Creating future UDL leaders

Transcript

NARRATOR: In this case study, Kathy Snelling from Skills Initiative Skills South Australia talks about creating future UDL leaders.

KATHY SNELLING: Hi there, my name is Kathy Snelling. I'm a principal consultant in course development and I work for Skills SA which is part of the Department of State Development in South Australia.

NARRATOR: What is the program you are sharing with us today?

KATHY: Well, it's a really exciting initiative that our department initiated in educator development and it was an UDL leaders’ program which we ran last year and we'll be planning to run again this year.

NARRATOR: What led to the development of this program?

KATHY: We have a very strong emphasis in our department in supporting VET educators to gain skills and interact with valuable professional development particularly in the non-government RTO area. So the challenge for us was to engage VET educators to participate in this UDL program and for many of them at the start they didn't even know what UDL stood for.

NARRATOR: How was the program designed and implemented?

KATHY: The project was designed to be a 12 week program where participants met online or in person for four sessions and in those sessions, and in between, they undertook the ADCET UDL online professional development program and our face-to-face sessions then unpacked the principles and the information for each of those sessions and we then looked at how the VET educators could apply that in their own teaching and learning environment. At the conclusion of those four workshops, we then supported the educators to attend the UDL symposium which was held that year in Sydney. And it was great to see the VET educators feel very proud and excited to be part of that and to also feel very well-versed in UDL.

So they got the maximum benefit out of that symposium. In conclusion, we then wound the whole thing up with of course a very important celebration and reflective session where people talked about and shared their ideas and their learnings from having done the program.

NARRATOR: What outcomes and improvements have you seen?

KATHY: Well, our initial objective was to simply ensure that everybody had completed the online UDL course which they then were certified for and attended the workshops and the symposium and they were our initial outcomes, that what we found was that the outcomes that we saw and continue to see have surpassed those now, I suppose, almost very low-level outcomes. What we've seen is that educators are using UDL terminology and principles in other projects that we're working with. So for example we support course development projects for small bespoke training which they are required to report on at the end.

And it's been wonderful to see without any prompting that when they report they include in their final report or presentation how UDL has been implemented and how they can demonstrate UDL principles have been incorporated in that course design. So that's been a really exciting thing to see them almost just embed it in their everyday practice.

NARRATOR: How have you measured the impact of the program?

KATHY: Well, initially we did a pre-program survey to gain their kind of entry level understanding and implementation and utilisation of UDL and what we saw was there was a range which we were expecting. Some of the people who did the course had actually engaged with UDL in their careers already but they wanted to enhance what they were doing.

Others came in with complete as I mentioned earlier no knowledge of what even UDL stood for and we repeated that same survey after the course had finished. So we were able to measure pre and post outcomes and to say they were dramatic would be an understatement. But particularly it was pleasing that those that had no prior experience or engagement showed amazing uptake and commitment.

But it was also great to see those that came into the course with some UDL background really see the benefit and also felt that they had great experience in becoming somewhat mentors during the program because we deliberately mixed groups up to have that range of experience. Beyond that we did do in class or in session, formative feedback type activities and we also got a lot of anecdotal and unsolicited feedback from participants both during the course and at the celebration session where they were able to I suppose relax and share more informally their feedback.

NARRATOR: Were there any unexpected benefits?

KATHY: The... probably most unexpected benefit from our UDL leaders’ program was that the symposium that was held in Sydney was for many of those VET educators, the first educational meeting or conference they'd ever attended.

And prior to going, some of them expressed to me that they didn't know whether or not they'd feel like they were, you know, worthy or that they belong. They didn't know whether they were going to be out of their depth. And it was amazing to see in the symposium itself, we had about 30 attend in person and a dozen interact online with the symposium, the discussion, the discernment, the kind of dialogue from them about, oh, I agree with what that speaker said or even things like, I found it interesting, but I really feel like I don't see that being relevant to my practice. So, I guess they began to be quite sophisticated in their kind of reflection and their discussion about UDL.

And I think for them it was a very affirming opportunity to see that in fact they do belong in adult and tertiary education. And that was exciting. And I think for many when we did our celebration event after that they said look I really feel a lot of the stuff that I'm doing stands up really well when I hear what the experts are saying.

So I encourage them to consider submitting an abstract for the upcoming UDL symposium to be held in Hobart this year thinking that probably they you know say no and in fact we've had four of the abstracts that were submitted accepted and they'll be presenting in Hobart and I think that if you'd asked most of those the educators prior to doing the program that they'd be doing this at any symposium, they would have said absolutely no way.

And we didn't even think at the start that was something that we were going to be encouraging, but they just seem to grow in confidence and their sort of the way they saw themselves as fitting in. So I think the wonderful thing about UDL is it's applicable across all areas of education. Beyond that, we had some of our participants not be directly involved in the VET education delivery.

They were administrators of an RTO, for example, or student managers. And many of them reported to us that they could see how UDL still had a lot of relevance for their interactions with supporting students even if it wasn't in a direct teaching role. So those sort of outcomes were kind of quite mind-blowing for us because to me they are kind of behavioural change that is often hard to get going but it sort of generated it and I think it was the approach that we had where people were supported in their kind of development of confidence in UDL.

NARRATOR: Were there any challenges and how were they addressed?

KATHY: Well, the first challenge that we found was right at the very start of the first session because we designed the sessions the four workshop sessions to be linked to each of the four units on the UDL online course. So the idea was that the that people would come in and complete the UDL course during the session and we would debrief, we'd stop, debrief, move on.

But some of the people who started the course had already done the whole four modules, some had done the first one, some hadn't done it at all. Some people were attending in person, some people were attending online. About 50/50. So we had a lot of moving parts and in a way without even realising it, we demonstrated really good UDL practice by thinking about after our first session which was a little bit disjointed because of all these different entry levels and attendance patterns.

We thought about how we could adjust the workshop program for the following three to meet the diverse needs of the student. And so we did things like adjust the starting time for those that wanted to come in and do the UDL online course in real time. They started an hour earlier and then the others join them. And that worked well because we were saying it's still giving you the time but you can choose when you do the online learning module.

It could be prior, it could be during. So that was really well received by the students. And one of them even said you are just trying to show us what UDL really looks like. And we said well I guess we are. And then with the online and the what I'd call the hybrid delivery, I find that very challenging. But since co we've all had to embrace it and I think we will have to continue to embrace it because the benefit of the hybrid delivery was we were able to have people join us from all over the state and of course South Australia being as large as it is means that for some people traveling for an in-person workshop is up to eight hours. So the fact that we could have people involved and well engaged from all over the state meant that the hybrid delivery was really important. But just juggling the challenges of having 20 people in the room and 16 people online, in terms of how the session was designed made us think about the important parts of things like having a person that was dedicated to monitoring the online chat, a person that was dedicated to managing the online kind of technology to make sure those people weren't feeling as they were watching me run a session online. So we thought about those challenges and I think mostly we met them and we certainly learned a lot about how we're going to run the workshop this time or the workshops in the upcoming course.

NARRATOR: What advice would you give to others?

KATHY: I think the advice that I'd give to colleagues in the VET sector is that it's really important for VET educators to see that their place in the discipline or the profession is really central and really valuable.

I had a career as both a university academic at the same time as being a VET educator. So straddling the two systems I got to see the best and the worst of each one. And the recurring comments I've always experienced from people in the VET sector is well you know university is kind of different or better and some of the best educators that I've ever worked with have indeed been VET or community adult educators.

So I think that it's actually giving them the self-confidence and the I suppose efficacy to actually see and expose them to the fact that what they do and the work they do is often amongst the best in the sector. So it's that capacity building, it's that guidance, it's that mentoring which I think is really important.

And I think that it's important to recognise that whilst we need to support early years VET educators, investing in people that have been in the system for a long time is also very important because not only do they get rejuvenation from programs such as this, they also see themselves as leaders or mentors and we encourage that to share their practice.

So there's many benefits and I just feel as though the VET sector, the educators need to understand just about the great work that they do.

NARRATOR: What is the future of this program?

KATHY: Well, the next steps for this UDL leaders program is that based on the outcomes of the program last year and the continuing benefits, we've been able to secure support to run another program in 2026 in the second half of the year and potentially a one a third one into the early part of 2027 because we do need to cap numbers and the people that have had in have made inquiries about doing it since the last one. There's been quite a long people on our list of people to approach for this next one. So the future plans would involve also using the past leaders, the people that complete the program to then potentially into the future become the people that actually facilitate and run the program, so that there's sustainability into the future.

NARRATOR: What has been the value of the program for you?

KATHY: I think probably for me in my sort of career as an educator, I think that some of the best investments that can be made is in educator development. I think I've seen as I mentioned early career educators gain so much in the VET sector.

Of course, we have the Cert 4 in TAE, which is an essential qualification, but what I see and what I hear and what I know is that's just the start. It almost just gets you your ticket. I think the value of ongoing professional and workforce development is that it's not only to introduce new concepts or new ideas or new technologies, but it also gives the VET educators in the programs that I've worked in an opportunity to reflect on their own practice.

And I think that what we all understand is that teaching in any context is normally just getting to the next lesson. You're always just one day ahead of your students. And to give educators the time and space to think about, share their practice and reflect about new ways or understand that what they've been doing actually stands up pretty well is really invaluable and a great investment in maintaining high standards of teaching in the VET sector.

NARRATOR: This video was developed by the Australian Disability Clearinghouse 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.