This week\u2019s blog post is dedicated to the assumptions we\nmake when we are planning our courses and designing our activities. A pivotal\nfeature of Universal Design for Learning is ANTICIPATING VARIABILITY. We try to\nanticipate variability so that we can design for the margins (the folks who\nwould otherwise struggle to access learning opportunities). We know that by\nteaching to the average means not only that we exclude many learners but also\nthat we miss rich teaching and learning opportunities that grow out of\ndiversity. As UDL initiatives expand we witness the ways that diversity is our\nstrength; we see how valuable variation is and that is wonderful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how can we anticipate variability?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m here to say that if we want to anticipate variability,\nwe can start by identifying and questioning our assumptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let me be honest here and say that in my teaching career,\nthrough academic support of children with learning disabilities through to\nteaching graduate classes, I\u2019ve had the privilege of being confronted with my\nassumptions. Oh, at first it\u2019s horrifying; the child hides under the table, the\nteenager refuses to talk, the class stares at me (and keeps staring at me), the\ngrad students protesting that they never learned this or worse, that the\ninformation isn\u2019t relevant. Even writing this I feel the embarrassment creep up\nthe back of my neck. The worst was when a student resentfully and miserably\ngrumbled to me, \u201cYou should have known it would take longer to learn about phonemic\nawareness.\u201d She was right, there were reasons etc. etc. Assumptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
OK so that happened and has stuck with me for years and now\nI am coming out of my cave and writing it here so that we can all benefit from\nwhat comes next: how to track and scrub your assumptions. Interestingly,\ntracking and scrubbing assumptions has been warmly welcomed in my UDL work at\nKPU so below I will share with you five ways assumptions of teaching, learning,\nand learner life can tangle us up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Coming to a subject area with less or different background\nknowledge can happen for a number of reasons. Students may arrive from other\ncountries, they may have been homeschooled, they may have taken different\nelectives in high school than you would think, they may have different\nlower-level undergrad courses than you expect (this is what was behind my\nphonemic awareness debacle, incidentally). It is worthwhile doing some\nformative assessment to know not just WHETHER students have the knowledge and\nskills your course content will rest upon but HOW those underlying concepts are\nheld. In later blog posts, I\u2019ll be talking about scaffolding instruction to\nexpand upon this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the assumptions that we are asked to scrub a lot is\nthat students like talking to share ideas. In my own teaching and at KPU, I\nhear lots of reports that students do <\/em>like\nto engage by talking. However, they may not like talking about ideas in\nstructured groups, in English, or with your topic targets. Offering students\nthe chance to write AND talk, to translate vocabulary terms between languages,\nto talk through concept maps that can be layered through the course, to discuss\nthrough Moodle and in person, or to have \u201cthis is what I\u2019m trying to\nsay\/mean\/learn\u201d conversations, are some starting points. This is what it means\nto provide multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and\nexpression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m cheating a little bit and wearing my Student Services\nhat to tell you what I hear from students about their instructors. Students may\nfind long lectures tiring, but they do<\/em>\nlike hearing you talk, especially when you\u2019re passionate about your subject\nareas. Stories, anecdotes, rants, thoughts, concerns, positions can all\ntranslate a dry lecture into a really fascinating discussion with an expert. Research\non developing expertise and mentorship shows the same: as a knowledgeable,\nexperienced instructor, you are the key to deep and meaningful learning\nexperiences that students are likely to carry forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thanks to post-war psychology and instrumentalism, we have developed\ncomprehensive frameworks around adulthood, self-regulation, and self-direction.\nIt may surprise you when students seem lost, disorganized, requiring repetition\nand everybody\u2019s worst nightmare, MAY NOT HAVE READ THE COURSE PRESENTATION. Should\nthey not have learned at least a modicum of self-direction in high school? Or\nin the early years of post-secondary? Maybe. Probably. But meeting students\nwhere they are (another way of anticipating variability) means acknowledging\nthat self-direction grows slowly through time and through teaching experiences\nthat continue through post-secondary and beyond. It may have little to do with\nage and more to do with opportunities to structure course experiences, be\naccountable for their activities and interactions, and respond to frequent\nfeedback on their performance. Again, later work on scaffolding learning can\nflesh out the self-direction issue in greater depth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It seems as instructors we hold two perspectives on\nengagement. On one hand, we talk about education as an opportunity to learn and\nsucceed and grow. On the other hand, we mark attendance, hand out participation\nmarks, and try to incentivize learning. Student disengagement is one of the\nchief concerns of Faculty and with good reason \u2013 teaching to the disengaged is\ndiscouraging and frustrating. Through my UDL work, I have put forward a bunch\nof ideas to address engagement, and there are instructors at KPU who are doing\nsome truly unique things to address the engagement problem. Here, since we\u2019re\nscrubbing assumptions, I\u2019d like to take a step back and offer that we take the\ndisposition that students desire to\nengage<\/em> (I have never met a student who is themself happy with their\ndisengagement), seek to understand and learn, and in that motivational\nlandscape, try different strategies and approaches to stay in the game. Take a\nregular engagement pulse, teaching how to check for understanding, how to\nconnect knowledge, and work on meaningful activities with relevant outcomes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As always, think about assumptions and reflect on what\nthrows you for a curve. The power of better teaching lies in those curves. They\npush us forward and force us to reconcile our expectations and our outcomes.\nScrubbing assumptions work is tough work for this very reason, and help is\nalways available. If you decide to do\nsome assumption work and shift things around, please let me know. In the land\nof the curve, we are all pilgrims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week\u2019s blog post is dedicated to the assumptions we make when we are planning our courses and designing our activities. A pivotal feature of Universal Design for Learning is ANTICIPATING VARIABILITY. We try to anticipate variability so that we can design for the margins (the folks who would otherwise struggle to access learning opportunities)….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","iawp_total_views":16,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-universal-design-for-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":343,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions\/343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}THREE Learners\ndislike lectures (but they do like hearing you talk).<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
FOUR Learners are\nself-directed.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
FIVE Learners will\ntake any opportunity to disengage.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n