them even better than I was with a 12-minute video. So they write their annotated bibliography, and that gives them an opportunity to work on MLA citations, work on summarizing, and thinking about how they’re going to use that material for the final essay. That’s part one. Part two is using ChatGPT to have a conversation, I call it a ChatGPT interview. And so now that students have done the research on their own, now they’re taking what they know and I give them a series of prompts. And I’m giving them the experience of using ChatGPT to inform their writing and the research. And so I’m not necessarily concerned about the interview. I’ve very recently learned that instead of them describing the process, they can send me a link to the actual interview. So it’s evolved from describing the process to: write an introduction, give me your link, and then write a reflection on what helped and what didn’t help and how you think this is a valuable tool in education, how you think that ChatGPT could derail you in your education. And so I know a lot of English faculty are very wary of AI in the classroom with good reason, because I’ve gotten a few of those papers. And I’ve probably gotten more than I think, and they’ve gotten under my nose. But it’s like the internet was 20 years ago. It’s a tool that’s not going anywhere. And so it is our responsibility as educators to introduce students to these tools and talk about the ethics of them. And so this is just an opportunity to kind of slip that in. And the feedback I’ve gotten from most students is “Oh, yeah, I got really good information. Some of it wasn’t accurate based on my research. I could tell from the tone of what I was reading that it was robotic, and I definitely wouldn’t want my writing to sound that way. But it was nice to put some ideas in and get some feedback from those ideas. So part one is the annotated bibliography. Part two is the ChatGPT interview. Part three is that final essay, and this semester, I’ve added a part four, because I wasn’t feeling like this assignment was robust enough. And I’ve also been in conversations about UDL, giving students multiple ways to express what they know. And so I actually went into ChatGPT and I put part of my assignment in it. And I asked him to write me guidelines for doing a media presentation. And so now they’re going to have to take what they’ve learned in their essay, or what they’ve written in their essay. And they have to take it a step further and do some kind of a PowerPoint or video or some kind of visual component, so that they can, I guess, bring what they know, it’s not just an essay, but they’re sharing it with the world in some respects, or they have something that they could share with the world. And so this will give me an opportunity to talk about portfolios, ‘cause some nursing students need those kinds of things. I know I did when I was in public relations, journalism was my major. And so I know when I got out of college, I needed a portfolio. And so this is just another opportunity for them to maybe have a little bit of fun with the content. And it brings them more into the 21st century. Our students, I’m sure many of them aspire to be influencers. They love their YouTube. So this is a way for them to live out that dream a little bit.

Rebecca: Sounds like an opportunity to think about audience as well.

Jeanne: Yes, definitely.

Rebecca: How have your students responded to these opportunities in the reconfiguring of this project?

Jeanne: They have responded really well, especially with this particular project, the feedback I’ve gotten is I really appreciated the opportunity to research something I need to know about anyway. And I appreciated that you created an assignment that I can relate to, that means something to me. Not every discipline can do that. But as a writing instructor, Comp 101, Comp 102, I do have a lot of flexibility with the content. And so I focus very much on the skills that students can attain… the Siskel and Ebert, they all are looking at me, like, I’m crazy for asking them to create this podcast. But as they go through the process, I give them a lot of time in class. And as they go through the process of creating the document, at the end of the day, they have another piece of writing that they’re really proud of. A lot of them say “I had fun doing this.” And I feel like if a student is having fun doing a writing assignment, I’m really going to get to see their best efforts. I find that a lot of kids come out of high school and they come to college with this idea that I have to write what my teacher wants me to write. And I have to figure out what that is. And during the pandemic, I really got a taste of that when I was helping my son with his research paper, because he didn’t really do any writing. He started by looking for quotes. And then he explained what those quotes meant. He started with main ideas, and then he’d find quotes, and then he’d explain the quotes. And then he’d slap in a bunch of transitions and call that a paper. But there was really no like, “What do I think about this?” It was more about how do I meet all the criteria that my instructors have given me to complete this assignment. And so it’s a real privilege in English 101 to be able to kind of deprogram that thinking and give students the opportunity to really know what it’s like to write what they think,

Rebecca: Maybe to move on from just efficient solutions to things to something that’s actually valuable to them.

Jeanne: Exactly. And they’re learning skills in high school for a reason. They just lack the opportunity to really put those skills together in a lot of regular classes, I think. It’s been my experience with my kids anyway, and with my students, that they are really just re-imagining graphic organizers and presenting them to their students with all the boxes checked.

John: In your professional development role have some of the techniques that you’ve been using been widely adopted at your institutions?

Jeanne: Well, at Waubonsee, they pay for faculty to take the ACUE courses, which is a certificate in effective college instruction. And I know that there are a lot of active learning modules, there’s modules that have to do with creating a classroom environment that is conducive to learning. And there’s also a course that’s separate from the effective college instruction that is fostering a culture of belonging. And so that is a really good course to get people thinking about those around them. And at College DuPage, I do a lot of book clubs. So that’s how I got introduced to Thomas Tobin’s work, Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone and Flower Darby’s work with Small Teaching Online. And in fact, Thomas is the one who introduced me to John, at one of his sessions. So I’m a little bit of a Thomas Tobin groupie, I guess. And so I do find that any opportunity for faculty to engage with each other is really key. I know this as an online faculty member, I know this as an adjunct faculty member. I probably spent a good 10 years in a silo while I was raising my kids, and developed very slowly as an instructor, because I was really just doing my own research and learning my own things. But bringing it out into the world and engaging with other people, it really does improve your teaching strategies and your abilities at a much faster rate. And so I have really enjoyed the privilege of working in faculty development and sharing the things that I’ve learned with others and constantly also learning from others.

Rebecca: That is one of the benefits to being in faculty development, is getting the opportunity to learn new things, and from other faculty and other developers on a regular basis. I think that’s one of the reasons why John and I like to do the podcast. [LAUGHTER] And that’s why I enjoy listening to the podcasts, too. I go in these stages where I just listen and listen and listen and listen and listen, and then I burn out and I gotta stop, or I think, “Okay, I’m not listening to another podcast until I apply something from the last one I’ve listened to.” Because you know, when you’re in the car, and you’re just driving around, it can be really easy to think, “Oh, this is great, and then you forget about it.”

John: And that is a bit of an occupational hazard for being a podcaster in this area. Because there’s so many great ideas that we hear from people that it’s really tempting to try to do all of them. And that can be quite overwhelming.

Jeanne: For sure.

Rebecca: So, we do always wrap up by asking: what’s next?

Jeanne: I know and I keep thinking about that. My faculty development job is supposed to end because it’s a two-year fellowship, supposed to end in May. And so what’s next is there has been talk about keeping my fellow Adjunct Faculty Development Coordinator and I on staff. So I guess we’re waiting to figure out as we revamp that department if I will continue in faculty development. But the good news is I love teaching so much. And I love teaching online so much. And one thing that I’ve learned about the anxiety that I have with teaching in face-to-face classes is that I don’t do it enough. And if I do it more, that anxiety dissipates, because I’m in that community. So I don’t know what’s next.

John: Thank you for joining us. It’s been great talking to you again, and we look forward to hearing more about your continued evolution in terms of teaching.

Rebecca: Thank you for sharing your story.

Jeanne: Thank you so much for having me on. This was great.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

Ganesh: Editing assistance by Ganesh.

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326. UDL in Action

Posted in accessibility, active learning, authentic learning, diversity, equity, feedback, higher education, inclusion, learning, pedagogy, social justice, teaching, universal design
January 31, 2024

Universal design for learning, or UDL, is a framework to help us design more equitable learning experiences. In this episode, Lillian Nave joins us to discuss how she has implemented a UDL approach in her first-year seminar course. Lillian is the Coordinator of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning for Student Success at the Appalachian State University Hickory Campus and a senior lecturer in a first-year seminar course at Appalachian State University. She is also the host of the ThinkUDL podcast. She is the recipient of several teaching awards and often serves as an invited speaker on UDL issues.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Universal design for learning, or UDL, is a framework to help us design more equitable learning experiences. In this episode, we discuss how one faculty member has implemented a UDL approach in a first-year course.

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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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John: Our guest today is Lilian Nave. Lillian is the Coordinator of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning for Student Success at the Appalachian State University Hickory Campus and a senior lecturer in a first-year seminar course at Appalachian State University. She is also the host of the ThinkUDL podcast. She is the recipient of several teaching awards and often serves as an invited speaker on UDL issues. Welcome, Lillian.

Lillian: Thank you very much. And I applaud you on all of the monikers that I currently have attached to my name that often don’t make sense. So, very good. And of course you said Appalachian in the way we say it down here in North Carolina and I don’t have to throw an apple at you. [LAUGHTER]

John: Well, I’ve heard it so many times on your podcast that I wanted to be sure we got that down.

Rebecca: Today’s teas are:… Lillian, are you drinking tea today?

Lillian: I am and I brewed it specially for our interview today, it is Bengal spice, which is a Celestial Seasoning herbal tea that is caffeine free. I went caffeine free a while ago, and it’s fantastic and I don’t have to put sugar or honey or anything in it. It has cinnamon sticks and it’s delicious and my best friend in the world got me hooked on it. And it always just makes me feel warm inside and makes me think of the lovely conversations I have with the people who I’ve drank tea with in the past. And I also have iced tea because I continuously drink iced tea and this one happens to be actually just a Crystal Light [LAUGHTER] iced tea as well.

Rebecca: And I did notice, of course, and must state that there was a Tea for Teaching mug involved.

Lillian: Yes, exactly, and I appreciate that. John saw me at a conference and I was so happy to get my Tea for teaching mug that I made sure I was drinking from it today.

John: And I am drinking a peppermint spearmint blend today… also caffeine free today.

Rebecca: I am drinking a highly caffeinated afternoon tea [LAUGHTER] to make up for everybody’s caffeine deficits.

Lillian: Well, I have plenty of chocolate throughout the day that is not caffeine free.

John: So we’ve invited you here today to discuss your work on Universal Design for Learning. We probably don’t have many listeners who aren’t familiar with UDL, but for those who are not as familiar, could you provide an overview of Universal Design for Learning.

Lillian: Of course, and I’d be glad to. Universal Design for Learning is a way of thinking, I would say, about teaching and learning that relies on three main concepts that include: engaging your students, providing accessible materials for your students, and varying the ways that your students can explain to you that they’ve learned something. And it is all based on neuroscience and also a lot of research that tells us that all of our students are different. Variability is the norm. And so we have students in higher ed that come from all different backgrounds, different cultures, different preparedness levels, different abilities and disabilities. And in order to reach all of our students, it’s important to think about that variability and universal design for learning gives us some really specific things to look out for. And three areas or categories: the engagement, the representation, and providing multiple means for those and multiple means of the student to express their knowledge. And so that’s like the general overview, but there are like so many weeds, that I can have a podcast [LAUGHTER] and talk to people about all of the different intricacies of UDL. But in general, that’s it in a nutshell.

Rebecca: I know we’ve talked about it a bit on our podcast before in terms of the difference between UDL and accessibility. But for those who haven’t heard those previous episodes, can you talk a little bit about the difference between those two ideas?

Lillian: Yes. So, accessibility is a part of Universal Design for Learning. You cannot have universal design for learning without attention to accessibility. But accessibility alone is not universal design for learning, it’s a part of it. And I like to think of UDL as like a three-legged stool. If you take out one of those legs, the stool doesn’t function anymore, it will fall over. And one of those legs is multiple means of representation. It’s typically the center column that’s purple if you look at the UDL guidelines at UDLguidelines.org. CAST puts those out. And that middle column about representation is about providing multiple forms of representation, so different texts or audio files, or making sure your font is readable too, especially for dyslexic students. So accessibility is about making sure that all students can access materials, that they have the ability to make sure they can actually get at that information. And this is less common now, but there used to be like those PDFs that a professor copied out of their book when they were a student and it has all their like markings and stuff in it. And then they would just like make a read really bad copy of it, and hand it out when everybody still used paper all the time, or maybe it’s on a screen. And those oftentimes were not accessible. And that means if a student needed a screen reader to read it, or even if they just needed to make the font bigger, they couldn’t because it wasn’t an accessible document, a screen reader couldn’t read it, meaning if a student was dyslexic or even blind, they had really no way to get at that information. So when you make your documents accessible, and you make your class accessible, you are making sure that everybody really just is on an even playing field, and they can get at that information. But in addition to accessibility, you want to make sure you’re also giving lots of opportunities for students to express what they know in different ways. And you’re also engaging with the students. And those two other things are not included in accessibility. That’s what makes up UDL.

John: How did you become interested in UDL?

Lillian: Well, I started working with our Center for Teaching and Learning in 2016 as a faculty fellow and I started doing faculty development as a one-course release for quite a while. And in doing that, we became part of a grant that was in three North Carolina institutions that was called College STAR. And STAR stands for supporting transition, access, and retention. And it was a two-pronged approach where there was a lot of student development, so tutoring centers and things like that. And then there was this other side, and that’s the part I got interested in and got pulled along with and that was supporting faculty. And to do that we used Universal Design for Learning. And I was just part of that grant. And that ended up me being the Universal Design for Learning Coordinator at Appalachian State. And I started going to different departments and introducing that at workshops and that sort of thing. So I became kind of the UDL girl or UDL lady for App state, which I think is about 2016 when that started, and then I saw it, like I’d never heard of it before, and I’d been teaching since 1997. And then I thought, oh, boy, this is really good, this makes a lot of sense. And so I started implementing it as well in all my classes.

Rebecca: So we’ve talked a little bit about UDL principles broadly. So can we dig into maybe a specific example, like your first-year seminar course? That sounds pretty interesting.

Lillian: Absolutely. So my course right now, I teach one called intercultural dialogues, and I get first-year students, and so I love it that they’re small, under 24 students. This past year, I was at our new campus in Hickory, and I only had 18 students there. And we get to work on intercultural competence, which is one of those major things that colleges want our students to know. It’s a 21st-century skill, and it is about understanding our own cultures, and then understanding that other people have different cultures. And then how can you mindfully act and interact with somebody from a different culture. And I have heard some students, at the end of the term, say “this is something everybody should know, like, this is really, really important.” They’ve seen how important it is. But at the beginning of the class, like nobody wants to be there. Nobody wants to take a first-year seminar course. They’re usually there because it’s Tuesday morning and they have an open slot. I’m in that unenviable position of teaching first-year seminar, and it’s that Gen Ed requirement that nobody wants to take. So I want to make it interesting, and I want to make it worthwhile for them, and so we learn about our own culture and then I also match students up with students abroad. We’ve worked with students in Doha, Qatar, in China, in Morocco, in Germany, Thailand, and Japan in the past year, and they work on intercultural competency skills and talk about things like power distance in the classroom, or some of the UN Sustainability Development Goals, like gender equality by 2030. And so they’ve done some things with students in China about that. So the class itself is about intercultural competence. And I have infused a bunch of UDL into this class over the years. And so it wasn’t all at once, but it took a while. And so that means I have multiple ways for the students to get at that information. So there is never just one way to do the reading. It’s either accessible or I’ve recorded a voice audio file for students. So we have a lot of commuter students at this campus, and so actually, we have zero students who live on campus in our new campus in Hickory. It is a new campus, it just started and so there are no dorms, there’s only one building and we’re all in that one building. And so students come in, they have jobs, and so UDL is very helpful for me to think about those students who have various commitments of their time. So they could listen to the audio file rather than read the book, because they’ve got a 40-minute commute to come into campus or something like that. So they’ll have an audio or video. I’ve used H5P, which is on our learning management system, which is like an interactive video, there’s VoiceThread, which is another way to be kind of interactive for students to participate. And so there’s always multiple ways for them to get at that information. And then there’s multiple ways that I ask them to tell me what they know. And they’ve done concept maps, so we have very little like, “write me a paper,” there’s very little of that my class. And that’s also a culturally competent type of teaching thing, because we often in an individuated, Western academic model, we prioritize reading and writing, reading and writing, reading and writing. That’s always what it is. And yes, we need to have very good readers and writers. But there are lots of other ways to learn and express your learning that might be more prevalent in other countries and in other cultures. And so they’ve had to draw some of their answers, they’ve had to give me a visual representation, they’ve written a poem, drawn a cartoon, and tell a story. One of their first assignments is to bring in something that expresses who they are, a cultural artifact. And then the last class that we just had recently, I asked everyone to name everybody else’s cultural artifact, so they learned about each other that way. And it was things like a keychain or one student brought in the T-top of his T-top convertible car. [LAUGHTER] Because the car was really important to get him around and all that stuff. And engagement is the last part. But it’s really the first part that gets students interested in the activities and in the learning and why they should learn. So I start off with a liquid syllabus, which is a syllabus that students can access outside of our learning management system, and they can see what we’re doing, and they get a video of me talking to them. And that’s supposed to be engaging. And then they have a lot of authentic assignments working with students overseas. And this year, because I was finally back in an actual classroom and not doing remote teaching, as I have been since 2020, I took students up to New York City. And Appalachian has this amazing loft that actually anybody can go stay at so all of your listeners could go and stay at Appalachian’s loft, and it’s very inexpensive. It’s like $70 a night per bed, and it’s these two rooms of 10 beds each. And we took students up there to actually learn a lot about culture. We went to the Tenement Museum, they looked around, and it was very cool. So experiential type of education as well. So that took like years before I got to that rendition of how I teach that course. But those are all UDL principles that guided me.

John: You mentioned collaboration with students in other countries, what types of collaborative work did those students do in your classes?

Lillian: They had specific zoom meetings that they had to do personally one on one. So one of them is that students got matched one on one with fellow students in Morocco. And they were supposed to talk about the difference in power distance in an educational setting. So power distance is the amount of power that people in a group expect and believe should be shared or held by the people in that group. So in an educational setting, if you’ve got a first-year student who comes into a large lecture hall on a college campus, there is a larger power distance for that instructor who will pretty much lecture to those students, students don’t raise their hand all that often, there’s not a lot of back and forth, there’s not a lot of flexibility, they probably don’t even know the students’ names. And so that would be an example of a larger power distance. A smaller power distance might be in a classroom, like in my classroom, I say, “You can call me by my first name, you can address me in this very informal way. We’re not going to have a lecture, we’re going to be in small groups, and then we’re going to share our ideas.” And that way, there’s a lot more voices, there’s a lot more talking. And that can happen in various times throughout the semester. I may do a lecture, I may not. And so my students were talking with students in Morocco to find out about their understanding of what power distance was. And do you call your professor Dr. Smith? Or what do you address them by? Are there rules about when you can address your professor and those sorts of things. So that was one of them. And then we worked with students in China, and this one was a series of three Zoom conversations. And all of our students had to set all these up. They were all in English because our partner students wanted to do this in English, and most of them had never spoken to a native English speaker. So this was a really good goal for them. And in China, they can’t have Zoom, not allowed. And so the students had to receive our invite from our students, and their first session was kind of an introduction: who they are, what they’re doing, for about an hour. The second was a second list of questions, which was about: Who takes care of children? Who goes to work? Who do you live with? Do you live with an extended family? Do you live with a nuclear family? And it was really about gender roles. And one of those things that’s a national cultural dimension is something called achievement versus nurturance. And that continuum has also been called in the past: masculinity versus femininity. And it’s how much a culture believes that men and women should adhere to somewhat stereotypical gender roles. So are there women CEOs, and stay-at-home dads? In some countries, that happens in some cities. That happens a lot more than in other countries. Do you put more emphasis on earning a higher wage? Or on having the flexibility to work from home? Like, where are you on that? And so the students talked about that. And then in the last session, they talked about: if you could change anything, what would you see that might improve your country from where it is now and that sort of thing. So they got to do some really authentic conversations with people around the world, and the students in China were 12 hours ahead. So my students were meeting sometimes at two in the morning, but they were up, [LAUGHTER] it didn’t matter.

Rebecca: So it sounds like there was a lot of coordination with counterparts around the world to make sure that you designed experiences for both sets of students that met, maybe not the same learning objectives, but learning objectives that were relevant for each population.

Lillian: That is exactly it. And it was my colleague in China, who said she wanted to do something about the sustainable development goals from the UN. I said, “Okay, well, let’s try and look at that.” And it worked for each one. And it is a lot of coordination for the faculty. And so I would meet with my fellow faculty member several times throughout the semester. And so we got the dates right for when we’d have Thanksgiving, nobody else had Thanksgiving break, and we have holidays, and they started a month early or a month late, and so there was a lot of coordination. And then they had to give me the list of all the students and I needed gender, too, because some students wanted to stay within their own gender, women, especially, in Morocco where some were less likely to speak to male students, who wanted to stay with female students. So we wanted to be culturally sensitive to those types of things. So there was a lot of beginning coordination to set those things up.

Rebecca: I wanted to circle back to one other thing you said too, in that you mentioned your classes developed with all these UDL principles over a significant period of time.

LILIIAN: Yes.

Rebecca: I want to know how you got started, what was the first thing you implemented? And how did that set a trajectory for the others?

Lillian: The first thing, way back when, probably 2016, 2017, like the big aha moment for me, was not doing the same thing all the time, and not having to grade everything, meaning maybe we were just going to do some honestly experimental assessments in class that were kind of fun and authentic. And I didn’t have to grade everything. And when I kind of let go of that, it opened me up to some more ideas. And then I thought, well, I don’t need them to write a paper, because I really have a specific goal in mind. And the goal doesn’t necessarily need to be a paper that then I’d have to read, [LAUGHTER] it made my life easier too. Maybe they just needed to demonstrate their understanding of these concepts. And so like one of the first things we do is draw an iceberg, and talk about how the culture that we see here, taste, feel, smell, all those five senses, that’s about 10% of what makes a culture. And when we think about culture, it’s usually just those things, it’s like, “Oh, you eat this special meal on Lunar New Year, and you have these special foods, and the kitchen always smells this way, or we dress up in cultural clothing, or whatever.” But that’s really only 10%, the tip of the iceberg. And then we have to get really deep into what our values and beliefs and assumptions we make. And that’s typically the hard part of the class. And so I just had students either draw an onion or an iceberg. And then they had to kind of point to where this was, what are your deeply held beliefs and assumptions, and that culture is so much more. And it’s a lot easier, I think, to conceptualize it as a drawing than it is to write me a paper about what your deeply held beliefs are, [LAUGHTER] and where they align with the things that I can see on the outside.

John: You mentioned that the first thing you had done was reducing grading and doing more formative assessments, which is beneficial for students too because it takes some of the pressure off and gives them the opportunity to try something, make mistakes, and learn from that without any penalty. Is that something that you’d recommend for someone who’s interested in exploring UDL, as a first step, if they’re not already doing that?

Lillian: Absolutely, I think it frees up both the student and the faculty member to kind of see what works. And so much of Universal Design for Learning is about feedback, feedback from the students. And that is a major portion of UDL. And I should have said that at the very beginning, that you really want to be figuring out what works for the students and what works for you. So I do think that’s a great way to think about it. And also, the flip side of that coin, to me as well, was whoever is doing the work is doing the learning. So if you are always lecturing to your students, it’s hard, like, you got to put together this great lecture, I always felt like I had a top hat and a cane, you know, walking into my lecture, and yadda-dat-dah, I’m gonna, like dazzle you with my art historical knowledge, and make it interesting. And I was doing a lot of work to do that. And I have slowly moved into kind of the other end of this continuum, from lecturer into facilitator. And if I can facilitate the students working together, or a lot of feedback back and forth with me or with each other, then they’re actually risking some things like “talk to your neighbor about this,” and they don’t have to raise their hand in front of the large class, they’re actually trying and risking and doing these smaller things. And that’s where I see the learning happening. If they’re just listening, that’s fine, that’s great too, but the more they can participate in their own learning, the better it is, that I’ve seen, certainly in my classes, the more they can do, the more they’re learning. But it doesn’t mean I have to evaluate every single thing that they hand in, or that they produce. And I can certainly, on the spot, kind of tweak things and say, “Okay, let’s turn it into this direction,” or something like that. But it was the: “I don’t have to grade everything they do” and “The person who’s doing the work is doing the learning.” And it was like freedom for me to try all of these things that were totally not what I had done as a student, or had valued as a student or an instructor because I was very much in that: “Alright, you’ve got a 15-page research paper, a midterm, and a final, and that’s the art history course.” And I don’t do that anymore.

Rebecca: Well, it sounds like not only is there a benefit to the faculty, in terms of workload, joy, [LAUGHTER] etc, but also an emphasis on self efficacy for students and building confidence.

Lillian: Oh, yeah. Exactly. And they’re trying things out, and they’re seeing what works. And that feedback is really important, a big part of UDL.

John: And you mentioned that it took you time to build to where your courses currently are. Is that an approach you’d also recommend to faculty who are beginning to introduce UDL principles, because it can be a lot of work completely redesigning or transforming your teaching?

Lillian: Absolutely. I don’t know if I could have done this stuff early on in my career, because I was worried about how I looked and was perceived. I was very young, and so I think I needed to feel like I was in charge. And that power sharing was too difficult for me as a young instructor. So I understand that. And now I feel much more comfortable in the classroom. And I feel that being a facilitator is really helpful for the students. And sometimes they just want to sit and listen, but that happens too. But it took a long time to get there. And the course has evolved over a long time. And you try new things. Tom Tobin and Kristen Behling talk about the plus one mentality, just trying one new thing. And that’s what happened, is when I started this course, we weren’t speaking with students in other countries. That just sort of happened when I went to a conference and made some friends in other countries and said, “Oh, I bet this would make a lot of sense to add this in.” It’d be really authentic, which is one of the engagement principles is having really authentic learning experiences. And I used to be like, “Oh, you’ve got to plan everything out, and it has to be perfect.” And now I see that I fumble through a lot of things. And every once in a while something sticks, and it’s good. It’s a practice. They say being a doctor is more of a practice. I think being a teacher is very much a practice to see what works and what worked in my class five years ago, doesn’t necessarily work now. Things that were really fun and hot at some point, you know, like making memes is pretty fun right now, but we didn’t do that 10 years ago, and we probably won’t do it in another five years, like, what did you learn? Let’s make a meme out of it. It’s evolving.

Rebecca: It’s interesting that we’re talking about a course about culture. And you’re describing how the culture of higher ed or institutions or our classrooms also evolve. And that evolution requires risk both on the part of the instructor as well as on the part of the students, and that the UDL principles are really allowing that risk to happen on both ends.

Lillian: Yes, and sometimes there are forces outside of our control that make that more difficult, and it’s not an enviable position. So things like I wish I didn’t have to grade, but we still have to have grades in the end. And so how does that fit into your course. And so I know a lot of folks are using ungrading. I know you’ve talked with Susan Blum and Josh Eyler about various different kinds of grading, which I think is like a later on kind of thing for UDL. Start with accessibility, make sure your stuff is readable and devourable by all of your students, and then start kind of playing around with it. And then maybe I think that ungrading or different kinds of grading structures might be the last step on that process. But to each their own.

John: One of the issues involving student variability is that some students might be resistant to some of the approaches that you’re using, because there have been a number of studies that show that students often prefer to be lectured at. And it seems like they’re learning more that way, despite the evidence that that’s less effective. How do you persuade students to be open to trying new approaches to learning?

Lillian: Great question, I know exactly what you’re talking about, like students, they’re like, “this is how we learn best,” and then you actually poll their knowledge. And students in an active learning situation who kind of hated it are much more knowledgeable than the students that were just in a lecture where they really liked it, because that was kind of safe. And in the last year or so I’ve heard myself saying this a lot when I do speaking, and when I’m talking to folks, is I think everybody needs to be uncomfortable in the classroom, some of the time. We don’t want the same students to be uncomfortable all of the time. So that means varying those different ways that we assess students, so it’s not the “alright, every week, you’re writing a paper,” oh, that also gets boring. But for your great writers, it’s fantastic. But are we really finding out what that student knows? Are we finding out that they’re a good writer. And so maybe that’s a poem, or maybe it’s a concept map, or there are other ways to assess that info. And so I tell my students, like, I’m really conscious about that, like, you probably aren’t going to like some of these things, but your neighbor isn’t going to like the next thing. And so having those opportunities that you have to step out of your comfort zone, to get into the learning zone, but not all the way out to that outer edge of the target, which is the panic zone. And that’s actually an intercultural competence idea that I learned in that field. When you study abroad, the only way you’re really learning is if you’re in that learning mode, like if you go to Germany, but you’re living with a bunch of Americans, and you never speak German, and you go to McDonald’s, and you’re at an English speaking school, then have you really learned much about German culture? So you should go outside of that comfort zone. Maybe you’re living with a local family, and you have to speak German, but you don’t want to go and you are in like a chaotic household and they don’t speak English, and they haven’t made sure that you have any food, and you don’t feel safe, and all the classes you are way ahead of you in your German speaking. And so you’re not learning much either, you’re kind of panicking. So it’s that learning zone we have to be in and so I think in our classrooms, we need to do that too, have multiple different ways for students to express what they know, which is one of our UDL guidelines. And I am very overt when I tell students that. And I found that with student evaluations, like I would get student evaluations where they asked like, “Did you practice critical thinking skills?” And they’d be like, “No, like, I totally didn’t at all.” [LAUGHTER] And then the next year… and I think I learned this at like an academic conference… the next year, throughout the course, I’d be like, Okay, we’re gonna do this critical thinking exercise, this thing that we’re doing right now, this is about critical thinking, you’re going to use your critical thinking skills because this thing that we’ve done, that’s a critical thinking skill. Guess what? The evaluations… way up. [LAUGHTER] Exactly like you’re pulling back the curtain and you’re saying, like, here’s actually why we’re doing it, and this is what you’re doing. And so I think explaining that is really helpful. And then the students know why they need to do something like what I’ve asked them to do, why am I writing a poem or why am I drawing an iceberg? And I think we do need to tell students that and not just have them guessing, because then they’re going to be in the panic zone and not learn so much.

Rebecca: That’s a really good point to remind students that being uncomfortable and taking risks is actually part of the learning process. Can’t remind them too much.

Lillian: Yeah, exactly. It’s necessary. And they do want to just sit and doodle. And not that doodling is bad. But they just want to sit and listen and have us do all of the work. But it’s like, I know this stuff, so why do I need to explain it? You could just watch a video of me talking. We need to get you into grappling with this and doing the stuff that I know you don’t want to do and you don’t want to be here because it’s a first-year seminar and you’re a first-year student. So my heart is with all of those folks that teach Gen Ed [LAUGHTER] to the students who don’t really want to be there.

Rebecca: Switching gears a bit now, can you talk a little bit about how you started the ThinkUDL podcast?

Lillian: Yes, it’s going back to that College STAR grant. We were getting into doing like workshops, and so I was working with other universities in North Carolina. And we had a PI, the head of it was at our East Carolina school. And I said, “Do we have any multiple ways to do this. They were doing research and then some workshops. And it just made sense to me like, we need a podcast, like this would be so off brand for UDL not to have multiple means for us to get this information out. And a podcast has the added bonus of being asynchronous, so people can listen to it whenever they want. I’ve always had transcripts, too. So if you don’t want to listen to my voice, which is totally fine, you could read the transcript and you can get that information, you can see the resources. So there are multiple ways to get it. But there was money from that original grant that sent me and my shout out to Tanner, who was my first sound engineer, and we went to a podcast convention in 2018 in the summer in Philadelphia. And seriously, I didn’t know a thing at all. I didn’t even listen to podcasts then. The only one I’d heard of was the Teaching in Higher Ed with Bonni Stachowiak, and then like, “Okay, we’re gonna try it.” And the very early episodes are, I think, awful. But luckily, Tanner kind of cleaned them up. But there was a Chris Farley on Saturday, live long, long time ago, so I’m showing my age here. But he would interview, in these sketches. He’d interview people that were amazing, like Paul McCartney from The Beatles, right? And he would just fumble the whole time. Like, “Wow, so you were in the Beatles? Wow. Yeah. That’s great. So can you tell me like, what’s it like being a Beatle?” And that’s what I felt like the whole time, [LAUGHTER] like “Wow. Okay. All right.” So it took a while. But the grant helped it and for about three or four years it was grant funded. And now I’ve turned it into its own nonprofit. And Texthelp is now a sponsor. And so they do the editing for me because the grant ended. And Tanner, he was part of that grant. So i had to kind of move on. That’s how it started.

John: So you’ve been doing this for a while now with the podcast, and we’ve been listeners since the very beginning. What do you enjoy most about podcasting?

Lillian: Well, ours came out around the same time. So the nice Tea for Teaching, right? It’s like 2018. And so I enjoy talking to people. If you’re still doing it, you have to enjoy talking to people. But that’s the best thing. I talk to people just all around the world because I do want it to have a worldwide focus. And so I have listeners, the top five are in the US, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and the UK, and so English speaking countries, yay. But you can see like, all over the world on six continents that people are listening, and I had a listener in Australia say, you know, I was walking on the beach, near my home, on the coast of Australia. And that just blows my mind that people are actually listening. But mostly it’s like, I get to just learn about new ideas all the time. And you would think UDL like it’s so focused on UDL, like, there would not be enough, like I should be done with this, but there’s so much.There are 31 of these checkpoints in Universal Design for Learning, and as you mentioned, it’s really overwhelming. Like if you were to go and just look at the guidelines, it’s like a whole bunch. And it’s like, how am I going to do that? You can’t, you can’t do it all. You can’t just redesign your course right away. And so there’s just all these little conversations I can have to help people understand what you can do. And then I get to talk to really interesting, witty, awesome, brilliant people all over the world. And that’s the best part. If I could just do that, like that was just my job, I would love that.

Rebecca: Definitely something that John and I enjoy too. It’s kind of an introvert’s dream to talk to [LAUGHTER] a lot of individuals one on one rather than having to network through a conference or something like that. It’s a good opportunity to have really in-depth conversations with folks that might not have the opportunity to have otherwise.

Lillian: Yeah, my brain is always seeking out the new. And so I love like, “Oh, that’s a neat idea.” And then I’ll send them an email, and sometimes they write back, and “oh, I really love to talk about this, it’s cool.” And so I’ll read their article or their book or whatever. And then there’s something else shiny that I get to go talk to other people about. And it’s just been helpful for folks. And honestly, I just didn’t expect there’d be listeners, and there are listeners. And so that’s just really fantastic.

John: We started out as primarily to meet our campus audience needs for commuting faculty, and so forth. And then we were amazed at how it caught on and spread. And it’s given us that opportunity that you both mentioned, to talk to some really interesting people doing some really interesting work. Before that in the teaching center, we talked to people at a workshop, and we might hear from one faculty member for three or four minutes, maybe 10 or maybe they’d come in for a consultation. But usually that was about a problem or an issue they were facing, but it just provides a wonderful chance to connect to people that we normally wouldn’t be able to talk to. And we see an interesting article, and then reading through it and getting to talk to the people doing the research in depth, it’s really a valuable experience.

Lillian: Yeah, everybody should be a podcaster just to have these conversations. You don’t even have to record them. It’s just really neat. And so it’s given me that like, “Hey, I have a podcast,” like a reason for me to be intrusive in somebody’s email. Like, I really want to talk to you about this. This is really cool. Would you talk to little old me? If so I have a podcast. [LAUGHTER]

John: And I’m amazed at the number of people who say yes.

Lillian: Absolutely, me too, like, “Wow, you’re actually going to talk to me. That’s so fantastic. I appreciate that.”

Rebecca: We’re definitely a part of a really wonderful community of practitioners.

Lillian: Yeah, it makes a very thankful and it’s so cool, because I have listened to Tea for Teaching for a long time. That’s actually my most listened to podcast for teaching and learning. I enjoy the fact that there’s two of you, and you kind of go back and forth and just interesting topics. So I’ve enjoyed yours, ever since the birth of our podcasts in 2018. They’re siblings. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: They are.

John: So we always end with the question. What’s next?

Lillian: I am so excited about what Appalachian State is doing. About two years ago, they bought a building in a town called Hickory, North Carolina. And our main campus is in Boone. And it’s a beautiful campus up in the mountains. And I happen to live halfway between these two cities. And so I was going up to Boone to teach and it is about 42 minutes to get up. And you have to go over the eastern Continental Divide, over the Appalachian Trail, over the Blue Ridge Parkway in order to get from my house into Boone to teach. And that’s great. And it’s the most beautiful commute I think in the world. But it also gets foggy and icy and weather and I was enjoying it, and it was where I would listen to podcasts. But Appalachian State is now the first university in the North Carolina system that now has two campuses. And so we’ve opened this campus in Hickory, it is a commuter campus, and some brave students, we have about 250 to 300 that have started this past fall of 2023. It has birthed this campus. And so I get to teach there, and I get to do some faculty development. And it’s really exciting to be on the ground floor of a new campus. And it’s the only one in the North Carolina system. We’ll have other campuses, but there’s no multi-campus university for us. It’s like being in a startup, except I don’t think I get stock options. That’s the only bad thing. [LAUGHTER] And so meeting new faculty, some faculty are teaching for the very first time. And so there’s no like institutional culture that they’re jumping into at this new campus, although we are very much a part of the Boone campus. It’s new. And there’s only a very small number of faculty there. So it’s like being at a small liberal arts college in a state system. And it’s just really cool. And I’m loving meeting the faculty there and helping with teaching and learning and UDL and all that stuff. So that’s like the next big thing is Appstate Hickory, and it’s really exciting.

Rebecca: Well, I hope you have a wonderful adventure. [LAUGHTER] It sounds like a really fun opportunity.

Lillian: Yeah, in fact, I’m in a group of faculty, we have like a community of practice, a peer mentoring circle we call it, and we’re calling ourselves the Hickory Adventurers, because like, we don’t know what’s going on, [LAUGHTER] and we’re trying to figure it out together.

John: You get to help shape what’s going on, which is a really nice place to be.

Lillian: Yeah, it’s fantastic. I’m excited. And I think I’m just that kind of person. It’s new and shiny. And I’m there.

John: I think we’re both that way a bit. And that is one of the risks of having a podcast, you get to hear about all these great things that people are doing, and there’s always a tendency to try to do many of them. And that can be a bit overwhelming, not just for us, but also for our students.

Lillian: Yes I know I have to peel it back [LAUGHTER] just a bit, don’t go overboard.

Rebecca: Well, thanks so much for joining us, Lillian. I know we’ve wanted to talk to you for a while.

Lillian: Absolutely. I’m so glad and when you contacted me, I was super excited. So thank you so much for having me on Tea for Teaching. I’m gonna show my mug that nobody can see ‘cause it’s a podcast, but I love my Tea for Teaching mug, and thank you for having me.

John: Well, thank you for joining us. It was great talking to you and we’ll look forward to more conversations in the future.

Lillian: Great.

[MUSIC]

John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

[MUSIC]

325. Looking Forward to 2024

Posted in access, accessibility, diversity, edtech, educational technology, engagement, equity, grading, higher education, learning, motivation, pedagogy, teaching
January 24, 2024

As we enter this spring semester, we take a break from our usual format to discuss what we are looking forward to in 2024.

Show Notes

Transcript

Rebecca: As we enter this spring semester, we thought we’d take a break from our usual format to discuss what we’re looking forward to in 2024.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

[MUSIC]

John: So what tea are you drinking now, Rebecca?

Rebecca: I’m drinking Ceylon tea.

John: And I have ginger peach black tea from the Republic of Tea.

Rebecca: So it’s a new year, John, and we’re gonna have a nice positive episode. So what are you grateful for?

John: I’m grateful that we survived another year. I’m grateful for the continued return to face-to-face instruction and a continuing return to a more normal classroom environment and college environment after all the disruptions from COVID that lasted for a while. And I’m also grateful for the initiatives that we’re using on our campus, and most campuses, to provide more focus on equity and trying to reduce some of the equity gaps that we’ve been seeing. And I’m seeing a general interest in that across a wide range of faculty and the administration. And we’re just in the process of running some workshops, and we’re getting some really good attendance at workshops that focus on techniques that faculty can use to improve equity and reduce some of those gaps. And I’m looking forward to seeing continued expansion of more equitable practices. And also, we’ve had quite a few people trying to implement the TILT approach that Mary-Ann Winklemes has talked about on a past podcast episode, and we’re hoping that that, combined with the increased structure that many people are trying to use in their classes, will help provide all students with more equitable outcomes.

Rebecca: I’m really glad that you have brought up equity, John, because I was just reflecting on a couple meetings that I was in just this week, and thinking about how equity oriented many of our colleagues are. And it’s really exciting to see them really advocating for policies, instructional practices, and many other things that are really equity oriented, and thinking about inclusion, and access, and all the things that you and I have talked about for a long time and have cared about and tried to implement in our classes. I’m also really grateful for, and I know you are too, for the many guests that we’ve had who’ve shared their expertise with us and with our audience. When we do these weekly episodes, it’s so great to have the opportunity to talk to such experts, to learn from them, to stay fresh with what’s going on, and to be able to share it with everyone else. It’s an experience that I didn’t know that I wanted, and I’m glad that we get to continue doing it.

John: And one other thing I’m grateful for from last fall is I attended my first POD conference, and I got to meet dozens of guests that we’ve talked to before. And we’ve talked to them, we’ve seen them on camera, but it was so nice to meet them and talk to them in more detail and in more depth in person.

Rebecca: I felt that way when I went to EDUCAUSE for the first time this year and connected with a number of colleagues focused on accessibility and growing that network and really connecting beyond just names and emails and other ways that we’ve communicated.

John: What are some of the major things you’re watching in the higher ed landscape? We’ve seen a lot of changes going on in the last few years, what are things that you’re going to be focusing more of your attention on in the next year?

Rebecca: I know that some of the things that we’re working on in grad studies and that I’m personally really involved in are kind of some increased accessibility resources for our colleagues at Oswego as well as SUNY. I’m looking forward to building out some of those resources, sharing those resources, and wrapping up a couple of research projects related to accessibility and getting to share those out. And I’m really excited that the higher ed landscape generally is having a lot more focus in this space because students with disabilities have been often overlooked in our diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. And there definitely is a push to be a little more inclusive, and to have that population represented in these efforts and initiatives. We’re also really focused on ideas of belonging for a wide range of students, thinking about how do we get our online students connected to each other and to the larger population of students and to see them as members of our community, extending some of those features and opportunities for international students and really thinking about what some of their needs are to be successful at our institution, especially with our kind of rural location, and what can make things really excited. So I’m really looking forward to finding ways to support our students not just in the courses that I’m teaching or in my instructional role, but also in policies and procedures that we’re implementing at the institution,in grad studies, but more broadly as well. How about you?

John: One of the things that I’m really following closely is the development of AI. This came about a little over a year ago and it’s been a really disruptive influence. It offers a lot of tremendous possibilities, but it also provides some challenges to traditional assessment, particularly in asynchronous online courses. So I’m looking forward to continued development, it seems like there’s new tools coming out almost every week. And it offers some really nice capabilities to narrow some of the equity gaps that we have by providing low-cost assistance for students who may not have come into our institutions quite as well prepared. It offers a possibility of students doing a little bit more retrieval practice for those classes where instructors are not providing those opportunities. It offers students who, again have a somewhat weaker background, to take more complex readings that they may have been assigned and simplifying it and creating a more accessible format to help students get up to the level they need in their classes. And so it provides tools that can help students improve their writing, and so forth. The challenge, of course, is that it can also be used as a substitute for learning in some classes unless assignments are designed in a way, and assessment techniques are designed in a way, that reduces the likelihood of that and that’s one of the things we’ll be working on a lot this year, ways of coming up with more authentic assessment and ways of providing more intrinsic motivation for the work that students are doing, so that students can see the value of the learning rather than focusing entirely on grades. And one of the things we’re doing is we have a reading group coming up early this semester on Grading for Growth by Robert Talbert and David Clark. And we’re, in general, encouraging faculty to at least consider the adoption of alternative grading systems, which shift the focus away from students trying to maximize grades to maximizing their learning. And there’s a wide variety of tools that could be used for that, ranging from mastery learning quizzing systems, which many faculty have already been doing through specifications grading, contract grading, labor-based grading, and also ungrading.

Rebecca: Yeah, it’s really exciting that we’re going to focus on that semester, something that I’ve been interested in for a long time and have been using in my classes as well. I’m glad you mentioned AI, there’s certainly a lot of promise, and I’ve been really excited by how many faculty, staff, administrators who’ve actually really been engaged in the conversation around AI. I think sometimes there are new innovations and things and people kind of brush it aside and don’t always think it applies to them or isn’t relevant to them. But I think this is something that’s relevant to everybody. And most people are seeing that and engaging in the conversation, struggling in the conversation, but at least we’re doing that in community. And I think there’s some power in that as we think through policy, in assignments and all the things that we need to think about to provide an enriching experience for our students, but also engage and use the tools and the power that they offer.

John: One other thing I’m following is the development of a wide variety of new edtech tools. We saw an explosive growth in the development of tools and expansion of their capabilities in response to the COVID pandemic, but that growth and expansion hasn’t dropped. And we’re seeing more and more tools that have often been designed based on research about how students learn. And I think we’re going to see expanded use of many of these tools in the coming year.

Rebecca: And I think a lot of faculty got used to experimenting with these tools during remote education and are continuing to use them in physical and virtual classrooms, which I think is really exciting, maybe even more exciting to me was attending big conferences like Middle States and actually having a presenter use some of these edtech tools as part of a plenary. So rather than having more of a lecture style session, it was more of an interactive session, which doesn’t always happen at conferences of such scale, or these more leadership conferences. So it’s exciting to see that we’re modeling some of these practices at the highest level so that the wide variety of individuals involved in higher ed are experiencing learning and engaging with these kinds of tools. Along the same lines, I’m also excited that many of these tools are starting to actually attend to accessibility, in part because higher ed institutions are really pushing back to third-party providers and requesting them provide information about accessibility, and even refusing to adopt tools if they aren’t meeting basic accessibility principles, which I think is really excited and really important.

John: And I saw something very similar both at the POD conference where you might expect to see people creating more interactive workshops, but I’ve also been seeing it in the workshops that we’ve had in the last couple of weeks here. We have a record number of faculty presenting in workshops, they’re using polling, they’re using tools like Mentimeter and they’re doing many more interactive activities than in past years. If we go back a few years, many of the sessions that were presented were essentially straight walkthroughs through PowerPoint slideshows with not a lot of interaction with the participants. And our workshops here have been both in person and remote over zoom. And people have been working really effectively to bring all the participants into the discussion and into the activities, regardless of whether they are in person in the room or remote. And it’s been nice to see that. Much of that I think did grow out of the experiences of COVID, and people just getting more comfortable trying new tools.

Rebecca: Come to find out, practice helps us learn things.

John: Also, our campus enabled the AI Companion in Zoom, which will provide meeting summaries for people who arrive late or people who come in at the end of a discussion. And I think that’s going to offer some nice opportunities for people who may have missed part of the discussion early on in a session, or in a workshop, or in a meeting, because so many of our meetings now take place over Zoom.

Rebecca: And there’s lots to be watching that are also highly concerning, but John and I resolved that we weren’t going to focus on those today.

John: So this will be a relatively short episode. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: So continuing on this theme of gratefulness and positivity, John, what are you looking forward to trying this year, or focusing on in your own work this year, or committing to this year?

John: One thing, and this partly follows up a couple of podcasts we’ve had in the last year or so. In our campus, many departments are working to build in some of the NACE competencies into their classroom. And there’s some really significant advantages for that. If it’s done well, it will help students recognize the intrinsic value of the things they’re learning in class and recognize that these are skills that they’re going to need later, which again, helps provide much more motivation for students to learn than if they just see a series of activities that instructors ask them to do, and they don’t see the value of that. So by making the connections between what we’re doing in the classroom in terms of the development of critical thinking skills, teamwork, and all those other NACE competencies, it offers some really serious benefits for students and for faculty. Because if students are more engaged in the activities and understand the purpose of them, I think they’re going to be much more likely to focus on the learning rather than again, trying just to get the highest grade. And that’s also very consistent with the TILT approach that we mentioned earlier. If students understand why you’re doing things, they’re going to receive the techniques and engage in them more productively than if they didn’t see the value of those tasks.

Rebecca: Yeah, I’m glad that you mentioned TILT as well. We mentioned it earlier, but I was just remembering that one of the things I wanted to mention while we were talking today is a commitment to thinking about TILT, not just in a classroom context, but all the other places that touch a student experience. So thinking about policies and procedures and ways that we can use a TILT approach to really improve transparency and clarity for our students and provide some equity and access by doing so. The other thing that I’m committed to trying to do is get back to more play, we’ve had some episodes on Tea for Teaching focused on play. And they always get me really excited about some of the things that I’ve done in the past in some of my classes and that I’ve done with some of my colleagues… and that the burden of transitioning during COVID to remote learning, some of these things have taken time and maybe attention away from play. And I’m hoping to take some time in 2024 to put some more attention back on being a little more playful.

John: So, you think education could be fun?

Rebecca: Maybe.

John: Okay. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: I’ve moved to doing some exercises and activities again a little more recently that get to some of these more playful ways of creating and making and thinking through complex problems. And every time I do that the students appreciate it. I have more fun, they have more fun, and I think a lot more learning gets done.

John: Since we want to focus on the positive, we’ll leave challenges for future episodes.

Rebecca: We’ve got all of 2024 to do that, John.

John: And we really appreciate, as Rebecca said, all of the wonderful guests that we’ve had since the beginning of this podcast, and we appreciate our audience too. So thank you for hanging in there with us.

Rebecca: Have a great 2024.

[MUSIC]

John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

[MUSIC]

321. College Students with Disabilities

Posted in access, accessibility, edtech, educational technology, equity, higher education, inclusion, learning, pedagogy, social justice, teaching
December 27, 2023

Sharing student narratives about their experiences can help us to understand how our instructional and policy decisions impact the student experience. In this episode, Amy Fisk joins us discuss to discuss her research project with Rebecca on the perceptions that students with disabilities have of their learning experiences.

Amy is the Assistant Dean for Accessibility at the State University of New York at Geneseo. Amy oversees the Office of Accessibility Services, which coordinates accommodations and support services for students with disabilities. Prior to her role at Geneseo, Amy coordinated a support program for students on the autism spectrum at SUNY Purchase.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Sharing student narratives about their experiences can help us to understand how our instructional and policy decisions impact the student experience. In this episode, we discuss the perceptions students with disabilities have of their learning experiences.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

[MUSIC]

John: Our guest today is Amy Fisk. Amy is the Assistant Dean for Accessibility at the State University of New York at Geneseo. Amy oversees the Office of Accessibility Services, which coordinates accommodations and support services for students with disabilities. Prior to her role at Geneseo, Amy coordinated a support program for students on the autism spectrum at SUNY Purchase. Welcome, Amy.

Amy: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Rebecca: Today’s teas are:… Amy, are you drinking any tea?

Amy: I drink tea every morning. So I have Bigelow French Vanilla black tea.

Rebecca: It’s a good way to start the day. How about you, John?

John: In honor of the holiday season, I have Christmas tea today.

Rebecca: I’m drinking Blue Sapphire from my favorite tea shop in Canandaigua.

Amy: Where’s that?

Rebecca: It’s right on Main Street. You should go there.

Amy: I should.

John: We’ve invited you to talk about the article: “Perspectives among college students with disabilities on access and inclusion,” which you co-authored with someone else… Rebecca, I think it was.

Amy: That name sounds familiar.

John: …which was published in College Teaching earlier this year. Before we talk about the article, could you tell us a little bit about your role at SUNY Geneseo.

Amy: So I oversee our Office of Accessibility Services, or OAS. I meet with students to coordinate accommodations and other kinds of support services for our students with disabilities. I monitor policies and procedures within our office. And I often work with faculty and staff on issues related to accessibility and inclusion. So for example, I might do trainings across campus, work with administrators on various committees, and having a voice on issues related to disability, education, awareness, and accessibility.

Rebecca: So prior to this project, Amy, and I didn’t actually know each other. Do you want to share the origin story?

Amy: I started my position here a month before COVID became a thing. So I was kind of thrown into some challenges I did not anticipate. But one of the things I had been thinking about, many of my colleagues were thinking about, was: How are we going to support our students with disabilities? We’re really kind of concerned about their trajectory during this challenging time. We wanted to just get some more information about students’ experiences during COVID. I started talking to Nazely about this, and she says, “You know, I know someone who does research who also might be interested in a potential collaboration.” So that’s how I got connected to Rebecca. And ultimately, we shared an interest in learning more about the impact of COVID on our students within our respective roles on our campuses. We knew that this was a really challenging time for all of us, but especially for our students with disabilities who had already been experiencing barriers pre pandemic. And so we really wanted to hear from our students about their experiences, and what can we learn about access and inclusion moving forward, even when the dust settles and we talk about things post COVID?

John: A lot of the studies that have been done have been quantitative studies. And your study is a qualitative study. Could you talk a little bit about how this qualitative research complements the quantitative research that’s been done?

Amy: Sure. So ultimately, we wanted to gather students’ stories, and many of our findings from our studies are reflective of findings from past studies on challenges and barriers students with disabilities face compared to students without disabilities. But we wanted to identify these specifically within the context of remote learning. And also within the context of navigating this challenging time just in life, we really wanted that student narrative. And we also wanted to assess the positive things that were happening, the practices that were helping our students feel successful, to really help inform tangible takeaways and recommendations to our readers. And we hoped for this information to be relevant, like I said, when the dust settles and regardless of teaching modality. And I think it’s important to highlight that despite the obvious challenges that COVID brought, it has highlighted the importance of accessibility in higher education and really gave us an opportunity to reassess what we’ve been doing, our everyday policies and practices, and we really wanted to highlight that from the student perspective. Beyond that, we also wanted to talk about the needs of our students with disabilities within the context of access and inclusion. So, often disabilities and identities, that tends to be left out of conversations related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. So it wasn’t just about how we need to provide appropriate classroom accommodations, but what are the ways that we can be more inclusive, promote a sense of belonging, proactively provide equal access? So those were the things that we had in mind as we were designing our study.

Rebecca: One of the things that comes up in a lot of conversations, at least more recently in higher ed., is this growing number of students who are registering for accommodations and also the mental health crisis. Can you talk a little bit about that to provide some context for our discussion today?

Amy: Sure. So the mental health needs of college students with disabilities was becoming really apparent before COVID hit, really significant needs related to depression, anxiety, other severe psychiatric impairments. And the studies that had been done around the time of COVID really highlighted those issues of more and more students connecting to their disability services offices, self-identifying as a student with a disability where they have a clinical levels of depression, anxiety, other debilitating mental health needs. And that theme came out in our study as well.

John: Did all the discussions of the challenges of COVID help encourage students to become more willing to declare their mental health challenges or their other needs that perhaps they might have been more reluctant to state prior to this time?

Amy: I think so. I think there is a shift in our culture, and it being okay to talk about mental health and mental illness, for students to say, “I’m having a really hard time, I’m struggling,” because mental health is a spectrum. We all experience a variety of emotions throughout the day, throughout an hour, and throughout our lifetime. And I think it’s becoming slowly de-stigmatized in talking about mental illness and the importance of promoting mental health, especially among our college-age population. A lot of college campuses are really taking seriously the wellness of their students on campus just because of the rise in numbers of students needing that extra support, because colleges across our country are noticing a pretty significant increase. And I do think COVID has propelled that de-stigmatization of talking about mental health.

Rebecca: We’ve talked in the past on this podcast with Kat MacFarlane about some of the barriers that students face in just even approaching and asking for accommodations, having to register with an office of disability services, or whatever the equivalent is on the campus, and having to self identify. And then a lot of students don’t actually choose to do that for a wide variety of reasons, some associated with stigma, but we are seeing increased registrations. So does that mean that there’s increased disability?

Amy: Yes, I think there are a variety of factors and more students connecting with disability services offices. One, I think high schools are better preparing students with disabilities to enter the post-secondary environment. Two, I think our offices are becoming more visible on campus. Again, I think there’s also a de-stigmatization of disability and accessibility services offices, and we’re becoming more visible and relevant on college campuses. And third, I think colleges are starting to talk about disability as an important facet of diversity more and more, I think there’s certainly room for improvement, but I think that conversation is starting to happen. So more students are finding their way into our offices.

Rebecca: So three key themes emerged in our research about the perceptions of students with disabilities, of our institutions, and their experience, and of belonging. And so those three themes are accommodations and accessibility, building relationships, and community, and then course structure and design. Perhaps we can take them one at a time here. Let’s start with accommodations and accessibility. Can you first start with what’s the difference between accommodations and accessibility? Because we know that this is often something that’s confusing to folks.

Amy: Sure. So an a ccommodation, by definition, is designed to remove some sort of barrier that an individual with a disability is experiencing. So an academic accommodation, for example, might be having extra time to take an exam, because timed tests can be a barrier for some students. Maybe it’s a notetaking accommodation because they need assistance accessing that lecture material. Sometimes it’s ensuring that the course materials themselves are accessible, that they can be read through a screen reader. Sometimes the accommodation is related to a course policy such as attendance for a student with a more severe chronic medical condition. So it is an individualized process to assess what an appropriate accommodation would look like. But the purpose of it is to remove some sort of barrier so that this person has equal access to their environment. And so accommodations, though necessary, is something that we’re legally required to provide for the ADA. It’s really a reactive way of ensuring equal access. It’s a floor, it’s a minimum. Accessibility, on the other hand, is about inclusion from the start, so that individual accommodation may not even be needed. And something I like to highlight is that accessibility is not about lowering standards. It’s sending a message that everyone belongs in this space and that inclusion matters.

John: What were some of the most common barriers that students reported facing related to accommodations and accessibility in your study.

Amy: Some of those barriers for students just not receiving their approved accommodations during remote learning, including extended time on tests, for example, or online course materials just not being accessible, or having to continually remind instructors about their accommodations, explain why they needed the accommodation in the first place, negotiating terms of pre-approved accommodations. And this was particularly true among students with what we might call an invisible or non-appearance disabilities such as learning disabilities, ADHD, mental health disabilities, these students are less likely to be believed and questioned about the validity of their disability or their need for accommodation. So those were some pretty significant barriers for students and just not receiving the accommodations that they were approved for.

Rebecca: I think one of the things that was also highlighted as a result of our study taking place, whilst COVID was in full force is how many campus resources students with disabilities and other students depend upon every day. So we had students reporting things like” I didn’t have access to a printer to pull up text when it was more of an image instead of an accessible text that could have been expanded digitally, or having access to a quiet space, like the library.”

Amy: Yeah, that was really significant. And then that is where you also saw some other equity disparities. So there were some students who live down near New York City in very populated areas, there was a lot going down there at the time. COVID, if we recall, some students did not have quiet spaces at home, whereas other students had quiet home offices and their parents may have been at home with them, helping to support them. And then other students who didn’t have a quiet space whatsoever took on more caretaking responsibilities, didn’t have access to WiFi. So those equity disparities continued to widen during COVID beyond the disability barrier, so that was something significant, I think that needed to be highlighted,

Rebecca: What are some of the factors related to accessibility and accommodations that actually resulted in positive perceptions?

Amy: So our students actually reported some very positive interactions with their instructors. So when receiving a student’s letter of accommodation, or like an accommodation notification that would come through our office, some would reach out and ask the student “How can I support you? How can I help provide this accommodation?” One student even noted how they appreciated that the instructor didn’t call them out in class, because that had happened before. So I think just preserving the students’ dignity, reaching out to the student, those were the kinds of things that our students reported as making a significant difference.

John: I know you’re study focused on the status of students during COVID, but in your role addressing these issues now, have the changes in faculty behavior persisted? Have faculty continued to become more sensitive to some of the accessibility and accommodation needs of students as we move back to more classroom instruction?

Amy: So in conversation with colleagues, other disability service providers across SUNY, but also across the country, I think we’ve seen a mix. I think there are some who just wanted to go back to normal, and didn’t we all. I think COVID, again, was a very challenging time and faculty too didn’t have a ton of support, and also really struggled with having that emergency shift to a remote learning modality and some didn’t have the skills or support to really deliver courses in the way that would have facilitated student success. So they were really looking forward to getting back to that in-person modality, back to the pedagogy that we’re used to, and that may have posed some new barriers for students coming back to college campuses. Conversely, we also saw instructors taking some of those learned lessons from the remote learning period and applying them when we did come back to campus. So I do know a number of instructors who, for example, are still utilizing the lecture videos they created during COVID and post them on their learning management system for students who may not have been able to attend class that day, for example, so they can still get the lecture material or recreating their course materials and documents so that they are accessible, creating videos, captioning their videos, modifying some course policies to be a bit more inclusive for students. So I think there has been a change in realizing we can still have students be successful and meet the learning objectives, but in a different and more inclusive way.

Rebecca: I think one of the things that we can highlight that also came out in the student experience, and students reported this in our study, is that some of them actually experienced better access during COVID. Not all but some, in part because some of the technology caught up. And when we first went remote, Zoom didn’t have captions available by default and now it does. And so a lot of these things have become norms that people with disabilities have fought for for a long time and never got.

Amy: And I would say that’s true as well with regard to course policies that may have been amended as well, introducing more self paced work, which is also something that students really appreciated during the remote learning period.

John: I just recently returned from the POD conference where there were many, many discussions of this very issue. And in general, the results there were pretty much the same as what you’ve described, that a lot of the changes that faculty made to better accommodate students needs persisted, but some faculty have moved back to old practices and the results are a little bit mixed. But on average, there seemed to be, in a number of studies, some substantial improvement in faculty responses to student needs.

Rebecca: Based on what students have reported, what recommendations do you have for faculty related to accommodations and accessibility to continue the forward movement as opposed to regressing?

Amy: So, actually I did a talk with faculty of one of our academic departments at the start of the semester, reviewing our office, some of the logistical pieces of implementing accommodations, that sort of thing. But before I started really getting into that, we had a discussion about how accommodations, and the dialogue about accommodations with students are approached, how it’s discussed, how it’s communicated, something as simple as taking time to actually review the portion in your course syllabus related to an accommodation, so maybe an accessibility statement. That tells students that this is important, making sure that your online materials are accessible from the start, that tells students that accessibility and inclusion is important. And students are more likely to engage in a reciprocal dialogue with you about their needs when they feel like they’re heard, when they feel like they’re a valued member of the class, that their accommodations are important and not burdensome. That’s a term we heard a lot in our study, that they’re not a burden, or it’s some sort of requirement that the faculty has to fulfill. And so I think this is probably true for most students, regardless of disability. But students in our study specifically noted how they appreciated when the instructor showed empathy and understanding and flexibility, recognizing that students have significant issues outside of the classroom. We all do, between family, finances, things that are happening in our world today. And I think this is important to acknowledge as well, given that we’re seeing an increase in students from various diverse backgrounds coming into the college environment.

Rebecca: And as we’ve talked about many times on the podcast, flexible doesn’t mean not having standards. [LAUGHTER] And it doesn’t mean a free for all. In fact, a lot of our students benefit from structure, which we’ll talk about, I think, in a few minutes, because that ties to one of our other themes. You talked a little bit about faculty workload related to this, and sometimes the perception that faculty put off is that it’s a burden to provide these accommodations. And the reality is that a lot of our students need very similar things. And so if we think about the common requests for accommodations, or digital accessibility strategies, from the start, we often don’t have a lot of one off things that we do need to accommodate, because we’ve already built it into our courses. That’s not to say that there aren’t accommodations that we need to provide additionally, but it may result in less work, ultimately, to really think about these accessibility principles upfront.

Amy: Right. And I think something as simple as making your course lecture materials available on the learning management system available to students. That can help reduce a lot of barriers for many students who might struggle with keeping up with the pace of the lecture and they end up missing material. A student who may have missed class that one day and just needs that material, other students who need to kind of re-teach themselves the material because, perhaps, they had challenges with staying focused during class. I think there’s a variety of reasons why students would benefit from that, but something as simple as that. Often, when students come to see me, there are maybe students who hadn’t needed accommodations previously, but they encountered a particular course where the policies were such that there were new barriers that arose and if the policy was different, perhaps they wouldn’t need that accommodation. That’s a concrete example of the difference between accommodation and accessibility. Some of our course policies and course design may be inadvertently barriers to students with or without disability. So this might include use of pop quizzes, not making lecture materials available to students, not permitting use of technology, not allowing students to even take breaks in class. And so although the purpose of these policies is probably to make students engaged and have accountability in the course, which these are things, of course, we want… again, we’re not lowering standards… students still need to go to class and do the work. But I think some of these policies actually might be having the opposite effect, and it does for students who request accommodations, rather than focus on learning in the course.

John: I think that many faculty who had only taught in a face-to-face modality before COVID, were able to avoid issues of accessibility by not creating digital content. When they moved to remote teaching, though, they were forced to begin developing digital materials and often received some training in creating accessible digital content. Do you think that that training received during COVID helped encourage more accessible practices by faculty in general?

Amy: I think so again, I think some of these practices have shifted over time, and I think COVID has shed light on the benefits of accessibility, not just for people with disabilities, but for all people. I mean, again, use of captions and subtitles can be beneficial for a lot of folks, whether you’re sitting in a busy Starbucks, whether you have a lot going on in the background, maybe you’re trying to juggle work and family, maybe, again, you’re hard of hearing, and so you need access to those captions. Again, accessibility is for all, not just about or for people with disabilities.

Rebecca: The second theme that kind of emerged in our research was building relationships and community, can you share some insights with faculty about the role that they can play in helping students with disabilities feel connected and included? And you highlighted some of those already: providing accommodations and showing students some dignity and respecting their dignity.

Amy: So again, I think engaging with a student and even something as simple as taking the student aside and asking, “How can I make this course more accessible to you?” speaks volumes to the student, that they are valued, they belong, that their needs aren’t burdensome, and they’re more likely to engage in a reciprocal dialogue with the faculty member when they feel like “Oh, they care about me and my success in this course.” I actually knew about a professor who did an anonymous Google form, asking students “How can I make this course more accessible to you? Are there barriers? In reviewing the syllabus, do you have concerns about something within the course?” One of my students actually told me about this, and said how it really made them feel seen and valued. And they were more likely to reach out to the instructor when they needed help, because some students fail to do so out of shame. They’re in a very vulnerable position to talk about their disability related needs to a faculty member, to an authority figure. And so when you do something as simple as asking a student, “How can I make this accessible to you? Are you experiencing barriers right now?” really opens that line of communication with the student and helps them build a positive relationship with that instructor and for maybe other instructors. It also helps to build a sense of community so that other students know that this is really important, and that inclusion matters. And that’s also sending a message to all their students within the classroom that we appreciate and respect diverse learners here in this classroom. I think that’s a teachable moment for our students as well.

Rebecca: So one of the other things that I think emerged is a desire to be connected with peers, but that faculty can play a really important role in facilitating that connection. So I think oftentimes, we just assume in a classroom that at the beginning of class students are socializing and getting to know other folks and have those contacts, but students really reported that having more structured ways of connecting with peers was really beneficial to them outside of class. And that’s something that I think we might take for granted as instructors in the classroom, that it would just kind of organically happen. But that structure, that scaffolding around that really bubbled up as being pretty important to our students,

Amy: Yeah, that peer-to-peer interaction for an even if it was virtual. One of our students said, “Our instructor had a virtual whiteboard that we could all do group work even when it was asynchronous, which is pretty neat.” So that helps set the stage for positive peer interactions, for peers to ask peers for help and mentorship, which is important. Often, students just feel that going to office hours is the only way that they can receive help. And when you provide opportunities to work together, learn together, that really helps, again, open up a line of communication among peers as well, which is a skill that we’re trying to teach our students.

John: And that was especially severe during COVID. But also, when we returned to the classroom, and students were asked to sit at least six feet away from any other student, it certainly reduced the amount of interaction and it has made it a little more challenging for all students to interact with others. That’s been improving, but I think, perhaps, that experience may remind faculty of the importance of building those types of connections. Because even before COVID, there were always some students who may not have felt as much a part of the class community. But I think we’ve all learned the importance of community during that time.

Rebecca: I think that’s just another example of something that students with disabilities have pointed out as being really important to them. But it’s also important to many other students, too.

John: The third theme that emerged from your research was course structure and design. And most of your findings in that particular category align with many other studies involving inclusive pedagogy and Universal Design for Learning. Can you highlight some of the common barriers that students with disabilities faced in terms of course structure and design.

Amy: So one of our students in the study commonly referred to one of their course LMS pages as a scavenger hunt, where they spent more time trying to find the materials and the information on the course rather than on the assignments themselves. So students in general benefit from an organized LMS and an organized syllabus for deadlines, instructions, policies are very clear and concise, but for students with disabilities, this is particularly important. Many of my students with ADHD, health or chronic medical conditions, or a learning disability, they need to plan ahead, because it might take the students double or triple the time to finish a task. So if students don’t know when their next test is, or if instructions aren’t posted a few days before something is due, we’re really not setting them up for success. And I also talked about some of those other policies and course design that might be inadvertent barriers to our students. And so some of our students reported that they did benefit from self-paced tasks, or on untimed learning assessments, having some autonomy and options for completing assignments in a different format, such as doing a presentation or a podcast, instead of a paper, working in groups or choosing to work individually on a project. Those are some of the specific practices our students highlighted as being really helpful. And again, we’re not lowering standards, they have to meet the same standards and learning objectives, as every other student, just perhaps meeting those same standards in a different way. And that’s what Universal Design for learning is all about.

John: One time in a workshop, a faculty member mentioned that they have students do a scavenger hunt in the LMS, to find various course policies, or to find materials. And I cringed at that and I suggested that it might be better to design your course in a way where the students don’t have to struggle to find things so they can focus their cognitive efforts on learning materials, rather than engaging in scavenger hunts, trying to navigate the course. Has that improved recently?

Amy: I think it has, again, in conversations with some of my colleagues who do this work and talking with faculty, I think it’s a mixed bag as it relates to how instructors are approaching course design in their policies. But other faculty are seeing that changing their pedagogy, changing their policies, changing the way they interact and see students and helping to meet those student needs have evolved, because perhaps they themselves have experienced accessibility barriers during COVID as well. And so it’s become more relevant, because they have that lived experience. And they’re seeing that adopting some of these inclusive practices are actually helping to keep their students engaged, that the students, even if they’re struggling, are more likely to tell their faculty member “I’m struggling and I need help, but I want to stay in this course, what kind of flexibility could be provided?”… rather than, we’ll use a college student term, ghosting [LAUGHTER] the class. So I think things are changing in a direction that speaks to some degree of flexibility and helping students meet those same standards, where the focus is more on learning, rather than adherence to an arbitrary policy.

Rebecca: I think the students really underscored maybe without realizing things like the transparency and learning and teaching or TILT, where being really clear and explicit about what the expectation is and how to get there and how you’re going to be assessed really helps and supports students… that structure and those guardrails is what all of us need. How many times have we worked on a paper the second before a deadline? We work on deadlines, and so if we help students with intermediary deadlines, we’re actually helping them and that doesn’t mean that we’re not flexible,and flexibility doesn’t mean not having those.

Amy: It’s about scaffolding. It’s about recognizing that not all students are coming from the same background and experiences and privilege. They’re not on the same playing field, and so providing those scaffolded learning opportunities… that can really help even the playing field, just providing those scaffolded learning opportunities.

Rebecca: And it’s really some of this scaffolded accountability, so it’s not all due at once, It’s helpful to faculty to remind them that there’s feedback throughout a process on a larger assignment, but also it’s helpful for students to hit individual deadlines to evolve their work as well.

John: And that’s something that is found, as you noted earlier, by Mary-Ann Winklemes in her research on Transparency in Learning and Teaching, and also by Viji Sathy and Kelly Hogan in their research on the importance of structure in reducing equity gaps. While transparency and structure benefits all students, it especially benefits the students who have equity gaps of some form, and it sounds as if that’s also true for students with disabilities.

Rebecca: Yeah, I think none of this is really new, but oftentimes students with disabilities aren’t necessarily included in those studies about equity always, it’s not always one of the groups that’s pulled out separately.

Amy: Part of what’s next is also hearing about the experiences of students with disabilities from other diverse backgrounds, including students of color, students from lower SES backgrounds, students in the LGBTQ+ community, that those experiences are different and that intersectionality is really key in understanding students’ experiences in the classroom and how we can be more accessible and inclusive because, again, accessibility is not just related to are we providing a legally required accommodation, but are we creating a sense of belonging in that space, and giving students an equal opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and be successful, which is ultimately why we’re all here, I would hope.

Rebecca: So we always wrap up by asking what’s next?

Amy: I think it’s important to not just put a focus on what individual faculty can be doing in their classrooms to support students with disabilities. But how are we promoting access and inclusion at the institutional level, supporting students with disabilities and students from other diverse backgrounds is a whole campus responsibility and faculty needs support in doing that work as well. So I’m hoping what’s next is working with administration, other campus leaders and identifying ways we can really help move that needle in a meaningful way. Making accessibility into larger DEIB (or diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging) campus initiatives, our campus-wide policy, strategic planning, campus-wide faculty and staff training, and other professional development opportunities, hiring diverse faculty and staff on our campus. So not just about talking the talk, but walking the walk when it comes to access and inclusion in higher education.

Rebecca: I think that’s definitely a theme that we’ll see throughout all of higher ed. I hope that we’ll all go home and arm and move in this direction collaboratively.

John: Well, thank you for joining us. It’s been great talking to you and we’re looking forward to hearing more of your future work on this topic.

Amy: Well, thank you so much for having me today. I appreciate it.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

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283. Neurodiverse Hiring Initiative

Posted in ableism, access, accessibility, accommodation, co-op, disability, diversity, equity, experiential learning, higher education, inclusion, internships, learning, pedagogy, social capital, social justice, teaching
April 5, 2023

Neurodiverse students often struggle to get co-ops, internships, and their first job because they face significant social barriers during the process of securing such opportunities. In this episode, Kendra Evans joins us to discuss a program at the Rochester Institute of Technology that helps this population of students build the skills needed to navigate the hidden rules of interviewing and supports them through their internship experiences.

Kendra is the Coordinator of the Neurodiverse Hiring Initiative (or NHI) at the Rochester Institute of Technology [RIT]. NHI facilitates myriad programs that build the confidence and job readiness skills of autistic job seekers, provides guidance and support to employers, and creates unique opportunities connecting hiring managers with RIT’s highly-skilled neurodiverse applicant pool. Kendra is pursuing her MBA to better make the business case for neurodiverse affirming workplaces.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Neurodiverse students often struggle to get co-ops, internships, and their first job because they face significant social barriers during the process of securing such opportunities. In this episode, we discuss a program that helps this population of students build the skills needed to navigate the hidden rules of interviewing and supports them through their internship experiences.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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John: Our guest today is Kendra Evans. Kendra is the Coordinator of the Neurodiverse Hiring Initiative (or NHI) at the Rochester Institute of Technology [RIT]. NHI facilitates myriad programs that build the confidence and job readiness skills of autistic job seekers, provides guidance and support to employers, and creates unique opportunities connecting hiring managers with RIT’s highly-skilled neurodiverse applicant pool. Kendra is pursuing her MBA to better make the business case for neurodiverse affirming workplaces. Outside of RIT, Kendra is a community organizer and serves on various boards. She has three teenage children and a springer doodle puppy, loves her Peloton and logic puzzles, and her last meal would be a soft pretzel and an IPA at a ballpark, preferably Wrigley Field. Welcome Kendra.

Kendra: Thank you for having me.

Rebecca: Today’s teas are: … Kendra, are you drinking some tea?

Kendra: I am drinking some tea. I was going to Ted Lasso you and saying I’m really more of a coffee gal. But for the occasion, I’m having a little Earl Grey here in the afternoon.

John: Many of our guests do drink coffee or Diet Coke or water.

Rebecca: I did have a silent share. I don’t know if you saw but I was cheering for the tea. I’m so excited that you had tea. [LAUGHTER]

John: And I have Prince of Wales tea today.

Rebecca: And John and I are on the same page because… this is very unusual… but I have the same tea as John.

Kendra: Well…

John: I think that’s the first time in over 280 podcasts.

Rebecca: We chose them independently, and then realized we had chosen the same.

John: We’ve invited you here today to discuss the Neurodiverse Hiring initiative at RIT. First, though, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your path to becoming a coordinator of this program?

Kendra: Sure. I actually started my career as an elementary school teacher and started off very early, realizing that my training, my master’s degree in education, didn’t actually prepare me for the students in my classroom. And so I went on to get a number of different certifications for the teaching of reading to dyslexic students, for a Lindamood-Bell training for processing disorders. And the more I broadened my skill set for working with learning differences, the more and more I kept coming in contact, and was being referred to work with students on the autism spectrum, mostly because of my passion for executive functioning, and how to basically improve those skills in everyone. And so I started as an elementary school teacher, I did that for a few years, became a learning specialist. Then when we relocated to Rochester, I opened my own small business. And while I was working in my brick and mortar social learning environment, RIT found me, my supervisor, Laurie Ackles, and the rest is history. So that’s where I came from. And then of course, I can tell you about the program itself. But that’s my trajectory was basically I’ve taught students pre-K now through higher ed.

Rebecca: You’ve hinted a little bit at your passion towards this work. Can you tell us a little bit about the origin of the initiative?

Kendra: Sure, well RIT started helping students transition from high school to college back in 2008. And one of the reasons that many students choose the Rochester Institute of Technology is because of the career and cooperative placement, we have a very robust, it’s like an apprenticeship program. In order to get your degree and most of our majors, it’s required that you have onsite experiential learning. And after my team had really moved forward in helping students with their social and their self advocacy and executive functioning, and all of the things needed to succeed for the academics in college, we realized that many of our students, even though they had come to RIT for this job experience, were unable to get their foot in the door. And therefore, when you can’t get your co-op that’s required, even though you’ve successfully completed all of the other content area requirements, they weren’t graduating. So this became the next barrier to employment and purpose and belonging in that meaningful adult life that we’re hoping all of our students succeed at. And so, thankfully, we have a gift funded initiative, thanks to the many parents that are very supportive of the work that we’ve done over the years. And so in 2018, we received this gift and pretty much were given carte blanche in order to do the work as we saw what our students needed and what employers were looking for. And in 2018, we started getting our students those first co-ops by partnering with employers and working on job training, and it’s gone from there.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about some of the barriers that you indicated that the students were having or facing trying to get their foot in the door for those co-op experiences?

Kendra: Sure. Well, interviewing is still a dominantly social process, right? We have to pick up on cues. We have to modulate our voice, we have to code switch, we have to dress appropriately. There’s all kinds of unspoken rules that our students are not prepared for. Even though they have the same hard skill set from RIT that their peers have, the social barriers were just really great. And so that’s one of the main difficulties with our students. Also, job descriptions can be a barrier for my students as well, because if employers are not distinguishing between “must-have” skills and “nice-to-have” skills, my students will often not apply to something if their exact major isn’t listed, if they’re like, “Oh, I’ve only had one course in C++, I haven’t had two, maybe that’s not enough.” Those were things that were keeping my students from even applying. There’s also things on the employer side that in addition to the way we’re looking to interview, when we’re looking for a best fit, that concept of best fit in the social aspect of the interviewer can inadvertently exclude this highly skilled talent pool simply because they don’t necessarily give you a warm and fuzzy, let’s say, or they don’t answer a question in an expected way. And so I often make the business case for: “Are you looking for expected? Aren’t you looking to get a job done and bring innovation, let’s talk about what is unique about my students, what they’re bringing that you already want, and what’s going to be different, that’s going to set your company apart.” And so those are some of the barriers in how I work with employers and with students to make that match and just make sure that we’re all speaking the same language,

John: what are some of the skills that the students you’re working with have that would be useful that are not generally recognized in an interview,

Kendra: There are so many. My students are passionate intellectual problem solvers. And I’m not saying that the rest of the RIT students aren’t. But that is definitely something that I will put forward. These are individuals who strive to do their best, they look at problems differently, and they’re going to stick with it. There’s a problem to solve, they’re going to follow it from beginning to end. I often say, and this is very general, but I’m neurotypical, I’m an extrovert, I’m going to spend time at work doing things not always just my work. Whereas I will tell you that my students can hyper focus on that task at hand, and they’re going to work very efficiently to get it done. So there’s just a multitude of things I could talk about, but their problem-solving skills, their stick-to-itiveness. And just their different way of approaching a problem. We don’t all want to be the same. It inhibits the creative process. And if you want to be innovative, we all know that you have to have creativity and a bunch of minds coming together.

Rebecca:So it sounds to me, based on what you’re describing is that you’re helping facilitate matching students to opportunities. Is that the role that the initiative is taking? How are the students getting the placements?

Kendra: So my role, when I describe it, it’s really three main goals. The first is to work with our students, to talk about those unspoken rules, to make them more job ready. The National Association of Colleges and Employers have identified 16 skills. So I work to let them know, “Hey, you’re actually being judged on these things. Let’s talk about them. Let’s practice and let’s teach you how to talk about your experience,” because oftentimes, they don’t realize that they have that. So I work with the job seeker. I work with the employer to implement universal design, so they’re not excluding anyone. And so actually, universal design helps all employees, not just autistic employees. And then yes, I’m the matchmaker, the bridge, the pipeline between the students and the employer. And we come up with creative ways to do that, including reverse job fairs, we partner with our career services office, we have information sessions that are low sensory and low stress, that’s a lot of what we do, is just to make sure that this is an environment that models best practice and how my student is going to be the best performer for your company. So those are the three main aspects of NHI.

John: You mentioned reverse job fairs. Could you explain what that is for people who have not heard of those before?

Kendra: So at RIT, we call it an affinity reception. And if you can picture a job fair, think back to our first jobs where you go into this large auditorium, you have 250 employers, and all the job seekers are dressed in their blazers like I happen to be today. And they go up to their 30 seconds of fame where they’ve got to give an elevator pitch, they got to wait in line, your recruiters are tired and cranky, and the sound is cacophony. It’s a lot. What we do is we bring our students and they sit at the table, we have fewer employers that are coming around which the students get to know who they are ahead of time. We prep for all of that. But then the employers circulate around the tables to our students as opposed to the reverse. And I’m also there as a facilitator to reach out to the employer: “Who are you? What is your name?” It makes the introduction. So I am frequently the matchmaker in all of these situations. And it really lowers the sensory overload, it reduces the stress factor, especially if you know who you’re going to see, you can prep for it. And you also don’t have to navigate, moving around, bumping into people, the crowds, the noise and we, even in that space, have a breakout room as well, so that students can take a break from the table, go refresh, have some water, regulate ourselves, and then come back out and do it again. So that’s kind of the theory as opposed to students coming to you, you’re coming to the job seeker.

Rebecca: We often talk about universal design for learning in a classroom setting but you were also talking about universal design in this interview setting. Can you talk a little bit about what that looks like?

Kendra: Absolutely. Just like we would translate an accommodation plan from college to career, the concept of universal design is universal, really. And so in this particular case, things that are very helpful for my autistic jobseekers, which I’ll be honest, very helpful for me, things like, “Could I please have the questions in advance so that I can prepare my best answer?” I’m not going to be surprised and therefore anxious and shut down when we’re going to have our conversation. Things like being able to disclose if I need to have a fidget under the table, and why I’m doing that, being able to talk about the lighting in the room, or like, “Where am I going to go? What can I expect? Who’s going to be there? How long is the day going to be?” …just various things like that. Those are some very small modifications to the process that universally help any job applicant feel comfortable, and therefore bring their most authentic and best self to the interview.

Rebecca: Sounds a lot better to me.

Kendra: Indeed. Ideally, we want an interview to be where we’re learning about each other, we’re learning about the job to be done, and we’re both assessing if we think this is going to be something that we want to engage in together. And the balance of power is always off in those interviews anyway, and especially for the first job out of college, or even co-ops, or before that, right? I’ve only been in college for a year and a half. And my students are already interviewing, right? They’re 20 years old, they’ve never had a job before. And now they’re going into this big data analyst co-op position. That’s a lot of stress for anyone. So anything we can do to minimize the stress and maximize the ability to share the skills that I have. And that’s another thing that companies are doing as well, is changing the interview process, so that instead of all of the questions, it’s “Alright, we’re going to bring you to campus, we’re going to give you a problem, we’re going to have you work on it with some of our other applicants in a team. And we’re going to see how you solve a problem, as opposed to how you talk about how you solve a problem.” So it really is much more skills based. Another thing that if you’re going to have not only getting the questions in advance, but breaking those questions down and making them single step, so that I don’t get lost in some huge, rambling answer is very helpful and making sure that they are less open ended and more, “What is the skill I’m trying to assess with these questions?” That’s another Universal Design tactic that helps a lot. And then one last thing that I’m seeing more and more companies use is, are platforms like HireVue, where they can record their answers. The virtual world, this way nobody has to fly to the new Microsoft campus anymore, we can do it from the comfort of our home offices and have as many recordings as we want. Again, all of us misspeak sometimes, it’s nice to have that do-over because I really am trying to showcase what I can bring to your company and my students bring a lot.

John: So it sounds as if employers are starting to recognize this and learn new skills. What role do you play in helping them learn alternative ways of interviewing?

Kendra: It really depends on the company. And we work with big anchor companies. I’ve talked about Microsoft, I’ve taught SAS, Southwest Airlines, they’re now big players in the field that are realizing that diversity, equity, and inclusion isn’t diverse enough if it doesn’t include neurodiversity. So there are some big dogs in the field that are bringing their HR programs, and they’re really working to make sure that they’re doing best practice. Companies like that will often come to me and say, “Hey, we’re doing this, who do you have for me in these fields?” And I am, in that case, mostly just a matchmaker, I help shepherd my jobseekers through the program. I check in with the recruiter: “How’s it going? Where are they in the process? Do you have any questions?” And I’m a matchmaker to make sure that that pipeline is direct, and they’re getting who they need. There are other companies, and these could be startups, these could be other big companies, but they come saying, “Hi, I’m an HR manager, I’m a data analyst, I’m someone right,” it could be anywhere in the company, that they have someone in their family in their network who’s autistic. And they realize, hey, this is something that would benefit my workplace. This is something that would benefit my person, what can we do? And so if you’re at the very beginning phase, I do a lot of nurturing with those companies talking about where can you get more information? Who are the models that you can look at. I’m here for a consult, do you want to interview some of my students, because a lot of what I do at that stage too, is destigmatizing. Autism, it is a spectrum, and so some people come in thinking that, “Oh, I’m going to do some charity work.” And that’s not at all what we’re doing. In fact, at this point, I’m doing you a favor. This is a talent pool in worker shortage. Trust me, companies really get it at this point in time.

Rebecca: You’ve match made, they’ve joined an organization for their co-op for their experience, how have you worked with companies to help that onboarding process and to make sure that they have a good experience once they’ve gotten the experience?

Kendra: One of the wonderful platforms that we partner with is an organization called Uptimize, and they do online trainings for employees, employers, and they have online training modules. I always give the disclaimer, we don’t know each other well, but I’m a highly critical person, and I hate to waste people’s time. So I don’t often send out professional development if I don’t truly believe in it. And I’ll tell you that I did these modules that were shared with us by Uptimize, and I learned things. And so one of the things that we have with them, because they have a whole suite of trainings, but we have Neurodiversity 101, and a basic module for hiring managers, for HR professionals, as well as supervisors. And so when a company is ready to take our students, I can give them unlimited licenses to share with the team, to share with the executives to share with everyone to try to build awareness, because the truth is, with the increase in diagnosis of autism, we’re all working in neurodiverse teams already, we just don’t always know it. So again, universal design is helping who you already have, and also opening up this talent pool that you’re not accessing currently. So there’s widespread benefits, and I’m giving it to you for free. If you want more, you can then go partner with Uptimize, and they’ll do all kinds of accessory training. But here’s a great introduction that we can give to our hiring managers. I often talk to them ahead of time before they take one of my students. The two main barriers once I have the job with you, would be housing, and transportation, learning how to navigate a new city, being comfortable navigating it, figuring out where you’re going to live for these 10 weeks. I remember doing that as a neurotypical, A-Type 20 year old. And so that’s hard for anyone, it’s exceptionally hard for my students. So that needs to be considered. companies aren’t really providing housing or transportation now, but if you’re going to boast about your neurodiversity hiring initiative, you at least need to have answers for me on how you’re going to direct them to these housing sites, here’s what we’re going to do, how is that going to work. And then I also just help make sure that my students are following through on all the onboarding paperwork and things from my end. And then if you’re an employer that we have a partnership with, I’m available to you. I’ll tell you that most of them don’t reach out to me during the co-ops, but I’m here. So if we need to troubleshoot, if something’s going better or worse than you expected, let me know, let’s take it to the next level. It’s about being the best supervisor you can, regardless, and I’m just an extra tool when you work with my students.

John: It’s wonderful that you have this program at RIT. But is this very common in the rest of academia?

Kendra: Well, there are about 75 to 80 programs across the country that are working in various ways at various levels, some are brand new, some have been around almost as long as we have, in order to help support students through this academic process of college. The goal of college is education, of course, and meaningful employment would be my objective at the end of college. So not all of them are handling it in the same way or have the same programming that we do. But that’s in total, there’s about 75 to 80 across the country at this moment in time, that support through the transition from high school to college. And just as I said, we started with that as well. And now we are helping transition into the workplace.

Rebecca: You mentioned early on about feeling not prepared to support the students you had when you were an elementary school teacher. And I have heard this many times, a faculty member at a college or university saying the same thing, maybe not prepared to teach [LAUGHTER] and then also not too prepared to support this particular group of students or many sets of students that are very different from one another. Can you talk a little bit about strategies that faculty might want to be aware of that could help support students like yours more effectively?

Kendra: Oh, absolutely. The more partnerships we can have with our professors and across campus, that’s one of the things when we talk about where this program is going, that’s something that is critically important, both to the academic success, and then, of course, into the workplace. So my students do very well with written communication, typically, and since most of us are using some kind of my Mycourses or online shell for information, please go ahead and upload those PowerPoint slides, please go ahead and put your notes online. Those are not crutches, if you will, those are actual accommodations that are just best practice. I let you all know that I’ve already got a master’s degree. I’m working on my business degree now. And I’m a graduate student in business. And I get that, as a neurotypical, like that’s just best practice so that I can go further than these notes. Doing those kinds of things, super important. Setting up a culture in your classroom where you can take a break if you need to, and just saying that out loud, so that it’s kind of a culture of the classroom, being aware of what could be overstimulating in your environment. In our lecture halls, it’s not as if we have a whole lot of control, but if you’re in a smaller setting, to just go ahead and look at those things. And sometimes some of us talk more than others. I talk a whole lot, we can have a neurotypical person that’s going to suck up the air in the room. That’s something that we’re used to. Giving students strategies ahead of time or if you notice that, pulling them aside, because they want to be their best selves. I’m constantly raising my hand because I love your topic. I’m very excited to please and I want to engage and if you say something, “I notice how excited you are Kendra, if you could pick just two times that you’re going to share out loud during class, and then write down everything else and email it to me, you can give it to me after class.” It’s just basic classroom management kinds of things. And it’s training our students not just to be good students, but to be good citizens, and to be good employees. And it’s how do we do that give and take that maybe some of us take for granted that we learned turn taking, and we were really good at it, and sometimes people need to be encouraged to take more turns, that would be the other end of the spectrum is that when I’m teaching my career ready bootcamp, the reason that I’m here, I usually have those two different groups. And that’s true among neurotypical people as well. So if I’m going to suck up the air, give me some strategies, so that I’m not alienating my classmates and I’m still engaging. And if I’m too afraid to talk, tell me how you want to hear from me, I can email you before class. Give strategies that show that you want them there and that teach them how to be part of the mix, regardless of whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, or a neurotypical or neurodivergent. Those are some of the really best practices that I can say: share all of that written material, [LAUGHTER] and make sure that you’ve created a culture that just meets people where they are. And like I said, this is universal design. It doesn’t matter if you’re autistic or not. These are just best practices that help everyone. This is something I’m passionate about, and it traces back to my earliest days as a first-grade teacher. As I told you, I went through Orton-Gillingham training to teach dyslexic students because I came out with a master’s degree, and then had no idea how to teach reading. I had no idea what I was doing. That’s whole language, it’s all the stuff. And when I would come back from this very intense training that is specifically for dyslexic students, and I wanted to teach it in my private, high-end, elementary school, I had to justify why I was doing that. Well, why does my student need this particular program, and I was able to say, “Orton-Gillingham breaks language down into pieces. And if I teach this way, it’s the way that this particular subgroup requires in order to learn how to read, we’re keeping reading from them, if I don’t teach it in this one way, but for everybody else that gets it broken down, this is helping them with all of that language that you’re going to hit later on… the words that are not first-grade words, they’re going to be able to decode it, because that’s how their brain works, and I’m just giving them new pieces of the puzzle.” And so when I talk about how I’m teaching reading to first graders, or how I’m teaching job readiness to 22 year olds, it’s the same idea. It’s just: how do we help everyone? …and tailoring our design to be more inclusive, it’s just what we should all be doing.

John: Right now we’re running a reading group that focuses on Inclusive Teaching by Viji Sathy. And Kelly Hogan, and much of what you’re describing seems like the type of structure that they encourage people to use, and small group discussions and providing ways for all students to be comfortable. And we’re seeing that a lot, that there’s so many things converging in terms of things that are effective in helping people learn show up in many different approaches in terms of studies of how we learn, studies of effective teaching methods, studies of creating an inclusive environment. And pretty much all these methods benefit all students, but they particularly benefit those students who don’t do as well without the support provided. And it sounds like this is another form of inclusive teaching.

Kendra: It is. I couldn’t agree with you more. Regardless of the age, we all need to feel safe in the environment. And I’m not going to feel safe if someone’s interrupting me or talking over me. I’m not going to feel safe if I don’t feel like the teacher wants to hear what I have to say. I’m not going to feel safe. If I don’t understand the information or I have sensory overload. It doesn’t matter, we all need to feel safe first. Second, the next buzz would be belonging in higher education, and how am I connecting to my peers and connecting one on one to either my teacher or my professor? How is that working? And then you have the content that comes after all of that. So we really do have to work on our classroom management, we really do have to work on that personal relationship with our students. And then it’s the same in the workplace, we need a safe workplace where I don’t have to mask but I can be my authentic self and therefore I can bring my whole brain capacity to the job, I’m not worried about if somebody’s going to notice something about me or I’m going to feel uncomfortable or they’re going to feel uncomfortable. It translates across the lifespan of a learner.

Rebecca: And most of these things are not difficult.

Kendra: You’d asked about my relationship with either professors or with employers. And I’ll go back to the employer piece because the concept of ADA and IDEA can be scary and intimidating to human resource managers. And so when I talk about what is a reasonable accommodation for my students, most of the time, it’s me asking for a supervisor to just be a very direct and explicit supervisor. It’s things like: can they wear their noise-cancelling headphones while they’re working to kind of drown out some of this din? Are they able to work at home? Are there hybrid options that are available? Is it okay if they take their shoes off under the desk? These aren’t even things that cost the employer any money. These are just sensory regulatory issues, and then it goes into things like: Can you please set a regular weekly meeting with your employee so that my student knows when to come to you. And it goes back to that Which type of person am I? Do I ask way too many questions all the time? Or do I never ask a question and then it’s a barrier for me accomplishing the task. So if I know that I’m going to meet with Kendra every Monday, and I have to bring my list of questions that helps both sets. It also, as the employer, gives me the ability to check in on where you are and advance, because that’s the goal. Even if you’re not considered a teacher or professor anymore, that’s what a supervisor is. Our goal is to elevate our employees and help them reach the next level, at least, that’s my definition of what a supervisor does. So. I like to share that, yeah, and these things are not big cost. They’re big returns on your bottom line, is what it is. So if I can be myself at work, I’m going to work while I’m there. And that’s really what it is.

Rebecca: You talked a lot about at the beginning that the Institute started with the transition from high school to college. Can you talk about some of the things that are important to support neurodiverse students in that transition?

Kendra: Oh, definitely. So there are five pillars to the program. And the one that we’ve talked about would be career and co-op. So we’ll go ahead and move that to the side. Social is a really big piece, that sense of belonging, self advocacy, how do I ask my professor? What are the deadlines? Can I leave the room? Self advocacy and all of those areas. Wellness and health is a really big deal. And the fifth one is executive functioning, where I’ve done all of my studying. That’s what we do, is a lot of executive functioning. So those are the five pillars of the program to help them transition. And we do a lot of work. Also, just like we onboard for a job, we do special onboarding for our students as they come in and their parents. And I think that’s a really important shout out is that oftentimes the support system for all of us gets overlooked… it’s our partners in life, it’s our children, it’s our parents, it’s all of those people. And for students on the spectrum, these are parents that have had to be varsity parents for a really long time to navigate the 504s and the IEPs and all of the social learning that has to happen in K through 12. And so onboarding the parents that this is a young adult, they’ve gotten into RIT, you did this. They’re here, they got this, and we’ve got them. So to do that transition on: “here’s what to expect.” And it’s all the same things. It’s like, “Where are you going to go? Who’s your point person? How are you going to do this when a problem arises… because it’s going to… where do you go?” …and I don’t say that, because you’re autistic, I say that because I can look at both of you and say, something’s going to happen that we have to navigate. And we have to stay emotionally regulated, and we have to problem solve, and we need to know who to ask for help. These are life skills for any person. Again, it’s back to universal design. But that’s part of what SSP, our spectrum support program does, specifically for our parents and students, is a lot of that onboarding and letting them know that we’re here and you earned this, you did this, you’re going to be okay, you’re going to survive, you’re going to thrive, this is going to be great for you.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit more about the executive function part of the program?

Kendra: Well, I always like to talk about executive functioning. So the first thing I’m going to do is tell you my favorite executive functioning 101. I want you to picture a stop sign, S T O P, and when we’re talking about executive functioning, we’re talking about space, time, objects, and people. So if I need to function in any environment, I need to stop and think about those things. Think about an elevator, what’s the space like? How long am I going to be there? Am I supposed to talk to the person? You go through space, time objects, people, and when you transition into college, it’s a big difference, because in K through 12, a lot of that’s managed for you. And then you get sent off to college. Oh my gosh, the schedule changes, the classrooms are different. I have to get from my room to all of this. And I have to factor in travel time. How long do these long papers take? How do I chunk those assignments? So everything we do is space, time, objects, people, and I’ve been using that since I was a first-grade teacher and all the way up because you can chew on that, everybody can understand this is what I’m thinking about in this environment. And so we do a lot of visual scheduling so that you can see your “must dues.” Where are your blocks? How do you plug in the things that you need to accomplish? We do planning on here are all the assignments that are coming up. How long do you think this will take? Time management is often a hiccup for my students. Again, think about the people in your lives. Some of us are really good at some pieces of executive functioning, and some of us are not. I can tell the time down to the second most places, people think I’m a savant, but I can’t organize to save my life. I have 22 tabs open right now on my computer. I struggle with that, and I’m neurotypical and high achieving and mid career and all of those things that you’re supposed to check the boxes off. So when we’re helping our students transition from high school to college, how do you navigate those four things? And some of them you’re going to be stronger at than others. Everybody is. So what are the tools so that you can be independent and accomplish your goals here? And that’s a lot of what we do. And of course, as I told you, there are those five pillars, so when it comes to career and co-op, I have a whole other set of how we’re talking about space, time objects, people. We also talk a lot, as I said, about social and about well being. I remember being horribly homesick. I didn’t like my roommate. There’s all of those things that all of us have to navigate. And so when you don’t like your roommate, because you didn’t get that single, what do you do? How do you navigate this? When you’re lonely, what does that feel like? What are the alternatives? And then of course, if something does happen, we always plug the students into those campus resources. So how are you doing? What do you think? Let’s walk down to counseling. Let’s just walk down together right now. They know they can advocate for themselves, but they also have somebody that’s going to walk on this journey with them, and that’s really important. And it brings, I think, peace of mind, both to the student and, of course, to their families that they’re sending out of the nest for the first time.

Rebecca: I think the things that you’re talking about in terms of executive function should be an all first-year classes, [LAUGHTER] it should be built into the curriculum.

Kendra: I think every professor would thank me, if it was, [LAUGHTER] and I say that about my career ready bootcamp. I would have been so much better off, if I’d have this kind of training going into my first job. It’s universal design. If we were doing this kind of prep for everyone, I think every employer would be happier. But my students specifically need the explicit instruction on “This is what they’re looking for. When you do this behavior, this is how they feel, and this is the outcome when that happens.” You need those behavior maps in order to teach the lesson that is not coming in through osmosis. And to be fair, one of the reasons there’s such an employment divide is, autistic students and adults, they’re not getting jobs, they don’t have any work experience at all. So if you’ve never been in a work environment, how are you supposed to know how to behave in one. I remember, again, as a learning specialist in elementary school, we would go over social situations like a birthday party, any birthday party, I don’t care who it is or what age, there are certain components that you can expect so you can stay self regulated. You can know how much time it’s going to take, you’re going to know you have to bring a gift of some sort, again, space, time, objects, people and here are the classic things. It translates into adulthood and the workplace. Like you need to know how do you code switch? What does that even mean in this new environment? And you can show how you’ve mastered it through your lifespan and here’s just the next frontier. We spend a lot of time doing this, and I will just say, in terms of our program, I’m excited that we have this funding, I’m excited to be able to do this at RIT and for that kind of buy in. In this last year, we used to offer career ready bootcamp, just once per year. I was able, being full time and with the buy in now, we offer it three times, which means if the average incoming population that works with SSP is about 30 students and I was able to get 24 students through the career ready boot camp in this first year. So that’s something that they’re all going to get to take. And so now that we’ve got this model that’s working really well and is self sustainable and that we hope we can take to other colleges to do this. We’re working on different ways to support the student across their learning journey at RIT. And so we’re doing some alternative, like a spring break trip, I’m actually taking a cohort of eight students to New York City in March so that we can go visit four different employer sites. And we’re gonna go over beforehand the T chart of what do you see? And what do you hear? And in these specific categories. Is it an open space, is everybody in a cubicle? Are they talking to one another? Or are they working by themselves in headphones? What is the culture that you observe? How are people talking with a list of, like, what are you looking for? Be a social detective, so that we can then come back and debrief and I’m intentionally going to very different environments, so that they probably haven’t been in a work environment before. And we’re going to some really big ones, and to be able to say for themselves, “Oh, I can do this.” I know what to expect. And not only can I do this, I know what I prefer, and I know why I prefer it. So again, it helps that self advocacy, it helps to be your authentic self. And these are employers that all have neurodiverse programs and want my students. And I have to tell you that that is the most rewarding part of teaching career ready boot camp is when I have SAS come to talk or Southwest Airlines and I get to set the stage with students of “You are wanted. I know you’ve spent your lives feeling other. No, no, they’re here early for you. It is August, they have not posted these jobs yet. They are here to get a front-row seat to my RIT talent.” And you can just see them, they just sit up so much straighter. And in all of the post career ready boot camp survey, that’s what they say… it was just I never thought that people were going to want me… never thought… or it felt so good to have someone come here. And they do, I mean these employers give a 45-minute presentation of how we are thinking about you and your needs and here’s how it’s really great. Oh, and here’s somebody that did it. Like Southwest Airlines started their program last summer and had one of my RIT students and brought her back to career ready boot camp… and to hear her share her experience and what it was like and the students were able to ask like, “What’s your one piece of advice? What do you think you did the best in the interview? What do you think you did the worst?” And this is my best piece of advice that I really want everybody to hear going into this interview. They want to know how you solve a problem. Just like in life. I just want to know that you’re listening to me and that you’re going to try,. I want to know your initiative and your problem solving and so the student comes back. And she says, “I got this question and I didn’t know the answer, and I started to panic. What I did is I took a deep breath and I looked down at my notepad, because we always say, have reasons, have ways to distract yourself. I looked down, and I composed myself, and I looked back up, and I said, ‘I honestly don’t know. But I’ve solved other problems. Here’s how I would approach that.’” And she went into what she would do next. She’s like, “I think that’s what got me the job.” Because again, it’s how do I solve some them? Am I going to give up? Am I going to whine? Am I going to complain? Or am I just going to get to work, because again, these are co-op positions. And then I talk about what a co-op is: “Think of it as a class. This is like the lab to your bio class. This is you getting out and putting those skills to work.”

Rebecca: This sounds like a really great program. We always wrap up our sessions by asking: “What’s next?”

Kendra: I love “what’s next?” I don’t know if you’re West Wing fans, but “what’s next?” is what’s asked by the President every time he’s ready to push the agenda forward. And so that is actually how I kind of live my life is “What’s next?” As I told you, we’ve expanded career ready bootcamp, we’re now doing alternative spring travel. And we’ll do winter term travel with our students to give these opportunities. What I’m most excited about, we’re always looking to increase the impact on our students, we’re always looking to increase the reach to the community, and how do we train the trainer. So that’s a big goal is to be able to take this career ready bootcamp to other universities and show them how they can make it their own and help their students. I’m also working with a lot of partnerships on campus, because that’s where creativity happens, because we were talking, it’s all cross disciplinary. And so we have a program called RIT certified that works with online options. And so this will reach not only within RIT, but wider. And so we’re going to have modules for managers. So if you’re taking an HR class, if you’re taking this managerial certificate, you’re going to get best practices and universal design, so that we can do the reach further. I’m also going to work with our business school to be able to have internship programs, leadership certificates, things like that. So that it’s not just helping the autistic student or the already employed, but we’re planting the seeds so that as each of these people go out into their various networks, it’s a wider spread awareness and knowledge. And so I think those are the main ways that we’re looking to take care of impact is cross collaboration and expanding the model.

John: You’re doing some wonderful work. And I hope we’ll see more campuses and more programs like this, because individuals who are autistic often have trouble finding those first jobs where they’re successful. And we’re wasting a lot of resources that can bring some real strengths to organizations and to businesses out there.

Kendra: That’s true. But as I said before, these are business solutions. This is an untapped talent pool that really the sky’s the limit here. In all spaces, we need to make a bigger table. We need to make room for everyone and make sure we all have a place. So that’s what we’re doing.

Rebecca: Well, I know that we’ll look forward to getting some updates maybe from you in the future about this program and the next things that you have planned.

Kendra: I would love that and maybe you can recommend some tea alternatives for me. [LAUGHTER]

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

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278. Google Apps and the LMS

Posted in accessibility, edtech, educational technology, higher education, learning, OER, open pedagogy, teaching
March 1, 2023

Creating course content in an LMS can be time-consuming and tedious. In this episode, Dave Ghidiu joins us to discuss ways of leveraging Google Apps to simplify content creation, facilitate student collaboration, and to allow students to maintain access to their work after the semester ends.

Dave is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Coordinator of the Gladys M. Snyder Center for Teaching and Learning at Finger Lakes Community College. Previous to his time at FLCC, he spent a few years as a Senior Instructional Designer at Open SUNY, where he was a lead designer for the OSCQR rubric software.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Creating course content in an LMS can be time-consuming and tedious. In this episode, we explore ways to leverage Google Apps to simplify content creation, facilitate student collaboration, and to allow students to maintain access to their work after the semester ends.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

[MUSIC]

Rebecca: Our guest today is Dave Ghidiu. Dave is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Coordinator of the Gladys M. Snyder Center for Teaching and Learning at Finger Lakes Community College. Previous to his time at FLCC, he spent a few years as a Senior Instructional Designer at Open SUNY, where he was a lead designer for the OSCQR rubric software. Welcome, Dave.

Dave: Thank you so much. This is so exciting to talk to you, too. I’m sure you don’t know this, but we have a very rich and robust parasocial relationship.

John: Today’s teas are: … Dave, Are you drinking tea?

Dave: I am. Halee, over at Saratoga Tea and Honey, makes tea bought from scratch and has made this Focus Pocus which is really, really good. I thought I would need my brain fog busting blend today.

Rebecca: I think I really needed that earlier in the week. [LAUGHTER] I just have English breakfast today, John.

John: And I have Tea Forte black currant tea with some honey from Saratoga Tea and Honey.

Dave: Their honey selection is out of this world.

John: It’s amazing, and they offer free samples, which is one of the reasons why I end up buying so much because there’s so many different flavors that taste so good.

Rebecca: And just for clarification, they’re not a sponsor. [LAUGHTER] It’s just a common choice lately.

John: That’s right, because that was [LAUGHTER] also in our last podcast with Jim Lang.

Dave: Oh, it was it really? Oh. that’s awesome. My wife, Katie went to high school with Halee, which is how we wound up shopping there.

Rebecca: Oh, that’s funny. So Dave, in January, you presented a workshop at SUNY Oswego, where you describe ways to use Google Apps to simplify repetitive tasks. I took many notes, started implementing some of these things. Could you provide a little bit of an overview of the basic strategy that you advocated for / continue to advocate for?

Dave: Yeah, that was a ball presenting, there was so much engagement and some really, really good questions during the presentation. Thank you for inviting me out. I think we’ll start with some level setting and I just want to let you know that everything we talk about today is using Google Docs in tandem with the LMS. At FLCC, Finger Lakes Community College, we use Brightspace. So everything that we do, and we’re talking about today will be irrespective of what software the campus uses. In fact, at FLCC, we’re a Microsoft house, and I just happened to have a better workflow with Google Docs. So I think it’s important for the audience to know that you don’t need to have Google Classroom, you don’t need to be a Google campus, you can do all this stuff today.

Rebecca: And a lot of it’s documented on won…. what’s the website?

Dave: As you know, SUNY migrated to Brightspace last year, and we in the computing science department at FLCC kicked the tires quite a bit on it. So much so that we were doing all these really niche, interesting things. So Carrie, who’s one of the professors in the department, says, “Hey, we should have a mini-Summit.” So we all got together and did a show and tell of all the things that we’ve been doing. And I chronicled all those, I wrote them down. And I just started a blog called LEARNBrightspace.com. So that will have a lot of these things that perhaps you didn’t learn in the Brightspace training, and it can potentiate your online classes. And this is also the home of where I’m putting these Google mechanisms, because I think it really blurs the line. I’m using Brightspace, just as much as I’m using Google Drive and Google workspace. So all these ideas and concepts will live at LEARNbrightspace.com.

John: And having noted that this is created for Brightspace, many of the tools that you’re referring to and the basic techniques could work with any LMS, Correct?

Dave: Correct. In fact, I started this project, working at MCC, 2010 – 2012. So I was using ANGEL at the time. And then we migrated to Blackboard. And I started ramping it up and now we’re using Brightspace. So this will work in any LMS. But it will also work just in a regular website. This is just all pure HTML.

John: And from what I recall, the basic principle is you try to reduce repetitive tasks within the LMS by leveraging Google Drive and Google Apps.

Dave: Sure, I call that the tyranny of repetition and software development, we have what’s known as the ground truth, and you want all the information to exist in one place and push it out in separate places. I have a twin brother who’s a software engineer, and he always talks about ground truth. I call it the single point of truth, but it’s the same thing. And a good example is your office hours. Since I’ve been listening to you, I’ve rebranded them as my student time, but your office hours, you want to have it in one spot, but push it out, maybe in your LMS. Maybe in your syllabus, perhaps you have three or four or five different syllabi, so you have it living in one spot and change it in that one spot. And you can push it out to all these other arenas. You don’t have to worry about updating it in 5, 6. 7 different spots.

Rebecca: And how do you do that?

Dave: Well, there’s a few different ways to do this. And I think the easiest way to explain it would be for this particular task. And this is going to be a concrete example of how I use this single point of truth. I use Google Sheets, Google Sheets is great for formatting tables. So I format my table. And then I highlight what I want to put, for instance, in my syllabus, and then I copy that, and I go into my syllabus, which lives in Google Docs, and I paste and when you paste, it says, “Hey, do you want to link this to the Google sheet so that if the Google Sheet ever changes or updates, we can see the changes here?” So I always click on yes, that’s exactly what I want. And the very first time I do that, I spent a little bit of time formatting it in Google Docs where I have to like bring the margins over, it’s not that hard of a lift, it goes pretty easy. Once that’s done, I’m done. I never have to reformat that table. So when I come the next semester, and I change my student time, or my office hours, I can just push those right to my Google Docs. The other place I do that is within the LMS. So within Brightspace, I have a page that says office hours or student time, and I actually embed a Google sheet right there. So when the students click on office hours or student time, they will see maybe a little blurb by me that says, “Hey, if you’re meeting in my office, here’s my office number, if you want a link to my virtual room, here it is, and look below, and you can see all my time.” And that’s really just the Google Sheet. Once I update that Google Sheet, I never touch that content in my course. And that’s semester to semester. Once I set up my course, I never touch that content again, because all the changes are live,

Rebecca: Does embedding a Google Doc or a Google sheet in an LMS present any accessibility concerns that we should be aware of?

Dave: As long as you’re using the iframe tag, they actually have a long description tag, which is not necessarily all tagged, but I think they’re screen-reader compliant, but iframes, use whatever accessibility is in the target site. So for instance, if I framed Tea for Teaching, if your site’s compliant than whatever my LMS, when I embed Tea for Teaching would use that compliancy, the screen reader just would actually be reading the Tea for Teaching website. So as long as your Google Doc and your Google Sheet or whatever you’re embedding is accessible, then this is also accessible.

Rebecca: So it’d be important to do things like have header rows and that kind of thing. And if you’re using Google Docs, you might want to know about Grackle, which is a great accessibility tool to check your accessibility of those files.

Dave: Oh, that’s interesting, because Microsoft does a really good job, with Word, of making things accessible, and they have their accessibility checker. I haven’t seen that in Google Docs. Are you using Grackle?

Rebecca: Yeah, it’s a third party tool that we have on our campus. And it works across Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, and will help improve the accessibility of all those documents and any PDFs you might need to export.

Dave: Oh, that’s awesome. I’m glad I came today. I’ll look that up as soon as we’re done. It is worth mentioning, and I’m glad you said that. In Google Docs, and I spend most of my time in Google Docs, not Google Sheets. In Google Docs, I’m always using headings, I like the textual hierarchy. And I always do the alt tags, there’s a lot of easy things to do that make my life easier and make it more accessible for anyone viewing the content. In fact, and I believe I demoed this in January, most of the assignments that I give my students are a Google Doc, and I have them make a copy of it. And then they paste images in for a lab, we’re doing computer science stuff. And I use those headings. So when they give me their Google Doc, I don’t have to scroll through 20 pages, I can use the document outline and click on the different headings where I know their answers are going to be so I can just skim it real real easily. So this is just another example of Universal Design writ large that it is better for the student, it’s better for me, it’s better for everyone.

Rebecca: That’s totally the strategy I use too, Dave.

Dave: Oh, really? Oh, that’s interesting. I’m so glad to hear that.

John: And so if you’re sharing templates with students for assignments, you can set them up to be accessible so that when you submit them, it’ll automatically have the heading structure.

Dave: Yeah, in fact, one of the things that I do, and I demo this in the video in the recording in January, but also at LEARNbrightspace.com, one of the tabs says “Tools,” and in this particular thing, you can paste in the URL of your Google Doc. But one of the things I do is: instead of making a template or saying to the students click in this Google Doc go to file, save as a copy, you can just change the URL of the link to your doc and chop off the last four characters that say “edit” and make it “copy.” So when the students click on the link, it’ll actually force a copy in their Google Drive. So that’s just one of the nice things you can do with those links. And one of the really, really cool ways to bend these URLs is you can make a link that goes to your Google Doc. You can also make a link by changing “edit” to “copy” that will force a copy. You can make a link instead of edit, you can do “export?format=PDF,” and that will take a carbon copy of your Google Doc and download it as a PDF. And that’s a great thing to do, for instance, for my course syllabus, because my course syllabus is embedded. Any change I make to my course syllabus in Google Docs gets pushed out automatically, but students like to print that out. So, I just put a link right on my page in my LMS, where the course outline is, or your syllabus, and it says “Click here, if you want to download it as a PDF,” and that download it as a PDF, “Click here if you want download as a Word,” and it just downloads as a Word. And it’s not that I’m hosting a PDF or Word, it’s converting my google doc at that moment in time to a PDF and downloading it. So that’s really, really slick. And that’s a great way to get your course materials into students’ hands.

Rebecca: And I’m pretty sure I saw the code to that button on your website.

Dave: You did, at LEARNBrightspace.com. You go to LEARNBrightspace.com, you paste in your URL of your Google Doc, and it gives you the code for those buttons, it gives you the code to in bet it gives you a code to do a thumbnail of your image, which is live, and it gives you the code to embed a QR code should you want that. You can just do some really crazy things. And I think that’s a perfect example of how to learn what you can do, is just go to that website and check out like, “Oh, I can download it as a Word file.” This is a great example of a single point of truth. I have one course outline and I might have it in three or four different classes, I have different sections. I only update it in my Google Docs, and all the courses where that embedded file lives, they get to see all those changes. And you remember in the good old days, or the Dark Ages, rather, of LMSs. So if I had a PowerPoint, for instance, and I changed my PowerPoint, I’d have to go into all those sections and take down that PowerPoint and upload a new one. But I don’t need to do that anymore. If I have Google Slides, I just change the slides. Because once it’s linked in your LMS, or once it’s embedded, you never have to touch that piece of content in your LMS again. You make as many changes as you want to your slideshow and it’s live immediately. And by the way, you can do the same thing with links to Google Slides, where it can download as a PDF, download it as a PowerPoin.,

John: The show notes file accompanying this podcast will contain links to the LEARNBrightspace.com website and to the recording of the workshop that you provided in January at Oswego for anyone who wishes to explore these options in more depth.

Dave: Awesome. I just started making this website, so I’ll be building it out. And again, it’s going to have a lot of Brightspace stuff, but also all this Google stuff that I’ve been doing for a few years.

John: One of the other things you demonstrated was the use of Google draw to automatically update images in an LMS, such as the ones that you used to signal whether a module was open or not. Could you tell us a little bit about how that might work?

Dave: Yeah, so I actually have a very unhealthy relationship and dependency on Google drawings. And I thought it was just like a throwaway tool. But once I started using it, I was like, “Oh, this is really, really slick.” So much like a Google Doc, my syllabus or Google Slides, you can embed a Google drawing. In Brightspace, we have the visual table of contents which Rebecca, I’m sure you had like a ball with, given your role in graphic design. The visual table of contents, if you don’t have an image in the description for your module, then it will just inherit whatever your course image is, in the main course. Using Google Drawings, I’ve created thumbnails for each of the chapters. So when you look at the visual table of contents, each chapter has a unique image that somehow intimates what we’re doing in that chapter. And then I put like a big one in a circle, or big two or big three, whatever chapter it’s on. Because it’s a live image, I can change the look and feel of it. So I have a gray overlay that I put over upcoming chapters. And then I have a banner that stretches across and says “upcoming.” So the students on day one can see all the chapters, and anything that’s upcoming, they can kind of see what the chapter is about with that thumbnail because it’s behind like a somewhat transparent gray rectangle, and they can see the big banner that says upcoming. But then when that module opens, I just go into Google Drawings, that gray rectangle on the banner, I send that to back, and you can’t see it anymore. So when the students come into my course, that’s how they know what the most recent chapter is. Anything that says upcoming and is gray, that’s in the future. Anything that’s bright and exposed, that’s what we’re doing now.

Rebecca: For those that are familiar with Google Draw, because, I don’t know many of us have thought of it as being kind of a junk app… [LAUGHTER]…

John: …spoken by someone who is used to that Photoshop stuff.

Rebecca: …can you talk to us a little bit about what it’s capable of doing and what it’s not capable of doing?

Dave: Yes, it is not capable of doing Photoshop. So you’re not going to have a lot of those high-end or even mid-range tools, such as the content aware or the lasso tool, it just doesn’t have all that. This is more for what I would say as graphic design if you’re doing almost illustrations or almost vector images. And you can put photographs up there. But I use it mostly as textbox, some colors, and I don’t want to undersell it, because right now I’m convincing myself that it is kind of a puny little web app, but it’s so potent in the ability to change the content of an image. So if you want to embed that image in your course you can change it and it does do some high-end things. You can crop in different shapes. But really, if you’re looking for Photoshop, this is not an adequate replacement.

John: But the ability to do layers offers some really nice capabilities as you described, because a lot of basic drawing apps will not allow you to introduce or to have layers.

Dave: That’s a good point. And there’s also the ability, much like Photoshop, it has a canvas, but then… and I don’t know what you call the area outside of the canvas, I call it the staging area. So I can put things that I might be using later in that staging area, and it’s not visible in the image. And that’s also where I put… and Rebecca, you’ve been asking about accessibility, I keep my alt text in the very first text box in this staging area so that if a screen reader is reading it, my alt text is right there. It also makes it very easy when I need to embed it later on. Because I don’t have to keep retyping the alt text, I keep it right there.

Rebecca: That leads exactly to what I was going to ask you about. It’s almost like a read my mind is whether or not, when you’re creating these Google Drawings, if it actually maintains text or not, because that indicates an accessibility issue, if it’s an image of text, or if it’s actually text.

Dave: For the listeners that want to pull this thread, when you publish the image it is, is for all intents and purposes, a jpg png. So it’s going to be a flattened image…

Rebecca: no SVG, huh?.

Dave: Actually, you can download it as an SVG, I believe, I don’t know if you can embed it as an SVG.

Rebecca: If I can’t embed, it’s no good to me. [LAUGHTER]

Dave: One of the ways that I use Google drawings, and I saw this at a conference, and the professor who was presenting was not presenting this aspect. This was just like a throwaway thing she was doing and I was blown away. I was like, “Woah, that is really cool.” So I stole this from someone I saw presenting. She doesn’t embed it as a JPEG or PNG, she actually embeds the Google Drawings website. So if you change the “/edit” or “/preview,” and you can do that in Docs as well, it gives you a more packaged… it doesn’t have the toolbar… and if you do it that way, you do have access to all the text. But one of the things that I really like about it, and I’m glad that we’re going down this road, is I make… think of it like a horizontal rectangle, and I have three squares side by side in that rectangle. So when it comes time to exemplary work, for instance, in my class right now, students are making infographics and they might not have ever made an infographic before. So I say, “Hey, here’s some work students have done in the past.” And I take a screenshot of three really good infographics and I make thumbnails all in this Google drawing. It’s just one Google drawing that has those three thumbnails. I make those hyperlinks. So now when I embed this Google drawings, not as an image, but this Google drawings in preview mode, students can click on these different hyperlinks and it pops up PDFs that actually live in my Google Drive of the actual infographic. So to answer your question, you can embed your Google drawings in such a way that text is retained. But, my caution is, I think with accessibility your mileage may vary if you’re actually embedding the Google drawing app as opposed to an actual image.

Rebecca: Proceed with caution when putting text and images. Yes,

Dave: I did work on OSCQR, when I was working with Alex Pickett and Dan Feinberg at Open SUNY, and I think Alex been a guest on your podcast before, right?

John: She has, a couple of times.

Dave: And by the way, I think working with Alex and Dan really helped me explore all this stuff in Google as we were working on that Google software. But in the OSCQR, I think that it says “Do not ever use text on an image as your primary way of conveying information.”

Rebecca: Indeed.

John: People can refer back to a discussion of an earlier iteration of the OSCQR rubric, because it’s continuing to evolve.

Dave: It sure is, and I’m not involved with that project anymore, but I’m always really impressed when I see the new things that they’re doing.

John: You’re at a Microsoft campus where students all have access to Microsoft Office apps. So why do you choose to have students work in Google Docs?

Dave: That’s an interesting question that oftentimes when I talk to other campuses about this, that that question comes up quite a bit. I like Google Docs for a number of reasons. One, more and more students are coming to college and they’re more comfortable with Google Docs. And to be clear, most of the stuff that I do in Google Docs you can do with the Microsoft suite. And when I say Google Docs, that’s just a proxy for Google workspace or Google Drive. There’s a number of ways that people have colloquially referred to it. I like Google Docs for a number of reasons. One of the reasons why I like having students use Google Docs is version control is so simple, because unlike Microsoft Word where you might have a version on your desktop, and then you go to another computer, and you have to download it, that’s just obviated with Google Docs. But I really enjoy having my students submit in the LMS, just a link to their Google Doc, and they’re sharing it with me. I actually have them share it so that anyone with the link can comment, because all I really want to do is comment on their work. One of the problems I had with uploading a PDF or Word file is I might spend some time annotating it, and I might spend some time just like highlighting it. And those tools in the LMS have been a little wonky and unreliable at times. And by the way, the students, when the semester ends, they might not ever get that file. So all the work that we’ve put into commenting and highlighting on their work, they might not ever see that if they didn’t even know they could go back and look at their work. So I like Google Doc, because if they own it, even when the semester is over, they still have access to it, which is not how it works if students upload a file. So that was my primary impetus. But I found recently that I’m really, really happy with their commenting feature. So when I leave a comment in their work, and I like to leave comments,that’s like footprints that I’ve been looking at their work. When I leave a comment, they get an email to their Gmail account, and it says “Hey, Dave left a comment,” but also says “Would you like to reply?” and they can just, right from their phone or wherever they get this email message, they don’t have to go into Brightspace, they can just reply to that comment. And I really think that’s an equilibrium I haven’t seen in LMS’s before. It’s really been teacher centric, where the student uploads a document, the teacher says, “Let me as the teacher make some comments,” and the conversation ends there. Whereas in Google Docs, now you can have these conversations that are bilateral. In fact, I was talking to my wife about this the other day, she’s the Director of the library at MCC, but she teaches a class at FLCC and she uses Google Docs. And she said, “You know, I was in there. And I was just leaving some comments on papers for the students, and one of my students got an email notification, she popped right into the document and we actually had a conversation in the comments.” So I think that’s really, really neat. And I like that the students can leave the semester and still have it. And Google also rolled out this feature a few months ago, that allows you to, in addition to commenting, there’s an emoji button and you hit that emoji button and you can just add an emoji on whatever you’re highlighted. And it’s really, really slick, because I might historically say, “Hey, I really liked what you did here.” But now I can just leave an emoji thumbs up or smiley face or whatever I’m going to do. So that’s a little bit better for me, because I can cruise through the work and let people know my sentiment without having to be very verbose.

Rebecca: And you can save that language or when you really need it…

Dave: Yeah.

Rebecca: …which may mean it might actually get read.

Dave: Oh, that’s an interesting point, yeah.

John: Another reason for using Google apps is that they are something that most students have worked with in elementary and secondary school, because Google Classroom is a really commonly used tool and students are already used to that environment. Another thing that I’ve liked about Google Apps is the ease of collaboration where students can collaborate in real time on Google docs, Google slides, or Google sheets and that just doesn’t always work quite as smoothly in other Office applications as it does in Google apps..

Dave: Yeah, I feel like Microsoft is always like six to 12 months behind Google when it comes to innovation in the collaboration. So it’s nice to have that ecosystem. I think it’s also worth noting for the collaboration, and I’m glad you said that, the LMS doesn’t have collaboration built in, at least at the faculty level. So if there are two or three other people in the department teaching the same class I am, but different sections, it’s a little cumbersome for us to ask to be in each other’s section. And you can easily screw things up. So if we have a lot of our content in Google Docs, again, we don’t need to be bothering Jeff Dugan, who’s the Assistant Director of Online Learning at FLCC and say, “Hey, Jeff, can you add me to the sections over here?” we can just manage that ourselves in Google Drive.

Rebecca: I really appreciate the collaborative nature of Google Docs and just the Google apps generally. I use that as well for peer feedback and evaluation. I like the flattening of the hierarchy between the faculty member and the student. And you can collaborate on things. It works really well when I’m working with upper-level students or graduate students where the process really is more of a mentorship or more collaborative in nature in the first place. And it’s happening more in real time. But I always am concerned about the ability to document and maintain copies of things. Because when the students own the thing, then you have to develop a system to back stuff up, when if they’re uploading a document or something to an LMS, that backup is kind of happening. Do you have any strategies for that?

Dave: I’m working on this software right now, and I had this working with Blackboard and then we switched Brightspace so I have to change the paradigm. But I actually create my content, all the Google Docs, all the Google Sheets, whatever I’m going to do in one folder, and then I get a roster for my students. And I effectively make a folder for each student, and I give them read/write access to that folder, but I’m still the document owner, and then I can push out, I can copy all the documents into each of their folders. That is, I think, the golden standard. And then at the end of the semester, I can turn that work over to the student and I can make copies if I so choose. So I had all that infrastructure written and it was working great in Blackboard, so I’m back to square one with Brightspace. But that’s not stopping me because I still think it’s valuable even if I don’t necessarily have access to their work after the semester ends. There is a revisions feature in Google Docs too, which a lot of people don’t know about. And this is why I keep using the same syllabus that I’ve been using since 2019. I make changes whenever I need to, if there’s a typo, or if I change it from fall to spring. And if a student comes back to me, and they say, “Hey, I’m transferring, I need the syllabus from two semesters ago. Can you give that to me?” I just go to that same document, I go to file revisions, and I can pick a date and it rolls back to that date. I print it, give it to the student, and then I go back. So it’s not a perfect system, but it’s a good enough system that I think covers all my bases for right now.

Rebecca: In the past, I just had a folder that I had students submit their work in. [LAUGHTER] It was like “Put your copy here, please.”

Dave: And I think one of the things we didn’t really talk about and I think you were talking about it, but I hadn’t really considered this, is the group work. It’s just so much easier. You don’t have to make the different groups in your LMS and then articulate who has access to what, it’s all built in. To be clear, I love the LMS because it can have those features, I would never just use Google Docs alone. I need the LMS to distribute the content to say who can see what and when to manage the grades and have the assessments. But the Google docs are kind of the meat of what I use. So the skeleton is the LMS and the Google docs are the meat.

John: For quite a few years, I’ve had students do some open pedagogy projects, where they’re working in groups for their own components, but they also are working on some shared materials. And I just download a spreadsheet from our registration system with all their email addresses in it, and use that to share that class folder with them, and then just create subfolders for each group and let them work in there. And then when they’re ready to share it with the rest of the class for peer review, we just copy it from those sub folders, and they have access to it as long as they don’t remove the access after the semester is done. And it’s worked really nicely, because the basic issue Rebecca was talking about is sometimes when students would share a URL to a file, they forgot to change the access so that other people could view it. But if they start in a document that you already have access to, all those problems just go away and that makes it a lot easier.

Dave: It sure does. And in fact, Rebecca, that problem I have all the time. So my very first assignment in all my classes is: make a copy of this Google Doc, share it appropriately, and send me the link. And because there’s these interactive checkboxes that you can do in Google Docs, I have a checklist. So I kind of get rid of that problem immediately. But I’m glad you talked about also open pedagogy. It was either one of your podcasts, or maybe it was Teaching in Higher Ed, but I was listening to some stuff about open pedagogy. And also, I’m married to the director of the library at MCC. And so that might have had something to do with it. And we created at FLCC our Java textbook. It is all open pedagogy. The faculty kind of did the bones, but the students, and this textbook’s been around for like three or four years now, the students, even today I’m getting email messages like such and such made this change… that even today, someone’s like, “Hey, it would be really cool if you thought about talking about this.” So we get hundreds of comments every semester, because our one open textbook is commented on by all the students… we share it so that they can comment. And likewise, in my principles of information security class, we have the students every semester look at a recent cybersecurity issue, debrief what happened, and give an analysis of like this could have been avoided if you’ve done a, b and c. So they create them in Google Docs, I aggregate them all into a PDF, and then that PDF lives in Google Drive, and I actually embed it in the course. So students next semester can see all the work that the students have done this semester. And there is a conversation that students have about Creative Commons, so they know what they’re getting into.

John: One of the things you shared in that workshop presentation was a tool that would allow you to use markup to create documents outside of the LMS that could then be embedded in the LMS. And that’s specifically in Brightspace, so this may not be as generally applicable. But could you talk a little bit about that tool and why you might want to do that.

Dave: I would love to talk about this tool. And I would love to take credit for it, but I can’t. Aaron Sullivan, who’s a professor in the department, came up with it and he was suffering a different tyranny, not the tyranny of repetition. He was the tyranny of formatting your texts in Blackboard only when you hit the submit button, it wouldn’t render how you thought it would. He’s like “There’s got to be a better way.” So he started this project in Blackboard, and then when we switched to Brightspace, he tweaked it for Brightspace. It takes someone like me, who is very good at math, computer science, but I have no eye for design, and my students think that I’m a graphic design luminary. What his software does is just… I can’t even describe it, you’ll have to go back and watch the video, but it thrives on markdown, which is a very simple language. In Microsoft Word you might highlight text and then hit the bold button to make it bold. Or if you’re savvy you might hit Ctrl-B or Command-B if you’re on a Mac to make it bold. Markdown is even lower level than that. So you would say for bold, I think, you put an asterisk before the words, before the text and after the text, and italics will be an underline. But Aaron’s gone bonkers with this. And he’s come up with all sorts of ways with very, very easy to apprehend markdown codes, make your course in Brightspace just eye-poppingly delicious. It is unbelievable. I can’t say enough good things about it. And you kind of have to know a little bit about markdown, but it’s the kind of thing where you can easily digest and be like today I’m going to work on bullet points, and bullet points, by the way, it’s just an asterisk. I’m going to work on bullet points, and then it converts it to all the HTML and just paste the HTML into your course. And then maybe the next day like “Oh, I really want to do the accordions because Brightspace has the accordions built in, and also the tabbed interfaces. But it’s really hard with the way Brightspace is setup, at least at Fingerlakes, to have both of those on the same page. So Aaron has distilled everything to be a very easy language where you can just do like ^acc, and that creates an accordion. It’s awesome. It just saves so much work. And then we actually save all our text files. We use GitHub and I make it public but you could use it in OneDrive or in Google Drive. You just host these text files. So when it comes time next semester and you want to tweak things, you just tweak this text file, run it through Aaron’s software, which is at LEARNBrightspace.com You run it through the software and it translates everything to the HTML with the JavaScript and the CSS and you just paste it in Brightspace and it works and it looks gorgeous and it’s responsive. It has heightened my aesthetic game by about 1,000,000,000%.

John: And the way the accordions, for example, in Brightspace work is there’s an accordion template that you can use as a style sheet. The default page has 6 blank accordion templates on it corresponding to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 item accordions, and then you delete the ones you’re not using. And then you just paste or type your content into that accordion template’s contents. But this tool, you don’t have to do any of that. And you’re not limited to a six-item accordion, if I recall correctly.

Dave: You can do more than six if you’re really brave with your HTML. But like, who knows what happens. And the other issue is you can’t do accordions and anything else, because the templates don’t have accordions and tabs, I don’t think. So if you want to have both those in one piece of content, then you kind of have to maybe open up another tab that’s like your sacrificial tab, and it’s just really, really wonky. So Aaron’s software, we’ve been calling it “Markdown to Brightspace.,” that’s the working name, anyhow. You can see that at LearnBrightspace.com. We will be building that out with videos and things to help people understand how to use the tool because it is more power than one person should wield.

Rebecca: That, at least, reduces high levels of irritation.

Dave: Yeah, Brightspace and Blackboard both have much better text editors than they did two years ago. The one and Brightspace, it’s just so unreliable, which is I think, what drove Aaron mad enough to make the software. And to your question earlier, John, I think that it did work for Blackboard and it can work for HTML, but we need to add some tweaks to it just to make sure that it’s universal. So right now, the predominant version is for Brightspace.

John: It would be nice if there was a universal translator type application that would generate the code in Blackboard, or Brightspace, or Canvas or any other commonly used LMS.

Dave: And Aaron’s is very, very close, it would really be just some small, small tweaks. But I will tell you, just last night, in my role at the Center for Teaching and Learning, I send out a newsletter every week. And I’ve been doing it in Outlook and you can do some things. And last night, I was like, I wonder if I can use Aaron’s software to do this. So I use the markdown I created an email, like a template, and then instead of copying the HTML code, I literally highlighted all the HTML, not the code, but the actual like images and graphics and stuff. And I just pasted it into Outlook, and it is gorgeous. It is absolutely beautiful. So perhaps that might be a way to have that work in other LMS’s, I would encourage people to look at that video. Because I think that having the how to of how to do all the things we’ve been talking about might help. And that was the video from your professional development in January. And just keep coming back to LEARNBrightspace.com. By the way, it’s not monetized and I don’t track you or anything… purely putting out there for the benefit of the world. But we’ll be publishing more stuff on Brightspace, some really cool, wacky things you can do there, we’re going to be putting out some really cool, wacky things you can do with Google Docs. And we’re going to be doing some really cool wacky things that you can do with Aaron’s markdown software.

Rebecca: Sounds exciting, and it’s interesting that you’ve said all these things that are coming. But our last question is always: “What’s next?” And now you have to come up with something else.

Dave: Well, I knew that was going to be your question, I thought I could preempt that. But I would say some of the things that I’m working on right now is first of all accessibility. So if anyone out there is listening to this and is an accessibility expert and wants to team up with me to refine my processes, and I can see you waving to me so maybe we can chat offline and really just check this and make it more accessible. The other thing is, I’m working on a few other projects that I think would be of benefit to educators and not of benefit to anyone else. And that all uses Google Docs. So for instance, I have a spreadsheet where I keep comments that I might use for different assignments. But then one of the reasons I really like Google Docs, being a computer nerd, is every Google Doc and Google sheet has a JavaScript component to it. So you can build software off spreadsheets. So some of the software I built is this comment generator. So you manage the comments in your Google Sheet, and then you hit a button and it pops up this nice window with all the comments and it’s tabbed for the different classes you teach. And you can just click on the comment, it copies it into your clipboard, and then you can just paste it. So when you’re grading, and assessing other students’ work, it just makes it go a little bit faster. And I’m also working on rebuilding that tool that I was talking about earlier, where it can spin off Google Docs for all the students in your class, and then you own them until the end of the semester where you can turn custody over to them. So I’m constantly building tools to help me be faster and better at what I do. And hopefully sharing those with other people along the way.

Rebecca: Yeah, if you need a user tester for backing up documents. [LAUGHTER]

Dave: Yeah, I would happily swap that experience with some accessibility knowledge.

Rebecca: That sounds fair. Well, thanks so much for joining us. It’s always a pleasure, and we always take away something new.

John: Thank you. It’s great talking to you, as always,

Dave: Yeah, it’s great seeing you too. And thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I just listened to, I think I told you this, but I listened to the most recent episode about Chet GPT and it blew me away. So keep doing what you’re doing because every episode is better than the previous, with the possible exception of this one. This one might be one of the low points, but the rest of them I really enjoy listening to.

John: Well, thank you

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

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253. Designing for Trauma

Posted in ableism, access, accessibility, accommodation, belonging, disability, emotion, higher education, inclusion, inclusive pedagogy, learning, self-care, trauma, trigger warnings, universal design
September 7, 2022

 Universal Design for Learning principles were developed to make our courses more accessible for all students. In this episode, Andrea Nikischer joins us to discuss how universal design principles can be expanded to address the trauma that can adversely impact student learning. Andrea is an Associate Professor and Program Coordinator for the Adult Education Program in the Social and Psychological Foundations of Education Department at SUNY Buffalo State.

Show Notes

  • Nikischer, A. B. (2021). Universal Design for Trauma.
  • Nikischer, A. (2018). Life after# MeToo: Understanding the impact of adolescent sexual assault on education and career. International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research, 17(10), 86-98.
  • Horsman, J. (2013). Too scared to learn: Women, violence, and education. Routledge.
  • Horsman, Jenny (2006). “Who will hear? Who will see? The Impact of Violence on Learning: A Historical Journey.” Canadian Woman Studies/les cahiers de la femme. Ending Woman Abuse, Vol. 25 No. 1.
  • Horsman, Jenny (2005). Moving Beyond “Stupid”: Taking Account of the Impact of Violence on Women’s Learning The International Journal of Educational Development, Gender Equality in Adult Education, Vol. 26, Issue 2.
  • Nikischer, A. (2019). Vicarious trauma inside the academe: Understanding the impact of teaching, researching and writing violence. Higher Education, 77(5), 905-916.

Transcript

John: Universal Design for Learning principles were developed to make our courses more accessible for all students. In this episode, we examine how universal design principles can be expanded to address the trauma that can adversely impact student learning.

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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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John: Our guest today is Andrea Nikischer. Andrea is an Associate Professor and Program Coordinator for the Adult Education Program in the Social and Psychological Foundations of Education Department at SUNY Buffalo State. Welcome, Andrea.

Andrea: Thank you so much for inviting me. It’s great to be here.

John: Right before this. We were talking a little bit about this, and you were a student here. So welcome back.

Andrea: Thank you. I loved my time at Oswego State, and I still have my mug and my sweatshirt in my office at Buffalo State. So it’s great to continue being part of the SUNY family.

Rebecca: It’s so great to have you here. Today’s teas are:… Andrea, are you drinking tea?

Andrea: I am. I actually love tea. And today….

Rebecca: Yay!

Andrea: …I’m drinking my regular afternoon tea, which is a double green matcha from the Republic of Tea.

Rebecca: Nice. And I noted like a really beautiful mug.

Andrea: I am an avid tea drinker since I was in my teens. So it’s wonderful to be able to talk about tea… one of my favorite subjects.

Rebecca: it looks like a mint colored mug with, is it butterflies?

Andrea: They are birds, birds of peace, I think is the theme of the mug.

Rebecca: Awesome.

John: And I am drinking a ginger tea.

Rebecca: And I have English breakfast today.

John: And next time you’re on campus, stop by the CELT office where we have over 100 teas available.

Andrea: Oh, I’d love to.

Rebecca: …always welcoming tea drinkers.

John: We invited you here to talk about the presentation that you gave at the SUNY Conference on Instruction and Technology. Rebecca was able to attend that… I wasn’t able to because I had to be in another session at the time. So this is a chance for me to catch up a little bit on that and so that we can share this more broadly. Your presentation was titled Universal Design for Trauma. Maybe we should start by talking about how prevalent trauma is.

Andrea: That is a really great and, I think, complicated question. I actually have been working with trauma since really right out of my undergraduate degree at Oswego. And I started work at a rape crisis center. And I worked in the sex offense squad of a police department as a victim’s advocate. And my interest, when I moved into education, was in studying the impact of trauma on educational outcomes and what I call the life pipeline or career and life trajectories. But when I wrote this paper, it was 2019 in the fall, before COVID, before we knew what was coming. And at the time, we were really looking at statistics, around 70% of adults in the US will have experienced trauma at some point in their life. Obviously, depending on what age group we’re talking about, the statistics will be different, but over the course of the life around 70%. Now, today, post COVID with the extreme increase in gun violence and mass shootings, with a televised violent attack on the US Capitol, with a war, climate disasters, and crisis, I think it’s really difficult to measure what the true number is, and that, indeed, the best response is to assume that close to 100% of the population has dealt with some form of trauma in their life, and certainly through the global pandemic and more recent crises. As I’m sure you know, here in Buffalo, we had a white supremacist mass shooting, towards the end of the semester. Our students live and work in that community. And so for us in returning to school in the fall, we will certainly be treating the situation as if every student has a history of trauma.

Rebecca: You and others have investigated the impact of trauma on academic outcomes. Can you talk a little bit about this research?

Andrea: Absolutely. There’s a fairly large body of quantitative research in Europe, as well as some studies here in the US, showing a clear, significant negative relationship between trauma and academic outcomes. Trauma is interrupting the academic process leading to lowered academic success or achievement, as well as lowered career status or career achievement. And really, some of the research can show that over the course of a lifetime, we’re seeing actually a significant reduction in earnings. So you’re seeing the sort of interruption points when trauma is experienced during youth and adolescence that is interrupting the educational outcomes. So if we’re seeing that trauma before age 16, some of the studies before age 18, or 21, we’re seeing that interruption during adolescence, during emerging adulthood, that really important period between 18 and whenever you become an adult, which, you know, can vary based on who you are, but usually we’re looking at 18 to 29 and beyond. That’s the most important sort of period for setting up your future career and earnings. So when we see trauma happening before or during that period, we’re seeing the most significant impact on educational outcomes, career outcomes, and again, lifetime earnings. I conduct qualitative research. And so I’m building on the work of Jenny Horsman from Canada and other researchers who’ve studied, through qualitative methods, the direct impact on education. She has really terrific work, “Too Scared to Learn,” and my research validates and extends her previous work showing that, specifically sexual violence, makes it extremely difficult to learn, work, complete assignments, engage in the educational experience during adolescence or emerging adult. And, so my participants were raped or sexually assaulted as a child or as a teenager. And we really went through how that process impacted their educational trajectory. And the results are just very significant in terms of how they describe the change in their relationship with schooling after the sexual assault. So you have students who are honor students, all As, dropping to Cs, Ds, Fs, and really nobody asking about trauma. What is going on here? Lots of questions, but nobody getting the key question of was there a trauma? …and specifically was there a sexual assault or sexual violence? The last piece of that point is that, for my participants, we are talking about a significant change to their engagement with schooling. And one of the most famous, or I should say, one of the most moving quotes from my research, which has been published in a few different areas. One of my participants said, “I go to school, and they want me to know about the first, second, third President, but I don’t care about the first, second and third President, I’m thinking about going home to slit my wrists, schooling just doesn’t have importance anymore.” And so I had participants who spoke about having commitment to schooling, wanting to go to Ivy League schools, wanting to have really significant career aspirations. And then after the sexual assault, just completely focusing on an eating disorder. Schooling was replaced by this unhealthy mechanism for dealing with trauma. So, right now, trauma is widespread. And we don’t know yet what the long-term impacts will be for the students of the COVID pandemic, for the students dealing with widespread school shootings and fear of mass shootings. But we have a clue from the previous research that there are serious risks to long-term educational outcomes and career achievement and earnings.

Rebecca: There’s been a lot of conversation during the pandemic about digital accessibility and universal design for learning to address students with disabilities and mental health has certainly come more into that conversation. And you’ve proposed a universal design for trauma. Can you talk a little bit about what that framework looks like? And how that relates to Universal Design for Learning?

Andrea: Oh, yes, I’d be happy to. Let me start by saying I’m building off the amazing work done with universal design, starting with construction accessibility questions and moving into learning. And in fact, many scholars had previously tied trauma and mental health directly to accessibility concerns. I’m certainly not the first to make that connection. But I think I was in a great position having the experience working in trauma as a rape crisis counselor, and then moving into education, teaching 100% online for the last 10 years, having that sort of perspective, both worlds. For me, universal design is all about making sure that all of our students can fairly and successfully participate in learning. And so we’ve done a lot of work thinking about accessibility in a variety of different settings, but not much had been done in terms of asking questions about trauma. For my work as a rape crisis counselor, and through my research with survivors of trauma often was discussed that students would struggle in particular scenarios in their education. So a universal design builds on this great previous work of Universal Design for Learning, and focuses specifically on addressing the needs of students with a trauma history. Like all forms of universal design, this benefits everyone. So even if you don’t have a trauma history, sometimes you may experience distress if content is presented in a way that is not thoughtful, and that content has the ability to cause distress among the students. So trauma triggers are something we talk a lot about in the trauma field, and certainly is a major issue of concern in educating students with a history of trauma. Trauma triggers are really very personal typically. So it might be a site, a smell, a song, something that brings you back to that trauma. But there are some content areas that are universally considered universal triggers or universally triggering: content on war, content on sexual assault, sexual violence, content on suicide. These content areas can even cause distress in students without a trauma history. So universal design is certainly focused on students with a trauma history, but has the ability to make the learning environment more successful for everyone, healthier for every student.

Rebecca: In your framework, you lay out five principles for universal design for trauma. Can you give us a little insight into those five principles?

Andrea: Yes, I can. So these are the five things that I focus on in my work. So there are certainly other things that I think can and should be brought into the conversation. But for me, the five things that I really focus on when building a course, address what I think are some of the most important concerns for students. So I should say, I teach courses on sexual assault and family violence and other areas that are potentially universally distressing. And so I started building this concept of universal design, probably 10 years ago, in what I call “teaching sensitive topics online.” I did a lot of presentations and writing and professional development about teaching sensitive topics. But universal design goes beyond that to say that every class has the potential for triggering past trauma. So it’s not just those courses teaching sensitive topics, but all courses. And one of the reasons I moved into a more universal focus was because a lot of my students in my courses who were not being taught anything potentially distressing, were disclosing violence to me in personal journals, and other assignments, in large part because they knew my professional history and research area, but also because trauma can be triggered outside of those universals. But let me talk a little bit about those pieces that I’ve included in a universal design for trauma. And the first one is strategic content planning. So the first question educators must ask themselves: is this trauma content central to the learning objectives of the course or program? So when we are teaching a course, truly any course, the first thing we want to do is scan that course to see if there is any potentially distressing content included. And again, we’re looking for those universal trauma triggers: war, violence, violent imagery, sexual assault, police violence, etc. So the first step is really to say, is there anything in this course that could trigger trauma? And the next step is to say, if it’s here, does it need to be here? I’m very concerned about the what I call gratuitous inclusion of trauma content. I am a dedicated proponent of academic freedom. I never want to tell any faculty member what they should teach or what they can teach, but I do encourage faculty to take a close look at all materials they use that have the potential to be distressing and/or trigger past trauma and to ask themselves, is this content necessary in this course? Is it directly linked to the student learning outcomes? Is it the best possible resource to use in this course? I teach courses on family violence. The entire course is potentially triggering, I cannot remove that material, nor should I. It is directly linked to the student learning outcomes. So it’s going to stay in the course. But I’ve had other courses where I’ve wanted to include something. One example would be my diversity course, where I’ve had materials included and I’ve had to go back and reconsider if it is the right way to approach the material we’re covering in the course. Even if the materials linked to the student learning outcomes, it’s asking, Do I need to include this potentially distressing, potentially triggering, content in the course, that’s step one. And then if we do need to include it, we move on to another step, or how to deal with that. But I’m very concerned about just including a story about incest in a certain community, because we like the story, and then not really thinking about how the trauma of that story may impact the learning in the course, because we don’t want our students learning to be stifled because they have been triggered or are experiencing distress. So it’s really about the thoughtful process of selecting materials that are directly linked to our student learning outcomes, and not including any gratuitous.

Rebecca: So for folks that aren’t typically teaching topics that would be universally triggering, this first step is the key one for them to focus on?

Andrea: Well, yes, I mean, it’s the beginning. I think they’re all key in their own way [LAUGHTER]. But this one is most closely linked to our step on content and trigger warnings, which is an important part of the process. But I do think this is one that opens a lot of faculty’s minds to what is going on in their own course. A lot of faculty members, if they are not explicitly teaching a course on a sensitive topic may not be doing the thoughtful review of content to sort of find where there may be the potential for trauma or stress. So this is definitely a universal step that applies to all faculty members teaching all courses, both those with trauma content, and those that do not focus on a trauma topic.

John: A while ago, I ran into a situation where I had a reading in my introductory microeconomics class that looked at the marginal cost and marginal benefits of trying to improve safety on airlines by adding additional exit doors and such things. What I didn’t realize was that I had a student in the class whose father had just been shut down in the Gulf War, just a week or so before that. And ever since then, I’ve been much more careful in selecting material that might have that sort of an impact, because it was something I had not considered and it had not been an issue before, until it was.

Andrea: That is such a great point. And even I, who have been working in this issue of teaching sensitive topics for so long and thinking about trauma, have found that in the courses that don’t focus on a sensitive topic, I’m more likely to not be as thoughtful about the potential impact of materials. Thank you for sharing that example. Very relevant.

Rebecca: So I think the second principle in your framework is trigger and content warnings.

Andrea: Yes, and step two, the second principle is really connected, obviously to the first step or principle in that, if we have identified content that has the potential to trigger past trauma or cause distress, then we need to include the trigger and/or content warning. I actually did a project on trigger warnings, a research project around 2018. And you may remember 2015-16, there was a lot of heated debate about trigger warnings: Are we coddling students? Are we dumbing down the curriculum? Are we violating academic freedom? And where I landed on that in this research project was that this in no way requires a faculty member not to teach something. It simply is a matter of accessibility for their students. By telling your students in advance that something potentially triggering or distressing is coming, you give them the opportunity to prepare for that learning. When a trigger comes out of the blue, when you’re not expecting it, that is one of the most high risk times for having a negative reaction or a negative trauma response. So it doesn’t require faculty to change what they’re teaching or to eliminate rigor in any way. It simply allows students to know in advance that the content may be challenging to them in some way. So it was great that I was able to do that research project before this. And in fact, several scholars who were on the… it really was a debate… many of the papers were written as a debate. Many of the scholars on the side of the pro-trigger warning debate linked it directly to accessibility. And so I was able to sort of build from their wonderful work and from the arguments they made in that 2015-16-17 trigger warning debate. So what is a trigger warning? What is a content warning? it does not need to be complicated. I train the medical students at the University at Buffalo in family violence identification and reporting. And my number one takeaway is do not overcomplicate, it does not need to be complicated. All you need to do is say, we are going to be talking about, reading about, watching a film on, whatever the activity is, a topic that could be distressing to some students, please know that this content is coming. And then I always refer them back to the resources on campus and in the community. It can be one sentence, a simple heads up to let students know this may be distressing content. And if you’re on YouTube, or Twitter or Tik Tok, you’ll see actually a lot of these videos and imagery is now labeled with those really quick trigger and content warnings. Just a sentence is fine. Again, you’re just letting the student know: it’s coming, I don’t want to catch you off guard.

John: The next point in your framework for universal design for trauma is what to do about those situations where there may be some content that will be triggering for people. And what do you suggest in those cases?

Andrea: So my next step, or principle, whatever we want to call it, is alternative readings and assignments. So I always encourage faculty who are teaching particularly courses that are focused on sensitive material, but even those that include some unit or smaller section, with potentially distressing or triggering material to set up, where possible, alternative readings and assignments. So I’ll give you some examples of what I do. In my course on family violence, the whole course is potentially triggering. I cannot remove every reading and assignment. But I am very thoughtful about how I approach the work in that course. For example, we read a autobiography, which describes the experience of a sexual assault during college and the long-term impact on that woman’s life, including drug addiction, recovery, and moving on through the phases of her life. I like this book, because it shows the long-term impact in a narrative way. As a qualitative researcher, i love those narrative data. But there is one chapter in the text, which is an extremely graphic description of the stranger rape. And so I label this reading ahead of time, I tell students before the course begins, before they have bought their books, on the reading calendar, and in several locations. You do not need to read this chapter. This chapter is distressing, it is potentially triggering, and you don’t need to read it to get the value of the text. It is a chapter you can eliminate without any repercussion to your learning about this topic. So, in that case, we’re still reading the book, but we’re taking out the most distressing part of the text and I always make it optional. And a key point of any alternative reading or alternative assignment is that it has to be universal. You cannot ask a student to come to you to seek an accommodation. We do not want to force a trauma survivor to come to us to disclose their trauma, to seek an alternative reading or assignment. Please don’t do that. It needs to be built in… that universal design, right? That is the whole concept of universal design, is it is built in for everyone. So that optional chapter is optional for everyone, it does not matter what their trauma history is. And in that same course for the final assessment, which is really the big culminating assessment for the course, I allow the student to choose from five different options: a research paper, a book review, a lesson plan, a community service experience, or creating a domestic violence workplace protocol. I do this because it gives students choice and agency over how they will engage in a very time consuming way with content that is potentially triggering. So if one of my students is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, they may be very comfortable creating a domestic violence workplace protocol, that material may not be triggering to them in the same way that forcing them to write a paper about childhood sexual abuse would be. Perhaps they want to write a paper on elder abuse… also fine. We’re allowing them to decide, for them, what is the best, healthiest way for me to engage with this content? And how will I be most successful. And I can tell you as a faculty member that grades many, many graduate papers, having a variety of different projects come in every semester is a benefit for me too. It makes that grading process much more interesting. And students love it. And it is very closely linked to Universal Design for Learning which values choice for students. And in adult education, we value that self-directed learning and giving students the agency to really tie their work to what’s important to them in their career or personal life.

Rebecca: You mentioned earlier about providing access to campus and community resources as one of your key steps. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Andrea: Absolutely, and that is step or principle four. I am extremely focused on this. And I really tell faculty everywhere I go, I tell faculty, I do this and ask them to do this. And I show them my Blackboard course site. And in all of those Brightspace meetings, I’m asking where can I put my campus and community resources. I build campus resources and community resources. It has to be both. Some students will never see assistance on campus. Many students who’ve experienced trauma do not want to relive that trauma where they go to school, where they work, and they would rather seek services off campus. You have to provide both campus and community resources so the student can select what is best for their needs. But I build in those campus and community resources on my syllabus, of course, but also right on my Blackboard course page, soon to be Brightspace. I put them in the left-hand navigation bar at the top, they are front and center in every single course that I teach. And in the post COVID world, not post-COVID, but world after COVID came, students really need these resources. We’re finding at Buffalo State, as I’m sure you are at Oswego, that the student needs for crisis intervention and mental health counseling and support are extensive. So it’s been very well received by my students. And I just build it in, make it a priority. Every time you log on, you can see that there is help for you should you need it. This is also important for me because I have worked in the field as a crisis counselor doing crisis intervention, doing street outreach and advocacy. But I am not a counselor at Buffalo State. And I cannot counsel my students at Buffalo State, it would be unethical for me to try to take on that role. So I want to make sure my students can go to someone that can provide those services to them. And so before they try to come to me to seek those services, which I cannot ethically provide, I’ve made sure they know where they can go. And if they come to me, I listen and refer, listen and refer. That is my role as a faculty member. F aculty cannot and should not be providing counseling,

Rebecca: Such good reminders. I think often when faculty are thinking about trauma, they’re thinking this is not a thing I can take on. I’m not qualified. I don’t have this expertise. But the reminders that the job here is to refer and to provide those resources is a really helpful one.

Andrea: Yes, absolutely. It can be scary to think about opening the can of worms and that’s the phrasing the survivors in my research study used particularly related regarding their K through 12 teachers thinking maybe they didn’t want to ask me questions about if I was a survivor because they didn’t want to open that can of worms. They didn’t know how to deal with it. But a faculty member’s role is to listen and refer. We are not counselors, and even though I am qualified, it would be unethical for me to attempt to do that in that role.

Rebecca: I remember from your presentation that you also talked about having students reflect on a self- care plan to make sure that they have actions that they can take in case they did become distressed. Can you talk a little bit about that? And does that relate to this step?

Andrea: Yes, it does, thank you.

Rebecca: I took good notes. [LAUGHTER]

Andrea: Thank you so much. Yes, a self care plan is critical. All of my students do a lot of work with personal journals. As an online instructor, I find that journaling is a great way for me to have a one-on-one conversation with my students in a safe and private space. And so the first journal entry in every course every semester is setting your goals and objectives for the course. What do you hope to learn? How will you know you’ve learned it? What do you need from me to be successful in this course? And then I include the question: please create a self-care plan for the semester. How will you take care of yourself if you encounter distressing content, or distressing situations in this course, and in that personal journal, the students can begin to build that self-care plan. I can comment on that plan, remind them of those campus and community resources and be sure that they have thought in advance about what they will do if they experience distress or trauma.

Rebecca: Is that something that you recommend for courses that might not be those sensitive topics?

Andrea: Yes, many semesters, I have more disclosures in courses with no focus on trauma content, but perhaps we are talking about K-12 schooling and a student is brought back to an incident of bullying. And they’ve been triggered by content that was not directly related to bullying, or a potentially triggering topic, but they were brought back in time, and in so doing, they experienced dis stress. I do it in every course. I recommend everyone do it in every course universally, because it is an easy step. And again, our students, particularly right now, are experiencing so much in the world that a self-care plan is, I think, extremely valuable for everyone in every course.

John: And the last principle you list is instructor protections. Could you talk about that a little bit?

Andrea: Absolutely. This is one of my passion projects is thinking about and talking about the impact of teaching, researching, and writing trauma on a faculty member. So I’ve written about my own experience with vicarious and secondary trauma in an article “Vicarious Trauma Inside the Academe” published in the journal Higher Education. It’s an autoethnography that really goes through a process of discovering I was experiencing secondary traumatic stress, and learning how to deal with that in my various roles, certainly starting with my work as a rape crisis counselor, but then experiencing it again when I was interviewing and transcribing those long and painful qualitative interviews from survivors of sexual assault, and dealing with them. My role on campus as an expert and being asked to watch a film and comment on what to do. I often found myself in a situation where it was assumed that I would be fine just because of the role I have on campus or as a researcher, as a writer, whatever it may be, but a faculty member is not immune to the distress from the content they are teaching and from student disclosure, even in courses where I am not teaching trauma content, students disclose to me, they find me on campus, they come up to me at poster sessions, they seek me out because they know what I’ve done and what I do with my research. And so that has had an impact on me and I have tried to speak about it and advocate for faculty members taking care of themselves. In my scholarship, I really put it at a higher level. I think our campuses need to take care of their faculty members a little bit better than perhaps they have in the past. The world is changing. We are dealing with students with high levels of stress, distress. We are dealing with mass shootings in our community, with political instability, with a range of illnesses and viruses and global pandemics. It is not an easy time to be a faculty member. And it is not helpful to pretend that we are immune to feelings because we are not. And so I always talk to faculty about taking care of themselves. What is your self-care plan? Because for me, when I experienced that secondary traumatic stress, I couldn’t write. These journal articles took a lot longer than I wanted them to, because I just couldn’t go back to the material to repeat it again. It is difficult to do the work well, if you are not healthy, if you are dealing with stress, distress, or potentially vicarious or secondary trauma. And so, for me, that’s a big piece. This is, I would say, an exploding area of research. So, there is just myriad scholarship right now coming out around faculty members, instructors and teachers and their own experiences with trauma, secondary trauma and secondary traumatic stress. So there are many wonderful articles available for those faculty members who’d like to read more, and I am always available. If anyone ever wants to have a chat about teaching sensitive topics or about universal design for trauma or just dealing with trauma in our students and in the world, they are welcome to email me and I am always available to my friends in SUNY and beyond.

Rebecca: What are some things that you would recommend faculty think about for a self-care plan? I know this is something that’s on the minds of a lot of faculty having gone through a couple of years of teaching during a pandemic and really dealing with a lot of student disclosures.

Andrea: Absolutely a very pressing issue. I actually spoke at a professional development conference at Fredonia this winter break, which was 100% focused on self care: How do we take care of ourselves? How do we deal with this very chaotic world, very distressing world, stress and distress and trauma, when it doesn’t end, it really compounds. So if the COVID pandemic was over, we’d all be dealing with the potential distressed trauma and after effects of that, but we would be ideally moving forward and healing. It’s not over. It’s changing and growing and shifting, and we have no idea of what is coming next. That is really a dangerous situation when it comes to trauma. Because when the trauma is ongoing, we just don’t have the time to heal. So self care becomes that much more important. Things I think about: One, preparing yourself, doing a trigger warning for yourself for those weeks, months, days that you will be specifically dealing with trauma content in your course. Two, making sure you understand what your roles and responsibilities are. Many faculty members are not aware that they are a mandatory reporter on campus for sexual assault and for domestic violence. Many faculty members do not know about the campus care team or emergency response team. It is really important for faculty to educate themselves on what their roles are, their responsibilities are, and who is available to assist them. Faculty are not alone. And if they feel like they are alone, the threat of distress and trauma is much greater. But I know that when I get a disclosure, I first have to report it through the online system if it is a recent disclosure. I rarely get disclosures that are current. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had one where a student is currently experiencing sexual assault or domestic violence, though certainly, many faculty do receive these. I think it’s just a matter of teaching graduate students online. It’s a different setting, but I am prepared for those. And the first step for any disclosure, no matter when the incident was, is to report through your campus reporting system. And then I contact the care team and I often go directly to the dean of students to ask for help. What do I need to do here? Can you remind me about my legal obligation? I’ve given the student resources, what else can I offer the student? if I am at all concerned about suicidal ideation, I immediately involve the crisis response or care team to assist with that, knowing that I have a team of people behind me, that I can email the Dean of Students, and she will get right back to me is extremely helpful, because a really big threat is feeling like you are alone. So preparing for content in advance, understanding your roles, responsibilities, and who is on campus to help you, and then doing those things, which to you, are self care. Buffalo State has offered meditation courses just about one every two weeks. I have taken all of them. That’s something that is really helpful and useful to me. For other people, it may be exercise or reading a certain book or going to a friend’s home, whatever it is, that’s the personal piece. So you have the campus understanding and then the personal piece as well.

Rebecca: Well, thanks so much for sharing such really important content, especially as we head into the fall and faculty are nervous and anxious about what this next semester of pandemic might look like.

Andrea: Thank you for having me. And just the last thing I’ll say is that faculty should know that they are not alone, and that their distress, stress, or feelings of trauma are justified by the world that we are living in, and that no one needs to pretend they are above the humanity of the time that we’re living in. And so I hope your campus and all of the campuses across SUNY and beyond begin to really prioritize the mental and emotional health, not only of students, but of faculty and staff asd well.

John: I think that’s an issue that all of our campuses need to focus on. And it’s been a tough time out there for everyone. So thank you.

Andrea: Thank you.

John: And we always end with the question, and which is very much related, of “What’s next?”

Andrea: Well, what’s next? I’ll answer it in several ways. One, I think that we need to continue the conversation and really advocating for addressing trauma in our higher education classes. Research, every setting in higher education must become aware that trauma is here, it is in our society, it is impacting our students, it is impacting our faculty, and we cannot pretend it is not an issue of concern. So for me, I’ll be continuing to write about and advocate for trauma concerns being addressed in higher education. I am working on the online oversight committee at my campus, and I’m working with one of the instructional designers. We’ve talked a lot about creating more training opportunities for faculty members related to learning about trauma and addressing trauma in their courses and among their students. So I’m excited to continue that work as well. But ultimately, the world has changed, higher education has changed. We are never going back to the world that we had before. And so we have to adapt to those changes that have really come very quickly in the past few years. And so step one is sort of admitting that higher education isn’t going to be what it used to be, and that we are ready and willing and able to do what needs to be done to help our students be successful. Because I expect in the fall, we are going to have students with a myriad of very significant challenges. And we are going to have faculty who need to be prepared to help those students address those challenges.

John: And it is a positive sign that students are so much more willing to disclose their mental health concerns than I think they ever had been in the past that may make secondary trauma a little bit more challenging to address, but it does allow us to get support to students when it’s needed.

Andrea: Absolutely, absolutely. And again, really making sure faculty understand they don’t have to solve the students’ problems. That’s not your role. You are a teacher, your role is to listen refer and, where needed, to connect directly to those campus resources like your care team and your sexual assault response office.

Rebecca: Thank you so much.

Andrea: Thank you so much for having me. I love the opportunity to be back virtually on the Oswego campus and it was wonderful speaking with you both.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

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221. Disability and Higher Education

Posted in ableism, access, accessibility, accommodation, disability, diversity, higher education, learning
January 5, 2022

Faculty, staff, and students with disabilities constantly have to negotiate when and if to disclose their disability status and whether or not to request accommodations. In this episode, Kat Macfarlane joins us to discuss the ADA and the experiences people with disabilities have in academia, including the burdens associated with accommodation requests.

Kat is a law professor at Southern University Law Center. She is a disability rights advocate, chairs the American Association of Law School Section on Disability Law, and co-founded an affinity group for disabled law professors and allies. Her work is published in the Fordham Law Review, the Alabama Law Review and Yale Law Journal Forum and many other journals.

Shownotes

  • Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
  • Twitter thread that prompted this podcast
  • Katherine A. Macfarlane, Disability Without Documentation, 90 Fordham L. Rev. 59 (2021). Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol90/iss1/2
  • Ms. JD Blog Series
  • Dorfman, D. (2019). Fear of the disability con: perceptions of fraud and special rights discourse. Law & Society Review, 53(4), 1051-1091.
  • Studies on laptops and notetaking:
    • Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological science, 25(6), 1159-1168.
    • Morehead, K., Dunlosky, J., & Rawson, K. A. (2019). How much mightier is the pen than the keyboard for note-taking? A replication and extension of Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014). Educational Psychology Review, 31(3), 753-780.
    • Aguilar-Roca, N. M., Williams, A. E., & O’Dowd, D. K. (2012). The impact of laptop-free zones on student performance and attitudes in large lectures. Computers & Education, 59(4), 1300-1308.
    • Artz, Benjamin and Johnson, Marianne and Robson, Denise and Taengnoi, Sarinda, Note-Taking in the Digital Age: Evidence from Classroom Random Control Trials (September 13, 2017).
    • Bui, D. C., Myerson, J., & Hale, S. (2013). Note-taking with computers: Exploring alternative strategies for improved recall. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105(2), 299.
    • Carter, S. P., Greenberg, K., & Walker, M. S. (2017). The impact of computer usage on academic performance: Evidence from a randomized trial at the United States Military Academy. Economics of Education Review, 56, 118-132.
    • Hembrooke, H., & Gay, G. (2003). The laptop and the lecture: The effects of multitasking in learning environments. Journal of computing in higher education, 15(1), 46-64.
    • Lang, James M. “The Distracted Classroom.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. March 13, 2017.
    • Patterson, R. W., & Patterson, R. M. (2017). Computers and productivity: Evidence from laptop use in the college classroom. Economics of Education Review, 57, 66-79.
    • Ravizza, S. M., Uitvlugt, M. G., & Fenn, K. M. (2017). Logged in and zoned out: How laptop internet use relates to classroom learning. Psychological science, 28(2), 171-180.
    • Sana, F., Weston, T., & Cepeda, N. J. (2013). Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peers. Computers & Education, 62, 24-31.
  • Accessing Higher Ground Conference
  • Mya on TikTok

Transcript

John: Faculty, staff, and students with disabilities constantly have to negotiate when and if to disclose their disability status and whether or not to request accommodations. In this episode we get a primer on the ADA and discuss the experiences people with disabilities have in academia, including the burdens associated with accommodation requests.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

[MUSIC]

Rebecca: Our guest today is Kat McFarlane, a law professor at Southern University Law Center. She is a disability rights advocate, chairs the American Association of Law School Section on Disability Law, and co-founded an affinity group for disabled law professors and allies. Her work is published in the Fordham Law Review, the Alabama Law Review and Yale Law Journal Forum and many other journals. Welcome, Kat.

Kat: Hi, thanks for having me.

John: Today’s teas are… Kat, are you drinking tea?

Kat: You know, I have an English grandmother, who… may she rest in peace… would be embarrassed to learn that her granddaughter is drinking Perrier today. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: Don’t worry, we’ve got you. We’ve got you. I have a tea that… I can’t remember what’s in my cup.

John: But there is a tea bag this time, right?

Rebecca: Yeah, there’s actual tea. I made a pot of tea. But I made it a while ago, and now I can’t remember what it is. It’s a black tea of some sort. I’m gonna have to go with that today, John. I really have no idea. [LAUGHTER]

John: And I have Twinings Christmas tea.

Rebecca: Oh, I had some of that earlier. So we invited you here today to discuss what it means to be disabled in higher education as both a student and as a faculty or staff member. You’ve written extensively about this subject in journal articles like “Disability Without Documentation,” and in your blog series for Ms. JD, and on Twitter. And in these spaces, you’ve identified yourself as a person with disabilities. Would you like to share a little more about that before we get started?

Kat: Yeah, absolutely. So I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis when I was 13 months old. So I’ve had RA, an autoimmune disease, my entire life, and I’ve been on very strong immunosuppressants my entire life. So, RA’s a joint disease… that alone makes me disabled but combined with the immunosuppressants I’m disabled in a variety of ways. Most of my disabilities play out as mobility impairments. However, unless you know what you’re looking for, or it happens to be a quite terrible day for me, in which I’m flaring, you’d likely wouldn’t know that I’m disabled. And I spent most of my life until my early 30s, being quite ashamed of what I was going through physically, really resisting the label of a person with disabilities. And no one really knew to the point where when I finally started talking and writing about it, friends from high school were shocked to learn what that’s an essential part of who I am.

John: To set the groundwork for the discussion, c ould you provide a bit of an overview of the Americans with Disabilities Act?

Kat: Sure, the ADA, as it’s referred to in legal circles, was passed in 1990. It’s a piece of civil rights legislation, and it was a result of decades of activism by allies, but mostly by people with disabilities themselves. And so it was intended to make all aspects of American life open to people with disabilities. So that includes employment, things like airplanes, public buildings, and what we’re going to talk about today, places of higher education. So one important thing that the ADA does, it views disability through what we call the social model. So we don’t think of people with disabilities as broken or in need of fixing, they exist outside of any kind of medical model or diagnosis, rather, the ADA and the social model looks at spaces and barriers. And the goal is to remove them so that everyone, including people with disabilities, can find space to exist equally alongside their non disabled peers. The ADA has a pretty specific definition of disability. And I say specific, it’s what we use legally, but it’s meant to incorporate all kinds of disability. So the working definition that we use is a disability under the ADA is a mental or physical impairment that substantially limits a major life activity. So my RA is a disability under the ADA. If you’re high risk for COVID because of asthma, you are disabled under the ADA, which of course has become very, very relevant over the last year and a half.

Rebecca: In academia, the primary way we often talk about disability, kind of unfortunately, is through the lens of accommodations. Can you talk a little bit about accommodations, and maybe also how that doesn’t always follow the social model. [LAUGHTER]

Kat: Accommodations, the way to think about them, are adjustments that make the learning environment so no one’s getting an advantage through an accommodation. And oftentimes, people have to ask for accommodations for things that really should be in place already. So an accommodation might mean installing an extra wheelchair ramp, there should already be a wheelchair ramp into any place of public education, maybe providing material in Braille, allowing students to have absences automatically excused to the extent that they need medical treatment related to their disability. And in the context of testing, giving either extra time on a test or something that I always encourage my students to ask for when they deal with panic attacks, for example, to have breaks that are untimed. So when you’re in front of the tests, the clock keeps on running, but to the extent there’s something you’re dealing with physically, maybe the clock for your break is unlimited. Things like accessible bathrooms are not accommodations. Schools, public buildings (private schools as well), have to have accessible bathrooms in there, you shouldn’t have to wait for a person with disabilities to arrive on campus. Same thing with service dogs, no one that has a service dog should have to get permission by way of an accommodation, they’re very limited questions that you can ask someone with a service dog. In general, we want to encourage and facilitate people to be able to bring their service dog to any place that they need to get to. So again, I would think of accommodations as fairly straightforward adjustments that facilitate equality. And I say fairly straightforward, because most of them are incredibly cheap. The rare accommodation is expensive, and we think of them in terms of equality. But there’s also limits on them. So you only get a reasonable accommodation. If an accommodation would change the nature of the learning environment, if it would undo a pedagogical purpose for a particular exam, for example, those accommodations don’t have to be granted. The ADA doesn’t say any accommodation whatsoever. It says only those accommodations that are reasonable. And cost does come into play in determining whether an accommodation is or is not reasonable.

John: Many institutions require documentation for disabilities, and that can serve as a barrier. And you wrote about that in your blog earlier. Could you talk a little bit about some of the barriers that are introduced by the requirements for documentation?

Kat: Sure, documentation typically requires a person with a disability to get a doctor to sign off on the fact that they’re disabled. You’re not supposed to have to do this, if you have an obvious disability, a legal rule. However, employers, places of higher education are very reluctant to call any kind of disability obvious. And I say that at the top, because there’s all of this suspicion that surrounds the assertions of people with disabilities make, both about the fact that they are disabled, and the kind of accommodations that they require. So typically, if you’re a student who needs any kind of accommodation, maybe that includes using a laptop in class, I know we’ll talk about that in a few moments, you are likely going to have to go to a doctor’s appointment, get a doctor to examine you to confirm that you’re disabled. And the doctor often has to write, themselves, what sort of accommodations you need, which adds on this additional layer of complexity because, in my case my rheumatologist, obviously never went to law school, doctors I continue to see do not work as law professors. So there’s this very strange requirement that we asked medical doctors to make recommendations about spaces they’ve never been in. The best case scenario: that takes one appointment, the doctor believes you, they sign off. But, what are we doing to people when we require them to get medical documentation of disability? They have to take time off whatever they’re doing… job, usually… school… doctors don’t work on weekends or after hours, they work the same time that classes are held. You have to go to a doctor’s appointment, travel to get there and back. You might not have money for that kind of transportation as a student. Parking at medical facilities is very expensive, gas or transport, If you have to add that on. If you’re in a new city, and you have to see a new doctor, even if your diagnosis was confirmed like me at birth, I’ve often had to provide additional documentation that the chronic and degenerative illness I have, in fact, I still have. I make jokes like, “Oh, is there a cure for RA that I didn’t hear about?” In any event, if you’re in a new city and you’re seeing a new doctor, you’re probably not going to get that form during a first time appointment, right? And I understand that a doctor might want to see you again. But we’re sending students down this very complex, very expensive, very time consuming path. Are their absences excused? Who knows? Another point to make here is that when documentation of disability turns on a health care professional’s assessment of your disability, we are now sending people into a system, medicine, that we know to be racist, and we know to be sexist, and that we know to disbelieve, in particular, women of color’s assertions of their pain. That absolutely crosses over into what doctors think certain demographics are saying and whether they’re to be believed when they make representations about their disability. There’s no uniform documentation form that every single university or grad school or law school uses. So, you might have filled out a one-page form at your undergrad institution and it was relatively straightforward and then have to start all over again once you get to grad school and pay out all this money, just to get, what we’ve just mentioned, was a tool of equality.

Rebecca: So you’re starting to describe, Kat, doesn’t really sound like the social model.

Kat: [LAUGHTER] No, it’s so dependent on medicine. And not everyone with a disability has to have as many interactions with healthcare providers as I do, for example, right? You may use a mobility aid, you may use a wheelchair and have to see a doctor every year or even less frequently. On top of that, the intricacies of your everyday life and what you need help with, what’s difficult, or what’s easy, even the understanding that you absolutely should be in the workplace is something that a doctor often will not understand. And just as we know that there’s an incredible amount of sexism and racism in medicine, ableism [LAUGHTER] is a terrible problem to the point where people in wheelchairs often can’t get into doctors’ offices, because medical spaces aren’t accessible to them. So Rebecca, thank you for mentioning that. It’s a point that’s at the heart of my “Disability Without Documentation” paper. And so not only are we tracking back to an idea that disability only exists if a doctor says it’s there, but we’re also treating a person with disability as someone who has something wrong with them. And you have to go to a doctor because only they will possibly know how you might be able to exist at school or exist in the workplace.

Rebecca: So what other models can we advocate for that would reduce this burden and help institutions move more towards inclusion for students, but also for faculty and staff.

Kat: So, I think every school should audit its accommodation process, look at how many pages accommodations forms are, if they’re more than two, you’re already asking a lot of people with disabilities. If there is a documentation requirement, it should be minimal. Anyone that already has documentation that includes a diagnosis should not be required to get anything new. If someone is discovering that they have a disability, and they’re now in a very intense academic program that requires accommodation that they might have not needed before, if they have to go to a doctor, I think they should be able to go to the Student Health Center and it should be free of charge, and it should be an appointment that students can get after hours. We often speak of our disability services offices as a part of the university that advocates on behalf of students. I’m sure there are places like that. Typically they’re not though, right? They’re offices that accept forms and decide some part of whether students are entitled or not entitled to accommodations, but they don’t then take on any other kind of advocacy role. So as institutes of higher ed, we should think about: Well, who is supporting students? Do they have access to mentors? Are we able to put students and even faculty in touch with other people who have gone through the accommodations process and can give them advice about how to navigate it? And then in turn, is there a feedback loop back to the institution about how to make the process better? I would also assume we all need training about implicit bias, right? But, we often don’t talk about disability in that discussion. There’s this overarching suspicion about people with disabilities. And a friend of mine Doran Dorfman has written an article called “Fear of the Disability Con,” and he describes how the epidemic is Americans’ fear that people with disabilities are faking. That’s statistically what we can measure. People with disabilities don’t fake. There’s so much discrimination that you face as soon as you identify yourself as a person with disabilities that why would you? So, we need to step aside from that model and assume that people are telling the truth. When you assume that people are telling the truth, you have less bureaucracy involved, [LAUGHTER] in your accommodations process, less people need to like double check or fill out paperwork, or even receive or review paperwork to begin with. And then finally, I would say, whenever we’re talking about accommodations, or people with disabilities, we have to speak as though people with disabilities are in the room because they are, right? I’ve sat through so many faculty meetings, where accommodations come up, and students are vilified. At my last institution, someone from the disability services offices came and gave a presentation and the only images of people with disability used were children with disabilities on playgrounds. I countered that with a presentation of my own, but I felt like I didn’t exist in that conversation. It was an invitation to talk about people and to other them. So the way we discuss students with disabilities has to be very different than what we’re doing right now.

John: One of the ways in which disability issues may come up in the classroom is that there are a lot of faculty who will not allow the use of any technology produced in the last couple of centuries in their classroom. How can that serve as a barrier to students with certain types of disabilities?

Kat: Yeah, I have this conversation with law professors, I guess I have this fight. Like every August I’ll tweet something and say: Just a reminder, laptop bans are ablest. And then people debate their merit. When I talk about this, the first thing I say is people are for some reason enamored with these studies about how students learn better if they’re not on a laptop, to which I say: What about all the students with disabilities? What’s the data on their experience when they don’t fit into [LAUGHTER] whatever data set you’ve come up with? “Oh, yeah, I didn’t think about that?” “Well, they’re just a few of them”. Okay, so this is not a perfect study to begin with. Anyway, second, I don’t think professors always understand how complex getting an accommodation is. So let’s walk through a timeline. You’re a freshman, let’s say. You get your syllabus, maybe a week… best practices…[LAUGHTER] right before classes start… maybe the night before, and all of a sudden you see a laptop ban. No way will you ever have enough time to get an accommodation in place that allows you to use a laptop on the first day that you need it, for various reasons. Accommodations require this multi-step evaluation process. And I know of no school that as soon as a student asked for a particular accommodation, they’re, in the interim, granted that. This is something that I’ve advocated for my institution. In the legal context, we would call that a TRO or like a preliminary injunction where you grant relief for a shortened period of time, pending a more fuller evaluation. We don’t do that. We make disabled students sit there and suffer without the accommodations that they likely are going to get. So if you have a laptop and you have a student with a disability who gets that accommodation, what they’re going to have to go through is all that medical documentation loop that I talked about: have meetings with the Office of Disability Services, fill out the forms, wait for the accommodation to be granted. So all that time has been wasted and that student has been sitting in your classroom when they needed a laptop and have had to go without it. So I’ve heard a couple professors come up with their own, like ad hoc solution to this and I haven’t heard one that I’m really on board with yet. So some people say, “Well, if you have a legitimate disability, then I’ll let you use it…” to which I say: “Number one, how are you going to measure that?” That’s interesting, that word legitimate is strange. Number two, no student should have to disclose their disability to you to get what they are entitled to under the law. And again, this is where implicit bias comes into play. We have confidentiality provisions under the ADA, because Congress, we as a country, decided we needed certain aspects of disability to be kept confidential because of the fear of discrimination. So on a one-to-one basis, professors should not just be deciding that students can be forced to disclose their disability. So I think that doesn’t work. Now, let’s say six weeks into the semester, the student finally gets permission to use the laptop, let’s say it’s a seminar class of 12 students, one student’s using a laptop, all of a sudden, you have forced that student to disclose to their classmates and to the professor, that they have a disability. And so what I say to my colleagues is, now that you’ve heard that, I’m guessing you wouldn’t want a student to go through all of that process and jump through all those hoops. And you understand that that’s hurtful and discriminatory itself. Yes, yes, yes. So can we just do away with the bans? And they’re still reluctant, but I managed to convince a few people that at least where we are now it’s impossible to do it fairly.

John: And we should also add that some of the most popular studies that found that result did not fully control for self selection. And when there were controlled experiments, what’s often been found is that it is true that the students who are most likely to choose to use laptops are more likely to be distracted. But that seems to be an issue of the sample selection, rather than the type of modality that they’re using for note taking, and so forth. And in at least some studies, there is no significant difference when the choice of using a laptop or not, is an experimental condition that’s controlled in the experiment. So even that argument breaks down a bit.

KT: Yeah.

John: But the issue about disability is, I think, much more compelling, in any case.

Kat: I’m going to quote you, John. [LAUGHTER]

John: We can include a citation in the show notes too, of at least one or two studies that found that

Rebecca: So, people with disabilities are often subject to comments about how they’re so lucky to have an accessible parking placard so that they can park closer or have extra time on a test. And these comments are often meant to imply that an individual is unfairly getting special treatment. How do you respond? Or how would you coach others to respond to these aggressions?

Kat: It’s hard because it does really hurt. And I’ve gone through different moments of my life where it’s made me cry. I’ve had several people, including one person when I was in a law school parking lot, yell at me about using a disabled parking spot, and I had someone who I thought was a friend, tell me exactly that, that I was lucky. Now that I’m older, I think people are scared enough of me to not say things like that. What I would tell people to say in response, if they are at that place is to ask more questions to say things like, “Oh, really? Why is that? Do you think you need one too? Would you like me to talk to you about why I have one?” But again, it’s difficult, because I don’t think anyone should ever have to explain themselves. So the best answer I’ve ever heard is from a friend of mine named Jesus who drives a Porsche and used a disabled parking placard one six-month period when he was on crutches. People really don’t like to see people with disabilities driving nice cars or really, in general, having nice things. Like the assumption is, we’re supposed to be impoverished and grateful for public transportation, I suppose. But he’s done very well for himself. So one day, he was parked in a disabled spot, and he’s in a Porsche. And before you see him get out, you wouldn’t be able to see his crutches. And so some woman comes up to him and said, “This is a disabled parking spot. How dare you park here? This isn’t for you.” And so then he became very slow and dramatic, and took his crutches from his passenger seat and very slowly and dramatically placed them on the ground. And when he was finally standing upright, he looked at her and said, “Thank you concerned citizen.” [LAUGHTER] and they went on their merry way. He’s a character. And I have some friends with disabilities that when they get stared at, they’ll wave at people, or they’ll get closer to the person staring and say things like, “Oh, do I know you?” [LAUGHTER] …just to kind of like put it on them for being awkward. I also think it’s perfectly okay to get emotionally exhausted by these kinds of statements and to look for spaces, and for a lot of us with disabilities that is online, I have found community on social media that I never even knew existed. I think you should feel absolutely justified in expressing how hurtful those comments are. I think the more important thing in those situations is for allies to immediately speak up, and to call it out… to say, “You only need a disabled parking placard if you are having difficulty with something about getting into the building. Nothing about that is easy, and it’s also none of our business.” So if that can be nipped in the bud by someone else, rather than putting the emotional labor on the person dealing with the reason for the parking placard, that would be ideal. Most people say things to me when I’m on my own. I now am more comfortable standing up for myself. But there’s weird things that happen to you, as a woman with disabilities. There’s some physical safety issues that I have to be concerned with. If I know I’m working late at night, and there aren’t that many other people in the building, I might move my car out of the disabled parking spot into another spot so that people don’t know that the only person in the building is a person with disabilities, which is bad that I have to do that… so I take some extra precautions, I would encourage everyone if they ever feel comfortable getting to the place, to hold their head up high, and to know that their life is too difficult already as a person with disabilities. And if they want to ignore someone, to be my guest, [LAUGHTER] and know that they have the right to do that as well.

Rebecca: I love the emphasis on having allies speak up and speak out. And maybe if you’re an ally, be an ally and have that in your pocket ready to pull out. Practice it.

John: Might this, along with many other reasons, lead people to not take advantage of services designed to accommodate disabilities.

Kat: Yes, so something that I hear from students is, in academic settings, where accommodated students take their tests in a known space. Just to not have to go in that one space, and let everyone know that you are testing with accommodations, students will not ask for accommodations. So the shame and the discrimination that attaches to just getting accommodations is something that stops people who very much need them from asking for them. I’ve had students who are veterans with PTSD and the need for incredibly limited accommodations to just take a break for a moment. Populations like that are afraid of disability… people who went to war are afraid of the stigma of accommodations, so much so that they won’t ask for them. In my own life. I still struggle with it within myself to the point where I make this decision in my head about whether I actually need to park in a disabled spot or not on a daily basis and whether I want to deal with the person that may yell at me. The truth is, I get a form of chemo for my RA, so I can objectively say I get that parking placard. I still don’t use it on days when I think the parking lot is crowded and someone else may need it more than me. I mean, the twisted way it’s affected my own assessment of what I need and what I deserve is really difficult. So I’ve been talking a lot from the perspective of someone with invisible disabilities. Of course, many people don’t have the luxury that I have to kind of decide on and off whether I want to share what I’m going through with respect to disabilities. However, they may still want to have confidentiality that attaches to the nature of their accommodations. For example, to the extent that they need an accommodation that places them closer to an accessible restroom. None of that should be announced to everyone and so fear of those very confidential and personal pieces of information being shared also stops people from asking for accommodations. The student feedback that I get, the reluctance is the stigma from other students and the conversations that the student bodies often have in law school, at least a conversation is, “Oh, whoever’s getting extra time on tests is ruining the curve.” And so people become petrified about being perceived as someone who’s getting an unfair advantage, to the extent they do well.

Rebecca: I hear a lot of conversation about this idea of like not being disabled enough to request accommodations, like you’re talking about, Kat, and I think that’s maybe become even more visible during the pandemic, partly because disability and chronic illness isn’t static, but also there are more folks who are experiencing mental health challenges, and maybe could really benefit from accommodations, but they don’t see themselves or don’t identify as disabled. And it would never occur to them to ask for an accommodation. How do we help these students?

Kat: So I tell my students that the system is not set up to give you too many accommodations, there will be some procedural barrier, or someone that gives you less than what you asked for. So don’t undersell yourself, don’t like negotiate against yourself to begin with, is what I tell my future lawyers. I also tell them that you don’t have to use every accommodation you get. So I think I probably asked for accommodations in law school that made my test-taking situation worse, but I had a certain number of breaks I could take away from the test to stretch and if I didn’t need them, I didn’t need them. And I was always very cautious of like, “Well, am I really taking this to stretch? Or am I taking it because I want to go and like think up this great idea, you know, in the hallway?” But the point being here, if you ask for 30 minutes of extra time, and you only end up needing five minutes or you finished early, that’s a great outcome, right? And if you have them in place, maybe there’s a semester where you don’t need them, maybe there’s a semester that you do need them, but better to have them in place early. I also really work with students, to do this work myself too, right? …to never qualify the word disability and to think in terms of the Americans with Disabilities Act, to talk about all of the heroic activists that fought on behalf of myself and other people with disabilities to make society more accessible and that you’re doing a favor for yourself. But you’re also opening the door and making the process easier and you’re normalizing it for people that come after you. So there’s a lot [LAUGHTER] to put on someone’s shoulders, but I think there’s no way anyone’s ever going to give you more accommodations than you asked for and the process is quite burdensome. So you’re going to lose time and money along the way. But why close yourself out? Why take away the opportunity at equality? You got there, you’re in school, you want to succeed, your here, you got up in the morning, you maybe were flaring, give yourself that extra step of equality that the law says you deserve.

Rebecca: During the Accessing Higher Ground conference this fall, I went to a discussion about an increase of accommodation requests in medical school, and that many of these med students have never needed to ask for accommodations before. And I think that’s something that faculty, staff, students, there’s a great population of individuals who maybe are feeling like they need to ask for accommodations, in part because of their risk, maybe with a pandemic and what have you. What advice do you have for folks who have never navigated this terrain before and now find themselves having to navigate it? It’s really intimidating.

Kat: It absolutely is. And during the first six months of the pandemic, I spent a lot of time… happily, but it was a lot of time… counseling friends from all over the country in different lines of work. And the first barrier was: “I don’t know if I deserve this.” And it absolutely was: :Yes, you do.” So if you can’t get a hold of me… if someone contacts me, I’ll either talk to them myself or find someone that they can get in touch with… but you need to have someone who is familiar with the process talk to you about getting accommodations. This is a very technical piece of advice, but often schools and whether you’re an employee or a student, the documentation form will inform the doctor to send the form directly back to the school. I say, “No, we don’t want anything going directly from my doctor’s office to my school or my employer and there’s nothing in the ADA that requires that kind of like fascist cutting out of the person with the disability.” So I say: “Be active in this process. Call the doctor’s assistant. Speak to the doctor directly. Use plain terms. Think about what you need, put it in your own words.” Again, you’re not doing anything nefarious here. You are the expert, you are the person that understands your body and your needs and your school existence or your working existence. And you try and talk to, especially medical professionals, get them to treat you like a peer and with respect and guide the discussion yourself because once it starts feeling a little bit out of control, and you don’t know what the doctor is written in the form, and a doctor might make a mistake, it’s harder to fix that. So from the outset, what I advise people is, let’s talk about what makes sense for you. Let’s get a hold of the person in the doctor’s office that actually fills out these forms. Are they okay with you being specific about what should go in them? No doctor’s office is like, “Oh, no, we’d like to write this from scratch.” No, [LAUGHTER] they like when you help them. But you need to talk to someone about that. With respect to the pandemic, what’s been really difficult… a lot of things move very quickly, at least, let’s say, in the first six months of the pandemic and then in fall of 2020, when we were all trying to figure out, are we going back in person or not. And schools did a real disservice, I think, to students and faculty and staff alike, by setting up these ad hoc systems that didn’t have any of the confidentiality protections that accommodations typically do. What I tell anyone who needs a COVID related accommodation is to call it a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Once you use that phrasing, you’re entitled to quite a few protections that you don’t always get if you just like send back an email form checking, “Oh, I want to work online.” So there have been different ways that schools have tried to not put people into the accommodation trap, because it’s more time intensive, and also it would likely mean that more people get to work or learn online. So to summarize: [LAUGHTER] talk to someone that’s been through it that knows, that can guide you through it, don’t hesitate to recognize that something like asthma is considered a disability because it makes you high risk for COVID. You’re entitled to the ADA protection, and then definitely ask for an ADA-based reasonable accommodation as opposed to any other phrasing that the school comes up with itself. That’s as close to legal advice, I think, as I’ll give.

John: Higher ed institutions have varied quite a bit in terms of addressing those issues. Some are very receptive and have given faculty the freedom to teach the modality that is most appropriate, and others have been much more rigid and have been much more likely to reject all such requests across the board, which has created a lot of challenges for faculty.

Kat: Absolutely.

John: More generally, though, higher ed institutions have, for several years now, been increasing their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, but in those they often leave out issues associated with disability. What are some of the top things that institutions of higher ed can do to be more inclusive for people with disabilities?

Kat: So when we talk about inclusivity, with respect to disability, I would say we’re starting from a different place than some other discussions. And what I mean is, many institutes of higher ed are not legally compliant with the ADA. So the first step, I would say, is an immediate physical audit of all of our physical spaces. There’s an amazing TikToker are called Mya. She’s a student at UMass Amherst, she uses a wheelchair, and she has been going around the entire campus, explaining what buildings she can’t get into, the lack of push buttons, there’ll be an accessible doorway, and then she’ll find herself at the bottom of a flight of stairs. Again, it shouldn’t take someone who uses a wheelchair and enrolls as a student to find those things out. It’s not that expensive to do this kind of physical audit, I think everyone really needs to do it. I work now at Southern which is an HBCU that is progressive in many amazing ways. Before this, I worked at the University of Idaho and found myself with a serious leg break and in a wheelchair for about four months, and discovered, by way of being in a wheelchair, that the building wasn’t accessible. I couldn’t use my office, I couldn’t get into the classrooms. I couldn’t reach the soap in the bathrooms. And that’s, in fact, partially why I became an expert in disability law, I didn’t set out to be it, I had to become that person. I had a couple of friends on the faculty who advocated for me personally, but it was humiliating, and nothing changed, even though I would bring it up every single semester. And they were fairly easy things like get a push button outside of these doors. Part of the reason I left was my fear that a student who used a wheelchair would get there and there’d be no way to make that space accessible to them. So an immediate physical audit. I would also do an immediate review of your institution’s accommodations paperwork. Can you bring it down to fewer pages? Can you cut out the documentation? Is there a way to accept prior documentation and make it straightforward? Some of the things we talked about… putting certain accommodations in place at the moment they’re asked for rather than when the full accommodations are approved. An example is something like note takers. When a student asks for note takers, very rarely is that request denied. So why not just from the first date always have a note taker in a class? Fine. if the accommodation actually gets rejected? Oh no, we’ve given the student notes for four weeks, what will we ever do? Our entire institution now is lacking in integrity. No, we’re fine, right? [LAUGHTER] It just doesn’t matter that much. And then, as I mentioned before, we need to have these conversations assuming people with disabilities are in the room. They have to be less patronizing, right? There’s a lot of like condescension involved in talking about people with disabilities. I think after all of that is done, then we can kind of talk about beyond legal compliance. What does it mean to be welcoming and inclusive? As a person with disabilities who in academic spaces still struggles to like, move, I’m not yet ready to talk about being welcomed. In fact, what I say to people is like, you can be mean to me, as long as I can reach the soap in the bathroom, I’m at peace with that. [LAUGHTER] So we need to have those conversations first, then you can throw me a pizza party.

Rebecca: I think also, in addition to probably those physical spaces, we should be doing some virtual audits as well. And making sure those spaces are accessible for a wide range of other disabilities who would benefit from making sure those materials are also reachable.

Kat: And anytime you can put the onus on someone who isn’t a person with disabilities to double check that things are working, that’s such a relief. And so sometimes that means double checking, if you have note takers, did the notes look good? Are they a mess? When I was a student, I received notes. I asked that my note taker have the same GPA range as me? [LAUGHTER] Yeah, no, I did say, “You know, there’s some stuff that’s missing. Is anyone reviewing them?” “Oh, no, we don’t have time for that.” Okay, so are we going through the motions or are we doing something that’s meaningful? A lot about that was getting feedback from students. I have seen student activism at law schools. When student groups for people with disabilities and allies are formed, they can do so much more than I can do as a faculty member. So to the extent you don’t have a disabled students group on campus, and you want to be an ally, I would think about how to get one started, because just the presence of that group is so meaningful. And in my days of activism, at least when I was like marching in the streets, are long gone. But when I meet these young people, ah, they’re so exciting. And they think of things that I won’t think of because I haven’t been in school for a while. Now. I’m on the other side. So I find listening to student activists very helpful and eye opening.

John: Do you have any other advice that you’d like to pass on to our listeners?
:

Kat: I would say anyone that goes into a position of leadership should be educated, or at least know who to turn to with respect to disability access, and disability inclusion. And so that can mean high level things like making sure that you hire someone with disabilities, they are given all the tools to succeed. It can also mean okay, you’re someone, maybe a student, who plans a conference. Is the conference accessible? Do we have a checklist that makes it easy for people who maybe might need an ASL interpreter, for example? Is all of that there and available? Are we treating disability awareness as a key part of the skill set that you need to be a leader?

Rebecca: I love that advice and something that’s definitely not typical as part of training or just general awareness that we share within our community in higher education. So we always wrap up by asking, what’s next?

Kat: I’ll tell you about my scholarship and then I’ll tell you what I’m thinking about with respect to my disabled community in general. So my next piece within the disability law sphere is looking to the way we force medical encounters on people with disabilities just to get access to benefits, for example, or to get access to accommodations in the workplace. And to the extent that we are a society that believes in medical choice, or we pretend to, or we have respect for bodily integrity, why does that change? Why are we so willing to force medical encounters and sometimes really intrusive medical examinations on people with disabilities? Aside from that, I, as a high-risk person, every day, I am still fighting for my life. I take three immunosuppressants, like a lot of people with autoimmune disease. And so I am tired [LAUGHTER] of asking people to pull their mask above their nose. This happens, for example, in the waiting room of the chemo infusion center. So, there are people sitting amongst cancer patients who have their masks not above their faces. So I think for people with disabilities, the pandemic has been petrifying. And occasionally we feel… occasionally… quite often… we feel abandoned. And when it comes to discussions in higher ed about, “Well, should people be back in person?” …and as soon as the conversation turns to “Well, I just prefer to be in person.” That’s great, but don’t forget our humanity. And again, don’t forget who else is in the room and part of that discussion. And earn a minimum, we should be trying to keep people alive. And then second, we can talk about whether you feel more comfortable delivering your contracts lecture [LAUGHTER] 10 feet away from someone or over Zoom. As I say that very critical statement, I work for a… we call our Deans Chancellors down here… and he starts every meeting with a reminder that our safety is his highest concern. And even though there’s no indoor mask mandate in Louisiana, we have a mandate at my law school. I work in an HBCU, and the African-American community has been hit disproportionately by COVID, and the recognition of what it takes to keep everyone safe is very much on my boss’s mind in a way that I truly appreciate. So it’s not an announced concern for people with disabilities, but it’s sort of like a universal design, right? …safety for all, that has tremendous implications for high-risk people like myself.

Rebecca: What a great perspective to be having when you’re in a leadership role.

Kat: Yeah, absolutely.

John: It’d be nice if that were more widely shared across all institutions.

Rebecca: Thank you so much for the wide variety of information that you’ve shared with us today and advice and some ideas about ways to continue to support our community.

John: Thank you.

Kat: Thank you.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

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210. A Pedagogy of Kindness

Posted in accessibility, classroom community, engagement, equity, feedback, grading, higher education, inclusion, instructional communication, learning, motivation, pedagogy, teaching
October 20, 2021

The informal culture of some academic departments can facilitate an atmosphere of mutual mistrust between faculty and students. In this episode, Cate Denial joins us to discuss how a culture of suspicion can be replaced by a pedagogy of kindness. Cate is the Bright Distinguished Professor of the History Department and the Director of the Bright Institute at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Cate is the 2018 to 2021 Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians and the recipient of the American Historical Association’s 2018 Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award. She is the author of A Pedagogy of Kindness, which will be released as part of the West Virginia University Press’ superb series of books on teaching and learning.

Shownotes

Transcript

John: The informal culture of some academic departments can facilitate an atmosphere of mutual mistrust between faculty and students. In this episode, we discuss how a culture of suspicion can be replaced by a pedagogy of kindness.

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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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Rebecca: Our guest today is Cate Denial. Cate is the Bright Distinguished Professor of the History Department and the Director of the Bright Institute at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Cate is the 2018 to 2021 Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians and the recipient of the American Historical Association’s 2018 Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award. She is the author of A Pedagogy of Kindness, which will be released as part of the West Virginia University Press’ superb series of books on teaching and learning. Welcome, Cate.

Cate: Thanks for having me.

John: We’re really pleased to have you here. Many of our guests have referenced you on past podcasts. And you’ve long been on our list of people to invite so we finally got around to that. I’m sorry it’s taken this long.

Cate: Oh, I’m glad to be here now.

John: Our teas today are… Cate, are you drinking tea?

Cate: I am drinking tea. I am drinking Yorkshire Gold black tea with just a hint of milk in it.

Rebecca: The true British way.

Cate: Exactly, it’s the way of my people. [LAUGHTER]

John: We long have had some of that stocked in our office for our British faculty members because that tends to be pretty much universally their preference.

Rebecca: I have that East Frisian, that’s my new favorite.

Cate: Ooh.

Rebecca: It’s a black blend, of what I don’t know.

John: And I have a pineapple ginger green tea.

John: We invited you here to discuss “A Pedagogy of Kindness.” You’re working on a book version of this now, which grew out of a document you posted on Hybrid Pedagogy in August 2019, and it’s been well referenced by many people. It’s been a useful resource, especially during this pandemic. In this blog post, you talk about your evolution as an instructor. Could you give us an overview of how your teaching approach changed after you attended that Digital Pedagogy Lab Institute at the University of Mary Washington that helped prompt some of these changes?

Cate: Yeah. The Digital Pedagogy Lab Institute in 2017 was kind of the “aha” moment for me. And events had been building up to that for a while. So when I was a graduate student, I was not taught how to teach very well. And I was sort of taught to think of students as my antagonists, to anticipate that they would try and get away with all kinds of things, they would plagiarize, they would cheat, they wouldn’t show up to class, or do the reading. And that my teaching career has been the process of unlearning all of those things. I have been helped along the way by colleagues in K-12 education when I worked with the Teaching American History grant in Iowa for 10 years, by some of my colleagues from Knox College, particularly Gabrielel Raley-Karlin, who is my friend and associate in sociology. And then I also was a participant in some intergroup dialogue workshops at the University of Michigan. And all of those things kind of came together to sort of make fertile ground for the stuff at DPL to sort of land. The Digital Pedagogy Lab is a profoundly kind place, everybody is so well taken care of, there are pronoun buttons, there’s great food, all of your creature comforts are taken care of. And this track that I was in, which was the introductory track, was very focused on how to really care about our students and to interrogate the way that we taught to ask if we were sort of thinking about their needs fully. While I was there that weekend, I came to the conclusion, I had this moment of going, “Why not just be kind?” and that really set me off on this new trajectory.

John: What were some of the practices that you had been using that you moved away from as a result of this Institute?

Cate: I took a long, hard look at my syllabus, and really noticed that the language in which I was speaking to students was very much from a place of authority, sort of on a pedestal, instead of thinking of them as my collaborators. So, I changed the way that I talked about all the policies on that syllabus. I changed the way that I talked about the honor code from being very sort of finger-waggy and sort of insinuating that everyone was going to screw up at some point, to a statement that said, “Hey, I take responsibility for teaching you how to do these things. And I believe that everyone in this class is fundamentally honest,” which is completely 180 from the language I was using before. I stopped taking attendance, I stopped having hard deadlines for assignments of any kind, I became infinitely more flexible with my students. I changed the “I” statements in my syllabus to “we” statements and really emphasized that I thought of students as my collaborators. Everything changed. Everything changed because I looked at it from a completely different vantage point after that moment.

Rebecca: I think one of the things that comes up when we say “kindness” is that people confuse that with “being nice,” or just being a pushover, having no standards.

Cate: [LAUGHTER] Yes.

Rebecca: …a laundry list of things that are associated. Can you talk about what you mean by “being kind”?

Cate: Kindness is definitely not niceness. I like to say that niceness is okay with lying, and kindness is not, it is unkind to lie to someone. And kindness often means telling very hard truths. But kindness is about three things in teaching, I believe. The first is justice, the second is believing people, and the third is believing in people. So justice means knowing who is in a classroom and who isn’t at any given time. Being super attentive to our positionality, and thinking about our social identities, and those of our students. Thinking about student needs in all their complexity. So having a basic needs statement in my syllabus, making sure I have fidget toys for students, I bring a huge bag of snacks to class, those kinds of things. So really thinking carefully and honestly about where I’m standing and where they’re standing. Believing people means that when people tell me that their printer died, their dog ate their homework, they had the flu, that I believe that on every score. I always feel that it is better to risk the idea that someone might pull one over on me, than to inflict more hurt on a student who’s already in crisis. So I always err on the side of belief. And then believing in people means believing that students can be our collaborators. So, changing the way that I grade so that my students and I do that together, changing the way that I think about our conversations as a class when we’re doing class discussion, and structuring those to make sure that everybody feels heard. Making sure that students get a say in what we read and what direction the course goes. And all of those things, I think, are integral to showing compassion and making the classroom a compassionate space.

Rebecca: I’d like to pick up on one of the ideas that you just presented, which was this idea of grading with students, not something we often hear. Can you talk a little bit about what that looks like?

Cate: Yeah. So, I’m a big proponent of ungrading, and ungrading is basically a big umbrella term for any action that gets us away from having numbers and letters on assignments, at any point. So there’s a big spectrum, you can do very small things that contribute to an ungrading atmosphere, and you can get rid of grades altogether if your college supports you in that. So, at my institution, what I’ve done is my students and I put together a list of grading standards, things that we think constitute each of the grades on the grade spectrum. And then when they turn in their first paper, they also turn in a self-evaluation of their work. And some of the questions are very mechanical: Did you turn it in on time? Did you ask to turn it in late? Did you do what the assignment prompt said? And some are much more open-ended: In what ways was this assignment an act of exploring new intellectual territory? I always end the self-evaluation with: “Is there anything else I should know?” …which is a great space for students to be able to tell me all the myriad things that are going on as they’re trying to focus on this assignment. And then the students and I either sit down together or Zoom together to have a conversation about what they think their grades should be. And sometimes we reference those standards that we talked about already in class, and then what I think perhaps their grades should be, and we discuss it. We talk about what are the two big things they could do that would make their assignment even better. And we focus on what you can do next. So we come to an agreement about what a grade should be. And my role in that is, really, to make sure that people don’t undersell themselves, and to make sure that people are accurately summing up the work that they did, rather than, some students have said to me before, “I don’t want to seem conceited by saying I get an A.” So there’s all kinds of little hiccups that I have to take into account.

John: I think a lot of faculty resistance to ungrading deals with those two extremes with students who may undervalue their work and students who overvalue it. Do these discussions with students help correct their perceptions and help give them a better understanding of what they’ve actually learned?

Cate: I think so. And I think that having the conversation about grading standards before we even get to awarding a grade is a really integral part of the process. So we co-create those standards, and they get to say if they want to edit a line, take something out, put something in. So we’ve already had a really great conversation about what grading is, and why I approach grading this way, before we ever get to the point where we’re going to grade an assignment together. In the four years that I’ve been doing this…a little over four years now… I have never had someone overestimate their abilities. But I have had many students who have underestimated their abilities for a variety of reasons. And so, it’s great to be able to say, like, “I think you’re underestimating yourself, let’s bump that up.” And to explain why, also, so that they have a better sense going forward of what they’ve achieved, and what they can continue to achieve.

Rebecca: One of the things that you also highlighted, Cate, is the idea of flexibility. And I think the phrase you used was “infinite flexibility.” [LAUGHTER]

Cate: Yeah. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: I can imagine many faculty really running away from the idea. [LAUGHTER] Can you talk a little bit about why you shifted to flexibility and what you mean by flexibility?

Cate: Yeah. When I say “infinite flexibility,” I don’t mean you have no boundaries and you do whatever. What I mean is more, there are so many ways in which I’ve been called upon to be flexible, that I couldn’t possibly enumerate them. There are different kinds of ways every time. So, what do I mean by flexibility? I mean, I plan my courses so that I have the time to be able to have softer deadlines, for example. So I set aside some time for these grading conversations in the week that a paper is due, but also in the week after because I know there will be students who need extensions. And so I make sure that I have plenty of time to be able to have those conversations with them, no matter when they’re going to turn in that paper. It means fostering an atmosphere where students feel okay saying, “Something’s come up, I really need that extra couple of days.” And I don’t force disclosure, so no student needs to tell me exactly what is going on in their life in order to get that extension. It’s really just a question of saying, “Hey, I need this thing,” and then it’s theirs. Flexibility in readings, being able to change things on the fly as things are revealed to be too easy, too hard, finding exactly the right mix for a particular community of students. Flexibility about time off. When do we all just need a break and a mental health day? Those kinds of things. Flexibility in terms of the kinds of assignments that I make, and the things that I asked students to do for a grade. That’s really important too, I think.

John: You mentioned giving students more ownership of the course and that flexibility certainly would be part of that. But you also, I believe, talked about using UDL principles in your class. Could you talk about some of the ways in which you’ve implemented UDL strategies?

Cate: Yeah. So the design of my syllabus is something that I thought a lot about on that score, in terms of making sure there’s always alt text where I have images, making sure that there are images that help guide people to certain pieces of information so that it’s not a wall of text that faces a student at any one time. Making sure that there’s lots of resources in the syllabus for students who might need extra help, whether that’s tutoring or talking to me, or connecting with our office for disabilities. In the classroom it has meant things like bringing in a large basket of fidget toys and encouraging people to use them. Making sure that, wherever possible, I have both a text version of something, and an audio version of something if it’s available. Making sure that if there is an audio version of something, there’s a transcript. Making sure if I’m uploading videos, that those are transcribed also and have subtitles. So all of these things adjust with me, trying to keep in mind: How can I reach the maximum number of students as possible at all times knowing that many of my students may have things like learning disabilities, but they’ve never been diagnosed? Or, they can’t afford to have them diagnosed. So planning things so that I try and catch as many things as possible that I can anticipate, and then being flexible with other requests as students make them of me.

John: Do you give students multiple ways of demonstrating their learning?

Cate: Yes, I do. So, one of my favorite assignments is the unessay. So that is an assignment where I ask students to show me what they have learned in any way that does not involve a major paper. I used to give them the option of a paper or something else. But I found that people often chose the paper because they thought it was the safer route. And what I was interested in was getting them sort of outside of that thinking and trying something experimental. So I’ve had students make food and diaries, and do embroidery, and make quilts and dioramas and maps and street plans, and just an amazing variety of ways to show me what they’ve learned in a given term. That also means that they can tailor that to what they are best at, right? So there are other assignments in the term that are written papers. So this assignment, if you’re someone who doesn’t write papers well or really struggles to write them well, this is a moment for you to show me that you can rap, or you can sing, or you can play guitar, or you can make something. And for the students who really find papers easy, this is a moment to refine another skill, to get really good at making a presentation, for example, or to think about how to visually communicate their knowledge. So I think it has something for everybody.

John: And for you, I imagine, it’s much more fun to listen to these different forms of assignments.

Cate: It’s super fun. And their creativity just astounds me every time that I do the unessay and I do the unessay in almost all my classes. I would not have thought, for example, to make a star quilt in a course about native history. But one of my students decided to research the kind of sewing that students were asked to do at some of the boarding schools, and found the long history of star quilts in native culture, and then decided to make a very simple one for themselves. That was a tremendous project where they learned so much about native history in the 20th century, and I would never have predicted that in a million years. Their vision of what they can do is so much bigger than what I can imagine on my own. And that’s one of the real delights of the unessay, is getting to find out all the other things that they’re good at, and all the ways they can draw connections to places around campus, other things they’re doing, other disciplines that they’re really interested in.

Rebecca: Cate, when you have students complete an assignment like an unessay, is there some sort of companion to go with that to explain the learning that occurred while they were doing that activity?

Cate: Yes. So there are a couple of other pieces that go with it. The first is that when the students make a proposal to me for what their unessay will be, they also have to turn in our grading standards modified for that project. So that’s another place where the grading standards come in really useful. That means that when I’m going to grade everything, I have an individualized grading sheet for every single project and can sort of just go through them one by one. Students also turn in a reflective paper where they reflect on what they learned by making or doing their project. And those are some of the best pieces of writing that I get to read. They’re much more informal than a paper would be. But they are these wonderful spaces where students are incredibly honest about where they struggled, and how they overcame those struggles, and what the projects have meant to them, which is really exciting.

Rebecca: For those reflective assignments, do you have specific prompts that you encourage students to respond to, or is it more open than that?

Cate: It’s much more open. I just say, “You know, I want you to reflect on what you learned during this process.” And they can take that in any direction that they want.

Rebecca: One of the other things that you brought up, in terms of flexibility, were less rigid deadlines. But a lot of faculty are often very concerned about workload or other things that could occur if the deadlines were relaxed. Can you talk a little bit about how you manage your time with this flexibility? You’ve talked a little bit about the conferencing and making sure you have conference time, but when you’re getting many things in over the course of the semester, how do you manage that?

Cate: I have reduced the number of assignments that I ask students to complete. I used to have many, many more. And I realized that some of that work was busy work, and that I would rather have fewer assignments that took longer, and where students were more engaged than lots of little bitty assignments throughout the term. Some of it is planning, some of it is planning to give myself a different kind of time to grade these things. So, in the grading conversations, like I said earlier, being able to have sort of time spread over two weeks, instead of just one, to get everything graded. It’s also about talking to students about exactly how much time they need to get the assignment done. So you raised the question of workload like, “Aren’t we going to add to students workload and their stress if they’re just putting these things off?” But what I found is that I can’t predict when their workload is highest. And sometimes my assignments really make for a crunch for them, because everybody’s expecting everything at the same time, such as around midterms. So saying to a student who asked for an extension, “How much time do you need?” Then perhaps a conversation where we can say, “I just need a day,” or “I need two.” And it never becomes a situation where I’m like, “Turn it in whenever you want.” [LAUGHTER] It’s much more about, like, “Let’s realistically think about what extra time would be useful to you, without it becoming an open-ended thing that can drag on forever, and really become a problem.”

Rebecca: That’s a really important point because having infinite deadlines is not helpful for anyone. It’s not helpful for us as instructors, and it’s not helpful for students.

Cate: Absolutely.

Rebecca: We all get motivated by deadlines, even if they are a little flexible. And as professionals, we know that our deadlines are a bit flexible, often.

Cate: Exactly, yeah.

John: So, do you think that pandemic has made people more open to consider a pedagogy of kindness as they’ve observed some of the struggles more directly of our students?

Cate: I think that has been the case, yes. I think there is tremendous momentum towards pedagogies of care. I think that we’ve also experienced the pandemic for ourselves. And we have been overworked and stressed out and worried about our families and friends and communities. And we have needed kindness, we have needed the breathing room that this can provide. So, I think that it is both seeing the real challenges our students face often because for the first time we were inside their homes, and seeing some of the material circumstances that they were living in, hearing from them about the challenges they were facing mentally and physically, but also reflecting on our own experiences and knowing what would help us. And we didn’t always get that help ourselves. And so being able to provide it for others, I think, has been a really good thing.

John: What is the anticipated publication date for your book?

Cate: I don’t know. And that is because I needed a little kindness myself this summer, and for my deadline to be a little bit flexible. My original due date was September 1st for delivering the manuscript but I had some major health challenges this summer. And so I wrote and asked if I could have some more time, and I was very glad to be working with an editorial team that was great, and that gave me that extra time. So, the book manuscript will be delivered this Fall, but I’m not sure where that will put things in terms of a publication schedule.

John: In the meanwhile, your “Pedagogy of Kindness” blog post is available to anyone who would like to read it, and it’s a very useful resource. And you’re joining a great collection of books there, we’ve had many of the authors on and we’ve referred to these books very often. And we’ve used many of them for our reading groups, and we share many of them with our faculty.

Cate: Yeah, I was once given the advice by one of my advisors that, when you’re thinking of publishing somewhere, look on your bookshelf and see where all the rest of the books come from. And when I looked at my bookshelf on pedagogy, everything was coming out of West Virginia University Press, and so I knew that that was exactly where I needed to pitch my book.

Rebecca: I know you have many people waiting for it, and we’re all excited to read it.

Cate: I’m very excited to finish it, so…[LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: I’m sure. The best part about having things on a to-do list is crossing them off. [LAUGHTER]

Cate: Exactly, yes.

John: You’ve been running the Bright Institute for a while, could you tell us a little bit about this?

Cate: So the Bright Institute was something I came up with five or so years ago. We got a very generous donation at Knox College, from the family of Edwin and Elizabeth Bright. And it was to facilitate the teaching of history before 1848… American history before 1848. So my idea was to bring together other liberal arts professors from across the country who also focused on that time period, so that we could try and help people with some of the challenges that liberal arts professors face. So we generally have less time to devote to our scholarship and to keeping up with readings in the field. We tend to not get grants or fellowships at quite the same rate as our colleagues at big research institutions. And we are people who have a lot of responsibility for teaching. So the format of the Bright Institute is that every summer there is a two-week seminar. The first seven days of that seminar are about reading scholarship in some particular field within early American history. We’ve had some just incredible conversations in those parts of the seminar. And then the last three days of the seminar are devoted to pedagogy. So taking the content knowledge that we now have, and thinking about, “How do we apply that to the classroom situation?” And then to help with research, we give everybody who’s a part of the Institute $3,000 every year to fund their research or to take them to conferences, there’s lots of ways that people have used that money to support them in this scholarship.

Rebecca: That looks like something to look forward to every summer.

Cate: Yes, one of the highlights of my career [LAUGHTER] is to be able to support so many people in doing such incredible work. And it’s such a delight to bring everybody to Galesburg every summer and have 14 other people who all do the kind of history I do. We tend to be kind of isolated on our campuses, we’re very often the only person who does early American history. And so to have this wonderful team of people with whom you can talk about scholarship and teaching is just so filling.

John: I wish we had more of that in all disciplines.

Cate: Me too. And I wish that I could replicate this… like I personally had the funding to replicate this for say, community college people, for precarious academics. It seems to be working very well, and I would love to see that model replicated in other ways.

Rebecca: Well, thanks so much for all this information and things to think about as we’re moving into next semesters, next classes, next academic years. We always wrap up by asking, “What’s next?”

Cate: What’s next, most immediately, is finishing the manuscript and getting that off to my press. And then after that, my college just won an NEH grant. So next summer, I will be leading a team of students in researching the dispossession of native nations from what is currently called West Central Illinois, building out on a website that some students and I have already built, and going to visit the communities that were dispossessed, to build relationships between the college and those communities. So that’s a really exciting thing to have on the horizon for next summer.

Rebecca: That sounds really exciting.

Cate: Yeah, it is. And we just found out about it, so it’s brand new information. [LAUGHTER]

John: That’s wonderful news, congratulations.

Cate: Thank you.

John: We’ve really enjoyed talking to you. We’ve been looking forward to doing that for a while and thank you for joining us.

Cate: Thanks so much for having me.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

John: Editing assistance provided by Anna Croyle.

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209. Military-Affiliated Students

Posted in accessibility, classroom community, diversity, equity, higher education, inclusion, learning, mental health, online learning, support network, teaching, trauma, veterans
October 13, 2021

One student population that is often overlooked in campus DEI initiatives is the population of military-affiliated students. In this episode Kenneth James Marfilius joins us to discuss ways to support and include this segment of our student population in the classroom and on our campuses.

Ken is the Director of the Falk College Office of Online and Distance Education and is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Syracuse University. While on active duty, Ken served in the U.S. Air Force Biomedical Science Corps in multiple roles: as an active duty clinical social worker, mental health therapist, family advocacy officer in charge, and as manager of the alcohol and drug prevention and treatment program. He has taught courses on topics such as social work intervention, military culture, and social work practice, psychopathology, and others.

Shownotes

Transcript

John: One student population that is often overlooked in DEI initiatives are military-affiliated students. In this episode we discuss ways to support and include this segment of our student population in the classroom and on our campuses.

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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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John: Our guest today is Kenneth James Marfilius. Ken is the Director of the Falk College Office of Online and Distance Education and is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Syracuse University. While on active duty, Ken served in the U.S. Air Force Biomedical Science Corps in multiple roles: as an active duty clinical social worker, mental health therapist, family advocacy officer in charge, and as manager of the alcohol and drug prevention and treatment program. He has taught courses on topics such as social work intervention, military culture, and social work practice, psychopathology, and others. Welcome, Ken.

Ken: Thank you, John.

Rebecca: Today’s teas are…Ken are you drinking any tea?

Ken: I have a chai tea in this September fall day here in Syracuse, New York.

Rebecca: Sounds like a perfect flavor for the season.

John: And I am going off season with a spring cherry black tea.

Rebecca: Don’t wish the best seasons away, John. Fall is the best.

John: I really like this flavor.

Rebecca: I have an East Frisian tea, which is a black mix from my new favorite tea spot.

John: Could you start by telling us a little bit about your background in the U.S. Air Force?

Ken: Sure. So I received what’s called a Health Professional Scholarship Program direct commission during my graduate studies. And during my graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, I did some work with veterans, specifically working on the inpatient psychiatric unit, at the VA Medical Center. Upon graduating, about two weeks after graduation, I was shipped off to commissioned officer training in the Nashville Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. In post-training, I would go to my first duty station, and almost instantly begin seeing active duty service members. We served, almost 100% of the time, just folks in uniform at this particular installation. And within the mental health clinic, there’s three areas. So traditional mental health, seeing anywhere between six to eight clients a day, and again, in this situation, both uniform. And there’s the family advocacy program, and I served as director of that program for some time. And that’s really both prevention, but also treatment. And so you can look at it as sort of a stood up DCFS or CPS on the installation. So we would get referrals for child and adult maltreatment cases, and that would range from anything from physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, etc. And then there’s the ADAPT program, which is the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment program. I also served as director forf that program for some time. And similarly, we would get referrals. It could be a command-directed referral, it could be a self-referral, it could be a medical referral, etc. Anything from low-level treatment to inpatient treatment, we would get referrals from issues that might have occurred off the installation, ranging from public intoxication to DUI, etc. So that’s sort of the three arms specifically in Air Force mental health that I operated in, in addition to other roles. I transitioned out of the Air Force in 2016, moved back to the northeast and worked as director of the HUD-VASH program, which is the Housing Urban Development VA Supportive Housing, under the Healthcare for Homeless Veterans Program at the Syracuse VA Medical Center. And during that time I also designed, and still do teach, a course on military culture and mental health practice. That’s a bit about my background in the Air Force, the VA, and also now at the institution.

John: A few weeks ago, when the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, there was a lot of political discussions about this, where each party was blaming the other for how that came about. And one of our colleagues, who has a son at West Point, was concerned about how this might be addressed in classes since we do have many veterans in our classes. The concern was basically that the impact of those discussions might be hurtful to those people who had risked their lives serving in Afghanistan. What might be a good way of addressing these topics that would be sensitive to those people who have served?

Ken: Yeah, thank you John. Yeah, so you mentioned, sort of, politics and let’s stay away from that and focus more on wanting to express support and empathy for all of our military members and their families who have invested and sacrificed so much for and with our allies and our partners in Afghanistan. I would be remiss if I didn’t first acknowledge the Gold Star families. A Gold Star family is an immediate family member of a fallen service member who died while serving in a time of conflict. And unfortunately, we now have a new cohort of Gold Star families with the most recent attack at the airport in Kabul. So they’ve been at the forefront of my mind. And it’s very normal for family members, and also veterans, and those actively serving right now, to have a sense of sort of loss, grief, suffering, that can feel overwhelming. It’s also normal for them to be experiencing all different types of difficult and unexpected emotions. They range from shock to anger, even potential denial, guilt, or disbelief. With the current situation that has unfolded in Afghanistan now, it is in the living rooms of all Americans. For a long period there it has almost been the forgotten war, because it has gone on for so long. And I’ve heard from active duty and veteran populations, that there’s really this sort of feeling of the need to do something in this moment, rather than feeling helpless. And so, it’s important to note that these feelings about the current situation are normal reactions to abnormal and complex and ongoing situations. They don’t make veterans weak, but actually make them strong. So acknowledging that it’s acceptable to experience them. And paying attention to those feelings, while talking with fellow veterans, active members, family members, and friends, is actually a sign of strength. So what can we do as instructors, faculty members, or even staff members, working at institutions of higher education? When you’re in the classroom, there’s really no way to pinpoint or acknowledge who’s the veteran in the classroom, right? You might be able to sort of run a report on the back end, if you’re so inclined, or perhaps it’s self-reporting, it comes out during initial introductions. I still think it’s important to not just assume, and particularly not just assume that it’s going to be a man, right? Because there’s a significant increase in females raising their right hand and serving in our military, which is a phenomenal thing. And that ultimately increases the amount of female veterans who will also be attending our classes. Given the nature of the recent long-duration wars in Operation Enduring Freedom, OEF, and OIF, Operation Iraqi Freedom, we have folks who are going back to study in institutions of higher education across the country, who have either witnessed combat operations or know of someone who’s gone to combat operations. And so, to your initial question, it’s important for we, as instructors, as professors, as staff, to be aware of those situations. And so how do we do that? Well, there are services. I know here at Syracuse we have a wealth of services on our installation. We’re the number one private institution in the country for veterans, and there’s the Office of Veteran Success, there’s the Office of Veteran Military Affairs, there’s different types of certificate trainings, the Institute for Veteran Military Families. We also have what’s called an “Orange Door” program. So in different colleges and departments across the institution, you have an orange sticker, if you will, or door hanger, to let veterans know who may be passing by your office, that there’s an advocate there that can help talk to you. Again, it’s not an academic advisor, but it could be sort of a life situation, or career decision, or something that’s just going on culturally. So I think it’s important to have these advocates, in any way or fashion, at different institutions so veterans do feel welcome and accepted. Now, actually in the classroom… So we have to understand that there is a divide between military life and civilian life. And what does that mean? Well, in the military, it is hierarchical, it is paternalistic, at times, in nature, it is very structured, it is collectivist and not necessarily individualistic, it is mission-focused. So there’s a shift there. When we come back, and we transition from active duty to veteran life, it is potentially a sense of loss, or “What is my identity? How do I find my way?” Often, you know, if we’re speaking specifically about undergraduate study, you might have an individual who just got out of high school, an 18-year-old, with a veteran who might have been through combat operations and might be 27 years old. So I think we have to acknowledge that there are differences. They’re not necessarily peers in that sense, because there’s different life experiences. It’s very positive for both the 18-year-old and the 27-year-old to interact and discuss those different experiences and not to alienate. And so, that level of understanding, that level of training, that level of conversation… in faculty meetings, in staff meetings, needs to be occurring because veteran populations fall under the umbrella of diversity, and they represent this sense of diversity, and we must honor that. There’s some times I’ve heard anything from a veteran hijacking a conversation, if you will, sort of talking about their experiences, to veterans feeling as if they’re not quite sure how to enter the conversation from what they’ve witnessed or experienced. So you mentioned, at the top of the hour here, that you talked about this idea, that sort of politics and blaming this way or blaming that way, and then the veteran’s sitting back and like, “I wasn’t involved in that, I was out there to do the mission. I raised my right arm to sacrifice myself with my brothers- and sisters-in-arms, and my experience is fundamentally different.” Because the mission is not what’s being talked about at that time. So understanding that there is a range. You and I, Rebecca, can be at the same place at the same time and witness the same exact traumatic event. You may come out feeling okay. Yes, was it traumatic? For sure. I may come out feeling as if there’s an impact on functioning. That functioning could be occupational functioning, it could be in the classroom, it could be social functioning, familial functioning, that could potentially lead to something like post-traumatic stress, and what we call post-traumatic stress disorder in the DSM-5. And it’s important to not just conflate and/or categorize like, “Oh, you’ve been in combat operations or you’ve been in the military so what about PTSD?” Mental health, and we can get into this a bit more, but mental health is much broader than just talking about PTSD as it pertains to veterans.

Rebecca: A lot of things that I’m hearing you talk about, Ken, that are making me think about my own experience in the classroom, but just also the conversations I’ve had with colleagues, is that I was looking up statistics just to see, like, I wonder how many students in higher ed are military or veteran populations. And the number I was finding was somewhere between 5 and 6, depending on the report, and in graduate studies about 7%. But I also think that often, when we’re talking about our student populations, this is a population that doesn’t come up in conversation. It’s completely invisible, similar to students with disabilities. It’s a population that sits there and may not be visible, necessarily. It’s an identity that’s existing in our classes, that we almost don’t recognize is present. Can you talk about ways in our classrooms where we can honor an identity that maybe isn’t seen without pointing out a specific person?

Ken: Yeah, that’s a good question. And I think it is sort of this overarching respect, human dignity. Understanding that we all come from different walks of life, whether it’s an individual that has a disability, or veterans alike who are both veterans with a disability, right? So there’s a couple of factors there.

Rebecca: Indeed.

Ken: But also to include cultural backgrounds, right? And race, and gender, all these are sort of present and need to be acknowledged. And so how I operate as a professor is, I’m not going to, first day of class, be like, “All right, all veterans in the classroom raise your hand!” or go through it like that. I’d say, “Let’s set some ground rules and expectations for a welcoming environment, and that, ultimately, I’m not here to tell you what to do. We’re here to interact with one another and learn from one another.” I tell them that I expect to learn as much from you as you do from me and maybe even more. So every class that I have every semester, I’m learning something new. And the way to do that and cultivate that is to provide that sort of sense of safety, regardless of subject. Provide that sense of safety so we allow these individuals to feel comfortable engaging in that process, both direct and indirect levels of communication. That one individual, like I mentioned, who might not talk too much in class, is potentially constantly observing, actively listening, taking in this information, and has sort of a byproduct of that entire process. I also want to talk about trauma. So, I’ll sort of go back and forth from talking about, in my specific research and teaching, it’s obviously military and veteran focused, but what we’re seeing is trauma affects children. There’s this notion of Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, that’s in the research. And so if it’s affecting children, well, they’re basically children and then before you know it, they’re graduating from high school, and they’re 18 years old, and now they’re considered an adult. But those traumatic experiences don’t leave them. Just like with a veteran, those traumatic experiences don’t necessarily leave them. So, the effects of trauma on children are far more pervasive than often us adults can even imagine. What does that mean and why am I talking about that, how that can impact the classroom? So following a child’s exposure to a traumatic event, or a veteran’s exposure to a traumatic event, there are a range of symptoms that may occur. Anything from a sense of arousal, being on edge, or constantly being worried, or the sense of rumination. There’s negative mood and cognition, so blaming oneself, or diminished interest in pleasurable activities or even school. Avoiding, consciously trying to avoid some level of engagement, not thinking about that specific event. And even re-experiencing, that can play out in potential nightmares or constantly replaying it over in one’s mind. So the symptoms resulting from this trauma can directly impact the student veteran, or the student’s ability to learn in the classroom, because they may be distracted by this level of intrusive thought about that particular event, preventing them from really paying attention in class, studying, or doing well. We also know exposure to violence has an effect on IQ and one’s ability to ultimately read. So as a result, some students may avoid going to class altogether. And so I think it’s important to have this sense of…what is trauma, who it affects, and not just looking at trauma as PTSD.

John: And certainly there have been a lot of additional sources of trauma. Now trauma has always affected a large share of our students but I think the number of students who have been affected has gone up quite a bit with the pandemic. And it’s also become much more obvious to faculty who are more directly observing trauma that might have appeared to be hidden to them in the past. What can faculty do to address the trauma that has affected so many of our students for any reason?

Ken: Yeah that’s a great question, John. I always come from the idea that we can’t address something that we don’t know about. So I think the first step is to educate, and it’s really on us as individuals and ultimately as a collective, is taking this seriously, right? And so how do we educate? Well, there’s sort of this idea of formal education, going to seek it out, reading about it, researching about it, going to events, but it also is talking with our colleagues about it, and actually experiencing it. So first and foremost, what is trauma-informed care? It sort of now has become a buzzword and I don’t look at trauma-informed care just for a mental health provider. If you really want to effectively implement trauma-informed care, it needs to be the frontline staff, the administrative assistant that might be interacting with these students first, it needs to be additional staff, it needs to be the janitor or the custodial, it needs to be the professor in the classroom. So it has to be a collective effort, and really sort of a cultural shift within the entire organization. Trauma-informed programs and services are really based on that understanding of some of the vulnerabilities that I mentioned or triggers a trauma survivor may experience and how they may impact the way that the individual accepts and responds to services.

John: You mentioned how one symptom of trauma is disengagement and lack of feeling of connection with classes. What are some symptoms that faculty might observe that might provide a clue that there’s an issue there that needs to be addressed?

Ken: Sure. There could be disengagement, but there can also be a level of confusion, difficulty concentrating. Let’s say that you’re noticing that there’s a shift in behavior, whether it’s through a written assignment, or maybe that individual was engaged and is no longer engaged. And I think there’s a balance there too, right? Because you want to be careful, and this happens quite a bit, is not to just call that individual out in the classroom because that would only make the problem worse, alienating and isolating that individual. So what I like to do is potentially talk to the student after class, just do a general check-in or maybe it’s an email and say, “Can we hop on a Zoom? I noticed a shift in the behavior, I just want to know that you feel supported by me as the instructor.” And that lends to an additional conversation where, okay, I am supporting this individual, this individual understands that they’re being supported, but they may need another service. And so we can’t just sort of be the end-all-be-all, the nexus of our students’ lives, we have to be able to be knowledgeable of the resources at our disposal and leverage those resources. And if we’re talking about veterans, specifically, what type of resource? Are we talking about academic resources, we’re talking about counseling? We have, at Syracuse University, right across the street is the Department of Veteran Affairs. We have, like I mentioned, peer-to-peer programs, which are often very successful in having veterans talk… specifically with the most recent incident in Afghanistan, having that sort of peer dialogues about, “Hey, what are you feeling? Are you feeling this too?” And just have that sense of normality, to say, “Oh, I’m not going crazy,” if you will, “This is normal.” And then situations may resolve on their own, or there might be sort of a level of psychological distress, acute distress, that needs to be tended to. And so, if it needs to be elevated to potentially having to see a mental health expert or provider, making sure that we’re training to get them to the resources that they need.

Rebecca: One of the things that I’ve been experiencing this semester is certainly an observation of students who are actually more open to talking about mental health generally. And that, when students are experiencing some distress in that area, actually being a little bit open about it, which makes it easier to refer them to resources. But also sometimes it becomes an impairment in being able to learn in the classroom, and that some additional accommodations might need to be had. And so some of those students may never have thought about reaching out to an office like Accessibility Resources or a disability office for supports. But these are students who are now getting support because we had a conversation, and it’s something that they never, ever would have thought of doing on their own and maybe wouldn’t have done on their own. I just thought it was something that was a definite shift from what I’ve seen previously.

Ken: Yeah, this is such a great point. Again, you don’t know what you don’t know. So the asset is you, Rebecca, right, that you’re aware of these services. And I even talked to my students about this, who will be clinicians in the field of mental health providers is, we have to acknowledge that we’re not going to know at all, but we need to know where to connect them to. And so, with that being said, you hear a lot about the increase in younger individuals, and specifically students at the undergraduate and graduate level, seeking out these services. And I think we have to come from this notion that there is strength in seeking help, right, there is a purpose in caring for one another. Reaching out for social support ultimately protects all of us. It protects you, it protects your family, the ones who care about you, your communities. I say that a stronger veteran community is a stronger American society. Same goes for other students. I like to talk less about stigma, and more about the inherent strengths of the human condition. We all have them. We must continue to find them, use them to help one another. And the beauty of technology today is that this could be done via text message. It can be done over a phone call. It can be done in a virtual Zoom session. Again, there’s so many options at our disposal, and it’s a unique opportunity in our society to actually leverage them to benefit all of society. And so I want to look at the increase in individuals seeking services as not necessarily a negative, but actually a net positive, and I think this gets conflated in saying we have a mental health crisis. It’s like, well where the same individual is saying, “Now we actually have these services.” And so it moves from, in which we are, a very much a reactive society to a prevention-based society. And so if we can get folks into services sooner, then there’s better outcomes. We know this in research, there’s better outcomes across the lifespan.

Rebecca: One of the things that I’ve been doing this semester, and really probably has been promoted by the pandemic, but something I will definitely continue doing beyond the pandemic is actually just bringing up mental health as a thing that we should be concerned about as individuals. And students have responded really positively to just even having that on the agenda for a moment, just acknowledge that that’s a thing that we should be thinking about. So that’s really definitely, I think, shifted the conversations we’re having in class and the desire for community. So I’m feeling a lot of the things that you’re talking about as it being a real positive that people are being a little more willing to talk about these issues. One of the things that I struggle with sometimes is thinking about how sometimes we talk past each other when we have really different experiences. And one of those can be military and civilian talking past each other because they have such different life experiences often. I mentioned before we were recording that I had listened to season six of NPR’s Rough Translation podcast called Home/Front: Conversations Across the Civilian-Military Divide. And there’s a series of episodes that talk about how people see different circumstances differently or experience the same thing differently, as you were mentioning before, Ken. Can you talk about strategies that we can use in the classroom to help us not talk past each other, but help us explain and listen?

Ken: So I think I’m going to talk here, from my sort of veteran experience, but it has a lot to do with civilians, if you will, also. So I’ve seen firsthand that serving in the military, in and of itself, is often not the sole reason that a veteran may experience mental health challenges. Actually, sometimes, it’s quite the opposite. So it certainly can be, and often is, a contributing factor. However, what I’ve seen in my work as both an active duty mental health provider and my work in the VA, is that mental health challenges—that may be anything from trauma, or depression, anxiety, suicide—is a very complicated and complex topic, and it does not discriminate. So we do know that prior trauma is a significant risk factor for the development of PTSD and mental health disorders… complex trauma. What we see in the research again, ACEs. So, let’s break that down, what is that? So traumatic experiences that occurred during childhood and adolescence. We have evidence to support that does have an effect on one’s health across the entire lifespan. Multiple ACEs pose a significant risk for numerous health conditions: PTSD, substance use disorder, depression, suicidal ideation. Research points out individuals with military service have higher ACEs scores, but why? Well, individuals who experienced traumatic experiences during childhood may seek sanctuary in the military. This can be very positive. We should also be exploring the associations between childhood trauma and mental health problems, both in veteran populations and our overall student population, and how this impacts the rise in depression and PTSD. For prevention, we really need to hone in on these predisposing factors and have an awareness of the vulnerabilities. Because nearly half, nearly half of the suicides in recent wars have been from individuals who never deployed. You also need to be psychiatrically evaluated before you go on a deployment, so you’re looking at physical and mental fitnesses. So I believe that to really sustain improvement in the veteran health, we must first understand the critical need to sustain the improvement in the overall public health, because these veterans are civilians before they enter the military. And when they transition out, they’re often integrated right back into the communities that they came from before service… they’re part of the social fabric of our society. So with that being said, the military mirrors society, which makes this a societal issue, and a community-wide effort in response. And so we need to create awareness, to have these conversations that you’re talking about, Rebecca, about the complexities of experiencing mental health challenges, and its impact not just on the veteran but their loved ones, not just on the student but their loved ones. It’s imperative that we work together as a society and work together on sustaining the improvement in the overall public health. Because again, a strong nation leads to an even stronger military and veteran population, both physically but also mentally. You’ve heard me say now “community-level” a couple of times and so it’s like, what can we do at the community level? We need the right services in place, communities that have the means to allow these individuals to not just survive, but ultimately to really thrive. So if we attack this head on from a prevention standpoint, we need to be providing our children and adolescents with parent-support programs, job trainings, mentors, access to education, not just access to education, but actually access to quality education. Family-centered schools, including embedded mental health services, or embedded trauma-informed care conversations. And survival services like access to medical, dental, mental health care, safe stable affordable housing, access to food, and breaking down barriers. Because if they don’t have access to these basic survival services, how do you expect them to have a critical conversation with a trained mental health provider when they’re worrying about where their next meal may come from? And the single most important factor in developing resilience in children who become young adults, this can also be said for adults, is to have a stable and committed relationship with a supportive parent, caregiver, or other adult. And that needs to be done on the local, county, and national level, and across our institutions.

Rebecca: A lot of this seems like it needs to happen way before they get to us in higher ed.

Ken: Correct. Before they get to us in higher ed, and as they continue on their journey in higher ed.

Rebecca: Are there things that we can do in the meantime, while we’re helping to advocate for these things in higher ed? I’ve heard you talk about certain services, and of course we would want to advocate for those on our campuses. I know we have many of these things on our campus, for sure. But what about within this classroom space? Is there something we can do at a classroom level?

Ken: Sure, this question also comes up. It’s like, folks in the community often ask, like, “How can we help?” It’s like “oh, the magic eight ball…” this is what you can do. I don’t think there’s one single answer. I do think though, number one is through actively listening, expressing empathy, being willing to be part of what I call an integrated network of support, building folks up, not tearing them down. One mental health provider can be a huge help. However, they cannot be the nexus of one’s life, there must be linkages to support in place.,,,for veteran populations to replicate that camaraderie that they experienced in the military, which is a significant protective factor. Perhaps most notably, Rebecca, is expressing to these individuals that they’re not alone in this process that we call life. And it’s important to engage in the language, so they don’t feel othered, begin to isolate themselves, which only perpetuates the cycle and the risk involved with developing depression, or anxiety, or even post traumatic stress disorder.

John: Going back to Rebecca’s point about people talking past each other, and your earlier discussion of the diverse array of students we have in our classrooms with very different backgrounds. We’re having a reading group on inclusive teaching on our campus, and a major theme from that is encouraging faculty to treat diversity as an asset. Are there any ways that you use to encourage people to express their different identities and to bring that as an asset into the class discussions?

Ken: So a specific exercise and assignment that I try and do in all of my classes, you might be familiar with it, Rebecca and John, is there’s one sheet of paper, and it’s called an identity wheel. And you break it off, and you begin to critically evaluate and do some deep thought about: “Where do you come from? And why do you identify this way?” And how identities change over time, and that is a positive thing. And so I have to talk about one’s core belief system. Before the age of seven, we believe everything that we’re told. And so, often, like-minded people in our communities around the country gather together, that even goes for race. And so, in some ways, that’s close-minded, because you haven’t been exposed. And so, beginning there, at what point did you start to critically challenge yourself, that, “Hmm, what I was actually told, I’m not quite sure if that’s true, or that’s factual? Where did that start?” And then ultimately, “Why did it change? What were you exposed to? Was it a teacher? Was it a peer? Was it a sporting event? Did you go off to some type of camp?” Often the first time that this happens is when they leave their high school and go to college. They’re exposed to individuals of different cultural backgrounds, different religions. It’s like, “Oh, I never even met someone who was from that particular religion.” And so, I think the best way to continue to first, have an understanding of where it comes from, what is our core belief system. Being willing to challenge our core belief system. This is the diversity conversation on how we treat others, but it’s also how we treat ourselves and ultimately, the impact that it has on our mental health. So if we do not have a firm awareness of our core belief system, it really affects the way that we think. Ultimately, it affects the way that we behave, it has an ultimate effect on how we feel. So it’s always a really good starting point to say, “Okay, what do I identify with? How do I identify myself?” Someone says, “Hey Ken, introduce yourself.” Is it, “Hey I’m a veteran, I’m a professor…” Like, that’s a starting point, but I want to get a little bit deeper into that, and to the students, I say, “You don’t necessarily have to share that in the collective, but I have to get you thinking from that frame.” So, that will help you in your academic journey, that will help you in your interpersonal relationships, but it will also help you in your, sort of, professional and your career trajectory in life.

Rebecca: Yeah I love those wheels, a great way to open doors into many conversations and a great thing to do early on in the semester, for sure. We can provide a link to an example of that in the show notes.

John: That was one of the topics in Cornell’s inclusive teaching MOOC that we participated in a number of times and taken faculty through. And that is something that many of our faculty have introduced at the start of the class to help people recognize their identities and their perspectives, and to talk about the value that all these perspectives can bring to the discussion.

Ken: And consistently engaging in this process, talking about the education, it’s also sort of continuing self-exploration. How can I continue to engage in a dialogue with those around me, and not this sort of constant debate, right? The media is filled with debate and competition. We can get a lot further as humanity, not just here in the U.S., but across the world, if we can engage in dialogue about these differences, and how we can continue to sort of build each other up in sort of a united front.

John: Do you have any other suggestions for our listeners?

Ken: You asked the question earlier, “What can we do more of?” And another question that’s floated my way is, “Is there a need for more mental health services?” My answer to that is, I actually think that, in many ways we’ve become, in certain areas we’ve become, specifically in higher education, resource rich. So I think it’s this idea that it needs to be the right services in place. And to all the family members, caregivers, veterans, civilians, who are wondering what they can do, sometimes it’s very simple. It’s call the veteran, call the military member and ask how they’re doing, call the student and ask how they’re doing. Like I say in the veteran community, you never know that that call, it just saved someone’s life. Especially an individual who was going through, potentially, a traumatic situation or is alone by themselves for quite some time at their house and getting that phone call can really change some things around. So I think it’s we, as a collective, need to keep it very simple, and start there and have that dialogue, reach out and be supportive of one another, and then we can start to create those linkages.

Rebecca: Imagine that, just being a nice human being.

Ken: There you go.

John: Your earlier discussion of the need for support for veterans reminds me of a conversation we had a couple weeks ago, in a podcast that related to new federal regulations. Russ Poulin talked about a concern with the way in which the Department of Ed is treating veterans differentially, depending on whether they’re taking online or face-to-face classes. And that’s been a fairly significant issue in the last couple years during the pandemic, especially when more classes moved online, in that the housing allowance was available only for people who were taking at least one face-to-face class. And they could take the others online. But if they were taking all courses online, they were not eligible for the same housing allowance. And that seemed to be a little bit inequitable, especially during a pandemic, when many classes moved online, and some of the funding disappears for people from one semester to the next, depending on the modality of their courses that semester.

Ken: Yeah, this is a big question because it’s a systems issue and what that system is honoring, honoring residential instruction over online instruction. So this is one byproduct of that. Now if you want to look at, first off, COVID has accelerated the use of online, not just online education, but the way that we communicate. And we’ve found out, in some degree, it’s more effective and efficient. Also the quality, the traditional online, is very different from what online looks like today, in both the asynchronous sphere but also the synchronous sphere. And online education is an access issue, right? We’re talking about equality, we also talk about diversity. I see, now as director of online, that it’s a different student who is applying for the online course, a student who may have work experience, like veterans who have served in the military. They also have families, and so it’s very difficult for them to uproot their family, let’s say, from Texas, but they want a Syracuse University education, and financially and their kids are in school. Now we provide them with that opportunity to get the same sort of faculty expertise within the respective department. Also high-level tech and interaction through video conferencing like Zoom that we all use right now. And so when you sort of drill down to it’s like, okay, the quality of instruction is still there. We’re actually reaching a different type of student, not just veterans, but I also see more people of color who are applying for online education. And why is that? And so I think we have to continue to sort of unbundle what’s going on and not create a dichotomy between residential and online education. Obviously, for some professions and what you need to perform, that may look a little different. But overall, with technology, we’ve gotten really creative on how we can deliver this content. In some spaces, online is of higher quality potentially, because of all the tools that you can use at your disposal. So, I think from your question, the BAH, the Basic Allowance for Housing, for folks who are potentially in service, but folks who are using the GI Bill based on geographic location of what they get their BAH from. And we have to look at honoring online education as the same quality as going to get a residential education. It’s a social justice issue.

Rebecca: Indeed, and something we all need to advocate for.

John: One of the things I’ve noticed in my online classes, and I’ve been doing this for 20-some years now, is that a relatively large proportion of the students in my online classes are active duty personnel. I had one student who, during the Iraq War, apologized for not being able to participate because they were on radio silence. He was on a ship there, and he was not able to communicate because there was an attack that was about to take place. And many of these students were among the best students I’ve ever had, they were really focused, they were really disciplined. They always got their work done on time, and it was always really enjoyable having active duty service people in class because they set a great example for other students. And online education has opened up many more possibilities for people in the military to build a foundation that often continues after their service ends. Could you talk a little bit about that role?

Ken: I’ll backtrack a bit. So I served as an Air Force officer with individuals on the enlisted side who served with me, who did not have a college degree, who might have joined right out of high school where the traditional high school student goes off to college, right, at 17, 18 years old. And what I’ve found is, they are my right and left hand. And they’ve been doing, you know, mental health intake assessments, free screenings, briefing me on the particular case, whether it was an alcohol and drug case, or a family-advocacy case, or a military case where I would get the file and I met with him for 45 minutes prior. And done incredible work in prevention and outreach—whether it pertains to PTSD awareness, mental health, suicide—and then I realized that these folks have real-world, real-life experience. But when they get discharged, or when they transition out of the military, they don’t have a piece of paper to show for it. So they have to go back and then get a whole four-year degree. In addition, in some cases, 10, 15, 20 years of this military experience. And so what online education provides, is an opportunity for, if they’re in uniform, they can begin, potentially part time, taking courses at a reputable institution, because they’re qualified to do so, not alienating them from doing that. And so I’ll use Syracuse as an example. I’m down in Louisiana and I really want to attend and get a Syracuse University education. I can have the opportunity to take online courses while I’m in the military. So when that transition does occur, I’m not only prepared with my real-world experience, but I also have the system backing of what that degree provides for a particular profession. And that’s a significant asset for our military and veteran population and their family members, because their family members are also residing with them, whether it’s on the installation, or on post, or off post in that geographic location, which may even be overseas. So thank you for bringing that up, John. I think that we have to continue to have conversations about access to education, and what that truly means for our military veteran populations, but even our everyday civilians.

Rebecca: I can imagine, too, the ability to have that consistency. Being able to take classes from the same institution when you might be moving around, or changing location, could be really helpful, because that helps have something be consistent.

Ken: Absolutely. And they can start online part time at an institution. And I’ve seen this situation occur, and they can even go residential, if they so choose, on campus when they do transition out of the military. So it gives them a sort of foundation or a head start, so they’re not starting from the first day of college once they get out of the military.

Rebecca: After a really different amount of experience, right, like someone coming straight from high school into a college situation. That goes back to your earlier point about having a first-year student in a college setting being in really two different moments in their life.

Ken: Absolutely. And the experiences are different, but I’ll tell you the symptoms are the same. So when that 18-year-old goes off to college and leaves his or her home for the first time and goes into the dorm room, there’s anxiety involved. There might be some level of depressed mood or lack of concentration, adjustment-related issues, mixed features in some way. Same thing goes for that 18-year-old I saw in my office in uniform. There is anxiety that goes along. There’s depression, right, there’s adjustment-related, there’s phase-of-life circumstances, which is completely appropriate. It’s good that they’re coming to seek these services, to sort of work through them, for longer-term success in one’s life.

John: We always end with the question, what’s next?

Ken: What’s next for me is that I have a book called Diary of a Disposable Soldier. I’m close to getting it published. And on a weekly basis, I would go over to the Syracuse VA Medical Center in the cafeteria and meet with a veteran who was disabled, unable to type for oneself but could ultimately speak. He had found a diary that he had when he served in combat operations in Vietnam. And so he had, after 50 years, had come to grips that he wanted to tell his story. And so I’ve helped him along with several other individuals, get this work completed. Unfortunately, he passed in December. And so it’s my mission, in the coming weeks and months, to get this published and get it out there for friends, for family, folks that he’s served with in Vietnam, and other individuals who are curious about one’s experience during the Vietnam War.

Rebecca: Sounds like a really important and powerful work we can all look forward to reading soon. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. It was really great hearing your perspective and thinking through so many important issues related to veterans but also just to our wider community.

Ken: Thank you, Rebecca. Thank you, John, so much. Wish you both a wonderful weekend.

John: Thank you for joining us.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

John: Editing assistance provided by Anna Croyle.

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