May 28, 2025 • 48 mins
The Universal Design for Learning (or UDL) framework is based on research on how students learn. In this episode, Tom Tobin, Lillian Nave, and Jennifer Pusateri join us to discuss the most recent evolution of the UDL guidelines.
Tom is a founding member of the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Mentoring at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the author of the forthcoming book, UDL at Scale: Adopting Universal Design for Learning across Higher Education, as well as Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education and several other works related to teaching and learning. Lillian is the Faculty and Educational Development Specialist for the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning for Student Success at Appalachian State University’s Hickory Campus, a senior lecturer in first-year seminar, and the host of the ThinkUDL podcast. Jennifer is the Senior Universal Design Consultant at The University of Kentucky and has served as the co-chair of the international UDL in Higher Education Network. She is a member of the CAST National Faculty and is the author of Transform Your Teaching with Universal Design for Learning: Six Steps to Jumpstart Your Practice. Tom, Lillian, and Jennifer often serve as keynote speakers on UDL and other issues.
A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.
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The Universal Design for Learning (or UDL) framework is based on research on how students
learn. In this episode, we discuss the most recent evolution of the UDL guidelines.
Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective
(00:24):
practices in teaching and learning. This podcast series is hosted by
John Kane, an economist... ...and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer...
...and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more
inclusive and supportive of all learners.Our guests today are Tom Tobin, Lillian Nave,
(00:52):
and Jennifer Pusateri. Tom is a founding member of the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Mentoring
at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the author of the forthcoming book, UDL at Scale:
Adopting Universal Design for Learning across Higher Education, as well as Reach Everyone,
Teach Everyone (01:08):
Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education and several other works related
to teaching and learning. Lillian is the Faculty and Educational Development Specialist for the
Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning for Student Success at Appalachian State University’s
Hickory Campus, a senior lecturer in first-year seminar, and the host of the ThinkUDL podcast.
(01:31):
Jennifer is the Senior Universal Design Consultant at The University of Kentucky and has served as
the co-chair of the international UDL in Higher Education Network. She is a member of the CAST
National Faculty and is the author of Transform Your Teaching with Universal Design for Learning:
Six Steps to Jumpstart Your Practice. Tom, Lillian, and Jennifer often serve as
(01:52):
keynote speakers on UDL and other issues. Welcome Jennifer, and welcome back, Tom and Lillian.
Thanks a bunch, glad to be here.Very glad to be, again, with you all.
Yeah, excited. My pleasure. Today's teas are:... Tom,
are you drinking tea today?I am, I am coming to you with some
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peak leaf cold brew iced tea when all you want is just the tea.
Love it. Lillian? I would like you to notice I'm drinking in
my Tea for Teaching podcast mug that John gifted me at a conference, and I brought my organic
hibiscus or hibiscus, depending on if you're from the south or not, my hibiscus tea bags.
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And how about you, Jennifer? So, I'm not a tea drinker, guys.
I drink a coffee in the morning, and then the rest of the day I am team water. So I've got my
emotional support water cup with me here today.I do like to always point out that water is the
foundation of tea. That is true.
And I am drinking a pure peppermint tea because it's been a long day filled with
caffeine up to this point. And I have my last cup of London
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Strand. I’m at the end. It's very sad.You may have to head back there again.
I may.So we've invited you here today to discuss
the UDL 3.0 guidelines that were released on July 30, 2024. But before we discuss the changes
that have occurred, could you describe what the UDL framework is and what remains the same?
I'll give it a shot. So the framework of UDL is essentially a collection of, gosh, I think there's
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over 1200 different studies that have kind of been boiled down into these nine categories, and those
categories are organized in a grid format. So you can kind of look at it in lots of different ways,
but essentially this framework, the UDL framework, tells you what research says works in teaching,
and it tells you about that in nine different areas. So three of those have
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to do with engagement. Three have to do with representation, or how things are presented,
and the other three have to do with action and expression, kind of how people are taking action
with and showing what they've learned. So that's how the framework of UDL works, and it's been
updated many times. There was an update that I remember in 2013. There was another one in 2018,
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but the move from the 2013 to the 2018 version, the words didn't really change, but the order of
some of the guidelines changed around a little bit. So this is the first time in quite a while,
and this new version, the 3.0 version that came out here in the summer of ‘24 this is the first
time we've seen some changes to the actual words inside of the guideline themselves. And there's
actually quite a lot that's the same. I don't think anything was removed, per se. Some things
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were combined. So they took two that might have been similar and combined them into one
consideration, which is what we call the bullet points that you see if you're looking at the
framework of UDL. So many were left the same. And then we also had some brand new ones, and those
are really scattered across the framework, and a lot of them are bringing into focus some other
things we hadn't really talked much about in UDL. So I'm excited to learn a little bit more about
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that from my colleagues today, but I always love to talk about the framework of UDL, so I'm here
for it. And for a webinar that Lillian and Tom and I did last week, we put together a crosswalk
document that will show you what things stayed the same, what things are new, and maybe some
things where it's been changed, but it's close. So we have a whole document laid out for that, and we
will be happy to put that in the show notes. Always like a good resource around here,
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that's for sure. So as Jennifer just noted, both the current and earlier versions of the
UDL guidelines include things related to multiple means of engagement, representation, and action
and expression, but there were some revisions to the language about how these are described.
The earlier guidelines asked faculty to provide each of these, and the current guidelines remove
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the word “provide,” and have shifted the focus to learner agency. Can you talk a little bit about
what motivated this change and what are some ways of building learner agency into course design?
Rebecca, this is an excellent question, because one of the reasons why we moved into a new version
number with universal design for learning is that, in earlier versions, we assumed a
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command environment where the instructor had all the skill, the authority, the deference
and the learners were just there to sort of bask in the glory of the knowledge of the instructor.
And that's not necessarily the case. I mean, if you're teaching elementary school students, you
act in loco parentis. At the same time, in higher education, we're working with adult learners,
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and they are their own folks. They're there for their own reasons, and we don't have any legal
obligation to treat them in a power dynamic. So when we think about the shift to learner agency,
there was, for many years, a call among practitioners to say the designers and instructors
are not the only people with power here, and the designers and instructors are not the only people
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who are engaged in the learning process. So it's not, “Hey, we design it and then you lucky people
get to experience it,” but we should be making space to help learners understand their own
learning process and then build up into agency. So the goal is not to create expert learners,
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but now they've actually shifted that language into learner agency, or agentic learners. In
colleges and universities, a lot of our learners already have some experience under their belts,
so there is much less of a need for an expectation to establish a command environment, like I was
saying a minute ago. Now, that actually lets us design better for the goal of agentic learning
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for Universal Design for Learning, since we are in the business of preparing our learners to join us
as professionals in our fields. And if you want to take a look into one of the new guidelines, you'd
watch for language in the 3.0 version that talks about co-creating, and we can apply that broadly
where it doesn't yet appear. So Jennifer talked earlier about there are three big principles of
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universal design for learning. So design multiple ways to get engaged, to represent information,
and to take action and express yourself. Each of those three big principles is further divided into
nine guidelines. And each of those nine guidelines has several considerations underneath it,
specific practices that people can do. The new consideration 8.3, “foster collaboration,
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interdependence, and collective learning,” it explicitly talks about learners creating their
own learning conditions. But one of the older considerations, 2.1, which is “clarify vocabulary,
symbols, and language structures,” it doesn't yet do that. So if you want, listeners,
you can search for research on social construction of learning, with colleges and universities in
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your search terms, and you can kind of address that gap. Similarly in how we design is there's
an assumption in Universal Design for Learning that learners’ brains are still developing. The
UDL came out of the K-12 environment, and if you think of maybe a mom and her grade-school-age son,
they're sitting at home, they're both working on their homework, she's in college, so she's on her
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laptop; he's in grade school, so he's got a pencil and a piece of paper. and we need to
support developing executive and emotional aspects of learners in K-12 environments. But for college,
we kind of have to shift our focus from developing brains toward social-emotional elements,
and we see some of this in some of the newer UDL considerations. So the research that's
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cited for consideration 3.2, it's one of the old ones, that's “highlight and explore patterns,
critical features, big ideas, and relationships,” right now, the research that is cited for that
doesn't contain any higher education examples, so we've got about 15 years worth of studies like
Jen was talking about earlier. And to address this, we can kind of move beyond the simple
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neurobiology argument of UDL toward a more social constructivist mode of practice. So we'll design
options specifically so that we can help reduce cognitive load, dissonance, and environmentally
interfering conditions for our learners. So watch out in the new 3.0 guidelines for language that
talks about emotions, self-regulation, and review the research page of those considerations to see
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what sources were used to develop them, and you can supplement your search with keywords from
those considerations, plus college, university or adult learning in your research databases. So
there's a lot to unpack in the new guidelines.The new guidelines also emphasize issues related
to individual identity and building on the strength of the diversity in our classes. Some
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faculty, though, especially in STEM fields, are somewhat resistant to that. They'll say,
“When I'm teaching students how to work with differential equations, identity doesn't matter.”
How can we convince faculty that perhaps they should at least consider the diversity of students
in their class and build on that diversity? Well, I'll take that one, John, and let's not
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give, and you're not doing this, give the STEM professors a bad name or anything. But I do
hear this a lot in a lot of my conversations with faculty, and I think it's just not really
broadening enough… broadening our definition of what identity is. It's really not just the
things that we can see, but recognizing that all of the students in our classroom are different,
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and identity can take many forms, and that's the reality that we have in our classrooms. More and
more students are coming to college than have ever gone before from different backgrounds:
We have first-generation students, English language learners, college prep students,
and students who've had really no college prep, so neurodivergent students, students
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with disabilities, etc. So it's really a matter of understanding who's in your classroom and
taking down barriers to learning for all of those students. So all of your students are
going to have some strengths. Some are going to be really stem focused. They're going to have a great
math background. They're going to be ready to go into your physics lab with really no problems. And
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other students might come in with a lot of other maybe verbal strengths, reading comprehension,
a lot of vocabulary, but need a little bit more structure and background with some of the math as
they move into your physics lab, okay? So we've got lots of challenges and opportunities for all
of them. What does that look like? Well, I can use the example of my daughter, who was a typical
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college student and would have shown up in many of those STEM classes, because she was a STEM major,
and she was kind of the typical, you know, most college students now are young women… that's the
majority… are girls. And by the way, she gives me full permission to share this story. And thinking
of all of you college lecturers and professors out there, how many of you have had a student named
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Emma? Probably 100% of them. So she's in your class, but what you don't realize is that there
are lots of things that are part of one student's identity that you don't know are making it harder
or are barriers. So being a girl in a STEM class is sometimes just a little bit awkward, when even
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though they're the most of the students, they are less represented in STEM classes. So when she was
in a physics class, she was in the minority. No big deal. But when you keep adding on a few other
things, like the fact that, as a left hander, she really couldn't write as fast as everybody else,
and so she needed a little electronic iPad to work on there. That's number two. And then the fact
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that she's neurodivergent in two ways, with ADHD, anxiety, that made it a little bit more hesitant
for her to go up and ask questions when she was feeling far behind. And then add on to that, a
chronic condition. So she has to get immunotherapy and go to a clinic. That means she has to leave
campus. She has to get those set up even before the semester starts. So, too bad it conflicted
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with her physics class because she didn't know which section she was going to be in. So all of
those things are things that created barriers for her, and I'm not saying that the faculty member
needs to know all those things, you don't, but those are the kinds of things that are part of
your students’ identities. So if you can make sure that you have accessible slides, that if a student
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has to miss for no fault of their own, they can get that information, then you're doing a service
to your students. In fact, you're just making it accessible for your students who can't be there.
If you're making sure that everybody knows, really well organized, what the material is,
and that they can go back and look at things that were building up to that particular date, if you
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have to miss, then those are just other ways that you are supplying the information to all of your
students, no matter their identity, if they have a lot of background or a little bit of background,
etc. So that's the kind of thing that we're talking about. And it's not just accessibility,
but it's just thinking about you're going to have students that are coming at your material from
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a different direction, and they are going to be better served by a variety of ways to get to the
end point, not just the one way that you're the most comfortable with. Because every student is
different. Every faculty member is different. My favorite saying that I use all the time is
we really don't want the same students to be uncomfortable all of the time, but we want all
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of the students to be uncomfortable some of the time, and so if we can spread that out,
we get all of the students into that learning zone where they risk just a little, but they're not
always in that risky fight or flight mode, then we're better serving our students. So that's what
I say about identity for our students, it does matter just because everybody's different.
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Sounds like we also need to think about as faculty also sometimes having that experience of being
uncomfortable like that goes… Yes, exactly.
…not all the same faculty need to be uncomfortable all of the time. So building on what you were
just talking about, Lillian, and what Tom was mentioning before about the social aspects that
are now in UDL. Can you talk a little bit about some of the ways in which our courses can more
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effectively foster a sense of belonging?Yes, yeah, so I'll go all in on these two
questions right now. So we're all in this learning together, and all of our students and faculty have
a relationship, whether you realize it or not, it might be a terrible relationship where students
are afraid to come into class because they'll get called on and they're anxious about it,
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and they're like dreading two o'clock on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That's a relationship that you may
or may not know, but it also could be a very warm and inviting relationship. I know that
I'm going to go into class and there's going to be something interesting and exciting and feel
like they're valued or ready to learn something new. So anyway, everybody's got some sort of
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relationship. But how can we leverage, really, the design of the course into learning together and
making it really a social learning opportunity? There's lots of different ways to do that. So
you can do that in person, online or hybrid. For example, if you have even a large in-person class,
a way that all of the learners can really understand that they're in the same place,
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they're all learning together, is if you were to use, like an in-person or synchronous poll, and it
can be completely anonymous, and then the faculty member could really determine, like, where are we
as a class? There's no points associated with it. It's completely anonymous. So, could throw out a
concept and see where people are, maybe on a continuum. Or how confident are you in this
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theory? Do you think you could solve this problem? And then the students could be like, “Oh, it's not
just me. About the third of the class thinks we need to review this again.” That's just one way
that everybody in the classroom is understanding their learning together. And it doesn't have to
be like, throw everybody in a group. You don't have to do that, although that's also helpful,
but that's just like, one of those things. In an online class. I love using a Q & A forum,
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so this is different, but this is understanding or seeing how somebody else in the class may solve
a problem differently than you, but you want all of your students to attack this problem,
and you don't want it to be a discussion board where the first person answers, and then everybody
else says, “Yeah. I was thinking that too.” Instead, this is something where everybody has to
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come up with their own answer, or way they would solve the problem or their thoughts on it, but
they don't get to see anybody else's until they've answered. You have to wait 15 minutes after you
answer to see if anybody else has and there's some great mechanisms to do that. And that could be in
smaller groups, it could be in the whole class, but we really do learn a lot and have a much more
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rich and more nuanced understanding the material when we see that other people are learning that,
like I can read a passage and get something out of it, Jen can read the same passage and see
something completely differently. Tom will see it a whole ‘nother way and pick up different things,
and I'm a much better learner when I see that rich and nuanced perspective of my classmates.
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So there we all are learning together. So you can design for group learning, whether it's hybrid,
in-person, online, if you give also really good roles for any group work you want them to do.
Don't just throw them in the group and say, “have at it.” Is there going to be someone
who's the convener, who's going to be sending out the emails? What are the roles? Is there an
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editor in the group, or what are they supposed to be doing? And also, what sort of document are they
creating? Is it accessible, so that all of those students can really find what they need to do. So
giving really good instructions on those things can help people learn together. And finally,
I think the last thing is, have fun (19:52):
games, quizzes, review days, trying things out together,
making it sort of fun in learning is another way, I think, that we can bring that sense
of community into the learning process.One of the things you mentioned was doing
some sort of a poll at the beginning of class, or gathering information about the identities
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of your students. One useful resource for that is the “Who's in Class” form that was put together
by Tracie Addy, Khadijah Mitchell, and Derek Dube, and we'll share a link to that in the show notes,
as well as an article they wrote about that. One of the other things in the new guidelines is that
there's an increased focus on addressing biases in the use of language and symbols,
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as well as biases related to modes of expression and communication. What are some of the ways in
which these biases may appear, and how can we address them in our classes?
This is actually one of the big shifts in Universal Design for Learning 3.0,
is that there's an increasing awareness of and a need to create space for the intersectional
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identities or characteristics that learners and instructors bring into learning spaces.
So those kinds of biases can be often unintentional ones. So for example,
physical assumptions. When I'm giving a webinar and I say, “as you can see on the screen,” well
maybe everybody can't actually see what's on the screen, so I've taken to doing visual description,
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or just using ableist language. When we think about something that's really difficult,
we say it was crazy or it was insane, and those are small but telling, unknowing ways of saying,
“Yeah, if you fall into one of these categories, maybe this is not for you, or you don't belong
here.” Our colleague, Ann Gagne has a wonderful approach to addressing some of these biases,
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is using very neutral language in very charged or meaningful ways. So if you had a challenging
day and someone asks you, “Hey, how did things go?” You can say “it was bananas,” and Ann, in a
recent webinar, she used that kind of language, and she talked about one of her colleagues just
saying giraffes. It was like a herd of giraffes, and it's evocative, yes, ableist less so. When
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Jen and Lillian and I held a webinar for the Professional and Organizational Development
Network Accessibility and Disability special interest group, or the POD A and D SIG for short,
recently, we each got to talk about one of the new Universal Design for Learning considerations.
The one that I was facilitating with some colleagues was 6.5: “challenge, exclusionary
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practices.” And this gets to your question, John. We can kind of examine power dynamics
now within universal design for learning in a way that it wasn't explicitly included before.
So when we're thinking about power imbalance, the people who teach in higher education, we are
not ourselves a homogeneous group. We experience and express privilege and power in varying ways.
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So the same inclusive practices that white male instructors like me might use in order to lower
barriers and smooth the way for learners, those might result in pushback and mistrust when they're
implemented by younger colleagues, women in the classroom, people of color who are at the front
of a classroom. So we should acknowledge the privilege and standing that are needed in order
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to implement many of the UDL considerations. And when we design for variability, we should do so
thinking about the variability, not only of our learners, but of the instructors who are going
to be in communication and community with them. So when we're thinking about biases, we can think
along lots of different vectors (23:40):
we can think about socioeconomic, we can think about gendered
bias. There's lots of those that listeners, you are probably familiar with. And when we think
about Universal Design for Learning, just as we're thinking about the variability of the learners,
we also should start thinking about, “Okay, who has the privilege to be able to do these things
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and facilitate them well in the classroom. So that's one piece where I'm hoping to see more
research come out. We've actually got a number of different researchers who are working on
these kinds of questions as their doctoral work over the last couple of years and into
the future in the next two or three years. So I'm excited to see some of this research come out.
We should note, Tom, that you wrote an article with Chavella Pittman on this issue a while back
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in The Chronicle, and we had a podcast discussing that as well, and we'll share links to both of
those in the show notes. So, when talking about agency and power dynamics, the new guidelines seem
to provide a bit more focus on the development of student goal setting, executive function,
and metacognition, while also recognizing the individual, institutional, and systemic barriers
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to learning. What are some ways of incorporating this into the design of our courses?
Yeah, well, John, one of the biggest changes that we saw in the framework of UDL from the 2.2 to the
3.0 was moving executive functioning, which was a part of the previous version, but it was only
one of the nine guidelines. So in this iteration, they have expanded that to be the entire bottom
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row, and so that's including several different pieces of executive functioning. And that whole
row now is labeled as executive function. So one piece of that would be emotional capacity. That
would be things like emotional regulation or motivation, even inhibition and metacognition
are part of that emotional capacity piece. It also includes the building knowledge guideline,
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and that used to be called comprehension, but is now renamed to building knowledge,
and that piece is really going to be talking a lot about the information processing and the working
memory piece that is part of this umbrella term, executive function. And then the last
is strategy development, and that's the one where we get into those, what people typically think of
as executive functioning, goal setting, planning, organization, time management, that kind of stuff,
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all falls under that category as well. And I'm really glad that this is the way they
have restructured this, because I'll be honest, I ran into a lot of questions from folks in higher
ed and K-12 as well, because previously there were two guidelines. One was executive function,
and then the other one was self-regulation. And so I had a lot of people saying, well,
aren't those kind of the same thing? And I don't want to go down too much of a rabbit… well,
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that's not true. I do want to go down a rabbit hole… but I'm going to refrain from going down
said rabbit hole. But it's really interesting to me that now we've kind of acknowledged that,
“Okay, yeah, the self-regulation part is a piece of executive function.” I think that's why they
went through and renamed some of these on the bottom row. And these are really important.
We're noticing, at least at my university, and I would guess at others as well, that we have quite
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a few more neurodivergent students than we used to have, and some estimates would say even up to
a third of our students could be considered as neurodivergent. And for neurodivergent students,
that executive functioning row, that bottom row of the new 3.0 guidelines, is a game changer, because
a lot of the pieces that we forget to mention in higher ed kind of that hidden curriculum that we
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might talk about, or that hidden structure, those things are made explicit through that bottom
row of the guidelines. So, for example, if we wanted to think about strategy development,
we could be looking at something like walking students through what journal of articles or
academic articles look like in your field and how you read those. So, I'll use myself as an
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example. I did not know until my PhD program that you don't just start at the beginning and read
all the way through an article to the very end, like front to back. In my mind, that made sense,
because that's how we read everything else. But as it turns out, my professors in my education
department were telling me, “Well, there's kind of a different way you can go about this. You can
start with the abstract, read through that, see if it's still within the realm of what you want to
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know. Then you can kind of skip to the discussion part at the end. Read through that a little bit,
figure out if that's what you need to know. And then, if you're still interested and still want
to use this article, then you can read some of the other pieces.” Well, I had no idea.
Like no one had ever said that. So why would I know that? So when we can pull those kinds
of things out and make them clear and explicit to our students, transparent is another word that we
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might use for that, and that reminds me of the work of Mary-Ann Winklemes in transparency, in
learning and teaching, TILT. You may have heard of TILT Higher Ed or transparent assignment design,
and those are really all kind of doing the same things. We're taking the guesswork out of our
teaching and learning, and that's, of course, going to help our neurodivergent students,
but that's going to help a lot of students as well, first-gen students, international students.
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And if we're able to do that and make those things really clear, then we're going to help a lot of
students. We could look at another example, if we're thinking about the, and this is in the
building knowledge guideline, so 3.2 is highlight and explore patterns, critical features, big ideas
and relationships. There are lots of ways that you can do this, but one way I really appreciate,
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because I kind of lean toward visuals, is having a concept map, or some visual way of connecting
the information to the other information, like connecting it and helping me to orient
myself within both the thing that we're learning about, but like, what am I learning about there,
in relation to the whole course? So being able to kind of see those relationships laid out in
a visual way is also going to be really useful. And then Lillian actually talked already a little
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bit about this idea of group work and how we might set that up. And there are several
considerations that talk about this kind of idea of, like, working together in some way. And one
of the ones I really like a lot in the emotional capacity guideline is talking about cultivating
empathy and restorative practices. And one way, of course, we can do that, and Lillian actually kind
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of mentioned a little bit about this as well, is helping students to reflect on, like, what
is actually helpful for me when I'm in a group setting? Like, what kinds of things make me feel
comfortable enough to share my thoughts and ideas? What kinds of things get in the way of that? Like,
what are some of the barriers that I encounter in a group setting? And having students actually work
through that, kind of process that information and process their own metacognitive view of themselves
(30:05):
working in a group before we get into a group. And if we can do that first and reflect individually,
then we can come together as a group, and now we can start to build this trust framework, this
sense of belonging, because I can now share those things. I can say, “Gosh, when I'm in a group, I
don't always talk first like, I'm just not usually that person. But if someone is like, ‘Jennifer,
(30:28):
what do you think about that?’ And they ask me, then I'm going to contribute to the conversation.”
So things like that really helped me in a group setting. And if I can say that to my group, now
they can understand, perhaps, why I'm not jumping into the conversation immediately, and that builds
that empathy. And then we can also figure out what are some things that I can make sure I don't do so
that I'm supporting my other group members as well. So I've actually got a really good group
(30:50):
contract activity kit that I put together for one of our workshops at the University of Kentucky,
and I would be happy to put a link to that in the show notes as well. And this actually has kind
of that breakdown. First, there's an individual reflection, then you get together in your groups,
and you do a group discussion with your reflection, and also you put together a contract,
and it kind of walks professors through how they could go about doing something like that. So I
(31:11):
will make sure I get that in the show notes. That sounds awesome. As we're thinking about
changing times, we also can think a little bit about generative AI and how that might
support the UDL framework in its new form.It's a wonderful question, and I had the pleasure
at the Online Learning Consortium OLC conference of being on a panel on UDL and AI with the two of
(31:33):
you. So I'm going to not actually recycle some of the ideas we talked about there, but I've got some
new ones. I want to talk about a lopsided house and listeners. I'm going to describe this for
you. There will also be a visual that we'll put into the show notes. I was recently talking with
Marcus Popetz. He's the person who runs Harmonize, the geek company, and we're going to be putting
(31:55):
together a webinar later on, on universal design for learning and artificial intelligence resistant
assessments. And if that sounds like I have my wooden shoe ready to throw into the cogs of
the machine, quite the opposite. So the lopsided house is an idea that I'm currently playing with.
Imagine a rectangular diagram so time moves from left to right. On the bottom, there are learners
(32:20):
who are beginners, people who don't know yet, and they're just starting to learn a concept
or a skill or something we can teach them. In the middle are proficient learners, people who
have enough to actually start doing the things in our field. And then over at the other end
of time is practitioners. These are learners who are para-professionals. They've got the skills,
(32:43):
and they probably their next step will be becoming colleagues of ours. Now in that rectangle, draw
a diagonal line from the very bottom of beginner all the way over to the very top of practitioner.
And what you've just done is you've created an artificial intelligence tool use diagram
(33:03):
that matches up with what we might call designed UDL. So when someone is a beginner, we want to,
as designers and instructors, provide them with and there's that provide word that UDL doesn't use
anymore. We want to provide optimized choices for learners in their learning experiences,
(33:25):
and we want to do a lot of that, and we want to be a little heavy-handed with it, right? We're the
experts, and we kind of know how to guide people through those beginnings. Also, at that beginning
stage, there's very little use of tools. We're helping people to understand the foundational
ideas, get them practice, even if it's the long way around or the manual way to do things. For
(33:46):
example, I teach writing courses, and my freshman writers, I want them to create paragraphs that
have a thesis statement and details evidence and examples that then help to support that thesis.
This is not the time to let them loose on Claude or Copilot or ChatGPT. This is the time to say,
“Please don't use those tools, because I want you to learn the foundations.” Now move forward in
(34:09):
time, and it's about half and half. As people get more proficient as learners, we take away some of
that designed UDL, we actually give them more agency. And here's where you can draw another
triangle on top of that, it's kind of a lopsided house, where as we reduce the amount of designed
universal design for learning opportunities, we start increasing where we're asking the learners
(34:35):
themselves to learn more about their learning process and be agentic, to take control of and
show where they want to go with their learning. And when you're more proficient, you can use
tools to start working on things like giving study questions to generate off of a reading.
A bad use of artificial intelligence... I'm here with Stacy Truex when she says “You can't ask it
(35:00):
to do something you don't know how to do yet.” So give me a summary of the reading… bad idea. Give
me some study questions from the reading and then quiz yourself on the reading that you've done…very
good idea in terms of asking proficient learners to use artificial intelligence tools. And then
when we move all the way over to sort of the end of the timeline, where people who are our learners
(35:24):
become more like practitioners. They become paraprofessional. That's when we really ramp
up the tool use. That's when we let them loose and we say, “Hey, artificial intelligence tools,
that can help you skip the foundational steps… Now you know, now you have enough skill and knowledge
to skip those steps so that you can focus on higher-order complex thinking.” And this is
(35:44):
also the point in people's learning careers where we want to have the least amount of designed UDL.
We're not guiding them anymore. We want them at that point to have the greatest amount of agentic,
universal design for learning knowledge. And when we're thinking about examples here,
I'm thinking about study question generation, but also creating alternative formats of things. “Hey,
(36:08):
this document is only a PDF, can you make a read it out loud to me version of that?”
Artificial intelligence tools are really good at making alternative versions of existing content
and materials. And the same thing when we're thinking about as instructors or designers,
because we have that expertise, artificial intelligence tools can help us to create
(36:29):
multiple means of engagement, multiple means of representing information very quickly. You want
a question bank that is tied to each of your learning objectives and segments things into
question pools of three questions or more. Bang, couple of minutes, and it's there, and then you
can review it from your expert perspective. Creating quizzes, everything kind of speeds
(36:50):
up when we're using artificial intelligence. The key though is, in order to use those tools well,
we've got to know what we're talking about first, whether we're learners, designers,
or instructors. So I want to leave that sort of as a provocative thing to hang into the conversation.
But AI is going to help us with universal design for learning in lots of different ways.
(37:11):
One of the things that you just underscored in your lopsided house, but also a little
bit earlier, is how you might use UDL in the way that you're designing a class as an instructor a
bit differently depending on the expertise of the students in the class. You pointed
that out in the difference between maybe K-12 and college, but then again, between this like
(37:32):
beginner and expert. Can you talk a little bit more about the different ways that instructors
might engage with UDL in really thinking about the expertise of the students in the
room when we're kind of thinking about level?Yes, and I'll be really quick here, and I want
to open it up. I know Jen has done work on this as well. When we're thinking about the students,
we've been actually engaging in a little bit of a heresy in our conversation today, and that is,
(37:58):
strictly speaking, Universal Design for Learning is what we do when we design learning engagements
before we ever know who's going to be in our learning spaces. So whether it's a classroom or
it's a librarian working with students, or it's a mental health counselor or academic counselor
helping students navigate systems, the design part is what we do before day one of the class, before
(38:22):
anybody ever walks through the door and says, “Can you help me?” Then, when we start noticing
patterns among our learners over time, we can take that into account. We're starting to see many
more learners who are first-generation college learners, or students who don't speak English
as their first language at home. Or we're seeing a lot more folks who identify as neurodivergent.
(38:46):
Those attributes are things that we can now plug into universal design spaces, but technically
speaking, we don't know who the learners are yet, so we have to assume that there's going to
be wide variability among their characteristics. That's what UDL is all about. It goes really well
with pattern recognition and what we in K-12 call differentiated instruction. I want to make a pause
(39:11):
here and see if Jen and Lillian can take this further too, because it's a cool question.
So, I do a lot of work, both in higher ed and in K-12, and in both of those areas,
one of the things I tell people is that UDL is for when a human brain is in a learning situation,
and that doesn't necessarily matter if that's for preschoolers or if that's for undergrads, or
(39:32):
if that's for postdocs, if that's for elderly, it doesn't matter. If you're in a learning situation,
the framework of UDL should help you to be able to meet the variability, and support the variability,
of your learners. So that's one piece. Having said that, I don't remember, Tom if you went a
lot into this, but I know we talked about this the other day in our webinar. You know, currently the
UDL framework is still a little K-12 heavy, and actually we've actually got a project going, and
(39:58):
I'm gonna throw that in here real quick while I'm thinking about it. So if you've ever gone in and
looked at the CAST studio guidelines website, and you've drilled down to one specific consideration,
so let's say options for choice and autonomy is a good example. And you've gone to that little page
where it tells you a little bit about this is what this means and here are some sort of generalized
ways you could think about doing that in a teaching situation. There's also a place on that
(40:21):
page where you can look at the research that was used to put that consideration in place. Because,
as I'm sure everyone knows, in the field of education, we don't just base our educational and
teaching decisions on one study. We're basing this on a body of research that is built up over time,
so that we know, over time, we've seen that giving students choice and autonomy is going to help with
(40:43):
engagement. Engagement, right? So that's what this list of all of these different pieces of research
and studies are about, and most of those are focused on K-12. So we were really wanting to put
together a version of the research per guideline, and even getting down to the consideration level,
or the bullet-point level, if you will, that also has some research for higher ed folks in
(41:05):
it as well. So we have put together a Google form, and we will get that in the show notes
as well. But I can just throw out this quick Bitly, if you'd like. It's Bitly, that’s, B,
I T, dot, l, y, slash, UDL, dash, H, E, which stands for higher ed, H E, dash research. And so
basically, we're wanting you to think about, do you have some like, go to research that
(41:27):
you share with people a lot that aligns with UDL? And if so, if that's higher ed focused,
we would like to know what that is, so we can start to build up our own body of research around
the guidelines that really is focused in on higher ed a little bit more. So having said that, there's
a lot of ways that you can do this, that you can build UDL in. When I think about our undergrads,
(41:48):
Tom talked a little bit about executive functioning earlier, and for the most part, yes,
we're done cognitively developing when we enter college, but we do know that there's still some
parts of your brain that are cooking up to age 25 for most and up to even 30 and 32 for others,
and that's our executive functions. So with our younger students, for sure, but honestly, with
(42:08):
almost all of our students, really focusing in on the executive functions piece is a good place to
start, because we can just go ahead and assume that our students are going to struggle with
executive function. Part of it is because of their age, but also we know that this is one of the most
anxious groups of students we've ever seen in higher ed, and anxiety, stress, trauma, all of
those things compromise our executive functions. So we can assume today that you will have students
(42:32):
in your class that are going to struggle with executive functioning. And so I think that's a
really good place to start. And some people like to start with the top row instead, because this
top row is really kind of your entry point into thinking about UDL, and it would be changing
kind of the concrete things in your class. So thinking about, yes, they have a paper textbook,
but can I also provide some kind of a digital format for that as well, or is this something I
(42:54):
can maybe give to them in a visual that might make sense in that way? So you're kind of
thinking about those concrete pieces of teaching, learning, and the materials and all the things,
and that's also a really good place to start, is looking at that top row. And I've actually seen
somebody put together a version of the guidelines where they put a little welcome mat above that
and said, This is your welcome mat into the UDL framework is starting at the top and going down
(43:17):
from there. And that's my thoughts on that.In addition to the differences that UDL can
be used in K-12, and then also the difference between a freshman seminar, which is what I teach,
and what you might use in a senior level or grad course, is thinking about UDL can be used
(43:38):
and should be used everywhere, because we're dealing with people, and people are different,
and everyone is unique. And so what it might also look like is thinking about it in workforce
development. So not just are you providing multiple ways for your students to learn,
but if you have a company, are you providing multiple ways for your learners that are in
(44:01):
your company to move forward, to learn new skills, but also to do the things that they're doing? So
do they have options for working off hours or in remote settings? Or do you have a human- centered
approach to doing whatever it is that you're doing, so that there might be quiet spaces,
or just the way that everybody can work to their strengths, so that you don't push aside talent
(44:27):
that you can really use, and that the people who are working for you or working in this
job or in part of a company are the ones that know themselves best, and so can they offer or
select specific requirements or ideas that might help them the most. And the more that we can be
flexible, but still have the same end point, like we want to figure out what the goal is,
(44:51):
but there can be multiple ways to get to that goal. Does that mean if you've got a project,
and somebody can do that project, whether they're in the office or not, and do a really great job,
does it matter that they have to be in the office for 40 hours at the time that you're
there, just those sort of lessons we learned during the pandemic. Let's not forget them,
but that it can be something that's really useful in the world. And think about how we teach our
(45:16):
students. So if we're going to teach a student to create a document, why not tell them also about
how to be accessible, so that when they're in the working world, they know to put alt text in
a picture because they're going to put it on the web, they know how to do headings in a document,
so that somebody who needs a screen reader or is blind can figure out what's going on, because your
(45:37):
company wants to reach all those people. So just thinking about the ways that, if we're learning
it in higher ed, then that is actually going to be a really marketable skill to take on into the
workforce. So it doesn't start or stop in the education world, it just is for all humans,
because we all learn and we're all different. It's a good note to close on, and we always
end with the question (45:59):
“What's next?” Well, my what's next Universal Design for
Learning is now moving from individual micro level applications to at-scale
barrier-lowering across entire institutions.Well, I am in the process of shopping a book
around, and my book is going to be focused on neurodivergent learners in higher ed and
(46:22):
what we can do to support them. And if we're going to be honest, it's mostly about UDL,
but I'm also talking about other things as well, but it's a book that needs to be written,
and because it's a book I wish my professors had when I was an undergrad with undiagnosed
ADHD. So this is something that I'm hopefully going to be moving forward on very soon.
And what's next for me? I'm not writing a book, but I'm still podcasting, so I like to listen
(46:45):
to everyone's stories and try to get those out about how UDL really is changing the world for
the better, and the more I can hear from folks who are implementing UDL, the better off I think
we all will be. So that's always it seems to be, what my next thing is, is the next podcast
and the next guest. And other than that, you know, world domination. No, no, not that. Just UDL.
(47:09):
And I haven't missed any of your podcasts since you started. In fact, I heard about
the podcast at the OLC conference a number of years before, when someone was talking about
planning this podcast. Excellent.
I very much enjoy your podcast. Thank you.
Well,thank you so much for joining us. It's always a delight to talk to all of you and to always talk
about one of my favorite topics. Thanks for having us and listeners,
(47:32):
we'd like to hear your stories too, so comment and you can find us on the socials, and we would
love to hear from you as well. Yeah, thanks for having us.
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
(47:56):
our Tea for Teaching Facebook page. You can find show notes, transcripts and
other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
The Universal Design for Learning (or UDL) framework is based on research on how students
learn. In this episode, we discuss the most recent evolution of the UDL guidelines.
Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective
(00:24):
practices in teaching and learning. This podcast series is hosted by
John Kane, an economist... ...and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer...
...and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more
inclusive and supportive of all learners.Our guests today are Tom Tobin, Lillian Nave,
(00:52):
and Jennifer Pusateri. Tom is a founding member of the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Mentoring
at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the author of the forthcoming book, UDL at Scale:
Adopting Universal Design for Learning across Higher Education, as well as Reach Everyone,
Teach Everyone (01:08):
Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education and several other works related
to teaching and learning. Lillian is the Faculty and Educational Development Specialist for the
Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning for Student Success at Appalachian State University’s
Hickory Campus, a senior lecturer in first-year seminar, and the host of the ThinkUDL podcast.
(01:31):
Jennifer is the Senior Universal Design Consultant at The University of Kentucky and has served as
the co-chair of the international UDL in Higher Education Network. She is a member of the CAST
National Faculty and is the author of Transform Your Teaching with Universal Design for Learning:
Six Steps to Jumpstart Your Practice. Tom, Lillian, and Jennifer often serve as
(01:52):
keynote speakers on UDL and other issues. Welcome Jennifer, and welcome back, Tom and Lillian.
Thanks a bunch, glad to be here.Very glad to be, again, with you all.
Yeah, excited. My pleasure. Today's teas are:... Tom,
are you drinking tea today?I am, I am coming to you with some
(02:13):
peak leaf cold brew iced tea when all you want is just the tea.
Love it. Lillian? I would like you to notice I'm drinking in
my Tea for Teaching podcast mug that John gifted me at a conference, and I brought my organic
hibiscus or hibiscus, depending on if you're from the south or not, my hibiscus tea bags.
(02:36):
And how about you, Jennifer? So, I'm not a tea drinker, guys.
I drink a coffee in the morning, and then the rest of the day I am team water. So I've got my
emotional support water cup with me here today.I do like to always point out that water is the
foundation of tea. That is true.
And I am drinking a pure peppermint tea because it's been a long day filled with
caffeine up to this point. And I have my last cup of London
(02:59):
Strand. I’m at the end. It's very sad.You may have to head back there again.
I may.So we've invited you here today to discuss
the UDL 3.0 guidelines that were released on July 30, 2024. But before we discuss the changes
that have occurred, could you describe what the UDL framework is and what remains the same?
I'll give it a shot. So the framework of UDL is essentially a collection of, gosh, I think there's
(03:24):
over 1200 different studies that have kind of been boiled down into these nine categories, and those
categories are organized in a grid format. So you can kind of look at it in lots of different ways,
but essentially this framework, the UDL framework, tells you what research says works in teaching,
and it tells you about that in nine different areas. So three of those have
(03:48):
to do with engagement. Three have to do with representation, or how things are presented,
and the other three have to do with action and expression, kind of how people are taking action
with and showing what they've learned. So that's how the framework of UDL works, and it's been
updated many times. There was an update that I remember in 2013. There was another one in 2018,
(04:08):
but the move from the 2013 to the 2018 version, the words didn't really change, but the order of
some of the guidelines changed around a little bit. So this is the first time in quite a while,
and this new version, the 3.0 version that came out here in the summer of ‘24 this is the first
time we've seen some changes to the actual words inside of the guideline themselves. And there's
actually quite a lot that's the same. I don't think anything was removed, per se. Some things
(04:33):
were combined. So they took two that might have been similar and combined them into one
consideration, which is what we call the bullet points that you see if you're looking at the
framework of UDL. So many were left the same. And then we also had some brand new ones, and those
are really scattered across the framework, and a lot of them are bringing into focus some other
things we hadn't really talked much about in UDL. So I'm excited to learn a little bit more about
(04:56):
that from my colleagues today, but I always love to talk about the framework of UDL, so I'm here
for it. And for a webinar that Lillian and Tom and I did last week, we put together a crosswalk
document that will show you what things stayed the same, what things are new, and maybe some
things where it's been changed, but it's close. So we have a whole document laid out for that, and we
will be happy to put that in the show notes. Always like a good resource around here,
(05:20):
that's for sure. So as Jennifer just noted, both the current and earlier versions of the
UDL guidelines include things related to multiple means of engagement, representation, and action
and expression, but there were some revisions to the language about how these are described.
The earlier guidelines asked faculty to provide each of these, and the current guidelines remove
(05:41):
the word “provide,” and have shifted the focus to learner agency. Can you talk a little bit about
what motivated this change and what are some ways of building learner agency into course design?
Rebecca, this is an excellent question, because one of the reasons why we moved into a new version
number with universal design for learning is that, in earlier versions, we assumed a
(06:05):
command environment where the instructor had all the skill, the authority, the deference
and the learners were just there to sort of bask in the glory of the knowledge of the instructor.
And that's not necessarily the case. I mean, if you're teaching elementary school students, you
act in loco parentis. At the same time, in higher education, we're working with adult learners,
(06:28):
and they are their own folks. They're there for their own reasons, and we don't have any legal
obligation to treat them in a power dynamic. So when we think about the shift to learner agency,
there was, for many years, a call among practitioners to say the designers and instructors
are not the only people with power here, and the designers and instructors are not the only people
(06:53):
who are engaged in the learning process. So it's not, “Hey, we design it and then you lucky people
get to experience it,” but we should be making space to help learners understand their own
learning process and then build up into agency. So the goal is not to create expert learners,
(07:14):
but now they've actually shifted that language into learner agency, or agentic learners. In
colleges and universities, a lot of our learners already have some experience under their belts,
so there is much less of a need for an expectation to establish a command environment, like I was
saying a minute ago. Now, that actually lets us design better for the goal of agentic learning
(07:36):
for Universal Design for Learning, since we are in the business of preparing our learners to join us
as professionals in our fields. And if you want to take a look into one of the new guidelines, you'd
watch for language in the 3.0 version that talks about co-creating, and we can apply that broadly
where it doesn't yet appear. So Jennifer talked earlier about there are three big principles of
(07:59):
universal design for learning. So design multiple ways to get engaged, to represent information,
and to take action and express yourself. Each of those three big principles is further divided into
nine guidelines. And each of those nine guidelines has several considerations underneath it,
specific practices that people can do. The new consideration 8.3, “foster collaboration,
(08:23):
interdependence, and collective learning,” it explicitly talks about learners creating their
own learning conditions. But one of the older considerations, 2.1, which is “clarify vocabulary,
symbols, and language structures,” it doesn't yet do that. So if you want, listeners,
you can search for research on social construction of learning, with colleges and universities in
(08:44):
your search terms, and you can kind of address that gap. Similarly in how we design is there's
an assumption in Universal Design for Learning that learners’ brains are still developing. The
UDL came out of the K-12 environment, and if you think of maybe a mom and her grade-school-age son,
they're sitting at home, they're both working on their homework, she's in college, so she's on her
(09:07):
laptop; he's in grade school, so he's got a pencil and a piece of paper. and we need to
support developing executive and emotional aspects of learners in K-12 environments. But for college,
we kind of have to shift our focus from developing brains toward social-emotional elements,
and we see some of this in some of the newer UDL considerations. So the research that's
(09:30):
cited for consideration 3.2, it's one of the old ones, that's “highlight and explore patterns,
critical features, big ideas, and relationships,” right now, the research that is cited for that
doesn't contain any higher education examples, so we've got about 15 years worth of studies like
Jen was talking about earlier. And to address this, we can kind of move beyond the simple
(09:53):
neurobiology argument of UDL toward a more social constructivist mode of practice. So we'll design
options specifically so that we can help reduce cognitive load, dissonance, and environmentally
interfering conditions for our learners. So watch out in the new 3.0 guidelines for language that
talks about emotions, self-regulation, and review the research page of those considerations to see
(10:16):
what sources were used to develop them, and you can supplement your search with keywords from
those considerations, plus college, university or adult learning in your research databases. So
there's a lot to unpack in the new guidelines.The new guidelines also emphasize issues related
to individual identity and building on the strength of the diversity in our classes. Some
(10:38):
faculty, though, especially in STEM fields, are somewhat resistant to that. They'll say,
“When I'm teaching students how to work with differential equations, identity doesn't matter.”
How can we convince faculty that perhaps they should at least consider the diversity of students
in their class and build on that diversity? Well, I'll take that one, John, and let's not
(10:58):
give, and you're not doing this, give the STEM professors a bad name or anything. But I do
hear this a lot in a lot of my conversations with faculty, and I think it's just not really
broadening enough… broadening our definition of what identity is. It's really not just the
things that we can see, but recognizing that all of the students in our classroom are different,
(11:22):
and identity can take many forms, and that's the reality that we have in our classrooms. More and
more students are coming to college than have ever gone before from different backgrounds:
We have first-generation students, English language learners, college prep students,
and students who've had really no college prep, so neurodivergent students, students
(11:43):
with disabilities, etc. So it's really a matter of understanding who's in your classroom and
taking down barriers to learning for all of those students. So all of your students are
going to have some strengths. Some are going to be really stem focused. They're going to have a great
math background. They're going to be ready to go into your physics lab with really no problems. And
(12:04):
other students might come in with a lot of other maybe verbal strengths, reading comprehension,
a lot of vocabulary, but need a little bit more structure and background with some of the math as
they move into your physics lab, okay? So we've got lots of challenges and opportunities for all
of them. What does that look like? Well, I can use the example of my daughter, who was a typical
(12:30):
college student and would have shown up in many of those STEM classes, because she was a STEM major,
and she was kind of the typical, you know, most college students now are young women… that's the
majority… are girls. And by the way, she gives me full permission to share this story. And thinking
of all of you college lecturers and professors out there, how many of you have had a student named
(12:52):
Emma? Probably 100% of them. So she's in your class, but what you don't realize is that there
are lots of things that are part of one student's identity that you don't know are making it harder
or are barriers. So being a girl in a STEM class is sometimes just a little bit awkward, when even
(13:13):
though they're the most of the students, they are less represented in STEM classes. So when she was
in a physics class, she was in the minority. No big deal. But when you keep adding on a few other
things, like the fact that, as a left hander, she really couldn't write as fast as everybody else,
and so she needed a little electronic iPad to work on there. That's number two. And then the fact
(13:34):
that she's neurodivergent in two ways, with ADHD, anxiety, that made it a little bit more hesitant
for her to go up and ask questions when she was feeling far behind. And then add on to that, a
chronic condition. So she has to get immunotherapy and go to a clinic. That means she has to leave
campus. She has to get those set up even before the semester starts. So, too bad it conflicted
(13:58):
with her physics class because she didn't know which section she was going to be in. So all of
those things are things that created barriers for her, and I'm not saying that the faculty member
needs to know all those things, you don't, but those are the kinds of things that are part of
your students’ identities. So if you can make sure that you have accessible slides, that if a student
(14:19):
has to miss for no fault of their own, they can get that information, then you're doing a service
to your students. In fact, you're just making it accessible for your students who can't be there.
If you're making sure that everybody knows, really well organized, what the material is,
and that they can go back and look at things that were building up to that particular date, if you
(14:40):
have to miss, then those are just other ways that you are supplying the information to all of your
students, no matter their identity, if they have a lot of background or a little bit of background,
etc. So that's the kind of thing that we're talking about. And it's not just accessibility,
but it's just thinking about you're going to have students that are coming at your material from
(15:03):
a different direction, and they are going to be better served by a variety of ways to get to the
end point, not just the one way that you're the most comfortable with. Because every student is
different. Every faculty member is different. My favorite saying that I use all the time is
we really don't want the same students to be uncomfortable all of the time, but we want all
(15:26):
of the students to be uncomfortable some of the time, and so if we can spread that out,
we get all of the students into that learning zone where they risk just a little, but they're not
always in that risky fight or flight mode, then we're better serving our students. So that's what
I say about identity for our students, it does matter just because everybody's different.
(15:50):
Sounds like we also need to think about as faculty also sometimes having that experience of being
uncomfortable like that goes… Yes, exactly.
…not all the same faculty need to be uncomfortable all of the time. So building on what you were
just talking about, Lillian, and what Tom was mentioning before about the social aspects that
are now in UDL. Can you talk a little bit about some of the ways in which our courses can more
(16:14):
effectively foster a sense of belonging?Yes, yeah, so I'll go all in on these two
questions right now. So we're all in this learning together, and all of our students and faculty have
a relationship, whether you realize it or not, it might be a terrible relationship where students
are afraid to come into class because they'll get called on and they're anxious about it,
(16:36):
and they're like dreading two o'clock on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That's a relationship that you may
or may not know, but it also could be a very warm and inviting relationship. I know that
I'm going to go into class and there's going to be something interesting and exciting and feel
like they're valued or ready to learn something new. So anyway, everybody's got some sort of
(16:57):
relationship. But how can we leverage, really, the design of the course into learning together and
making it really a social learning opportunity? There's lots of different ways to do that. So
you can do that in person, online or hybrid. For example, if you have even a large in-person class,
a way that all of the learners can really understand that they're in the same place,
(17:22):
they're all learning together, is if you were to use, like an in-person or synchronous poll, and it
can be completely anonymous, and then the faculty member could really determine, like, where are we
as a class? There's no points associated with it. It's completely anonymous. So, could throw out a
concept and see where people are, maybe on a continuum. Or how confident are you in this
(17:45):
theory? Do you think you could solve this problem? And then the students could be like, “Oh, it's not
just me. About the third of the class thinks we need to review this again.” That's just one way
that everybody in the classroom is understanding their learning together. And it doesn't have to
be like, throw everybody in a group. You don't have to do that, although that's also helpful,
but that's just like, one of those things. In an online class. I love using a Q & A forum,
(18:10):
so this is different, but this is understanding or seeing how somebody else in the class may solve
a problem differently than you, but you want all of your students to attack this problem,
and you don't want it to be a discussion board where the first person answers, and then everybody
else says, “Yeah. I was thinking that too.” Instead, this is something where everybody has to
(18:31):
come up with their own answer, or way they would solve the problem or their thoughts on it, but
they don't get to see anybody else's until they've answered. You have to wait 15 minutes after you
answer to see if anybody else has and there's some great mechanisms to do that. And that could be in
smaller groups, it could be in the whole class, but we really do learn a lot and have a much more
(18:52):
rich and more nuanced understanding the material when we see that other people are learning that,
like I can read a passage and get something out of it, Jen can read the same passage and see
something completely differently. Tom will see it a whole ‘nother way and pick up different things,
and I'm a much better learner when I see that rich and nuanced perspective of my classmates.
(19:13):
So there we all are learning together. So you can design for group learning, whether it's hybrid,
in-person, online, if you give also really good roles for any group work you want them to do.
Don't just throw them in the group and say, “have at it.” Is there going to be someone
who's the convener, who's going to be sending out the emails? What are the roles? Is there an
(19:34):
editor in the group, or what are they supposed to be doing? And also, what sort of document are they
creating? Is it accessible, so that all of those students can really find what they need to do. So
giving really good instructions on those things can help people learn together. And finally,
I think the last thing is, have fun (19:52):
games, quizzes, review days, trying things out together,
making it sort of fun in learning is another way, I think, that we can bring that sense
of community into the learning process.One of the things you mentioned was doing
some sort of a poll at the beginning of class, or gathering information about the identities
(20:15):
of your students. One useful resource for that is the “Who's in Class” form that was put together
by Tracie Addy, Khadijah Mitchell, and Derek Dube, and we'll share a link to that in the show notes,
as well as an article they wrote about that. One of the other things in the new guidelines is that
there's an increased focus on addressing biases in the use of language and symbols,
(20:35):
as well as biases related to modes of expression and communication. What are some of the ways in
which these biases may appear, and how can we address them in our classes?
This is actually one of the big shifts in Universal Design for Learning 3.0,
is that there's an increasing awareness of and a need to create space for the intersectional
(20:59):
identities or characteristics that learners and instructors bring into learning spaces.
So those kinds of biases can be often unintentional ones. So for example,
physical assumptions. When I'm giving a webinar and I say, “as you can see on the screen,” well
maybe everybody can't actually see what's on the screen, so I've taken to doing visual description,
(21:22):
or just using ableist language. When we think about something that's really difficult,
we say it was crazy or it was insane, and those are small but telling, unknowing ways of saying,
“Yeah, if you fall into one of these categories, maybe this is not for you, or you don't belong
here.” Our colleague, Ann Gagne has a wonderful approach to addressing some of these biases,
(21:45):
is using very neutral language in very charged or meaningful ways. So if you had a challenging
day and someone asks you, “Hey, how did things go?” You can say “it was bananas,” and Ann, in a
recent webinar, she used that kind of language, and she talked about one of her colleagues just
saying giraffes. It was like a herd of giraffes, and it's evocative, yes, ableist less so. When
(22:09):
Jen and Lillian and I held a webinar for the Professional and Organizational Development
Network Accessibility and Disability special interest group, or the POD A and D SIG for short,
recently, we each got to talk about one of the new Universal Design for Learning considerations.
The one that I was facilitating with some colleagues was 6.5: “challenge, exclusionary
(22:34):
practices.” And this gets to your question, John. We can kind of examine power dynamics
now within universal design for learning in a way that it wasn't explicitly included before.
So when we're thinking about power imbalance, the people who teach in higher education, we are
not ourselves a homogeneous group. We experience and express privilege and power in varying ways.
(23:00):
So the same inclusive practices that white male instructors like me might use in order to lower
barriers and smooth the way for learners, those might result in pushback and mistrust when they're
implemented by younger colleagues, women in the classroom, people of color who are at the front
of a classroom. So we should acknowledge the privilege and standing that are needed in order
(23:21):
to implement many of the UDL considerations. And when we design for variability, we should do so
thinking about the variability, not only of our learners, but of the instructors who are going
to be in communication and community with them. So when we're thinking about biases, we can think
along lots of different vectors (23:40):
we can think about socioeconomic, we can think about gendered
bias. There's lots of those that listeners, you are probably familiar with. And when we think
about Universal Design for Learning, just as we're thinking about the variability of the learners,
we also should start thinking about, “Okay, who has the privilege to be able to do these things
(24:03):
and facilitate them well in the classroom. So that's one piece where I'm hoping to see more
research come out. We've actually got a number of different researchers who are working on
these kinds of questions as their doctoral work over the last couple of years and into
the future in the next two or three years. So I'm excited to see some of this research come out.
We should note, Tom, that you wrote an article with Chavella Pittman on this issue a while back
(24:28):
in The Chronicle, and we had a podcast discussing that as well, and we'll share links to both of
those in the show notes. So, when talking about agency and power dynamics, the new guidelines seem
to provide a bit more focus on the development of student goal setting, executive function,
and metacognition, while also recognizing the individual, institutional, and systemic barriers
(24:49):
to learning. What are some ways of incorporating this into the design of our courses?
Yeah, well, John, one of the biggest changes that we saw in the framework of UDL from the 2.2 to the
3.0 was moving executive functioning, which was a part of the previous version, but it was only
one of the nine guidelines. So in this iteration, they have expanded that to be the entire bottom
(25:11):
row, and so that's including several different pieces of executive functioning. And that whole
row now is labeled as executive function. So one piece of that would be emotional capacity. That
would be things like emotional regulation or motivation, even inhibition and metacognition
are part of that emotional capacity piece. It also includes the building knowledge guideline,
(25:33):
and that used to be called comprehension, but is now renamed to building knowledge,
and that piece is really going to be talking a lot about the information processing and the working
memory piece that is part of this umbrella term, executive function. And then the last
is strategy development, and that's the one where we get into those, what people typically think of
as executive functioning, goal setting, planning, organization, time management, that kind of stuff,
(25:56):
all falls under that category as well. And I'm really glad that this is the way they
have restructured this, because I'll be honest, I ran into a lot of questions from folks in higher
ed and K-12 as well, because previously there were two guidelines. One was executive function,
and then the other one was self-regulation. And so I had a lot of people saying, well,
aren't those kind of the same thing? And I don't want to go down too much of a rabbit… well,
(26:20):
that's not true. I do want to go down a rabbit hole… but I'm going to refrain from going down
said rabbit hole. But it's really interesting to me that now we've kind of acknowledged that,
“Okay, yeah, the self-regulation part is a piece of executive function.” I think that's why they
went through and renamed some of these on the bottom row. And these are really important.
We're noticing, at least at my university, and I would guess at others as well, that we have quite
(26:44):
a few more neurodivergent students than we used to have, and some estimates would say even up to
a third of our students could be considered as neurodivergent. And for neurodivergent students,
that executive functioning row, that bottom row of the new 3.0 guidelines, is a game changer, because
a lot of the pieces that we forget to mention in higher ed kind of that hidden curriculum that we
(27:06):
might talk about, or that hidden structure, those things are made explicit through that bottom
row of the guidelines. So, for example, if we wanted to think about strategy development,
we could be looking at something like walking students through what journal of articles or
academic articles look like in your field and how you read those. So, I'll use myself as an
(27:28):
example. I did not know until my PhD program that you don't just start at the beginning and read
all the way through an article to the very end, like front to back. In my mind, that made sense,
because that's how we read everything else. But as it turns out, my professors in my education
department were telling me, “Well, there's kind of a different way you can go about this. You can
start with the abstract, read through that, see if it's still within the realm of what you want to
(27:53):
know. Then you can kind of skip to the discussion part at the end. Read through that a little bit,
figure out if that's what you need to know. And then, if you're still interested and still want
to use this article, then you can read some of the other pieces.” Well, I had no idea.
Like no one had ever said that. So why would I know that? So when we can pull those kinds
of things out and make them clear and explicit to our students, transparent is another word that we
(28:14):
might use for that, and that reminds me of the work of Mary-Ann Winklemes in transparency, in
learning and teaching, TILT. You may have heard of TILT Higher Ed or transparent assignment design,
and those are really all kind of doing the same things. We're taking the guesswork out of our
teaching and learning, and that's, of course, going to help our neurodivergent students,
but that's going to help a lot of students as well, first-gen students, international students.
(28:35):
And if we're able to do that and make those things really clear, then we're going to help a lot of
students. We could look at another example, if we're thinking about the, and this is in the
building knowledge guideline, so 3.2 is highlight and explore patterns, critical features, big ideas
and relationships. There are lots of ways that you can do this, but one way I really appreciate,
(28:55):
because I kind of lean toward visuals, is having a concept map, or some visual way of connecting
the information to the other information, like connecting it and helping me to orient
myself within both the thing that we're learning about, but like, what am I learning about there,
in relation to the whole course? So being able to kind of see those relationships laid out in
a visual way is also going to be really useful. And then Lillian actually talked already a little
(29:20):
bit about this idea of group work and how we might set that up. And there are several
considerations that talk about this kind of idea of, like, working together in some way. And one
of the ones I really like a lot in the emotional capacity guideline is talking about cultivating
empathy and restorative practices. And one way, of course, we can do that, and Lillian actually kind
(29:40):
of mentioned a little bit about this as well, is helping students to reflect on, like, what
is actually helpful for me when I'm in a group setting? Like, what kinds of things make me feel
comfortable enough to share my thoughts and ideas? What kinds of things get in the way of that? Like,
what are some of the barriers that I encounter in a group setting? And having students actually work
through that, kind of process that information and process their own metacognitive view of themselves
(30:05):
working in a group before we get into a group. And if we can do that first and reflect individually,
then we can come together as a group, and now we can start to build this trust framework, this
sense of belonging, because I can now share those things. I can say, “Gosh, when I'm in a group, I
don't always talk first like, I'm just not usually that person. But if someone is like, ‘Jennifer,
(30:28):
what do you think about that?’ And they ask me, then I'm going to contribute to the conversation.”
So things like that really helped me in a group setting. And if I can say that to my group, now
they can understand, perhaps, why I'm not jumping into the conversation immediately, and that builds
that empathy. And then we can also figure out what are some things that I can make sure I don't do so
that I'm supporting my other group members as well. So I've actually got a really good group
(30:50):
contract activity kit that I put together for one of our workshops at the University of Kentucky,
and I would be happy to put a link to that in the show notes as well. And this actually has kind
of that breakdown. First, there's an individual reflection, then you get together in your groups,
and you do a group discussion with your reflection, and also you put together a contract,
and it kind of walks professors through how they could go about doing something like that. So I
(31:11):
will make sure I get that in the show notes. That sounds awesome. As we're thinking about
changing times, we also can think a little bit about generative AI and how that might
support the UDL framework in its new form.It's a wonderful question, and I had the pleasure
at the Online Learning Consortium OLC conference of being on a panel on UDL and AI with the two of
(31:33):
you. So I'm going to not actually recycle some of the ideas we talked about there, but I've got some
new ones. I want to talk about a lopsided house and listeners. I'm going to describe this for
you. There will also be a visual that we'll put into the show notes. I was recently talking with
Marcus Popetz. He's the person who runs Harmonize, the geek company, and we're going to be putting
(31:55):
together a webinar later on, on universal design for learning and artificial intelligence resistant
assessments. And if that sounds like I have my wooden shoe ready to throw into the cogs of
the machine, quite the opposite. So the lopsided house is an idea that I'm currently playing with.
Imagine a rectangular diagram so time moves from left to right. On the bottom, there are learners
(32:20):
who are beginners, people who don't know yet, and they're just starting to learn a concept
or a skill or something we can teach them. In the middle are proficient learners, people who
have enough to actually start doing the things in our field. And then over at the other end
of time is practitioners. These are learners who are para-professionals. They've got the skills,
(32:43):
and they probably their next step will be becoming colleagues of ours. Now in that rectangle, draw
a diagonal line from the very bottom of beginner all the way over to the very top of practitioner.
And what you've just done is you've created an artificial intelligence tool use diagram
(33:03):
that matches up with what we might call designed UDL. So when someone is a beginner, we want to,
as designers and instructors, provide them with and there's that provide word that UDL doesn't use
anymore. We want to provide optimized choices for learners in their learning experiences,
(33:25):
and we want to do a lot of that, and we want to be a little heavy-handed with it, right? We're the
experts, and we kind of know how to guide people through those beginnings. Also, at that beginning
stage, there's very little use of tools. We're helping people to understand the foundational
ideas, get them practice, even if it's the long way around or the manual way to do things. For
(33:46):
example, I teach writing courses, and my freshman writers, I want them to create paragraphs that
have a thesis statement and details evidence and examples that then help to support that thesis.
This is not the time to let them loose on Claude or Copilot or ChatGPT. This is the time to say,
“Please don't use those tools, because I want you to learn the foundations.” Now move forward in
(34:09):
time, and it's about half and half. As people get more proficient as learners, we take away some of
that designed UDL, we actually give them more agency. And here's where you can draw another
triangle on top of that, it's kind of a lopsided house, where as we reduce the amount of designed
universal design for learning opportunities, we start increasing where we're asking the learners
(34:35):
themselves to learn more about their learning process and be agentic, to take control of and
show where they want to go with their learning. And when you're more proficient, you can use
tools to start working on things like giving study questions to generate off of a reading.
A bad use of artificial intelligence... I'm here with Stacy Truex when she says “You can't ask it
(35:00):
to do something you don't know how to do yet.” So give me a summary of the reading… bad idea. Give
me some study questions from the reading and then quiz yourself on the reading that you've done…very
good idea in terms of asking proficient learners to use artificial intelligence tools. And then
when we move all the way over to sort of the end of the timeline, where people who are our learners
(35:24):
become more like practitioners. They become paraprofessional. That's when we really ramp
up the tool use. That's when we let them loose and we say, “Hey, artificial intelligence tools,
that can help you skip the foundational steps… Now you know, now you have enough skill and knowledge
to skip those steps so that you can focus on higher-order complex thinking.” And this is
(35:44):
also the point in people's learning careers where we want to have the least amount of designed UDL.
We're not guiding them anymore. We want them at that point to have the greatest amount of agentic,
universal design for learning knowledge. And when we're thinking about examples here,
I'm thinking about study question generation, but also creating alternative formats of things. “Hey,
(36:08):
this document is only a PDF, can you make a read it out loud to me version of that?”
Artificial intelligence tools are really good at making alternative versions of existing content
and materials. And the same thing when we're thinking about as instructors or designers,
because we have that expertise, artificial intelligence tools can help us to create
(36:29):
multiple means of engagement, multiple means of representing information very quickly. You want
a question bank that is tied to each of your learning objectives and segments things into
question pools of three questions or more. Bang, couple of minutes, and it's there, and then you
can review it from your expert perspective. Creating quizzes, everything kind of speeds
(36:50):
up when we're using artificial intelligence. The key though is, in order to use those tools well,
we've got to know what we're talking about first, whether we're learners, designers,
or instructors. So I want to leave that sort of as a provocative thing to hang into the conversation.
But AI is going to help us with universal design for learning in lots of different ways.
(37:11):
One of the things that you just underscored in your lopsided house, but also a little
bit earlier, is how you might use UDL in the way that you're designing a class as an instructor a
bit differently depending on the expertise of the students in the class. You pointed
that out in the difference between maybe K-12 and college, but then again, between this like
(37:32):
beginner and expert. Can you talk a little bit more about the different ways that instructors
might engage with UDL in really thinking about the expertise of the students in the
room when we're kind of thinking about level?Yes, and I'll be really quick here, and I want
to open it up. I know Jen has done work on this as well. When we're thinking about the students,
we've been actually engaging in a little bit of a heresy in our conversation today, and that is,
(37:58):
strictly speaking, Universal Design for Learning is what we do when we design learning engagements
before we ever know who's going to be in our learning spaces. So whether it's a classroom or
it's a librarian working with students, or it's a mental health counselor or academic counselor
helping students navigate systems, the design part is what we do before day one of the class, before
(38:22):
anybody ever walks through the door and says, “Can you help me?” Then, when we start noticing
patterns among our learners over time, we can take that into account. We're starting to see many
more learners who are first-generation college learners, or students who don't speak English
as their first language at home. Or we're seeing a lot more folks who identify as neurodivergent.
(38:46):
Those attributes are things that we can now plug into universal design spaces, but technically
speaking, we don't know who the learners are yet, so we have to assume that there's going to
be wide variability among their characteristics. That's what UDL is all about. It goes really well
with pattern recognition and what we in K-12 call differentiated instruction. I want to make a pause
(39:11):
here and see if Jen and Lillian can take this further too, because it's a cool question.
So, I do a lot of work, both in higher ed and in K-12, and in both of those areas,
one of the things I tell people is that UDL is for when a human brain is in a learning situation,
and that doesn't necessarily matter if that's for preschoolers or if that's for undergrads, or
(39:32):
if that's for postdocs, if that's for elderly, it doesn't matter. If you're in a learning situation,
the framework of UDL should help you to be able to meet the variability, and support the variability,
of your learners. So that's one piece. Having said that, I don't remember, Tom if you went a
lot into this, but I know we talked about this the other day in our webinar. You know, currently the
UDL framework is still a little K-12 heavy, and actually we've actually got a project going, and
(39:58):
I'm gonna throw that in here real quick while I'm thinking about it. So if you've ever gone in and
looked at the CAST studio guidelines website, and you've drilled down to one specific consideration,
so let's say options for choice and autonomy is a good example. And you've gone to that little page
where it tells you a little bit about this is what this means and here are some sort of generalized
ways you could think about doing that in a teaching situation. There's also a place on that
(40:21):
page where you can look at the research that was used to put that consideration in place. Because,
as I'm sure everyone knows, in the field of education, we don't just base our educational and
teaching decisions on one study. We're basing this on a body of research that is built up over time,
so that we know, over time, we've seen that giving students choice and autonomy is going to help with
(40:43):
engagement. Engagement, right? So that's what this list of all of these different pieces of research
and studies are about, and most of those are focused on K-12. So we were really wanting to put
together a version of the research per guideline, and even getting down to the consideration level,
or the bullet-point level, if you will, that also has some research for higher ed folks in
(41:05):
it as well. So we have put together a Google form, and we will get that in the show notes
as well. But I can just throw out this quick Bitly, if you'd like. It's Bitly, that’s, B,
I T, dot, l, y, slash, UDL, dash, H, E, which stands for higher ed, H E, dash research. And so
basically, we're wanting you to think about, do you have some like, go to research that
(41:27):
you share with people a lot that aligns with UDL? And if so, if that's higher ed focused,
we would like to know what that is, so we can start to build up our own body of research around
the guidelines that really is focused in on higher ed a little bit more. So having said that, there's
a lot of ways that you can do this, that you can build UDL in. When I think about our undergrads,
(41:48):
Tom talked a little bit about executive functioning earlier, and for the most part, yes,
we're done cognitively developing when we enter college, but we do know that there's still some
parts of your brain that are cooking up to age 25 for most and up to even 30 and 32 for others,
and that's our executive functions. So with our younger students, for sure, but honestly, with
(42:08):
almost all of our students, really focusing in on the executive functions piece is a good place to
start, because we can just go ahead and assume that our students are going to struggle with
executive function. Part of it is because of their age, but also we know that this is one of the most
anxious groups of students we've ever seen in higher ed, and anxiety, stress, trauma, all of
those things compromise our executive functions. So we can assume today that you will have students
(42:32):
in your class that are going to struggle with executive functioning. And so I think that's a
really good place to start. And some people like to start with the top row instead, because this
top row is really kind of your entry point into thinking about UDL, and it would be changing
kind of the concrete things in your class. So thinking about, yes, they have a paper textbook,
but can I also provide some kind of a digital format for that as well, or is this something I
(42:54):
can maybe give to them in a visual that might make sense in that way? So you're kind of
thinking about those concrete pieces of teaching, learning, and the materials and all the things,
and that's also a really good place to start, is looking at that top row. And I've actually seen
somebody put together a version of the guidelines where they put a little welcome mat above that
and said, This is your welcome mat into the UDL framework is starting at the top and going down
(43:17):
from there. And that's my thoughts on that.In addition to the differences that UDL can
be used in K-12, and then also the difference between a freshman seminar, which is what I teach,
and what you might use in a senior level or grad course, is thinking about UDL can be used
(43:38):
and should be used everywhere, because we're dealing with people, and people are different,
and everyone is unique. And so what it might also look like is thinking about it in workforce
development. So not just are you providing multiple ways for your students to learn,
but if you have a company, are you providing multiple ways for your learners that are in
(44:01):
your company to move forward, to learn new skills, but also to do the things that they're doing? So
do they have options for working off hours or in remote settings? Or do you have a human- centered
approach to doing whatever it is that you're doing, so that there might be quiet spaces,
or just the way that everybody can work to their strengths, so that you don't push aside talent
(44:27):
that you can really use, and that the people who are working for you or working in this
job or in part of a company are the ones that know themselves best, and so can they offer or
select specific requirements or ideas that might help them the most. And the more that we can be
flexible, but still have the same end point, like we want to figure out what the goal is,
(44:51):
but there can be multiple ways to get to that goal. Does that mean if you've got a project,
and somebody can do that project, whether they're in the office or not, and do a really great job,
does it matter that they have to be in the office for 40 hours at the time that you're
there, just those sort of lessons we learned during the pandemic. Let's not forget them,
but that it can be something that's really useful in the world. And think about how we teach our
(45:16):
students. So if we're going to teach a student to create a document, why not tell them also about
how to be accessible, so that when they're in the working world, they know to put alt text in
a picture because they're going to put it on the web, they know how to do headings in a document,
so that somebody who needs a screen reader or is blind can figure out what's going on, because your
(45:37):
company wants to reach all those people. So just thinking about the ways that, if we're learning
it in higher ed, then that is actually going to be a really marketable skill to take on into the
workforce. So it doesn't start or stop in the education world, it just is for all humans,
because we all learn and we're all different. It's a good note to close on, and we always
end with the question (45:59):
“What's next?” Well, my what's next Universal Design for
Learning is now moving from individual micro level applications to at-scale
barrier-lowering across entire institutions.Well, I am in the process of shopping a book
around, and my book is going to be focused on neurodivergent learners in higher ed and
(46:22):
what we can do to support them. And if we're going to be honest, it's mostly about UDL,
but I'm also talking about other things as well, but it's a book that needs to be written,
and because it's a book I wish my professors had when I was an undergrad with undiagnosed
ADHD. So this is something that I'm hopefully going to be moving forward on very soon.
And what's next for me? I'm not writing a book, but I'm still podcasting, so I like to listen
(46:45):
to everyone's stories and try to get those out about how UDL really is changing the world for
the better, and the more I can hear from folks who are implementing UDL, the better off I think
we all will be. So that's always it seems to be, what my next thing is, is the next podcast
and the next guest. And other than that, you know, world domination. No, no, not that. Just UDL.
(47:09):
And I haven't missed any of your podcasts since you started. In fact, I heard about
the podcast at the OLC conference a number of years before, when someone was talking about
planning this podcast. Excellent.
I very much enjoy your podcast. Thank you.
Well,thank you so much for joining us. It's always a delight to talk to all of you and to always talk
about one of my favorite topics. Thanks for having us and listeners,
(47:32):
we'd like to hear your stories too, so comment and you can find us on the socials, and we would
love to hear from you as well. Yeah, thanks for having us.
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
(47:56):
our Tea for Teaching Facebook page. You can find show notes, transcripts and
other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
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