After reading Chardin and Novak’s essay on Universal Design, I wondered if there actually is still significant pushback against this approach in higher education curriculum. If the foundation of the approach is to design classes with “multiple means of engagement, multiple means of representation, and multiple means of action and expression,” it sounds like what we in CUNY are already doing and being strongly encouraged to do in selecting material and learning activities for a very diverse student population. When I combine different media sources to explore a single issue or theme, this is the philosophy I am following. One student’s “means of engagement” into the issue of local climate solutions might be a video about a community garden, but another student might be more motivated by an article about a local business that generates its own electricity. As long as we’re all learning about and writing about the same thing, arranging materials so that students can find different entry points into seems like a strength to me – not a complication. It makes the curriculum more exciting, and allows students to discover new interests. Who, exactly is fighting against this, I wonder?

In terms of accommodating students with learning differences, I don’t really see a downside here, either. I have never had a student complain to me of unfairness because I allowed certain students to take longer to complete quizzes, tests, or papers. I see it as not really different from students availing themselves of tutoring support. I don’t hear anyone arguing that tutoring creates an unfair advantage, so I think these fears of unfairness have to do with the need to make these accommodations more universal, so everybody can get used to them.

On a note of detail, I felt very validated reading the argument that some students work better alone, and that they should be allowed to do so because group work is not for everyone. I want to say amen to that! Many English classes tend to emphasize group projects and give these very high stakes grades, when really not all students enjoy working in a group or produce their best work collectively. I have lately been trying to create alternatives to group projects so students can still succeed in the course even if the group project really won’t work for them. It serves nobody to make students miserable, and the goal really should be to create the conditions under which everyone can produce their best work.

The most resonant moment, for me, in the *Equity by Design* chapter was its mention of Zaretta Hammond’s warning about inadvertently creating “dependent learners”: students who are continually paralyzed by novelty, show no sign of progression from task to task, no retention from lesson to lesson, and have been trained into a state of “learned helplessness” that leaves them reliant on teachers or other authority figures (13). If I could boil down the problems I’ve encountered over ten years of teaching (and, honestly, even beyond that in other jobs and roles), most of them would fall under the rubric of passivity. As it stands right now, institutionalized education produces passive subjects, and it’s extremely difficult to push back against entrenched tendencies from within the system. This was always a problem, but the pandemic has exacerbated it: teachers are expected to do more and more, students less and less. It’s impossible to blame the latter; rather than being taught, they were “managed,” and they quite reasonably expect to be processed through college in the same way. This chapter opens with a Paolo Freire quote; I recall another observation of his (the source escapes me at the moment) that likens education to laying out a string for the student to follow. It’s a great image both because of the etymological significance (education suggests a leading forth or drawing out, in the same way that we might call a metal ductile or say that a docent guides one around a museum), and because it attributes agency to the *student*. Someone has still got to follow that string–in their own way, to be sure, but under their own steam. I see my role, as grandiose as this sounds, as encouraging students to seize at least a modicum of control over their own lives, to help them become better defenders of their own minds in a world conspiring to keep them weak and passive. And the dangers of passivity, or the risks of a “learned helplessness,” are all the more consequential for students who are already marginalized in some way, whether by identity, economics, neuroatypicality, or the myriad other points of individuation to which we’re rightly becoming more attentive.

I have more to say on this subject, but one of the questions I think we might take up is the imperative to *evaluate* students. I’ve voiced my dislike of grading before, and I’m curious to hear about how other instructors have negotiated the need for (at least an appearance of) “fair grading,” ranking, and competition (in the context of UDL or otherwise). As an adjunct, I feel very constrained and under pressure to keep reproducing a system I don’t believe in, but I imagine that even tenured faculty can only push back so far.

Universal design reminds me in certain ways of participatory design. A few years ago I learned– and was thinking quite a bit– about participatory design, when the entire floor of the tutoring center at the other CUNY college where I work was being renovated, re-imagined and redesigned. Participatory Design originated in Scandinavia in the 1960’s and was championed by labor unions to democratize workplaces. The participatory design approach is one that emphasizes design with and alongside people instead of strictly for people. In short, it’s design that is, well… participatory.
The rehab of the library and tutoring areas at this other CUNY college was the pet project of the vice president at the time, and I was baffled by some of the choices being made regarding the learning spaces, tutoring tables, lab placements, enclosures, etc. But no one asked my opinion, nor were any of the other coordinators or tutoring directors who actually worked in the space asked what they thought might improve student learning there. Decisions were being made by administrators and designers who clearly had no idea what the needs on the ground were in this particular environment. Walls were knocked down, for example, without considering potential noise issues in multiple tutoring/class/lab spaces. In the re-envisioned space, the walls of the computer labs did not reach the ceiling, and were basically glass partitions of so many large cubicles, presumably for a more “open” feel. All tutoring tables were aggregated in the middle of a big tutoring pen in the center of the floor like a Medieval prison yard, with tutors and students at different tables all yelling over one another to be heard. Aesthetically, the new lavender-colored chairs looked nice, and the floor did indeed look and feel more open, but at the expense of approximating the acoustics of a lively morning in the trenches at the New York Stock Exchange. One conversation between the designers/architects and someone who actually worked in the space could have predicted and prevented, or at least drastically mitigated, these problems.
At the time, I had recently had a fascinating conversation at a party with an industrial designer who was telling me about how industrial design is more collaborative and participatory than architecture, which is usually based on precedent. He talked about the differences in the research processes: architects go out and look at what’s been built before, and then they use that to inform what they’re building. Industrial designers tend to look at how an existing space is actually being used, and survey the people working there to improve their design based on the participation of those surveyed. This was one crucial aspect that the former CUNY VP had missed, with results that I would describe *generously* as… whelming.
Universal design as a pedagogical frame in the writing classroom necessarily includes participatory design, which potentially entails a radical reconsideration of all sorts of assumptions one might harbor regarding placement, assessment, participation, student voice and inclusion, co-learning. Universal/participatory design in learning spaces then truly becomes an instrument of social change. I will continue to endeavor to co-create such environments with students. This framework, if effectively actualized, harms and excludes no one, and benefits everyone in the learning space. All boats rise.

This was a great reminder to educators to be sensitive to all students’ request for accommodations. Despite there being difficulties CUNY seems to ahead of other schools as I am a bit surprised that the podcast was just made 1/2022. If a student has had an accommodation request I have always just accepted it without question. I’ve always looked at it that it is a great thing that they are brining it to my attention.
Covid has just added another layer of accommodations. I am teaching an in person class with only nine students. Three of them have separately approached me about their social anxiety and their hesitancy about coming back with their classmates. That’s a third of the class! Perhaps even more have not felt comfortable approaching me. I remind students that the classroom is a safe space. I had always encouraged group work but now it optional. I try to make the class a relaxing free place and students appreciate this. I am so touched by how kind and accepting the students are to each other.
As educators our main job is to encourage learning for all. Students have enough stress about their perceived shortcomings, the teacher should not add to it.

After listening to the podcast, my reaction is essentially: okay! I think we’re experiencing a particularly rapid change in mass consciousness with regard to a lot of important issues in the last decade, and accessibility is one of them. I think some aspects of what are being discussed are institutional and not in my control — access ramps, the red tape around getting accommodations, etc. — but what I can control is within the classroom, on the syllabus, and in my e-mails. I’m a big rubber stamp. Whether I get requests for accommodation through official avenues or direct requests from students, I just say yes. Why not?

For one thing, I tend not to have many such requests, and the most common thing disability services ask for is extra time taking tests, which doesn’t apply to my classes. On the other hand, denying requests seems pointless. The podcast brings up the idea of “faking.” I don’t believe people fake disabilities, but on the other hand I do tend to get at least 1 or 2 11th hour requests per semester for extensions vaguely citing the student’s mental health. And my response is: okay! Take more time. Who am I to doubt such a claim? What could possibly be gained if I do? I take the “better to let 100 guilty people go free than jail 1 innocent person” approach. If someone just procrastinated and decides to lie to me, so be it. They’re only hurting themselves but I’m not interested in becoming a PI.

Part of this I think has to do with my own view on classroom competitiveness that the speakers on the podcast don’t address. Actually, Kat Macfarlane makes an observation I found interesting. She says there’s angst about accommodations because students might receive an “advantage.” Her response (if I remember correctly) is that accommodations are not really advantages, they’re a necessary corrective. But I found myself wondering: what does “advantage” mean? I just don’t see my students in competition. She teaches law so maybe there’s a different culture in law schools, and I know from experience that grad students in particular often see themselves as competing with others. And of course we know undergrads who view grades as the be-all and would be upset if they thought other students’ grades didn’t represent the same “rate of exchange” for effort as their own. But I just don’t see the end point of evaluation or the learning process in terms of grades, and so I really don’t see any problem with students wanting more time, extensions, etc. There are some accommodations which I agree with Macfarlane might be beyond “reasonable” — I’ve never encountered that situation, but if for instance somebody said I had to like make a duplicate version of all course materials in some different modality, say record myself reading my syllabus and other readings, I’d probably resist. And I think there are decent technological solutions for things like that. But otherwise: okay!

The only real backstop I put on this, and it’s one I don’t see discussed explicitly, is that the student does have to do the work. I think once, maybe twice, I’ve had a student essentially not turn in coursework, hand in a note from some healthcare provider about their mental health, and bristle at the end of the semester when I insist they can’t pass the class without making up the work. Even in the case where the student has had a difficult semester and just couldn’t do the work, and even if I let them make it up, I know that they won’t have gotten much out of the class because the process and progression of assignments is the class; the work is secondary. But I’ll pass them if they do the work. What I cannot consider is having a student sign up for a class, not do the work, claim exemption because of personal medical difficulties, and request a passing grade anyway. I do think there’s a point at which medical (whether physical, mental, or both) difficulties go beyond what can be reasonably accommodated, where the reality is in no reasonable sense should the student be in a college class at the moment. It’s rare, but obviously it does happen. Have I given out some undeserved passing grades? Yes. Have some students taken advantage of the well intentioned spirit of accommodation without probably needing it? I’d be foolish to think not. But it doesn’t seem relevant to me. Students get out of the course what they put in. My job is to motivate them to put more in, not punish them if they don’t. And certainly not to hold some imaginary line on grades or deadlines if they seem distressed.

Reading Chardin and Novak’s essay on Universal Design for Learning (UDL)espoused by ESSA since 2015, the first thought that came to mind was – really? This is a thing? In particular, the three tenets of UDL were that instruction should provide “1. Multiple means of engagement 2. Multiple means of representation 3. Multiple means of action and expression.” In reflecting on these tenets, I was drawing on my own children’s learning experiences and my own involvement in public education. I had not noticed any such shift from No Child Left Behind to ESSA, other than a mandate to get rid of time restrictions on standardized tests. My children did not come home excitedly talking about the unique and varying ways in which they were engaged in their lessons.

The second thought that came to mind related to UDL was this idea of creating variation in educational modalities to accommodate the variety of learners we engage as teachers. In this respect, I am fully on board. I have been approaching teaching this way for years in the community college where I teach, where students come from a diversity of backgrounds with continuing challenges and potentially lessened exposure to the privileged learning experiences we can often take for granted and often erroneously maintain as some sort of ‘gold standard’. The authors write, “Many of the “tried and true” techniques and curricula perpetuate privilege and compliance rather than focusing on the power of learning, productive struggle, and empowerment” (2). To me, learning begins with engagement, and if we expose students to curricula material, particularly complex material which they are not fully prepared, or willing, to embrace, we run the risk of turning them off to the process of learning anything meaningful before we even get started.

This is why I structure my Modules with a variety of media on our particular topic to engage students at an individual interest level. Readings are scaffolded in complexity, beginning with the most accessible (usually something visual). And then we progress and expand. Once student interest has been established, I will invite them to consider more complex material related to their sub-topic of choice. Then students are invited to expand on their curiosity in a scaffolded essay assignment. In this way, learning becomes, as Chardin and Novak suggest, a learner centered subjective literacy event.

Hello everyone! For next Tuesday, we’ll be meeting on Zoom and discussing principles of Universal Design and accessibility.  To review, Universal Design :

(A) provides flexibility in the ways information is presented, in the ways students respond or demonstrate knowledge and skills, and in the ways students are engaged; and (B) reduces barriers in instruction, provides appropriate accommodations, supports, and challenges, and maintains high achievement expectations for all students, including students with disabilities and students who have limited English proficiency (Chardin & Novak 3)

Key to the ideals of UD is that we are designing for everyone, not just those who have been given non-normative labels.

For Tues, I’d like to do things slightly differently. With the ideas of UD in mind, I would like everyone to:

1. Take a look at accessiblesyllabus.com Then
2. please choose to read or listen to ONE of the following:
3. • UNIVERSAL_DESIGN_AS_AN_INSTRUMENT_OF_CHANGE-1. This book chapter gives a pretty solid overview of the theory and praxis behind UD. It’s a good starting place!
   • TEA FOR TEACHING: DISABILITY AND HIGHER ED This podcast involves some teachers chatting and “spilling the tea” about experiences with disability for both instructors and students, and how institutions can better serve us all. Transcript available if you, like me, can’t concentrate on podcasts.

3. Write a blog post about your thoughts/ feelings/ questions/ experiences/ whatever’s on your mind about Universal Design and Accessibility.

Just FYI, and kind of on the topic, a deaf friend of mine posted this article about how outsiders respond to deafness today and I found it very helpful/ interesting, if you wanna give it a read.