Episode 5 Lillian Nave UDL Research and development

Hi, my name's Joe Houghton, and this is the +1 Podcast. My guest today is Lillian Knave. Lillian is a podcast host for the Think UDL Podcast, so I'm under pressure here already. She's also UDL coordinator and senior lecturer at Appalachian State University, which is North Carolina, I think, in the USA, isn't it?

Mm-hmm.

If you haven't visited my podcast before, you may not be aware about +1, but +1 comes out of Universal Design for Learning, UDL, and that's one of the reasons why I thought Lillian would be a great person to talk to. And I actually found Lillian by typing in UDL innovation and education in LinkedIn, and Lillian came up top of the list. So I dropped her a message and then we exchanged emails and now she's here on the podcast. So I mean, I'm thrilled with that. So thanks so much for taking the time to come on, Lillian.

Well, thank you so much for finding me, and I love talking about UDL, and as a podcaster, I'm just thrilled I'm thrilled to hear more about having— you're having a UDL podcast and bringing this out into the world. And the reason I started mine was to raise the chatter about Universal Design for Learning, especially in higher ed and beyond, like workforce readiness and things. And this, you are doing exactly what I'm, you know, hoping to do is we need more people talking. We need more people having these conversations. So anything I can do that helps. You is totally what I want to do.

Yeah, brilliant, brilliant. Yeah, and I mean, you know, I mean, I only discovered UDL myself last year. So my journey into UDL was a colleague of mine— well, it started out that I was doing a diploma in creative education with the University College Dublin Innovation Academy, and they bring together educators from all over the place. So I'm like, you I teach at university, I run a master's in project management. One of the other people on that course was the first lady that I interviewed for the podcast, Jen Lynch, and she is a dental nurse who runs dental nurse kind of training at Marino College in Dublin. And she won the 2020 John Kelly Award for Universal Design for Learning in Ireland. So that was the big Irish award for UDL. And she kind of put me onto UDL, and they run in Ireland now each year. There's an organization called ahead.ie, and they run the digital badge for UDL. So I signed up for that, which Jen was actually co-facilitating. She didn't facilitate my group, but— So I did the digital badge in UDL. last year and thought it was fantastic. I mean, you know, I've been a college educator now for 15-odd years, and I'd never really heard of UDL. And it was kind of one of those jaw-dropping experiences as an educator where you think, why didn't I know about this stuff? Why have I not heard about this? How have I got to this stage in my career and not been made aware of UDL? So that's what brought the podcast to life, if you like, because Innovation Academy, for some reason, gave me a fellowship this summer. So I don't have to do any teaching this summer or thesis writing. Oh, that's great.

You can do the podcast.

So I said, well, I'll create a podcast, interview innovative educators from around the world, and then write it up in a book. So that's what we're doing. So that's my summer project. And UDL is really at the heart of this. I mean, it's not everything because it's innovation in education, but the kernel, the seed of this whole thing is UDL. So, I mean, you seem to be just like, you know, my perfect interview guest. When I found you, I thought, yes!

Well, I must say you are in one of the best places for UDL. One of my early interviews with was with Dara Ryder, who's now running ahead in Ireland. And they have put together such amazing resources and trainings that so many people I know have already benefited from. So, and I have been so impressed with Ireland's ability to integrate that nationally. So I'm just— blown away. So any, any time I see, uh, Dara Ryder or Ahead Ireland or, um, anything out of Dublin, I'm— my ears are perked up to find out more.

Right, yeah, because I mean, this, this last time around, um, I think that 2 years ago, they, they'd rolled out the digital badge to some tens of people. They did it to over 600 Wow. So, they put it all online. It was really well laid out, and it was kind of like they'd really thought about how to put this stuff in front of you so that you could pick it up in lots of different ways and engage with it in your own time. And yeah, they scaled it straight up to 1,600 people fully online, facilitated in groups of 3 or 4, I think it was. It was really impressive.

Yeah, it's super impressive. So I'm so glad you got to do that and look at what it's already inspired. That's so great.

Yeah, isn't it? It's just amazing. So you're an art historian.

So-called, yes.

That's your background, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, that's your background. So I mean, how does an art historian end up as a UDL coordinator? And are those things either complementary or are they at odds?

I mean, I actually think they are very complementary, but I mean, the actual answer is I fell into it much like you did. But I, if I look, if I reflect back on my teaching, it has been very closely linked with universal design for learning, even though I didn't realize it.

Yes.

With art history, you have to present in multiple modes. So that means if we're learning about something, we're most likely going to see an image like a work of art. We might also see a diagram that might explain leading lines or chiaroscuro or different parts of a painting or a sculpture. And that would also include text. So there's multiple ways that you're presenting the ideas. Also storytelling. You know, I loved art history and fell in love with it because of the stories that were being told that I just got to kind of sit in class and listen to stories and have it come alive with slides. way back when, when it was actual like dark rooms and slides projectors. So I think they're really complementary, and it, it is a creative field, although art history is the more analytical side of studio art.

Mm-hmm.

So I do think it's quite complementary. But I was an art historian where I was teaching like art history. Greek art is my specialty, so Greek art and myth, those Those sorts of things, but also taught modern contemporary and Italian Renaissance. I'd studied in Italy and studied in Greece, and those are my favorite things—is being able to, of course, travel and see this stuff in situ. But I was teaching in art history and eventually got a chance to move over into an interdisciplinary department, which is our first-year seminar, and that allows me to have a lot of flexibility, a lot of creativity in creating courses because they all have to be. multidisciplinary. So it can't just be a straight Art History 101, you know, something like that. It has to be things like— I did Art, Politics, and Power, Art, Religion, and Society— so that you're taking different tracks into your subject matter. And so some of that, I included service learning when I had students work with various different religious organizations and learn about how art influences or works in that. And Art, Politics, and Power was about Nazi-looted art, which in World War II, which was fascinating to me, and how art can be political and important. So all of those things had like lots of multiplicities to them. Wow. So it turns out that I was doing some of it, just didn't know it, but got a real education when our university, Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina was part of a grant called College STAR. And the STAR stands for Supporting Transition, Access, and Retention. So the STAR is an acronym. And we were part of 3 campuses that got a grant to help students with executive functions, to help our tutoring centers that was UDL-focused. And I got to be the person who rolled out UDL to our faculty. So we had a service that was more towards students and then a service that was more towards So I fell into it, started learning about it, and thought, yeah, thought, whoa, okay, there's some things I do, and then there's all this stuff I didn't even know about that was really important. So—

So you got the job to roll this out to this faculty, even though you hadn't done UDL before, you didn't know about UDL before?

No, that's right.

Oh my goodness.

And actually I came into it, I wasn't the first. There was like, there was about 2 years of this grant that had, some faculty learning communities, and then had some like rollout in our Course Redesign Institute. And then I came in on it and sort of was able to take the reins and move forward. But yeah, it's a lot. I think a UDL is a lot of people who are just excited by it and finding their way.

Yes.

As we're moving forward and we're trying to get more research, especially in higher ed, we want, those connections to be made more forcefully and more concretely. But it's still a relatively new field that we're researching in higher ed. We've got a lot to learn from K-12, but I'd say it's still relatively new for higher ed.

That's really interesting because it's funny, I was talking, we sat out in the garden for half an hour. We've got a sunny day in Dublin. got a week of rain coming in, so we took our coffees out in the garden this morning, Penny, my wife, and I. And she was saying to me, like, you know, what are you doing at half 2? And I was explaining about you. And she said, so what's the background of UDL like? Is there any research? Is it, you know, is it proven? And I said, well, it started by a neuroscientist. And, you know, but yeah, so I mean, there seems to be some pretty solid underpinning on it, but it's just such fantastic ideas. you know, if you're practically teaching. But I confess, I haven't gone into, if you like, the research or whether there is any research yet. So that's something, as I suppose, as I get into the book that I do need to address.

Yeah, and there is, there's research. It is, there's a lot of research on learning, on neuroscience and K-12. It's now we need to really add to, there is some, And there's some really good research on outcomes, on professors using Universal Design for Learning with student feedback and lots of research just being created now in the last 5 years too.

Right.

But one of the problems with UDL and research is if you know about Universal Design for Learning, you aren't going to do the traditional type of research where you have a control group and you teach your class in the old way.

Yes.

And then you have this other section and you include all of your Universal Design for Learning strategies and, and you, it's dynamic and exceptional and flexible. It's really hard to, to do that, right? To have that control if you know that there's this other way. So I've never heard of anybody trying to do, you know, what, what are the outcomes? Because once you know you can do it, you do do it, you do better.

Yes. And that's a real problem, isn't it? From the scientific method, you know, you need a control group to kind of show the difference and the different outcomes and things. Yeah. Yeah. That's tricky, isn't it?

But I do know there are a lot of folks who are researching now on universal design for learning in higher ed and several people who I've interviewed. And my most recent podcast is with somebody at Tufts, Kirsten Beeling, who's the co-author with Tom Tobin of Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone. And she's been doing research on what she's called accidental UDL, which is people who have included Universal Design for Learning in their coursework and the changes that have happened because of the pandemic. And maybe they didn't know immediately that it was UDL, but it certainly was.

Yeah, I suspect there isn't a teacher in existence who encounters UDL and doesn't look at it and say, oh, I've been doing that, but I just didn't know it was called that, or whatever. I mean, there's always more layers and there's more you can do, isn't there? But it does seem to be one of these things that's grounded in common sense and grounded in the fact that almost every teacher I know tries to do better.

Yeah.

If you're a teacher, you're trying to do well for your students, aren't you? You're trying to do right by your students, if you like. But most of us are just kind of trying to figure it out as we go along, if you like. And UDL does give us some beautiful tools, practical implementable tools to do that. It's great. Yeah, okay. So it's interesting, your educational inspirations, Professor Michael Lewis.

Yeah.

Professors who did things differently. So talk to me about Professor Lewis. What did he do differently?

So he, first of all, as an undergrad, I was not even an art history major, but I did religion and history as an undergrad. and then went to graduate school in art history because I ended up taking all these art histories and they were my favorite courses. They were just so interesting to me. I enjoyed them so much. And I loved the format. I remember taking Greek art and thinking that every time I was in that classroom, that it was like nectar from the gods as I was listening to and just enraptured by these stories. So, okay, I was a bit of a geek, right? Yeah. I took American Art and Architecture with Michael Lewis, and he is a wonderful art historian. And there were a couple things he did that blew my mind. And one of them was he had a— some Saturday morning, which was completely voluntary, he invited people to come to our outside like the museum, the outside courtyard, and show up to do some sort of experiment, really, but it was art history. And he divided us up into groups. I believe we took a personality test. This was 25, 30 years ago that this happened. And divided us into groups and gave us Tinker Toys. You know what, yeah, those are the little sticks and the wooden drums that you can add to.

Okay.

And things like, like a train set or some, some things. And he said, build your ideal city. So we had, I think, 4 or 5 groups, and we were all in different areas of this courtyard, and we built the city. And, um, you know, we're 4 or 5 people in each group. And I remember, I remember this so clearly. Our city had kind of buildings, tall buildings in the middle, and then it had a beltway, um, that went around it, a little beltway.

Right.

Very American. You know, I'm thinking something like Baltimore or Boston has—

Yeah, yeah.

Has a beltway that goes around it. And, and we, you know, just had a fun creative morning. And at the end of it, he has us kind of walk around like a studio art type of review of everybody's city. And he gets to ours and he says, oh, this is interesting. And he kind of reads down our personality profile of all the people who are like this. And it says, we like to keep things organized. And I look at that beltway, I was like, oh my gosh. Yeah. Connections. Yes. And I had never been asked to build or do or interact, you know, that sort of experiential learning. It was surprising. It was interesting. And it was outside the classroom proper. Like, we weren't sitting in chairs with little half desks and taking notes. And I still remember that. And that was one of those really amazing aha moments to me. And I thought, I want to do that someday where that is something to remember 30 years later.

Yeah.

And another thing that he did that was also so fascinating to me is he did kind of an intro to American art. And he kind of Went through a series of slides, like the first day of class or something, and said, here's kind of the story. It goes from here, it moves into here because of this, and it moves into here because of this. And then that was about a third of the way through a 75-minute class. Then he says, okay, or maybe it could be this, and he uses the exact same slides and he goes through a completely different story. Um, and backs it up with evidence and this and that. And then he does it again, I think 3 times, using the same slides and gives a completely different story. He's like, or it could be this, we use this and it goes into this. And at the end I was like, that was the most amazing thing and the most frustrating thing at the same time. I was just so, um, really impressed and made me think about Have I been believing all of these other things without questioning? And so he just showed a very different and creative way of being or teaching, and I've never forgotten that.

Isn't that amazing? And I mean, throughout history, that kind of reframing, isn't that beautiful? That's just incredible.

Yeah, and to remember that so long afterwards was quite amazing. So I really appreciated him. And, you know, I didn't go into American art or anything like that, but I really appreciated the interesting ways he went about teaching that was not the same old stuffy type of thing that art history is often known for. So I try to make art history different.

Isn't that a lovely kind of thing maybe for us as educators to kind of think of as we prepare a class, maybe, will they remember this in 30 years?

Yeah, right.

You know, I think I should stick that up on the wall. I mean, I use it with my students when I— when my students— I very often get my students to do kind of presentations in class and stuff. Yeah. And I give them tips and tricks on presentation technique and handing over to each other and presenting and all the rest of it, and obviously on Zoom recently. But one of the things I always say to them is, In 2 years' time, will I remember your presentation? And that always gets them sitting back and kind of going, what am I going to do? That's right. Yeah.

You know, and this past week when I heard from you and was thinking about what's coming up, and one of your questions was, you know, about— it made me think about this long-term, you know, what are people going to remember? I out of the blue, got one of those strange messages on Facebook, and from a name that was vaguely familiar, like maybe I'd heard at one point. And, um, it's— you're always scared. You're like, what is this? I don't know if I should accept. It was somebody I didn't know, but it was just one of those messages. So I click on it, and it said, hi, you probably don't remember me, but I took your art history class in 1997. So this was a— and he said, I think it was the first time you taught. And sure enough, that was my very first semester ever. I was teaching as an adjunct one of those like 6 PM to 9 PM evening Art History 101 courses that, you know, they give new teachers, you know, throw it to you. And I'd never taught before. I mean, I'd been a TA in grad school, and then it was my first job. I was working 2 other jobs, you know, worked during the day, and then this was my fun to try to teach in the evening. And he wrote to say, I just want you to know that I remember your class and you made it fun because you showed this Tracy Chapman Fast Car pop-up video. And that was a big thing in '95, '96, '97.

Oh, I remember Tracy Chapman.

Do you remember that?

Oh, I do. Yeah.

Yeah. So I thought pop-up video, that's totally what art history is because it's like throughout the video it pops up and says, did you realize Tracy Chapman wrote this song when she was in a basement of this, you know, or, and did you realize that this guitar that's being used here is this kind of guitar? And I was like, that's pretty much what art history is. You're learning a lot about whatever the visual is or— Yeah, the backstory and all that stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah. And he said, I just wanted to let you know I remember that. And he had found my syllabus. He was— he's now Stay-at-home dad. He's a photographer. And he saw— was moving things and saw the old syllabus from 1997, found me. I don't even know how. And said, I appreciated that you could make it fun for, you know, art history and less intimidating. Because art history really is intimidating. I mean, it's not something— it's not a subject you would have taken in school. We once in a while had an art lady who came by with like a big book.

Yeah.

And would show us stuff. With a big book. Yeah.

That's the thing, that's what you think of, isn't it? The big book.

Yeah, and certainly a lot of my experiences with art history was people wearing all black with a scarf, high black shoes, and very uppity and not very approachable and snooty. And, you know, you are beneath me or below me and in some sort of high-ranking hierarchy of museums. And that's totally not me. That's not who I am. So trying to make it interesting and inviting was one of my main, like, foci to make sure that, that students felt that they were a part of it and were valuable and could have a way into the subject matter. So, and that, that's part of UDL is valuing your students and recognizing that learner variability. So that also means like opening up your subject matter. So it's not just these works of art, but what sort of art are we missing?

Yeah. And I mean, isn't art, isn't the history of art, and I mean, I know nothing about it really, but I mean, isn't the history of art full of rebels and kind of people who are trying to express themselves in different ways that isn't the normal kind of way?

Yeah, that's true. They're the ones we remember. Absolutely, yeah, is the first who's done this or who have built on new innovations. That's who we teach about.

Wow. So innovations then, I mean, current UDL people doing the hard work right now is something else you said. Talk to me about some of these guys and where they're taking UDL and what can we as teachers and educators, whether we're primary or whether we're mid-school or whether we're college or university? You know, if we think of the plus ones, if you like, where are Eric Moore and Jen Pusateri and the others taking us?

Oh, great. Yeah. So these, first of all, for the higher ed folks, there's a Universal Design for Learning in Higher Ed, UDLHE, is a group. It's a group of like-minded instructors and staff and folks in higher ed who want to—

What do you consider to be higher ed? Is that adult education? Is that post-18 or—

Yes. Yeah, that would be things like, I think in Ireland it's called technical colleges. So community colleges, universities, colleges. And so, yeah, higher ed would be anything post-secondary or post-high school. Although now there are a lot of high schools in America that have dual enrollments with our local community colleges. So it's, it's making its inroads there as well. But that, that's it, the after high school kind of further education, and that could be technical or community colleges. So working towards a trade certification or a bachelor's or an associate's degree, and then also master's and PhDs as well. Right.

That's a wide church.

Yes, it is. It is. Yeah. Um, and so folks like Eric Moore, who's at the University of Tennessee, uh, in Knoxville, Jen Pusateri is at the University of Kentucky. They're folks I've interviewed before that are hoping to run this organization. Um, Anne Gagné is also part of that, uh, one of the leadership, and she's in Toronto. So there's a lot of North America, you know, USA and Canada, in this group, but it is worldwide. And they are doing the research, but doing a lot of presentations and, and getting the word out. And they're just brilliant thinkers. I'm super impressed with, with Eric, Eric Moore, Jen Pistori, Anne Gagne. There's so many others that I, I learned so much from. And they're pushing the envelope and really helping us to understand the real wealth of possibilities and breadth of possibilities with Universal Design for Learning, that it's not just accessibility. A lot of people think UDL is let's just get some transcriptions and some closed captions. And that's not what UDL is. It's part of it. And I believe it starts from that barrier breaking, but it's so much more about the engagement and thinking about your students as individuals and learner variability. And a lot also about various ways of assessing or going about finding out what students know. So I'm, just so impressed by these folks. And we're all, you know, relatively new to it. It's not like these folks have been, you know, teaching for 30 years and then, and using UDL. It's sort of a newer idea in the last 5 years that folks are really, the experts are kind of a young group.

Yes. And it also means that if you, get involved, I suppose. It means you can be part of a movement that's actually starting rather than one that's kind of calcified and, you know, it's never going to happen again kind of thing.

Yes, and I would also say what's different is there's not this giant hierarchy, you know. There's not a, well, wait your turn, you've got 10 years to toil away before you're going to have a voice in this movement. It's, are you interested, excited, what are you doing, Let's find out about it. Let's, you know, bring anybody who is interested, who's doing things, let's bring them along and create this wealth of opportunities for as many people as possible. So it's just such a wonderful community, really. Not the usual stuffy academic at all. It's totally different.

Oh, it sounds like I found a new tribe here.

Yes, you have. You are one of us already.

You are going to have to send me the link or I'll look it up. But yeah, definitely.

I can definitely— I'll make sure you have it so you can put it in the show notes or whatever. Yeah. So UDL-HE or Universal Design for Learning in Higher Ed and the UDL-IRN, which is the International Research Network, is another way for people to get involved. We'd love to have more people in it. So fantastic. Yeah, I'll make sure you have that.

Well, I'm sure Lisa Padden and people like that in Ireland are probably already in there. But yeah, I might be able to add my name into that. That would be great.

Absolutely.

Fantastic. Wonderful. So I was fascinated when, you know, I asked about innovative projects and you gave me 2 and they were both really interesting because I have a 9-year-old son, Danny, who is big into, you know, kind of games and online games and stuff like that. We haven't led him into Fortnite yet, but he keeps asking about it. So the epic finale, that sounds interesting. Talk to us about that.

I can't say I came up with it myself. I've definitely borrowed from other people, but thought about that same question we looked at before, which is, are you going to remember this 5 years down the road? 10 years down the road. And I thought about final exams, and I remember when I was a student being incredibly stressed, especially about art history exams, which is a lot of names, a lot of dates, and a lot of just felt like throwing out words on paper and doing it in a timed environment. Super high pressure. And I remember the adrenaline I remember, um, being in the room, but I could not tell you what I wrote or what I remembered, honestly. So I did great. I was a really excellent student, but was I a really great learner?

Yeah.

Did I really take it in? And I didn't want, um, that to be an experience for my students. So this works well for the kind of class I teach, which is interdisciplinary, It's a first-year seminar. It is not, let's say, chemistry, right, where you have to remember certain formulas or put them in, in, in use. It's really about adopting ideas, attitudes, and skills and being able to demonstrate them. And so it works for me. And so instead of having a final exam, We often will have a final project, which has been a documentary film before, or a group presentation, or things like that. And then for our final exam, we have at Appalachian State and most, you know, state schools, especially North Carolina, you have to be— in order to be accredited by our accrediting, you know, board, you have to have a certain amount of time in seats, right? You have to meet twice a week for 75 minutes, and then you also have to have your 3-hour exam time, or 2 and a half hours. Otherwise, you're not, you know, accredited. And so we were told this a lot, and I thought, well, what am I going to do for this 2 and a half hours? Give them a test of, you know, all the things that we've done that they're not going to remember? So I thought, I'm going to put together this epic finale. And I am a huge fan of the TV show. In fact, I don't watch TV except for one thing, which is called The Amazing Race.

Okay.

Which is a reality TV show where teams of 2 travel around the world, they learn about different cultures, and they have to perform tasks. And each week, the last team that makes it to the mat to meet the host is eliminated, right?

Right.

So, but they learn things like about how to build a tower of watermelons in a, you know, in a bazaar in, in like South America, right? Or something like that. So sometimes it's a skill, or sometimes, did you notice which particular hat the— this kind of series of Indian princes are wearing and where were they standing at this, you know, Taj Mahal-like building kind of thing. So I thought this would be kind of fun. So I started doing epic finales and there were a series of tasks that students had to do in groups. And it was really just a completion type of thing.

Yeah.

And so things that they did was one time they had to go to— this was when we're on campus, of course. had to go to the museum that we had visited throughout the semester and look at one of the exhibits we went to and kind of mark down where was this or what, what did you see. And so there was like a scavenger hunt during that final exam. And then when we were making, when we were making films, like where did you need to go at the library in order to check out your equipment in order to make this, you know, so that You have the skills to get the resources and all this stuff. So those are the kinds of things that some of them needed to do. And they would go there, and I had people at the library desk hand them their next clue, right? They could go to the next thing.

So they had to go. They had to go.

Yes. Yeah. And somebody at the museum, you know, at the desk there, hand them their next clue. And then they had to do some things like, okay, in your group, make a little skit about one of the things that you learned and had 5 choices. And so they had to reenact something that was important they had done. So it was super interactive. It was a little bit competition-based. I— they didn't get points necessarily, but maybe we had cookies, you know, or something like that at the end.

Yeah.

But what was happening each time is they were reviewing what the most important parts of the course were about the skills, the things they were preparing for, and recognizing what other people in the class had brought So they had to go back into what did you learn from each other? And there were some parts that was a lot about personal capital, because we were supposed to have a pretty small, about 20 people type of class and learning from each other and multiple perspectives. So actually knowing what somebody else knows is just as important as reading this book or article. So—

More important. Yeah, yeah, right. Diverse environment. I mean—

Exactly. So, so that was the epic finale. And it was like 2 and a half hours. And I had different rooms they would go in to try to— they'd have to work for 10 or 20 minutes on this. I had them also work on a Google Form, like that was a reflection individually. So, all right, now everybody in your team open this Google Form and fill this out as part of it. So it was a lot of kind of review of what the course was and a celebration of it.

In a multimodal form.

Yes.

Yeah, and physically engaged as well as mentally engaged through these different Yeah, medium. Wow.

Right. And, and that's— I thought, you know what, they might remember that rather than the other 4 exams they were taking, you know, where they sat in a classroom and had to remember math facts and that sort of thing. So I'm really looking for the learner part rather than the student part. Like, oh yeah, I can answer 10 questions in 20 minutes, uh, with— in a timed environment with this pencil and this set of bubbles to fill in. But did I really learn what I was supposed to learn, like internalize and keep it.

And it's interesting because, I mean, I do experiential learning with my master's students and I point them at charity projects and bring companies in and they have to go and write business plans with the company and for the company and stuff like that. And that's the stuff that when they go off to get a job, that's the stuff they get interviewed about. Nobody's ever interviewed them about a slide deck that I gave them in PowerPoint. It's strange. I can't understand this, but constantly the interviews go back to, well, your professor asked you to put that personal branding website together about yourself, and you're a concert musician now, I can see. Tell me about that, or tell me about this charity project where you raised $5,000 for for some amazing charity. Yeah.

People don't really care, why did you get question 13 wrong in your— yeah, the third year? You're not really smart, are you? No, they're not asking that at all. They're really— it's, you know, having authentic real-world assessments as part of universal design for learning. And that's going to make students care about what they're learning. It's going to help them remember because they can see the usefulness of what they're learning. They can see it put into practice. And, you know, there's a lot of things that are somewhat— I'm going to use air quotes if people are listening and they can't see me— that are sort of broken about higher ed, which is we've gotten into this assessment way of doing things that doesn't map really well into so many fields, into the real, the real world, so to speak. And, but we've been doing it so long, there are a lot of folks who don't know what to do otherwise. And Universal Design for Learning gives lots of options and the push of creativity for folks to do that.

So, I mean, your jump into UDL, as you described earlier, was you ended up kind of like having to transfer the UDL teaching into the faculty. So, yes, if this— I mean, this podcast is aimed at inspiring educators by listening to other educators. So, if somebody's listening to this podcast and they're, okay, so the UDL, they're getting an idea of what it is now, but they're still very challenged and they're stuck in the old ways and they're still running exams and closed book and all that kind of stuff.

Right.

How do they make the first jump into this? Where— what's a plus one to just, yeah, get them in?

So, great question. And I know there are many of my colleagues who need to teach their students how to do well on something like an entrance exam, all right, or a nursing practicum, right? And they still have to take some sort of test. And I'm not anti-test at all. Um, those are really, really important. Um, and in those cases, I'd want to help professors, instructors to help their students do well. So starting with low-stakes assessments and giving multiple opportunities and getting those students ready to perform well. And I would say the first step to be thinking about it, if you're jumping into Universal Design for Learning, is to start with engagement. That's one of the 3 main areas of Universal Design for Learning, and think about what engaged you? What made you interested in this, um, subject matter? What is it that keeps you going? And then how can I share that with my students? Um, and that I think is the place we can start with some creativity and even telling the story. We are often told just to be brains and not to be people. Like, you know, I, I don't want to—

Teach on stage thing. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. Like, You're not supposed to get anything personal, and you don't have to be super personal, but, but just being a human and talking about how it matters to you is a way to hook your students in. And maybe that's a story. Maybe that's outside the traditional textbook, and here's this information. But being able to show how it applies to the real world, to what could be important to the students, and to make those connections might give you the opportunity to say, oh, I might try something new. I might see this as valuable. Maybe it hadn't been done to you, or maybe you hadn't seen that before, but can you find something that's valuable that you might share? So that when I think about that Tracy Chapman Fast Car was the VH1 pop-up video I shared. I remember now Going back, you know, I haven't thought about that in 25 years, but I do remember feeling that I was a bit of an imposter by showing that because real art historians wouldn't have done that. They would have started with a Picasso or a Rembrandt.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. And that maybe I am somehow not a real art historian and I shouldn't be teaching this class if I'm going to start with that. But for me, it made sense. I remember watching those things, and I was addicted to watching those things. I was like, this was so fun, and I loved learning about that information. So sharing that joy and that passion ended up, you know, being something a student remembered now 25, 30 years later. So I would say start there. What is your passion? What is it? And then how can you share that with, with students? And that might be the thing that's sort of out there That's something a little bit different that may not have been the way you were taught it, but you can see value in it. And then believe in that, that it does have value. It really, really does. And you can use your position as the teacher in the course to give weight to that. And I think Universal Design for Learning empowers us to to make those connections and to say that those are actual really good ways of learning, even though they're not in the traditional canon of doing things.

I love that. Yeah, I mean, I've always tried, I suppose, as a teacher, and I hate the word lecturer. I just refuse to use the word lecturer anymore. Yeah, I mean, that's my official title, but I just won't.

Mine too.

You know, I call myself a teacher or an educator or a facilitator now rather than lecture. But it's funny because for years I've used a little video that I think it was 2013 or so, Simon Sinek did a talk on the Golden Circle. I don't know whether you know that little video.

I know Simon Sinek, but I'm not—

Oh, well, look it up, the Golden Circle TED Talk. Okay, it's brilliant. But he says most companies kind of, and most messaging starts with kind of You know, the what and the how, and eventually you might get to the why. And he turned it the other way around and he said, always start with the why.

I have seen that one, yes.

Yeah, you did know it. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, that's the same thing, isn't it? Start with the why. Why does this turn you on? Why does this light you up? Because if it lights you up, it'll probably light other people up.

Yes.

Because you'll talk about it with passion and you'll talk about it with care.

Right. Right. Yeah. And it's very different than, you know, I grew up with the Peanuts cartoon, which is Charlie Brown.

Oh yeah. Yeah, Charlie Brown.

And Snoopy was my favorite. And that voice of the teacher, wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah. And that's what I'm so afraid of. And for art history, the way I had learned it for the most part was lectures. And so for many, many years, that's what I did was lectures. And I thought I had to kind of put on a song and dance at the front to make it interesting, tell jokes. kind of things. And it wasn't until I was well into my teaching career that I have moved into that facilitator's role where I'm asking students to be much more participatory and, and explore and find out things for themselves rather than me being the, the person with all of the knowledge who's just sort of explaining everything. And there's actually a lot of deprogramming that has to happen on the student side. Because most of our students come into higher ed thinking, well, you're the expert.

And give me—

Yeah, you're supposed to be telling me and I'm not getting my money's worth, or, you know, this— you're not doing your job. So there's a lot of explaining, and I do spend a couple weeks in the beginning of my classes explaining how different my class is. So don't expect me to lecture. I think I give 3 or 4 half class, and my classes are 50 minutes long, 3 or 4 mini lectures. That's it. The rest of it is facilitation of them doing stuff. Game shows some days, uh, improv we do in class sometimes.

Yeah.

Um, we do another kind of mini day where they're acting out things and they're bringing, um, their reading to life, hopefully, that kind of thing. And I explain, look, I'm gonna— we're gonna kind of go outside of our comfort zones, but everybody will be equally uncomfortable. At some point.

You sound comfortable in that, and the second episode, you probably haven't even looked at them, but Jacob Eisenberg was talking about being comfortable with discomfort.

Yeah, right. It takes a long time.

It takes a long time. It's a challenge for a teacher who has been used to being sage on stage, who has been used to the deliverer of knowledge.

Yes.

To kind of step back out of that kind of power distance role and say, actually, we're gonna co-create some learning here, and I'm not quite sure what's gonna happen, but I just want to set something up and roll with it and see. That's a scary place to be for a lot of teachers, isn't it?

It really is. And it does, it takes a lot more confidence. And I would not have been able to do it my first year at all. There's the— you spend a long time as you start teaching, trying to get rid of that imposter syndrome.

Yes.

And working on your own ability to trust yourself. And it's hard. So You know, there's a lot of unlearning that we have to do as we begin to learn. So I, I can't say, hey, you're starting out, you gotta, you know, do it this, this way. You have to be comfortable in doing it. So you can always try something, maybe something small, and see how that works, how it feels. Slowly get comfortable with it. That could be your plus one, is try something in the last 5 minutes of class, right?

Yes.

And know that it's a short, brief time period where it feels like you're losing control, but there's often something that's really magical about that too. So it's a really different way of being in the classroom, and it is a, it is a giving over of control. It's not a loss of control, but it's a sharing of that control. And I made a little video and talked to my students about my conception of teaching and learning, which is about all of us as as being in a cave together and exploring that cave. So I made a silly little video where I'm wearing a headlamp and I have a fake, you know, cavern background behind me and said, you know, we're all spelunkers and we're all exploring this cave. Yes, I've been in this cave before. In fact, I've been in this cave for about 20 years.

Mm-hmm.

But the cave is constantly changing. There's absolutely no way that me with my one headlight is going to be able to explain the entire cave. But if I give all of you your own headlamps and you all start moving around the cave and somebody says, come over here and take a look at this, and somebody else says, go over here, let's look up here, then we are going to have a much better, more nuanced, amazing understanding of this cave than if I just went over, here's my 5 things I want you to know about this cave, over here, over there, down here, this place and then back here. But if I've got 20 other people who are saying, well, this is really cool over here, and I think, gee, I've never thought about that, or I didn't notice that before, let me look that up, that's a new formation, you know.

I want to come and do your class.

I have a lot of fun now.

Oh yeah, that is— that's fantastic. What about diversity? What about Challenging students? What about students who perhaps come present where, you know, they've come from tough backgrounds or they've got tough home life at the moment and they don't see the point of school or college? And they're, you know, how do you— I'm not going to say deal with because you shouldn't deal with, should you? But how do you bring them in? How do you—

So yeah, that's tough. And sometimes I can't, and sometimes there are things that are going on that are way outside anyone's control. But there's, there's times where one can be flexible, and that really, really helps. Just, just being able to say, if you have a problem, like if you have something that you aren't able to get this in, having options, then that's part of universal design for learning is recognizing, going in before Before the class starts, knowing I'm going to have students that are radically diverse, that come from very different backgrounds, that have very different preparations. Some went to a high school where they learned how to research like a college student. Some had never heard of research in their lives, right? So yeah, yes, exactly, different levels of preparedness. And so we do, we get that in first-year seminar. We've got students who are really great at listening and taking notes and some that can't do that at all and need a lot of help. And so knowing from the very beginning that you've got that diversity of students means planning from the very beginning for a diversity of students, and that means giving options for students. So if, let's say, we've got— I've got some students who are working full-time, And I'm teaching right now all online, and so we only have one synchronous class session per week, and the rest is asynchronous.

Okay.

So they're— they can read or listen or whatever, and then they have 2 deadlines. So I try to keep very consistent but also be flexible. And as I learned from Karen Costa, who I learned a lot from about trauma-aware pedagogy, Flexibility and structure are both trauma aware. So knowing that there are things that are due at consistent times. So I have every Tuesday and every Friday at 4 o'clock, those are our deadlines. And each week you've got something to do, or one or two things to do Tuesday at 4, Friday at 4.

Yeah.

But also said, if you are having trouble, if you can't make it, just let me know ahead of time. Now there are some students who knew that already, students whose parents had gone to college and say, well, just ask for an extension. Yeah. There are other students who've never been to college, don't know that you even can.

Yes.

That's even in the realm of possibility. So making that very explicit from the very beginning is really important and helps those students that might be struggling or that might be having a difficult time and then offering lots of options. So let's say I've had students who can't make that 1 hour a week, right? We just meet on Wednesdays at either 10 or 12 or 2, and, and you might think, oh, come on, it's just 1 hour a week, come on, you can plan your life. Well, sometimes now maybe you've got COVID. I had students who could only get to the doctor at that particular time, you know, there's things that happen, whether it's a chronic condition or a temporary disability. I broke my leg and I can't get you know, with my crutches to the Wi-Fi coffee shop I used to go to, right? Who knows? And it's not up for me for them to have to explain their whole life story. So having options, me and that flexibility. So if I had students who missed that one synchronous session, and usually I'm opening up things for the week, here's what we need to know. And we're usually doing something that you need other people there for. All right, you guys are in this group figuring this out in a breakout room. We come back together, and it's important that Group 1 sees what Group 2, 3, and 4 did, and vice versa, because, oh, they had a different solution, and here's a different perspective. Oh, and isn't this interesting? So it's things that you need to, to be present, or, or we need those multiple people at the same time. And so what if a student can't make it? Well, so I record those and say, all right, you've got 2 days to watch the recording and answer the questions that everybody answered during that, which is usually like 2 scenarios. What would your answers be? So it ends up being about the same amount of time and a little less fun because you're not figuring it out with 4 people. So there's an incentive to actually be there.

Yeah.

It's easier. You're in, you're done. You're kind of talking about it. Somebody else might be writing it, and then you all come in and you learn a lot together. But let's say you can't. Let's have another way for students to get full credit, to get all of that information, and then, and feel like they've been a part of the group. And that took me a while to get to, like, that took me a while to figure out what's a way to include all those students. So that flexibility, that ability for people to participate in the way that they can and not be penalized. for that, I think, has been a major addition to my class in just recently in this semester. I figured out how to make that work. So when you've got students who are struggling, that ability and flexibility to say, okay, this one way isn't working for you, we've got options.

We've got options.

Yeah, for you to participate. And honestly, there's still— every year I have students who drop out. college isn't for them at this point, and that's fine too.

Yeah.

Maybe they work a year or two and then come back, and they're amazing when I get, you know, students who come back after a year who now it's the right time for them. Um, so, but I don't need to throw barriers in their way that don't need to be there, like, I'm sorry, you missed 2 o'clock on Wednesday, there's nothing I can do for you. But there is. So, but you don't have to— doesn't mean there are no rules, it doesn't mean there's no rigor, and it doesn't mean you have to bend over backwards for everybody. It just means you have flexibility in place in the design from the beginning so that students who have a full-time job, who— oh, another thing I do is all of the readings you could either read or you can listen to. Sometimes I record my voice when I'm reading them or I'm talking about them, or they are things like a TED Talk where you can read the transcript or listen to it or watch it. So if I've got students who have a newborn baby, which I've had, they've got, you know, they can listen to it while they're rocking their baby to sleep. You know, we just have a— we have so many different kinds of students that we did not have before, and that's Wonderful. We cannot teach to the, the way that we taught 30 years ago when we did not have all kinds of students. We only had a certain kind of class and situation, and usually they were like on campus all the time.

Yeah, whereas now they're online and we don't know whether they're on a phone or on a tablet or on a computer or whether they have crappy Wi-Fi or good Wi-Fi. Yeah, you can't—

Yeah, there's so many variabilities. We can't ignore that. We just can't ignore that.

That was your plus one, wasn't it? Your plus one was these asynchronous options. Have a plan. And I mean, you know, I teach project management. I mean, it's have a plan B.

That makes sense.

Plan A isn't going to work for everybody, is it?

Right. Yeah. And we didn't realize that we were all just working with a plan A, and we thought plan A meant it was rigorous and right.

Yes.

We didn't realize that Plan A really meant we're excluding some people, um, and we are, um, making one of those, you know, courses that weeds out people or something like that. And we didn't realize we were doing it at the same time, I guess.

I could, I could talk to you all day. I'm just looking at the time and it's kind of half past 3 already. So we've done it. We've done our hour. I better let I'm going to let you go, but I didn't— I don't want to. I mean, this has been exciting to me. Yeah, thank you so much for kind of all those insights. That's just been an amazing hour. I can't wait to get this episode up and out. And you've given me so many things to jump off to and look at, which is brilliant. So I'm sure we will be talking again. I hope we will.

Absolutely. And I'm so glad with what you're doing. And I'm just— kudos to you for coming up with this and for having the energy to put towards this. I'm so glad you got a fellowship to work on it. I look forward to the book. And, and that's just— it's great for everybody. So thank you for doing it. I'm just happy to be a part of it.

Thanks for connecting and reaching out. Like, you know, when I, when I kind of contacted you. Yeah, really, really appreciate it. Okay, well, we will draw it to a close there. So thank you again, Lillian. Now Yeah.

Thank you for having me.

And cut.

Good night.

Fantastic. Oh, that was just fabulous. That would just really flow, didn't it?

Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Yeah, thank you for sending me this because I'd forgotten all the things I had said on Friday.

That was so useful. It's so useful to have those kind of prompts, isn't it?

Yes.

Be able to riff off them. I don't— I mean, I'm just making this up as I go along, but it seems to me that would be a good way of doing it.

Yes, it is. It's really, it's really good. And I usually send— it took me a while to send certain, you know, questions ahead of time, but now I go through that with each of my guests and I ask all of them the same first question. Right. Yeah. Yes. So, well, this is great. Oh, you said you talked to— I didn't say this during our talk, but you— your first person was a dental school. Yeah, Jen Lynch. Jennifer Lynch. So I have a contact, Claire McNally, on Twitter. She's in Australia. Okay. Yeah, I think it's C-L-A-R-E McNally. And she is a dental School professor in Melbourne, Australia, and she's all about UDL. She's amazing. And so I follow her on Twitter and we're friends on Twitter. So she'll get up at like 2 in the morning to participate in a UDL, you know, presentation or something.

Oh, well, I must connect Jen with Claire. Yeah, maybe if you could send me her Twitter link or handle.

I will. Yeah, that would be great. So I need to send I'll send you the UDL IRN and the UDL HE. Yeah. And I'll send you my little video about spelunking in a cave.

Oh, that sounds so good. Yeah, I love that, the cave thing. That was fantastic.

Yeah. So amazing. And I don't— I think that was all the resources.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I'm going to pick some of the other stuff out. You mentioned Costa and a few other people and stuff. I'll look them up as well.

Karen Costa, yeah.

Yeah, they were great. But yeah, oh, and I loved Tracy Chapman. I got that album, I played that album.

Me too, I know. Exactly. So that's funny, it just happened all in all the same week that I had another student had mentioned that first year as well. And when I took them to museums in Boston and New York, Because that was important too for me to get them there and demystify the process. But it just all happened this past week. It's pretty cool. Brilliant.

Okay, well, thank you so much. Okay, thanks, Lily. Cheers. Yeah, see you. Bye-bye. Bye.