When I advocate for Universal Design for Learning, I often get questions about academic rigour. Does offering flexible deadlines and approaches, options for assessment, and supports to reduce barriers diminish rigour and prevent students from developing necessary skills? Are we expecting less of our learners and reducing their ability to overcome challenges? In my experience,…
For many of us, the last 18 months have been a time of transition and turmoil as we have faced a global pandemic, a growing climate emergency, increased racial violence, and the impacts of historical and ongoing colonization (to name just a few of the issues that have arisen in 2020-21). As a university community…
According to this report, students are confiding in Faculty about mental health struggles, particularly in the last year around COVID, and questions continue to arise around how to help students who have. In my discussions with Faculty around both UDL and accommodation planning, mental health disabilities come up frequently. Absences, episodic symptoms that see students…
Today’s blog post has kindly been provided by Teaching & Learning Commons’ Educational Consultants, Dr. Seanna Takacs & Dr. Gordon Cobb. It can be viewed here.
I found Universal Design for Learning (UDL) by accident. I was a novice teacher working with students who faced massive barriers — disability, language, economic precarity, technology access, racism, colonialism, and discrimination as a result of their gender and/or sexuality to name a few — that impacted their learning. My search for tools to support…
One day, during my work in The Commons, our effervescent and eternally helpful communication and events specialist, Kathy Leung asked me if I ever stop thinking about inclusion. And the answer is probably no, never. There are a bunch of reasons for that. Some are private, some public, and many political. I thought I’d share…
When pandemic planning hit and things shifted online, I started paying attention to words. I have a deep, if narrow interest in historical ontology – the way we generate kinds of people as we devise classifications (Hacking, 1996). For instance, I started my career in remediating students with dyslexia. That term morphed into language-based learning…
Borders are being closed, people are stocking up and staying at home, and schools are moving classes online. Everyone has questions. Most students and instructors feel a sense of urgency, some a sense of resignation, and some are in a nervous holding pattern. However you slice it, things are changing and whether you feel you…
It’s been ten months since Universal Design for Learning hit the streets at KPU (at least in a formal sense whereby an individual with the requisite skills, knowledge, and experience was hired as an Educational Consultant in UDL in the Teaching and Learning Commons). A lot of solid, interesting work has already been done in…
Over the holidays I spent a lot of time reading and watching movies. My mind craved novelty and weirdness which led me down a wonderful rabbit hole of Spanish language films (yes, they were subtitled). I also read a book more aligned with my non-weird interests called The End of Average: How we Succeed in…