Building staff capability in UDL

Transcript

NARRATOR: In this Case Study, Leanne Crawshaw from North Metropolitan TAFE talks about building staff capability in UDL.

LEANNE CRAWSHAW: Hi, so I'm Leanne Crawshaw. I'm the instructional designer at North Metro and I work across all various portfolios, looking at programs for lecture uplift and digital capability. And one project that I'm working on at the moment that I'm quite excited about is our Universal Design for Learning Program. So we've been running this for about 3 years now and we've trained over 100 lecturers in various portfolios. So our Universal Design for Learning program is 10 weeks and it's one day a week and it really helps uplift our lecturers in their teaching pedagogy and some digital implementation as well in their lecturing.

NARRATOR: Why develop this program?

LEANNE: Our lecturers often have asked and requested professional development to help engage their students, also to try and have a look at what are some of those barriers that they have with their students. So Universal Design for Learning originated in architecture and my background is actually in Interior Design. So when I, also a TAFE graduate, so when I first left TAFE, I was working in medical design and I designed lots of disabled toilets, ramps and making sure that all this built environment was accessible. So when I started researching about Universal Design for Learning and about removing those barriers for our learners in education, it really resonated with me.

So every learner needs to be able to walk through the front door. So in learning it's often difficult to see these barriers and they are hidden. So Universal Design for Learning works on the principle that there's no average learner and that we design upfront design to make sure that learning is accessible for all learners.

So this really resonates with our lecturers. So most of the lecturers that are the most successful, they sit in our classrooms and they say, I have tried everything. I just don't think students want to learn anymore. And they're our most successful candidates because Universal Design for Learning works on the three P principles of engagement.

Why do I need to learn this and why am I here? It works on representation: How can I understand what I need to learn? And action and expression: How can I learn and show what I know without the process defeating me?

So, we work on these three pillars and we say to our lecturers, we're not telling you that everything that you're doing is wrong and that you need to start again. We're saying take one pinch point, one thing that actually isn't working, one thing that your students are struggling with, and add one more.

So, this might be a lecturer giving content that's heavily in text. So if you have a student that maybe has dyslexia but has not disclosed that, text is going to be their barrier. So what's one more thing we can do? How about we have a podcast? How about we have a transcript, an audio transcript for our student? And that way we're automatically reducing that barrier without the student having to ask for that retrofit.

So this really works well for all our learners and our lecturers have had such great results and success. One of our lecturers walked into the classroom one day and he said, "I've tried everything. These students, they don't want to learn. They're not interested."

And this was our chef Rowan. He said the content and the material that the students were given were often PDFs and written text and they just weren't engaging with this. So, his brainwave and great idea was to take this into a digital application and he put this into Microsoft Sway. He had images of how he wanted it to look and videos to explain it. He asked for five minutes of his students' time before they went into the classroom with a QR code. They could use their mobile phone and they would just spend 5 minutes looking at the instruction and then they say, ‘yes chef, I can do this’. And he was astounded by how this one approach got brilliant results.

So that's how we keep the momentum, these success stories, that one application, that one more way in, one more different way to learn engages and our students excel. That's just one story of many. Having lots of lecturers trained in various portfolios, we have two to three in each qualification. So they're able to build that momentum, peer coach and teach and show what's actually working in their class. So we're really, really proud of this program that we have with our lecturers and it just keeps growing and growing.

NARRATOR: How was the program designed and implemented?

LEANNE: So we started designing probably four years ago. It was about six months of design consultation. So I'm part of the quality and development portfolio. So that was our professional development team. So a good colleague of mine, Deb Lunt, also my manager Huda Ali, we worked together and looked at trying to take the Universal Design for Learning framework, which could be a university degree for three years, and put it into a 10-week masterclass, one day a week.

So it was for about six months or so we really looked at the timeline, what we wanted to include. It was actually quite difficult to put something so big into 10 weeks and one day a week. So we really just looked and then when we discovered the Thomas Tobin plus one approach that really resonated with us.

I also went to a lot of professional development and seminars. I remember speaking to a lady who was also a guru, saying, where do I start? And she gave me some good points of starting small and just breaking it down and really looking at that plus one approach.

One of the biggest things we wanted to include was accessibility in our LMS. So we had a big section in that awareness of what tools are already available, what digital tools are there that there just wasn't an awareness about. And we really wanted to start with the basis of that engagement, having a safe and secure learning environment. So creating that first and then building on that with that backwards design.

So looking at what we want to achieve and designing the lesson plans and the assessments so that we didn't have to retrofit, because Universal Design isn't about making adjustments. It's about it being inclusive from the start.

So really looking at how our lecturers currently design, putting in engagement, accessibility, choice and world life. We also have looked at putting in digital implementation. So looking at the TAC framework but going on a low tech, not high-tech, but low tech, and using our digital ecosystem of what we already have readily available so that we could create learning for our lecturers that is accessible to them, that it's practical and they can actually use.

So, it was really about taking something this high and bringing it down to meet our lecturers also where they're at and looking at some of the areas that students may have complained about. And sometimes one of our biggest issues is assessment. When students aren't successful, we really need to look at what's going wrong and what can we do. So, assessment's a big part of that and that assessment choice.

So a lot actually happened and then we had a pilot. So the first one was a one-term pilot and then we made changes and then we run it twice a year. And every time that we run it, my colleague Deb and I actually do change it and we refine it. And we also change it according to who's in front of us too and what their needs are. So, we've never actually delivered the exact same thing because we've found we've had to always be evolving and changing, which is what we encourage our lecturers to do. Don't be stagnant. What might work one year may not work the next year. So, it's evolving all the time.

NARRATOR: How were some of the program’s strategies developed?

LEANNE: So some of our strategies that we look at first is that engagement. So you can have the best learning plan in the world, but if your students are not engaged and they're not interested, it doesn't matter how great your lesson plan is. So it's looking at applications of buying that interest for your student. So real world applications, giving your students choice.

So in assessments, if students can choose how they want to showcase what they know. For example, if it was a history assessment, they might want to pretend they're writing a story from the view of a person during that period. They might want to say they're the newsreader recounting what had happened in that era. Or they might be able to have the choice to design an infographic or a timeline.

So, giving choice for our students gets that buy in as well and increases their success because they're interested and motivated. So our strategy is all about our students and student-centred learning.

NARRATOR: What growth have you seen in the program?

LEANNE: So the growth is the momentum of our lecturers on our waitlist. So they're very excited. They're seeing how this works and is successful with their students as well. We have particular areas where they may feel that they're struggling or want to improve a particular qualification area. So it really has been knowing that it works, seeing the showcases from their other lecturers as well, and it's something that we've been running for 3 years and we definitely have the college backing for that for our lecturers.

NARRATOR: What feedback have you received from students and educators?

LEANNE: From our lecturers. One day I got a phone call on a Friday and this particular lecturer rang up and said I just want to thank you. I said thank me? Thank me for what? And he said I've just been through an external audit. So I'm like yes. Now they're quite a scary thing at times.

And he said to me, for the first time ever I could actually explain what I was doing in my classroom. He said I had the language. I could say what I did and why I did this. And he said that was from the engagement. He could show how he had engaged them. He could show how he'd put choice in there. And he could show how he'd given multi-modality and media for his students to cater and be inclusive for all students.

He said the auditor was so excited, loved what he was doing, and he said it was the first time ever he came out of an audit and just felt proud of his students and also what he had achieved. So I think if you can get through an audit smiling and happy and excited, that to me is one of our best examples because we do have great lecturers who are amazing, dedicated to what they do, but often we don't have that language to showcase and say what we do. So it's really achieved a lot more than we could have thought possible.

I don't get the feedback from the students but I get it back from my lecturers saying how engaged their students are. That particular lecturer who passed the audit with flying colours, his pinch point was assessments. So he taught online students and face-to-face and all the time he was having reassessments after reassessments. So many emails with students asking questions.

So what he actually did is he took a video and a screencast of his assessment and uploaded it in the LMS so the students could rewatch it, pause it and re-watch it. It did take him a little bit of time, but he realised the amount of time that he put to this one video, he had limited questions and he had a high level of submissions and no resubmissions and he was floored and he couldn't believe it.

So it wasn't that the students weren't willing to learn. It wasn't that they didn't understand or didn't have the technical skills. It was the information wasn't presented to them clear enough. So, this one step of doing a video just really increased the student experience and outcomes as well.

NARRATOR: Were there any unexpected outcomes?

LEANNE: Well, I guess as I said previously, the audit, that's not one thing that I expected, that that could really translate. One new thing that is happening with our RTO standards is the engagement. So we're now having to show engagement and map that to our learning and assessment plan. So already having three years of UDL and some champions in the college, translating that and showing their learning materials and their inclusive learning strategies, I think really puts us at the front for our new RTO standards.

NARRATOR: What advice would you give to others?

LEANNE: I guess the most important one is not starting from scratch. We're not asking our lecturers to redesign what they've done. They're actually already doing an amazing job. It's that Thomas Tobin plus one approach. Just have a look at what you're doing. Where are the students struggling? What's not quite working? What's your pinch point? And just add that one more element.

And the two examples that I spoke about, they did more than a plus one. They did a plus 20 because once you start, they just could see the value. So it's about the value, the buy in.

One thing I didn't touch on is UDL is based on neuroscience and it looks at the way that the brain actually works. So it also talks a lot about behaviour in your classroom. So I often say look at the behaviour and ask why. And once you see the behaviours in the classroom, you can start unpacking and seeing what can I do to help my student overcome those barriers.

So it's also looking, you know, a student that may be looking disinterested or getting a little bit angry or aggressive, they may be overwhelmed. So we look at chunking and reducing that cognitive overload as well for our students. So it's really just starting small and meeting your students where they're at, at that point in time.

NARRATOR: This video was developed by the Australian Disability Clearing House on Education and Training in partnership with the Australian Government Department of Employment and Workplace Relations. For further information on building inclusive practices and supporting students with disability, visit our website adcet.edu.au