Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Transcript edited by Miranda Stalions

Intro Disclaimers

Kylo: You’re listening to Let’s Talk! Let’s Talk! is a digital space for students at PCC experiencing disabilities to share their perspectives, ideas, and worldviews in an inclusive and accessible environment. The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of Portland Community College, PCC Foundation, or our community partners. We broadcast on our home website, pcc.edu/dca, on Spotify, on X Ray 91.1 FM and 107.1 FM, and KBOO Community Radio 90.7 FM.

Introducing the Episode

Amanda: Hello and welcome to today’s very special Let’s Talk Autism episode. I’m your host and producer, Amanda, and today there will be a panel discussion between two college students and instructors about Universal Learning Design, or UDL. UDL is one of the premier inclusivity movements in education, and can be described as a teaching method in which all students can succeed because their individual needs are being met inside the classroom. The three main principles of UDL are engagement, representation, and expression, in which the teacher would ideally identify the best method each student needs to interact with the material and retain it. However, my concern is that this is unreasonable for both instructors and students. Administrators are telling instructors how to teach without resource consideration and instructors are assuming what students need without speaking to them. Today’s episode is showcasing that UDL and other learning topics need to incorporate both students and instructors in discussions to determine viable solutions.

Episode Start

Amanda: Thank you and welcome to today’s Let’s Talk Autism podcast episode. I am the host and producer Amanda and I am joined today by professors Josephine and Heiko, as well as students, former students, graduate students, Eliana and Edith. Today we’re going to talk about universal learning design or universal design for learning. This subject has come up recently in terms of education and in ways to improve education. Because the idea is to essentially make any classroom basically possible for any student to learn. We’re going to kind of discuss what this means to both instructors and students, as well as, what these terms can mean on both an individual level, as well as a systemic level and how we could actually achieve this. So, without further ado, I’m happy to introduce our guests and we can get started. Josephine, would you like to start?

Josephine: Sure! My name’s Josephine Pino. I use she/her pronouns. I teach biology at Portland Community College, and I’ve been teaching biology for a long time. I’d say the other hat I’ve worn is to teach bioscience technology or biotechnology. Glad to be here.

Heiko: I’m Heiko Spoddeck. My pronouns are he/him/his. I teach math at PCC. I have been at PCC for 21 years, and though my major was actually physics I also have a counseling degree. I’m in a wheelchair and also very recently identifies [sic] ADD. I’ve never found kind of what neurodiversity works well for me and I realized, that’s it. I found it.

Edith: My name is Edith. My pronouns are she/her/hers. My occupation is health care worker as I continue for my major, which is nursing. My disabilities include anxiety, depression, ADHD, and also PTSD. I was a student at PCC for four years and now looking to get into a nursing program here in the Portland area. Thank you for having me.

Elianna: Hello, my name is Elianna. I use she/they pronouns. I’m a completed student at PCC with the Associates in Science, and now I’m a student at PSU in the Urban and Public Affairs program. I currently work for PCC in the Accessible Education and Disability Resources program. I have ADHD, but I’ve also been diagnosed in the past with anxiety, depression, and PTSD.

Amanda: Thank you so much everyone for being here. My name is Amanda. I use she/her pronouns. I’m a prospective veterinary student. I just finished applying to vet schools and I will hopefully hear back from these programs with positive news. I am autistic, and I wasn’t diagnosed with autism until I was 31, but I also was diagnosed with anxiety last summer, thankfully there were great medications for that.

Understanding Universal Design for Learning

Amanda: So, with the majority of us being neurodivergent, this is going to be a good conversation because I feel like universal design or universal learning is often applied to us, or used as like an argument for this design almost. I have mixed feelings about that myself. It’s like, we are people that need individualized approach, but that doesn’t mean we should be used as a blanket argument for, “hey, we need to have this system wide implementation without discussing it with both students and teachers. So with that in mind, what does universal learning or universal design for learning mean to everyone here?

Elianna: So, the way I view universal design is very strongly affected by my experience with people who aren’t disabled and are disabled having overlapping needs. But, also understanding that within the disabled community, we don’t have the same accessibility needs. We’re currently talking within the frame of neurodivergence, but I know that myself, as someone with ADHD; what helps me succeed in a class is not necessarily the same thing that helps other ADHD people succeed in a class. There’s different people with autism who have different needs. So, when I think of like universal design, I think of physically we can see this with things like ramps. So, it’s like ramps make it to where everyone can enter into a certain space. But, if we’re talking about education, I really do think it needs to be viewed in a more broad lens where we’re offering a variety of accommodations for people to meet their own needs. Some of these needs, when it comes to universal design, will help other people. So, accommodations that help people with disabilities, maybe they have a chronic illness and they’re not able to attend every class or something like that. This will also be helpful for people who are caretakers and can’t attend every class or people who have certain jobs that make it to where they can’t attend every class. That’s kind of universal design to me, in that classroom aspect. But, I think it’s something that needs to be applied more broadly. Saying we’re going to meet everyone’s needs where they are at and this is going to help different people in different ways. Some people will be disabled and have be helped by this and some people won’t be disabled will be helped by accommodations that are built in different classes.

Edith: The way I see it is to offer the ability of here are what we have, this is what we’ve tried and we’ve known in order for students to understand, to show their understanding of a subject, in whatever way they can. In that way, it’s going to present differently for different people. Some people can present it by speaking and explaining it to somebody and then you see, “Okay. Yeah, they fully understood the topic at hand.”. They can teach it to somebody else and that’s a way that they fully comprehend, and then, therefore, they can help others. it works best if they write it down and they can show you with an equation, with a sentence, with a paragraph. So, I think having the different ways for students to present what they are interpreting that’s being presented to them. Providing options is, to me, what I understand from UDL.

Amanda: Thank you.

Instructors’ Perspectives on Universal Design for Learning

Amanda: Professors, Josephine and Heiko, as instructors, what does Universal Learning Design or Universal Learning mean to both of you?

Josephine: So, one of the things that I think about when I’m teaching is, “what’s the goal?”. Like, ultimately, I’m helping. I’m there to help people learn what they’re supposed to learn, what outcomes they’re supposed to achieve, what goals they want to meet if they’re taking a class with me as their instructor. Then because we have this pesky thing called grading that we’re all required to do, we are duty bound accountable for reporting a grade. I want that grade to represent what the person, what the student, achieved. What they actually learned and could show they learned. So it makes perfect sense to me that you would want to have different ways of having students show you what they learned. So, what it means to me in practice though, it’s hard to do because of the history of how we do science teaching in particular. But, what it means to me in practice is thinking about that constantly. Am I giving students ways to learn that are going to meet their needs? What are their needs? What universal design means to me is having to learn what those needs are of a lot of different people. Which is difficult. But, then how can I help the student show me what they’ve learned in a way that’s authentic to that student and meaningful.

Heiko: Yeah. For me, when I hear universal design, it means that anyone could walk into my class and be successful. Meaning not just by me saying, “Oh, you should just, did what I tell you, then you would be successful.”. But, actually truly successful and in learning. So, then that, little bit similar to also what Josephine just says, like kind of them backwards that requires that I have a whole host of available material and the way I teach opportunities and then can look at all my students, get to know them and kind of adapt from there. This is where we come at later point. Sorry, I’m always skipping on points. But, where we come to later points where it partially gets hard. But, for me, the most important thing about that is being open to it. So, do not ever think, “Oh, I have the perfect design.”. So, universal design for me doesn’t mean perfect design, but it means if a student comes in who like I’ve never had somebody like that in my class. They have different learning needs that I’m discovering with them together or learn from them what they need. Then provide what I can reach out to others, to help and support to, learn. For me, it’s less about the grading aspect, it’s more about the learning aspect. But, I’m already start thinking about what Josephine said about, all the different ways of grading or showing that you have learned. For me, grading is really how can you as a student show me that you have actually learned something.

Amanda: Thank you. So, I’m not going to take up a lot of speaking time myself in this conversation. But, I do want to add that I think my idea of what universal design or learning is kind of what Heiko’s idea is. Where, ideally, any student can walk into a classroom and learn, but as we’ll discuss later on in this episode, it kind of becomes of a how process and how practical is that given time restraints and budgets. With that being said, though, universal design for learning or universal learning –I think I’ll just use universal learning in this episode because I think it’s just shorter and easier to say – it’s perhaps one of the most prolific efforts in making learning more accessible for students. From your perspective as either a student or a teacher, do you believe UDL has helped make classroom environments more inclusive? Why or why not? This time I’m going to start with the instructor’s side. Heiko or Josephine, would one of you like to go first?

Josephine: Yeah. I think it’s a difficult question because universal design for learning is even the acronym or the name of something. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it until about a year and a half ago, maybe two years for the first time. But, when I learned about it, it was in the context of a conference, or something. It really resonated and I started recognizing the things that I did that I enjoyed doing that I thought were working, I saw how they fit that, then I realized, well, I’m not doing it enough. So, it’s hard to say. I didn’t approach it as like a movement that we were told to use or anything like that. It was more like I learned about it and then I saw how it could fit in my own teaching. Because, instructors in colleges and universities often don’t necessarily come into our positions from being trained as teachers. We come through all these different paths, but mostly through research and then we get a higher degree and a master’s degree, or a PhD, and end up teaching, and then we have to learn how to teach. I was very fortunate to have a lot of mentors and people who taught me to teach early on. So, I’m always looking for these new things that are described and that’s kind of how I came upon UDL. I don’t know if I answered the question exactly, but that was my experience.

Heiko: I actually learned about it very early on from Kaela Parks, who’s our PCC Accessibility, Education, and Disability Resources Director. She introduced me and I did like it also right away, the idea of that. I do feel there’s significant amount of math instructors, at this point. Like, there was a whole generational shift. I’m not saying just the older didn’t do it, but there was some young people came on and they were also more interested and in many ways technological wise, being interested in reaching more student wise, and there are also many teachers who have been here for a long time who are also totally on board. But somehow there was became more of a momentum that has been nice to see, and not everyone is on board. I want to recognize that, and not always do we reach everyone. Making it more inclusive, and there are still people we leave out. Some people are very happy in my class, I’m sure. So, I do the best I can with what I have available. But, I do feel it has, at least in our math department, made a difference. Also the way the conversations go. It is about including more people, reaching more people, making it more that more people succeed. But, we have used very little of the words in universal design. It has come more from actually also the equity language. So, it’s been more influenced for that. So, we are not using the words, or the concepts like that, but, Idea of that. I hope that makes sense.

Amanda: I think it does make sense. But, for me, universal design, it’s an ideal at this point for me. I’ve seen efforts, certainly, or like principles of universal design to try to make classrooms more accessible. Like one model I’ve seen a lot of, specifically with math classes, was flipped models, if anyone knows what that is. Where basically you read the majority of the course material for that day and then you come in with questions about the material, and the teacher is supposed to essentially go over like the lab or like our harder problems with you. I have mixed feelings about that myself. Because, on one hand, it feels kind of like a hybrid. It’s basically a hybrid class where you’re basically just taking lecture material. Then you’re essentially asking questions that may or may not be relevant to your homework or your lab. So, that’s one example I’ve seen in how universal design has been implemented in an attempt to make classrooms more inclusive.

Students’ Experiences with UDL

Amanda: But, Edith, Eliana, turning over to your side from your perspective as students; has universal design made classrooms more inclusive in your opinion? Or have you seen examples like that?

Edith: Yeah, so in my opinion, in my experience. Like Josephine mentioned, I only found out about this in the last couple of years as well. It could have been going on or implemented longer than that. I recently only found out about it. I actually found out about it in a math class, in 2022. At that time, I was, you know, dealing with a lot and I really appreciate it. I just assumed that this was a standard for teaching, that if you weren’t able to present what you learned, on paper, then just talking to him about it, explaining it to him how you got to the answers, that was enough. Because, that’s what he was doing with me, except I didn’t know that at the time that that’s what it was. I didn’t know that that was being implemented in real time. So I just, when it came time to testing, because of my, disability at work or at school, I was able to get accommodation, which was very nice. However, this was the first term back in person after COVID. So, I wasn’t familiar about the testing center. I didn’t know the protocol. He said it makes some people more uncomfortable and really just gives them more anxiety, especially with math. Because the people there are not able to explain it to you. So, if you have a question, they can’t break it down for you like I can. So, I am available to stay afterwards. The rest of the class will stay here for an hour and 20 minutes or whatever the time was. But, since you have that, plus an extra hour, you’re welcome to stay here and I will stay here with you. Well, again, that’s another way that he is helping me, right? That the professor is making it more accessible for me. That is making it more inclusive. But, this isn’t something that he’s spelled out for me. This is just something that I experienced and that I assumed was the normal for teachers for professors to experience to give to students. So, those are the ways that I’ve experienced in myself. I do feel like some people learn it, some professors learn it, and they’re able to implement it in every single classroom, every single term. Sometimes you don’t have all the resources to do that. Sometimes you don’t have the time to stay an extra hour and a half every couple of weeks with students. If you have every other week where you test. For example, in another chemistry class, we had to take tests every two weeks. So, that’s not maybe something that he’s able to offer, because he might have to go to his next job, you know? So I do think that it’s a way to offer more inclusivity, but it can also be a challenge for professors. I do acknowledge that.

Elianna: Yeah, kind of touching on what Edith said; some of the accommodations that are made available, like the testing center. Is it really good for everyone? Also, with what Edith said; do we as students know that the teacher is intentionally using universal design in there? Sometimes I think that a teacher has an extremely accessible and flexible class, but they’re not really consciously implementing universal design. Like one class I adore taking at PCC was E. Nicholas’s stats class. Apparently, he had copied a good bit of his class structure off of another teacher, I don’t quite remember this other teacher’s name. But, what we did in this class was we had the notes, we had everything, and we basically could get all of our homework done and all of our whatever else we need to get done during the lecture and the lab time. Then we could always just go up and ask him questions during exams, and it was just so nice. He also recorded lectures, so then if you couldn’t make it to a class one day, you could just do it from home, do it another time, and it was just lovely. It was my number one class. I went back to the gateway to college advisors that I had and I was like, “Hey, listen, if you have students who are scared of math, tell them to take this person’s class.”. I adored this class, but when I had a meeting with him while discussing it on a teaching week project, I don’t think he mentioned universal design. So, I think there’s ways for teachers to have certain classes that are just better fits for other students. My number one example is when I was first starting in the Gateway to College program was that we had one math teacher for this program, and some people really gelled with her, but a lot of people really didn’t. I really loved her class. I would have taken this woman’s class to the end of the line if I could have gotten all my math credits with her. I loved her structured class. I really felt like I understood the material. But, then there was one girl in my class, in particular, who was having such a stressful time and just so incompatible with how the class was structured versus how she learned. She was having tears multiple times a week. So, for me, this kind of structure is great, but then for other people, it’s not so great. This is kind of touching into that universal design aspect is that, I really do think that there’s going to be some class structures that are going to really fit for some students and not fit for other students. For me, once I couldn’t take this math teacher anymore, it was then like on the hunt to find someone who had a similar structure. That really isn’t information that’s currently out there on course information pages. It’s not out there on My Professor. I had another teacher who a lot of people really liked. But, he was a more loosey goosey teacher. This isn’t to say that he was a bad teacher, or anything like that. It just isn’t compatible. I didn’t really feel like I grasped the concepts as well, because we didn’t have like a packet to follow. I had to keep looking up and down from the board to my page to make sure I was copying things down directly. For me, with how my ADHD is presenting is that gives my brain more time to get distracted and to lose pace with everything. That’s what’s so great about the packet is like basically the main structure is already written down and I can just focus on the concept. If we’re talking about math, it’s like, there’s different ways to break down the concepts that some people are going to get more than others. I was taking a pre calc class and I had to find other ways to understand the sign, co-sign, everything like that and understand that wheel in a way that made sense to my brain versus how the teacher understood that and communicated that information. So, I definitely feel like, if we’re talking universal design, I don’t know if every class can really be welcoming to every student. I think it’s more so a case of where as teachers figuring out how you break down your information, how you have your class set up, and then making that more easily communicable, and then helping students find teachers and find certain like class structure elements that are best suited for them.

Amanda: Yeah.

Challenges and Solutions in UDL Implementation

Amanda: Eliana, that’s like such a great point and, to me, that’s the better approach to throwing out the term universal design you need to implement this into your classroom. The individualized approach, to each student or maybe even just some students, a teacher could take is really awesome.

Josephine: I think there’s also another term, differentiated learning, which is maybe what we’re talking about me as an instructor would be trying to meet the needs of individual students based specifically on their needs. Which can be, as you can probably imagine, very difficult with class of 24 or more students. But, I considered an extreme version of universal design. I took a class, online, about universal design and the way it was taught using universal design. So, every weekly module or every daily module, whatever the timeframe was, had a list of ways that one could learn whatever that topic was. There were so many choices that it was very anxiety provoking. I felt like I needed to use them all. So, I’ve been very aware of that because when I give students choices I try not to overdo it. Because, as a student, especially with our history of STEM instruction, so many people act like there’s a default way of teaching stem you lecture. Students give back answers, you give a multiple choice test, or whatever it may be, every student gets the same exact experience that when you do something differently it seems that can provoke some fear and anxiety itself. I experienced that, ironically, taking a class about universal design. I ended up spending way too much time. I was watching every video and reading everything they gave me, because I felt like I was going to miss something. I see student hands going up and I was going to ask you, what do you think about that?

Edith: Yeah, hearing you talk about that makes me anxious. The so many overwhelming options, that does make me anxious. Because, I have had professors that say, in the beginning of class, this is how you can get your assignments in. You can email me, you can upload it to D2L, you can do a writing, you can do a painting, you can record yourself explaining it to me. Three to four options for me is good. I don’t know how everyone else’s brain works. But, for me past that, you’re opening up the floodgates. All of a sudden, overwhelmed by the options, the number of options, the number of assignments. Well, if there’s 20 assignments and I could present each one in five different ways, that’s a lot of different options. As you mentioned, you explore all those options on your own just out of curiosity, and that is how my brain works. So, one week I would try this, another week I would try that, next week I’m like, “I don’t know, should I go back to that? I got an A, what if I don’t get an A? What if I get a B?”. Like I said, it opens up the floodgates. For me, I have found that when the professors just say, “hey, these are the top three ways that students like to present the information to me. If those don’t work for you and you find another way that has. Feel free to pull me aside, feel free to email me, feel free to text me and just let me know. Because, I’m more than willing to open up other options for you if you know that this has worked for you in the past.”. So, I think that is a greater way of presenting universal learning to students. Because, I don’t feel like it’s on the professor’s task to explore or explain every single option. To say, “Hey, I’m open to options. However you want to learn. And you’ve known that it has worked for you in the past. Feel free to let me know, and we can work with each other.”.

Elianna: The specter of choice paralysis haunts us all. Josephine, getting back to what you said was like, online classes are great for certain people to take. But, when the pandemic hit and we all shifted to remote learning, for very good reasons. I had to stop getting an education because my mental health just really started tanking. I know I don’t absorb digital information nearly as well. It takes so much more energy for me to try to keep up with an online class, and then read everything online, and then have to copy paste everything, and then making sure I’m able to traverse all the different websites that we need to traverse. Then being at home, like the way my brain operates is when I’m at home then I’m at home, but if I’m at work, then I can focus. Then there’s how much bandwidth of focus do we have in a day? I’ve seen studies where workers start becoming less efficient after four hours of work day. So, I think this goes into the; what are we getting our education for is the way that our class is currently set up really going to be helpful for when we move into the professional environment. Is that really what we’re set up for? I’ve heard other educators talk about this. When we’re talking about tests is the amount of time that we’re given per term. With the expectation that students are going to memorize and then successfully regurgitate the information that they’ve been given at the end of the term, then that’s how we’re going to know that they’re going to be able to do whatever job that they have to do moving forward. Versus, if you have a job what’s going to happen is you’re going to be at that job, and you’re going to learn the ropes, and you’re going to end up figuring out your own rhythms with that. Then you can’t look up notes. If you were on the job, you could probably look up notes. Or, at least, if we’re talking like med students, is that the med students go through, they do the work, but they also have someone there checking them and making sure that they’re doing everything right. They do have that eventual learned reinforcement, versus what we have in our standard classroom where it’s just the expectation of supportless regurgitation.

Amanda: It’s interesting. Both you and Edith’s points and even Josephine’s point. Because, in terms of pointless regurgitation, the math classes I had to take for vet school programs. It’s flat out acknowledged that I’m never going to use differential calculus. But, I still had to take that class, because it’s a well known gatekeeping class. It’s just one of those open secrets. I remember my math 112 professor, the way I memorized the unit circle, is that I literally correlated the X and Y coordinates to the denominator of the fractions. That’s how I memorized it. That kind of goes back to the whole different approaches to different brains thing and whether or not universal design can even accommodate that. Because, I wouldn’t say I get choice paralysis, like Josephine, Edith, and Eliana described, but I definitely get that. I actually just would prefer to professors just tell me how to submit assignments one way. It’s great that you’re being accommodating or you’re trying to be, but just tell me where I’m supposed to submit this thing because I just want to move on with my life.

Josephine: That kind of goes back to Eliana’s idea, which I’m very intrigued by it. I have the idea that a student, or someone, would help support the matching. How do you see that actually playing out logistically, Eliana? This idea of having students find the right match, pedagogy, or learning environment.

Elianna: So, I’m actually working on a project right now that I’m calling The Tagging Project. So, basically what it is, is that I have a poll set up currently and the idea is that we’re gonna ask students like what parts of a class, that could be present in a class, really help them succeed? Then this would basically be like an ingredient list that a teacher could then just like check off when they have their classes posted to the class sign up section. Then that’s really quick and easy for them to do. They can remove it or change it, add blurbs to add more information. Cause right now what happens is a lot of teachers don’t add a course description to their pages, or maybe they will, maybe they won’t add a syllabus. Which then doesn’t really include a lot of information. I don’t have everything really set in stone right now. Cause I want to be flexible to the needs and the concerns of teachers and other such things that people may have as issues. But, the idea is if you like this teacher for XYZ reasons, this other teacher has similar class structure styles that if you really like this thing, this teacher also does that. Then as you go up, everyone can save time, energy, money, blood, sweat and tears by instead choosing teachers whose classes are structured to be more compatible with how they need to learn.

Heiko: Yeah, those class details pages, they were originally designed if you’re only available to online instructors. Then during the pandemic, they opened it up to all. I was part of a group, where we would give presentations to instructors at different training events to how can you implement the syllabus. But, then how do you put that at scale, especially if it’s not required. So, for online, it’s required. You still don’t get everybody, or sometimes people like me who are a little late because I have a great idea and I’m going to do that first. Before you know it, the weeks have gone by. But if we make that part of the things you have to do to get a class ready, that would be really helpful. That would have to be a shift that could maybe go through the EAC, the Educational Advisory Council. Things like that. I’m totally in support of that idea.

Elianna: Thank you. I’m glad to hear that it’s being positively received. I’ve already met with the staff union about this and heard some of their concerns. I know that one of the common concerns is will I be paid for doing this? Are we going to have common understanding of what the different terms mean? I’m really flexible on how this is going to eventually take shape. But, ideally, the whole idea is that we’re going to figure out ways to help guide students on paths to help them pick teachers that they’re not going to struggle in, then everyone can have a better time. Because, then teachers won’t be paired with students who either have to drop out at a certain point, because it’s just an incompatible situation and you’re also not watching students just drown. They’re not being challenged and then overcoming challenges, they’re just drowning and suffering and everyone’s having a bad time. Kaela has invited me to some of the meetings for the website overhaul that we’re going to have so we can build the system in. So, hopefully we have good things in that. One thing about certain classes is like sometimes people’s brains just work better with different things. So, it’s like I can be in lecture and I can talk with people and I can really prove myself with understanding the concept. But, then when I have to sit down, and read papers, and then write things back; that’s when my brain can sometimes really slow down and it takes a lot of energy out of me. That’s when I have late work and I need extensions and incompletes. I still have like incompletes right now at PSU, because it’s just sitting down and looking at a piece of paper and then not feeling overwhelmed. It’s, how paper heavy is something versus, does the teachers know that I understand the concepts and I can play ball with this. But, then it’s like sitting down and writing the paper is a very different task.

Josephine: Eliana, I might have a little bit of a case study for you. Because, I have mobility and chronic pain issues. I’ve been teaching online now since the beginning of the pandemic. It’s so heartbreaking really when students sign up for the class, I have the flipped format and there’s a lot of group work, collaborative learning, with options. it’s a format that a lot of students have not engaged with before and are expecting me to lecture during the zoom time meetings. So, what I have taken to doing is from the day that the course opens for registration to the day that we start, I send emails, at first once every two weeks, saying here’s the format. Finally, I created a frequently asked page and I linked that to my class details page. I send it in the email with the commonly asked questions helps students who are shopping for classes to understand whether this format is going to work for them. It was kind of rough going for a couple of years. But, now I’ve noticed something and it’s anecdotal, the students that seem to be registering and sticking it out, by sticking it out not the ones that registered at the last minute and never read those emails or the class detail page, but my students seem to be really into the ways that I’m teaching. They’re reading, they’re spending the time in a way that I didn’t necessarily see before. So, I think there is a little bit of that selection happening and it’s very fascinating. I hadn’t thought of it in the same way until today. So, thanks for describing that. I just wanted to say again, I think in STEM instruction; there’s so much of an assumption, not only on the part of students, but also on the part of a lot of faculty, that there’s a certain way it has to be done. It has to be a lecture, it has to be a certain amount of rigor, and everybody seems to define rigor differently and sometimes it can be used in not so nice a way. One of those ways I think that sometimes people define rigor is making everything equal. Every student’s going to have the same exam, or all the exam questions are going to be the same, and they’re all going to be hard because you have to memorize a certain amount. That sort of default way that STEM instruction has been done for decades. But, for 200 years or so, I think it makes it hard for people to try new things. Particularly faculty that are vulnerable, because they’re part time or they’re new and might be even evaluated by someone who’s not knowledgeable about universal design principles or about inclusive practices. So, there are a lot of challenges I think that we are sitting in, in STEM instruction in particular.

Heiko: Yeah, it’s always one of my goals to send out those emails after student register. But, hearing that, that’s really cool. It’s nice, we can automatically just resend that email. That’s more motivating now. But, the other thing I wanted to say; 10, 20 years ago, when we taught, you walked into the classroom. That’s it. That was your first point of contact. There was no online presence. I mean, email was already happening. But, mostly people would leave me a phone message, they would walk into my office. So, part time faculty is not required to do anything two weeks before the class starts and from then on they will get paid also. Even if the class will get cancelled, they will get some payment. So, in this modern time, where things have changed, we need to rethink these ancient practices where you just didn’t have contact with your teacher before you walked in. But, now it can be different, and we should utilize that and how can we, at the same time, manage the– colleagues call it– workload creep. It’s like I made my 80 year old mom plan a vacation with me online. “You can just go online and do that thing.”. We spend hours in front of the computer together and then had the vacation. So, it’s those little things that take not just a few minutes, they take hours off. Especially, I feel like that’s where my neurodiversity comes in. It takes me longer. I have to read things twice or I just, my brain just reads them twice, even if I understood them the first time. But, also on the student side, as you said about the flipped classroom. Right now you have to do that by yourself, but you signed up for class so that you have somebody else help you learn. I feel like that, too. I’m focused a lot of real engagement with the material in class and, at the same time, it’s not everybody’s cup of tea to watch a video about it. How can we communicate that ahead of time well and make it also work for the people that are in my class? Because, it’s the only time that works for their schedule.

Edith: I’ve been hearing us talk about the flipped mode as an option to be more accessible. I think in some professors minds, it gives the class time, an hour and a half, sometimes two hour classes depending on what subject you’re taking, it gives the students that time for open questions. It’s a free for all, you can ask me anything. You can sit here and do your homework. You can do whatever you want to be successful. I understand that, but for me ,personally, I don’t like it. It has not worked. It feels like it’s very heavy, doing the work at home, then trying to schedule time to do that work, to read it, to understand it, and then have to write down notes in case I’m confused, I need more examples to fully understand it, and then I have to do all that and then go prepare to class. So, that seems like it’s a lot of work on my end as a student. So, for me, that hasn’t been a great option. I had two math classes, they were so very different. One was great, flexible, accessible, and the other one was the flipped mode. In math, that did not work. I learn math better when I’m seeing someone actually do it in real time. But, instead we were to watch videos and read notes from another professor, and then implement that when we went to class and do group activities, group work. Which frustrated me. Because, the way my brain works, I need to do it. I need to follow what you’re doing, copy it, and then doing maybe one more time by myself, and boom, I got it. That’s just math. Other subjects are very different. But, when you’re forced to do it as a group, if not everyone in the group is understanding, then you have to in part become the professor, become the teacher, and help explain it to them. I didn’t want to, but this is the way it was explained to us by the professor. If one person falls behind, it’s up to the rest of the group for you guys to explain it to that person, so they can understand and so you can all move forward. Because, we’re being graded as a group. That frustrated me, because I’m the one that’s learning, I’m an individual, and so my grade shouldn’t depend on somebody else’s. how fast they’re learning, how fast they’re keeping up, whether they’re watching the videos at home or not. Because, if they’re not, they’re going to be very confused and that was frustrating for me. We were talking about the course details, available syllabus. Another frustration of mine was that both advisors, at school, and professors didn’t have that available to me when I was thinking about next term. I know we’re on the last three weeks of this term, but I’m thinking about next term, because that helps me with my anxiety. I need to prepare mentally and prepare my calendar for what classes I’m going to take Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. I’m going to schedule one to three, and then three to five to study. I need to do all of that before I’m actually in the new term. So, I would have to take it upon myself to advocate for myself to email professors and say, “Hey, can I get a copy of your syllabus? I need to get an idea of how work heavy, how writing heavy, how much I have to plan for and how much I have to mentally prepare myself for your class on top of my three other classes that I’m thinking about registering. Because, if it’s too much, then I need to change things up.” I need to do that well before the term starts. So, again, that feels like it’s more work for students. It’s more responsibility for them to take on as opposed to; Eliana was talking about having a system implemented where we can already see what kind of a structure they have prior to that, prior to taking the class, taking that professor, and that would be very helpful. That would alleviate some of the stress, some of the anxiety, and a lot of the planning that it takes for some students to be successful in school. That’s something that I also wanted to say is part of this is that, not every student is prepared to advocate for themselves if something is not working for them, if a professor is not explaining it well enough or in a healthy way. Then it’s up to someone to speak up and that’s very hard. That could be very challenging.

Josephine: It’s a little mind boggling. It’s such a complicated thing we’re talking about today because each person has particular needs. In my career, I think It feels like every term when I’m getting ready for that term, I’m responding to things that didn’t work the prior term. Sometimes it depends on which students did advocate. Then there’s always that potential of not setting it up well and making it worse for other students. Since my modality now is online, I was flipping my classes and discovering the same issues that you talked about. It was frontloading a lot of the work more than was appropriate for the number of credits students were earning and the number of hours expected. But, now that I’m teaching online and I have some remote time in Zoom, I reduced that time to leave more time for the online independent work. Which I think is working better, especially with what I described earlier where students are choosing. At least I hope so. I’ve seen some evidence anecdotally.

Credit Systems, and How it Relates to Neurodivergent Learning

Josephine: But, I guess what I wanted to just say is it’s so complicated to be responding and trying to match the needs. I have one question for the students, after Heiko gets a chance to respond; I’m wondering how many students out there in the world, and instructors for that matter, are aware of the federal regulations about what a credit means? It’s a calculation I do frequently, and I don’t think I’m getting it right. I think I’m still expecting too many hours from students. It’s very difficult because of the way STEM education is. But, the definition of a credit is federal regulation, state regulations, accreditation people that regulate whether we can award credits is one, what they call, a “contact hour” in the classroom. Plus two hours external study time, learning time. So, for a four credit class, that would be 12 hours a week, for a five credit class. Are people aware of that? I guess the secondary question is, does that seem about right? Or do you end up getting more work than that? Just curious.

Amanda: From the student perspective, I’ll just say that it’s very frustrating in terms of how Oregon specifically handles credits. Because, applying for vet school, I was short by half or 1 credit because we have quarter credits. I think most of the world, actually, not just the rest of this country, are on semester credits and I have no idea, for the life of me, who in Oregon thought that was a good idea. But, to answer your question, I have no idea how credits are calculated. I just assume that the five credit classes always had a lot of in class activities, like lab, for example. The STEM or core sciences all have lab. So, that’s my perspective on credits. They’re just this arbitrary number that’s assigned to a class and it, basically, is dependent on how many class hours there are, how much homework or study time is required, and whether or not there is a lab or some kind of practical component.

Heiko: Let me answer that question. So, credit is not the same as credit. There’s lecture credit and there’s lab credit. So, when you take one credit lab, then you are for three hours in the lab, there should be no extra work. Now there’s still lab A and lab B, and so sometimes you might have to do a lab report outside. But, that’s the extent of it. For lecture, you have one hour in class for one credit. Then you are expected to do two hours of homework or study outside. So, that depends how much work there should be done and I feel like, definitely in that, many of my students tell me they do much more than that. What I did want to say to something you said about the flipping the classroom is; a very fantastic instructor, a long time colleague of mine who just retired. She said, “unless it comes out of a student’s mouth, they haven’t actually really understood it. At the same time, many people then take that to, you just watch the videos and then come in class and you practice that and you discuss with that. But, I’m with you. The students who are more in your direction often come to me in my class. But, people are not so into watching the videos. Maybe a little bit, but then really like me to show something, and then they practice, then they can talk. it’s that extra one more time doing it and then I talk about the next thing. So, it’s more back and forth. Also a really well designed, flipped class can also be amazing. There’s a lot of variation. I just want to say that, to the previous topic.

Edith: I wanted to touch on what Josephine said. Personally, before I started college, had no idea what credits were. When I was growing up in California. everything was by semester there and you had certain level of credits. I didn’t understand it though. It wasn’t explained. It wasn’t something that the teachers talked about. It was just, ” it is what it is”. You need to graduate, you need a certain number of credits. I went to college and I realized “so that’s what that means!”. That means that for one four credit class I should be doing four hours in person, usually. It would be like an hour and a half, an hour, 40 minutes, two times a day or two times a week, I should say. Tuesday, Thursday, Monday, or Wednesday, something like that. Then you go home and you do about eight hours or so of work, whether that’s homework or that’s studying. If you’re doing that, chances are you’re going to be successful in that class. That’s what that class requires is the way it was explained to me. It’s very different when you’re taking 12 classes. 3, four credit classes, or when you’re taking 15 credits. Now I understand why they don’t recommend that students take more than 19 credits per term. It’s a lot, it’s a full time job. If you think about it, Going to and from school, driving there. If you have, let’s say, six hours that you’re in a day, or eight hours in a day, that’s as if you’re going to work. You also have to find meals for yourself, and a lot of the times they don’t have cafeterias that are open. Some of the campuses don’t have a working cafeteria, they’re not fully staffed for that. You have to eat out of vending machines, or you have to order something, or you have to pack just a bunch of garbage and eat that. Chips and soda and what have you. So, again, this is all to say that there’s a lot more thought that goes into the credits that some students are not prepared for. That is why it made me very anxious and I didn’t realize that’s what would work for me. As if I reached out to every potential instructor, that I was thinking about having, and then say, “Hey, can you please explain to me what the structure of your classroom is, what your flexibility is on accommodations, is it mandatory like you have to be there every single week? Especially during the fall, I might get very depressed and I just can’t get out of bed. So, am I going to fail this class if I’m not able to make it for three lectures?”. I need to know all of that before I start working with this professor, before I invest that much of myself to go and drive there, do that, and try to do all that work; if I know I’m just like, it’s a one, two, three, and you’re out, you’re going to automatically fail or you’re going to get a withdrawal. That’s a lot to think about for students and some students don’t think about that ahead of time.

Educational Structures and Financial Pressures

Elianna: I think this also goes to touch on, who was this structure built for initially. If we’re talking in, Europe and America, this kind of Western idea; universities were built to educate the young men of upper middle class families, usually upper class families. The whole idea is that they would go, they would also socialize at these places, get to know each other. So, it was built exclusively. It was not built with disabled people in mind. It was built in a very specific sense, like what this system was built for. Who it was built for is still affecting how this happens today. So, it’s like a full credit course, how many people have that energy? Then it’s like getting financial aid is based on how many classes you can take. That was a major problem for me back in 2018, when I was trying to go to OSU is that I was really struggling. I was undiagnosed ADHD and I didn’t have enough tutoring support there, everything was online, and I didn’t realize that I didn’t do well with a lot of online work yet. So, I was in a very bad place mentally and I was experiencing psychosis. I was in so much stress I was in psychosis. When I went to my academic advisor going, “I don’t have enough money with this” or that “I’m scared about this other thing”, “I’m not doing well and I don’t know why and I’m feeling a lot of shame around that”. Then my academic advisor goes, “I want you to graduate on time. So, don’t take fewer classes.”. Because I had gone to her explaining that I was feeling really overwhelmed. So, at that time I was experiencing a new form of suicidality I wasn’t familiar with before because of the psychosis. Who this program is built for the kind of class and the ability that’s expected of people is something to consider when we think about how education is structured and what the expectations are.

Amanda: Thank you, I just want to say, first of all; Elianna, thank you for sharing that with all of us. I think we’ve all been in places of extreme academic trouble. Going back to the credit idea. Honestly, credits to me are almost completely arbitrary to this day. Because, how much time I spend on homework and projects is completely dependent on how difficult I find the classes completely subject dependent. I can have a five credit course where the homework supposed to take me three hours and sometimes it just takes me 10 minutes. But, in math classes, especially when I was getting back into STEM. My Stats 1 class, it would take me like three hours. I want to say it was like stat one here is like four credits or probably even longer than that ,if I’m being honest with just how long. Because I had to use Excel as well in that class. I ended up getting anxiety fairly recently just last summer because, I didn’t experience psychosis like you did. But, what happened was I had to take, I want to say, 15 credits in three months. Would not recommend that to anyone listening to this, would not recommend that to anyone here. I was so stressed out. I was studying all the time even though these were subjects I liked, they all related to animals. These are all subjects I was good at, they were all anatomy and physiology related. But, I still ended up developing severe anxiety because I was studying all the time. So, going back to the point about universal design; it really is dependent on the student. Each student’s gonna have their own limitations, each student is gonna have their own talents. We’ve talked pretty extensively about examples, we’ve seen attempts of it trying to be implemented or different ideas that instructors had of it, but how practical is it? Should administrators really be touting words like universal learning, or UDL, when it should be more like individualized approaches, like what Eliana and Edith have been talking about?

Josephine: Yeah, I think something that happens in education is that we often have a catchphrase or an initiative, like universal design, or something else. Bringing it back to what’s good teaching, and what do students need, and what’s going to help them learn, and what’s going to help us assess whether they learned. It can be difficult to do that. It can be time consuming. It takes experience and professional development learning, on our part, as instructors. There’s just so much that needs to happen. But, I think we can’t say, “Oh, this one thing is going to solve everything.”. In fact, with universal learning or, universal design for learning, you can think of it as one component of a good teaching practice principles like bringing in the student’s identity. That’s a different thing. They’re not mutually exclusive, you can’t say it’s all going to be this and not the other, or it’s only flip learning. Because, flip learning can incorporate active learning and collaborative learning and student identity and inclusion. So, I think too often we find ourselves kind of trapped looking for that one thing that’s going to solve all the problems and I don’t think that exists, unfortunately.

Elianna: Yeah. One thing I think about, when we’re talking about education and how it’s developed, we don’t really offer people space to be sick or unwell for a while. So, it’s like I have a lot of uncompleted work because of depression and burnout. Then I knew someone in my gateway to college program who had to leave and then come back later because she needed a lot of operative surgeries done, and that meant missing a lot of classes. She had to like, leave that and then start back at square one, basically, with taking certain classes. Because, of the regulations that they had for this. I don’t remember exactly what her operations were, but she needed a lot of ” R&R time” from these surgeries. So, what kind of timeline do we expect for people? Not even just talking about an individual class or a structure that we have, or the kind of front loading of information, so then people can make better choices. But, if someone was sick, if someone had something go wrong with them health wise, or there was a family emergency and they had to step away from classes for a bit, can people afford to take classes over again? That’s one of my concerns with my overdue work, is that can I afford to take these classes over again, versus having to keep on track? I think there is this kind of like intersection here with money and disability, or just like the human life versus expectations and education and the kind of pacing that’s there.

Edith: I think that universal learning would be great if it was fully implemented with all the professors and every school explained and carefully, thought out. So, everyone knew their options. So, students knew that they could advocate for themselves and what to ask for. Because, if you don’t know what’s available to you, you don’t know what to ask for. You don’t know what you need to be different, to be successful. If you want to go into nursing, for example; you’re going to go to a CC, a community college, and you’re going to do two years of prerequisites, then you’re going to transfer to a four year and you’re going to finish the rest of the two years there, and then you’ll come out with your bachelor’s in nursing, and then you can go on and be a nurse. But, what’s not explained to you is that it is nearly impossible to finish those two years worth of classes in time. I don’t know anybody that did it unless they were either not working or very young and were being supported by parents and by financial aid. Because, that plays a huge factor in this. I know that’s one of the topics, as well as, accessibility and marginalized groups. It took me four years to finish a two year degree, and I’m not ashamed of that. Because, I had a lot of ups and downs, some of them good, some of them bad, during those four years. When I hit the two year mark, I was thinking I need to have graduated. I should have been done. A little bit of guilt, a little bit of shame comes into that. But, then at the same time, you come out four years later and you’re like, “wow, I accomplished so much! I was there to support my friend through this. Somebody was supporting me through this couple of months that I needed to be away from school. I couldn’t focus on anything, let alone trying to take 15 credits in one term so I can be on track.”. So, I definitely have had advisors that have said the same thing that they told Eliana. “We don’t want you to fall behind, so you’re going to need to do this if you want to stay on track. If you want to meet your goals of graduating in two years time.”. Again, I say that it’s nearly impossible because it is; life does happen. For me as an older student and a person that’s of color; there’s certain responsibilities, there are certain things that are part of my culture. Like taking care of your parents, helping them out, taking care of family. That plays into the full time job of being a student. So, I’m already expected to learn, go to school, do my homework, study for 40 hours a week, then I also have to work to pay for my health insurance. On top of that, I have to take my parents to doctor’s appointments. I have to schedule their appointments. I have to remind them of their appointments. I have to have a life. I have to go out with friends, try to make friends. That’s a lot. So, I think that the idea of it is great, but it’s not properly implemented and that, right now, that’s part of why there’s so much anxiety in the world of academic right now. For students, it is very hard to do things. I understand why there’s so much anxiety, why there’s so much mental health in younger people, younger students. Why they’re being diagnosed with anxiety at six, seven years old. I understand it, because It’s an expectation that’s, in a way, unspoken of you need to do this. You need to be on time. You need to reach the goal that everyone else is reaching. You need to graduate. You need to move on up with your friends, with your classmates. If you fall behind, that’s going to start a chain reaction of bad events. So, for me, it’s a hopeful thing. I wish that it worked better. I wish that more professors were great at implementing this, and for also just advocating for students when students don’t know that they have those options. I wish It was easier, I wish it was better implemented, and I’m hopeful that in the future it will be. But, right now we’re in the steps where it’s still very frustrating and we’re just dragging along, trying to be successful.

Heiko: Thank you, Edith.

Student-Instructor Communication

Heiko: What you are saying, from the student side, I also want to bring in from the instructor side. First of all, we are also a particular type of learner. So, we often teach how we learn. Not always, but it’s definitely heavily influenced by our own experiences, for better and, sadly often, worse. But, even if we go over that, we have certain characteristics. Some of us neurodiverse, or we are just different. The approach teaching a class vastly different. We all have a certain capability of extending ourselves and I think it is absolutely necessary that we always work on doing that. That we learn and continue that. I love the project of who is who, so that people can find each other that are a good match. I really liked that. Also in terms of realism, for part time instructors, they teach one class and they’re teaching completely different classes next time or three of them or two of them, but not the same ones and have one or two or three different classes and never the same. So, we are sharing on the math department, a lot of materials. And yet, there are also people they [sic] always like their own materials because it’s part of who they are. So, for me, there’s so much included for every quiz I write that it’s a lot to ask for. Rather than asking, “is that realistically?”, I’m hoping that we come to the point that we can say, “what can we do or implement so that it becomes more realistic?”. That I feel is the advantage of working with math and science. Like, technologically, people are pretty savvy, for the most part. Not everybody knows everything. and we all like our own little thing, but there is a lot of knowledge and ability to combine, maybe streamline some things and make them more universal in support of universal design.

Amanda: Thank you, Heiko and Edith. I want to say that, to me, the biggest issue about implementation of universal learning is, again, not only that does everyone have a different idea of what it is or what it means, it’s also the fact that a lot of students aren’t aware of it. But, to me, it goes into the fact that administrators are making a lot of assumptions about what teachers can do realistically, and then teachers are making a lot of assumptions about what students are capable of realistically. Rather than coming up with these implementations or terms or universal design, equitable learning, differential learning, yada yada; quite frankly, those are buzzwords. I’m sorry, they don’t really mean anything to me at the end. I can’t speak for everyone else here. But, just talk to your students. Like how Edith and Eliana are talking to both of you right now, not that either of them are your students. I know this isn’t in the questions, but to everyone here, how often do you talk to instructors like this, and professors Josephine and Heiko, how often do you talk to students like this?

The Role of Feedback in Education

Heiko: Yeah, it reminds me of something that our PCC vice president, Katie Ho, did a study at some point of like what students want most. The number one thing came that instructors care. We can put whatever words we wanted, but then we actually care that we care about what our students say, what they are, giving us feedback. Students do give feedback, even if they don’t say anything. You see the way they walk in. You can walk up to them. You can check in. You see the work they turn in or don’t turn it. It speaks volumes. So, I feel like there are lots of progress has been made, at least in math.

Josephine: I think it’s starting to happen, Heiko. I was just going to reflect on the fact that it’s a hard decision to make when you want to talk to students, but you don’t want to use class time for the students valuable time. Time is so valuable. It’s hard to ask for conversations like this one or conversations Amanda’s organized outside of our courses has been, to me, very valuable and we need to do more of that. Sometimes there are social media groups that provide that opportunity as well, which I think are great. But, one place that I’ve started integrating it is in asking students to write very small short reflections on their learning of a specific topic, or on how an assignment went, or if they’re doing collaborative work, how did your group approach the assignment and what were the pros and cons. These little snippets of reflective time or metacognition thinking about how they’re learning have been the most valuable. Cause I’m learning from the students and educational research shows that those little metacognitive moments, where you’re thinking about your learning, actually help students improve their learning. So, for me, that’s where I’ve landed in asking students what they think and what’s working.

Edith: I want to share two things. To answer your question for me, I talked to professors like this, not openly about everything; what’s worked, what hasn’t worked. But every term that I was thinking about taking a class, I would send out this long email saying, “hey professor, I’m considering taking your class. I want to take it, because it’s going to meet the prerequisite, need for this program, or I need to take it, or I want to take it for it just for fun”, what have you? Then I would go on to, “can you please explain to me the structure of your class? Can you please explain what flexibility you have on assignments deadlines? If possible, do you have a syllabus that you could share with me? It doesn’t have to be the syllabus for next term. It can be a past syllabus. I just need to get a rough idea of how much time I need to schedule for this, for that, and to see if this class would be a good fit with my other classes that I’m considering for this upcoming term.”. Then I would go on to say, “the reason why I’m asking this of you; because I have severe anxiety, because I need to plan things out this far ahead in order to not feel like I’m already falling behind. Because, if I don’t do this by weeks ahead of time and I just take a class, I am so filled with anxiety that first week.”. After my first experience of having one class, that I was prepared for be dropped last minute, two days before the class was due to start they canceled the class because it was low in enrollment rate. I was shocked. I didn’t even know that was an option. I didn’t know that could happen. So, after that, I was like, “Oh, my gosh! Now I have to rewrite my whole schedule. I have to work everything around. This is going to throw everything out of whack.”. So, for me, that is something that I’ve been used to doing for years. It was actually an idea from a professor. They said, “I think that this would be beneficial for future people to know. So, if you want to write to your future professors and let them know, this is why I’m asking for this extra help or resources or explanation, this would be helpful for them to know and for you to know. That way you’re advocating for yourself. You’re mentally preparing yourself. You’re taking that initiative that a lot of people are going to want to have as a student as apart of their classroom.”. So, that’s in a way to answer that question. When Josephine was answering about how the communication that she has with students; another part of my decision making for possible classes to take was rate my professor. That was something that I was going to ask; is that something that you, as a professor, take into consideration? Do you care about that feedback that’s on there? Because that is something that I actually found very helpful. I would say, “okay, well, this is what they say. They say they’re flexible. They say that they’re this and that or that.”. But, then I would go on there and I would read, “this professor is not flexible at all. They were not very sympathetic. I think they’re very jaded and maybe they’re just used to students lying or coming up with excuses. Not a very caring individual. I would not recommend.” So, I would be like, “Whoa, okay. If there’s a few comments that are similar, maybe that’s not going to be a good fit for me.”. So, that is the resource that’s available and for me as a student, I found helpful. So, I was just curious.

Josephine: Rate My Professor has a history of toxicity. It’s a company running it. I’ve seen outright lies from students. I don’t read mine because it’s very toxic and it can be very hurtful. Early on when it first opened, I was teaching in Rhode Island a long time ago, I had two comments one term on Rate My Professor. It was a student who had gotten an A. It was the only A in the class, the students were struggling that term, and that student went off on a rant saying my class was way too easy and it wasn’t appropriate and it was harmful to him. The opposite was, “oh, she’s a horrible professor. It was too mean, everybody failed.”. It was both ends and that was just a small example of the toxicity. I’ve heard some real horror stories from colleagues, and I’ve seen outright lies about faculty members that I know. I can also see, as a student, why it would feel very useful. But, just keep in mind that sometimes people go there because they’re very angry and are trying to hurt someone. It’s frustrating because it’d be nice if you could guarantee a place where students just could be honest and express their experiences. But, I think the Rate My Professor platform can be toxic and they just barely got rid of the red hot chili peppers, or whatever that were rating people’s appearance, not too long ago. Sorry, I feel kind of strongly about that site. I’ve seen people get extremely hurt by it and I’ve had to consult colleagues who made the mistake of opening it. Most people I know won’t open it.

Amanda: No need to apologies. It’s very understandable why you and your colleagues be upset. I actually have used rate my professor to select teachers, but I look for trends in the information. I don’t really look at the reviews themselves, if that makes sense.

Elianna: That’s another one of the reasons behind why I want the tagging system. Rate my professor, there’s no way to really fact check it in a sense to see what’s going on there, why people are leaving certain reviews. It doesn’t provide information that people need all the time for what would influence a teacher. Going back to the original question of do I try to contact teachers. Well, number one, I have a lot of residual shame and stuff from when I was an undiagnosed neurodivergent kid. I had one teacher who all the time told me that I’m just making excuses. So, I still have this feeling of; who am I to go waltzing into this teacher’s email and go, “I’m scared of this.”. Prove yourself to me that you know you’re gonna be a good fit for my educational needs and now here I am making excuses for not getting work done. So, it’s not really something I have a conversation with any prospective, or current, professor of mine. Now I’ve been able to have conversations with professors or professors I’ve had in the past, but I’m no longer taking. It’s like this relationship of respect and authority where there’s a level of professionalism that’s there and then of course residual shame of like you’re just making excuses. So, it’s really concerning where it’s like I’ll talk with people as far as it is about getting work done, or maybe I’m going to be a little late on something, or I need a little bit of help with this choice paralysis that’s come up. But, otherwise I think for a lot of people, because of just the way that things are structured, that there’s a lot of shame for neurodiverse students and needing accommodations or needing things to be a little bit different or it’s what kind of workload might be present for a class.

Amanda: Yeah, to what Eliana said, definitely. I feel like if Eliana’s tagging system or even a similar system exists, I feel like my professor would hopefully become obsolete. Because, I’ve had to look at professors for my own neurodivergent needs. How heavy are they on homework and how strict are they on tests and how unfair are they on tests? That’s the trend I look for. Because, what screws me over in a lot of classes is whether or not professors lie to students about what’s going to be on a test. I hate mind games like that. For any instructors listening, don’t do that. You’re not doing yourself or your students any favors like that. Do you believe that UDL is the right direction to go in education, why or why not?

Edith: As a student, that’s very active in their own advocacy journey. I’m hopeful that we can make it more accessible, that we can make it more equitable. I’m also hopeful that teachers, professors, get more pay. That they get more resources. That they are given more options so that they can pass on those options, they’re also very limited. I understand that and it frustrates me because I’ve had some great professors and I feel so bad for them. They are giving it their all, you could tell that they are, and that they’re getting so little in return. So, I hope that in a few years, and maybe 10 years, this can be very, very different and that there is way more communication. That it’s received well. Right now, I feel like whenever students, or schools are asking for a survey, or they’re asking for feedback; they’re looking for a certain kind of feedback and when that’s not received, the feedback that they get is disheartening. It changes things and maybe they’re not as open next time and maybe they don’t ask for those surveys for that feedback next time. That’s frustrating, because I heard once that when you ask people to reply to something, you’re either going to get the people that have the best service or they have the worst service. Those are the only people most likely to reply, not the in between people. Again, as a student, I need to share, I need to advocate for myself, for other people, especially people of color, that have been taught to respect your elders. Respect the professionals, it’s their job, you don’t talk back, you don’t disagree. This is somebody that is older and wiser and you need to show them a certain level of respect automatically. You can’t say that you are not learning or that it’s not helpful for you. That’s just something that’s part of our culture, I feel like. So, for me, I’m talking to professors, as if they’re just another person. That’s the way I see them. They deserve a certain level of respect, yes. But, they also need to afford me that. If they don’t know what’s different about me or how I have found success in the past, then we’re just going to butt heads and they’re not going to appreciate me being there, being moody, and I’m not going to appreciate them being very unflexible to help me. So, I’m very open about that. I’m very hopeful for the future. I think right now it’s not at a place where I would say, “Oh yeah, it’s great! It’s great for everyone”. Especially people with disabilities, people of color, students of color, and even first time college students. First generation students, it’s very hard, very difficult. I’m very hopeful. I don’t think we’re there yet, though.

Elianna: Yeah, and getting on this, how do we define UDL? This has been our whole conversation in a way. The implementation of UDL really depends on what we mean by UDL. I feel like that’s where we’re at this point in the conversation.

Josephine: Yeah, I happened to open a web page that has an infographic about UDL and it made me think about how it could be useful. I think the utility of it would be more as a vehicle for reflection for instructors. Again, a lot of us came into teaching not because we were educated on how to teach. We’ve learned as we’ve gone and continuous improvement is extremely important in what we do. I think having opportunities ourselves for reflecting on our own practice is probably the most valuable thing. For me, it has certainly been. So, UDL as a formalized thing with infographics that lists things like access, support, engagement, representation, action, expression. Those are good words and I think just having something that you can point to that gives us a vehicle for reflection on our own practices in teaching, I think that’s the most value that one can find with UDL and other things like it.

Amanda: Professor Heiko, what do you think?

Heiko: Yeah, I’m coming back to something you said earlier, Amanda. There are other words that are being used to describe something similar. There are things that are unique to this particular concept, but there are other things like inclusive design, equitable design, and all of that is trying to get at that same core through different aspects and avenues. All of that, I feel like it’s absolutely the right direction. For me, universal design has been always part of that, too. So, yeah, I will continue to do that. What I like about the universal design aspect, specifically, is that it emphasizes the design of it all. Especially in general and equity work as well, the system is designed to get certain outcomes and we want different outcomes, so we need to have a different system. We are working often on improving and overhauling and stuff, or maybe make it all totally new, whatever it is, but that I feel, that, that part I really like about the universal design thing. So, I do think it’s going in the right direction and hopefully we’ll add a lot more students being successful, especially in our higher math and higher science classes. I would really like to see that.

Final Thoughts

Amanda: So, we’re coming up on the end of our conversation, but the one final question I do want to ask all of you is, did you find it valuable talking about universal design with each other? As students, did you find it valuable to talk to instructors? Instructors, did you find it valuable to talk to students?

Edith: I loved this conversation. I think that in the past, I have been burned by an educated professional that asked for feedback. We collectively, as a group, are very open and giving our feedback and they were argumentative and they were getting defensive and then they were victim blaming. So, this isn’t just a person of color thing, but you hold on to those traumatic events that you have lived and it makes you not want to share, it makes you not want to open up. Like Eliana was saying earlier, you do feel that guilt of, “I’m asking for something different, I’m asking for an accommodation.”. There’s a little bit of a shame that comes with that, because you want to be on par with everyone else. With a person that has a disability, all you want is to be quote-unquote normal. But, then there’s a sense of relief that comes with, “well, I spoke my piece and I was heard, I was valid, and they weren’t argumentative. They were open to it and they were receptive to the feedback.” I feel like this; in the future, a student doesn’t have to live through the hardships that I have lived. That maybe both parties can leave that conversation feeling better and hopeful for the future. That’s kind of my takeaway from this is that, yeah, I feel like everyone here was very receptive to each other. I think we’ve all had good and bad moments when it comes to the educational system as both students and professors. I understand their side too, there’s only so much you can do with the limited resources that are available to you. So, thank you. Thank you all for being receptive.

Josephine: Thank you, Edith. I feel heard and I appreciated being able to listen and learn from both of you, Eliana, Edith, and Amanda too, of course. Just being able to sit as human beings and talk through something and recognize that’s what we are. We all have things that we struggle with and challenges and doing the right thing, even when we’re trying to do the right thing. I think that’s wonderful. It was a nice conversation. I appreciated it.

Heiko: Yeah, I also want to thank you all for this conversation. It’s always amazing how many more thoughts we can generate and ideas and sharing each other’s thoughts and learning from each other. So, definitely got new ideas and also new motivation to bring it back to the math faculty. One thing I feel like I haven’t expressed, we are sometimes at the point also with colleagues where we are all wanting the same thing, but really strongly disagreeing about how to get there and how to achieve that. That we in a way at least in words all share, by not listening to students and having this conversation. Math department meeting, we had 100 instructors and 100 students present, and had actually conversations, group discussions and stuff. I wonder what could happen? How would that influence our decisions, our opinions about certain things. So, that’s what I’m taking.

Elianna: I really enjoyed the conversation. I really like that we had this friendly meeting from both sides of the academic perspective of teachers and students. Where we get to talk about our issues and see eye to eye. I really enjoyed this and I think it’s productive to have these kind of conversations. I hope there will be more in the future

Amanda: Thank you, and I hope to actually invite all of you back for a conversation in the future to both on the podcast, or maybe in other meetings. But, the reason I really wanted to have this panel discussion between students and teachers is to show that students and teachers can have these productive conversations about learning and strategies for learning, and that it makes sense to have them together. Because, Teachers can’t talk about teaching students without talking to students about their needs. That’s just not going to happen, but similarly administrators can’t tell teachers how to teach without actually teaching a class themselves. So, that’s ultimately what I wanted to showcase today in today’s conversation and everyone here did splendidly. Thank you so much for that. With that, I’m Amanda signing off and I hope everyone joins me for the next episode.

Outro

Amanda: Thank you for listening to today’s Let’s Talk: Autism episode. As you heard, the definition and implementation of UDL differs between people because it comes down to personal interpretation. Additionally, the distance between students and instructors can cause reluctance and fear to start discussions, forcing students to rely on controversial sources like Rate My Professor. But as Eliana pointed out, a tagging system with specific keywords would be a better investigative tool, with both students and instructors working together to implement the system. Edith and myself also regularly advocate and self identify our disabilities to professors so we can better explain our needs in the classroom. Open discussions like this are what is needed to better improve relationship between students and instructors and the learning material. As supported by professors Josephine and Heiko, who point out that the difficulties of implementing UDL not only come from personal interpretation, but even when they learn it, it can be daunting because the materials are so widespread. Overall, I hope listeners found this discussion to be productive and that this encourages institutions to invite students to speak and participate in teaching conferences and other events that roll out concepts like UDL. Thank you and be sure to tune in next time.

Outro Disclaimer

Asher: Thank you for listening to Let’s Talk, Portland Community College’s broadcast about disability culture. Find more information and resources concerning this episode and others at pcc.edu/dca. This episode was produced by the Let’s Talk Podcast Collective as a collaborative effort between students, the Accessible Education and Disability Resource Department, and the PCC Multimedia Department. We air new episodes on our home website, our Spotify channel, X Ray 91.1 FM and 107.1 FM and KBOO Radio 90.7 FM.