Summary
In these episodes, Deb Matthews talks about the importance of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and explores each of the three principles of UDL. Through an understanding of the uniqueness of trees and our relationships with our environments, Deb highlights the benefits we gain by creating rich, diverse educational ecosystems much in the same way our world creates rich diverse natural ecosystems. Deb Matthews, takes us through the importance of UDL and explores each of the three principles in this final episode that focuses on the principle of multiple means of action and expression. Through an understanding of the uniqueness of trees and our relationships with our environment that highlights the benefits we gain by creating rich, diverse educational ecosystems. Much in the same way our world creates rich, diverse natural ecosystems that Matthews is a professor and the child and youth care practitioner program at Centennial College.
Guest Speaker
Deb Matthews
Deb Matthews is a professor in the Child and Youth Care Practitioner Program at Centennial College. Deb is a proud graduate of the Centennial College Child Care Worker program and holds a Masters Degree in Education and an Undergraduate Degree in Child and Youth Care. from Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). Deb works to promote well-being and looks for every opportunity to explore our relationship with nature (an eager forager and avid gardener).
SPEAKERS
Teresa Lee, Deb Matthews
Teresa Lee 00:01
Welcome to the UDL Conversation Cafe Universal Design for Learning Podcast where we hear from people who are designing and implementing strategies with the diverse needs of learners in mind. I'm your host, Teresa Lee. This is the last of four mini episodes where Centennial College faculty Deb Matthews takes us through the importance of UDL and explores each of the three principles in this final episode that focuses on the principle of multiple means of action and expression. Through an understanding of the uniqueness of trees and our relationships with our environment that highlights the benefits we gain by creating rich, diverse educational ecosystems. Much in the same way our world creates rich, diverse natural ecosystems. Deb Matthews is a professor and the child and youth care practitioner program at Centennial College.
Deb Matthews 01:05
Hi, everyone, welcome to another episode in the UDL conversation cafe's series. I'm Deb Matthews. And in this episode, we're going to talk about the third principle in UDL, action and expression. And what we're really talking about when we talk about action and expression is helping students to be able to express what they know. So in this area, there are three key areas to think about: Physical action, expression and communication and executive functions. But before we do that, I want to tell you a little story about gardening this summer. And for those of you that may know me, or have heard previous podcasts, you know, I talk a fair amount about trees, but this time, I'm going to shake it up a little bit and share a story about growing tomatoes this summer. So a friend of mine, who grows heritage tomatoes, had a few seedlings that weren't marked, and weren't labeled as to what type of tomatoes they were. And she asked me if I wanted them. And I was so excited, I thought I can't wait to see what kind of tomatoes grow from these little beautiful seedlings. And so I planted them in the garden, and I took care of them. And as summer progressed, so many of my tomato plants were getting beautiful ripe, red, juicy tomatoes. And I was so excited. And I had this one plant that was growing these incredibly large, absolutely gorgeous tomatoes. And they weren't, they were probably at least the size of a small cantaloupe just incredibly big tomatoes. In fact, I kept having to add support to make sure that they weren't drooping all down to the ground. And I started to realize through the summer that all my other tomato plants seem to be producing these beautiful ripe red tomatoes. And these ones just weren't ripening. And so I called my friend and said, I think I may be I'm doing something wrong, because they're just not turning right. And she chuckled and said, Oh, you must have one of the green tomato plants. And she told me that in fact, those tomatoes don't turn red, they express they're ready by just, when you push on the skin, it gives a little it's not that firm tomato, skin flesh that normally you see from a tomato that's not ripe, it has just that little bit of give. And you know, it's right. But in fact, it stays green. And I share this example. Well, I should tell you, they were some of the best tomatoes I've ever eaten. So definitely worth it. But I share this example because in many ways, this is much what it's like when we're talking about how our students express themselves. You know, I used to believe that there was one way tomatoes showed us they were ready, tomatoes showed us that they were ripe. They express that by turning red. And in fact, now I've learned that there is another way tomatoes show us that they're ripe. And so much like my tomatoes, our students are no different. In fact, we know that our students will show us what they learned. And we can tap into that incredible knowledge that they have if we allow them multiple ways to show us what they know. And so in this episode, we're going to talk about the physical action ways that we can do that, the expression and communication and the executive function ways. And so to begin with, when we think about physical action, what we're really talking about is have we provided our students that variety of ways to express their learning and to navigate the content and have we given them. have we kind of optimized the tools and adaptive technology that may be available as a way to help them express what they know. So for example, in my courses, you know, when I have a discussion board, I allow my students to post a written discussion board post, or they can produce an audio post or a video post, and any of those are absolutely fine. And when I think of many of my assignments, that's true, they can do it as a written submission on audio or video assignment. And I have found that that's a relatively easy way I've been able to incorporate multiple ways of expression into the assignments I have within my classes. When we talk about optimizing tools and adaptive technology. again, I learned something fairly recently that I didn't realize, and that is, we have the ability to add a text to speech function in our eCentennial courses. And what that does is it allows students to push a button, a little play button, and they're able to hear the content that we've posted on our course. And this is important because we know that if students are getting the information in, in ways that they can process and understand it also allows them opportunity to really prepare and organize how they're going to express what they know. Another example of adaptive technology is intelligent agents. So intelligent agents are this cool function in our eCentennial kind of toolbox that allows us to set reminders and notifications. And this is particularly useful if you have a large class. But it's also useful if you're wanting to notice particular things for your students. So you may set up an intelligent agent to remind students of an upcoming deadline, you know, one that notifies them that there's a discussion board post due by Friday, but you also may want to set up an intelligent agent when students achieve above a certain grade. And it alerts them that in fact, well done, they've done a remarkable job in demonstrating the how they understand the learning. And so there are just so many options available in tools and adaptive technology that really, our hard work is to make sure we're taking the opportunities to really learn what those resources and options are. And we know that there are so many ways to connect with COLT, the UDL group, and others to really get support on how do we bring these elements into our courses. And so the next area I want to talk about is expression and communication. And this is really speaking to the multiple formats, again, we allow our students to use to communicate what they're learning. And fairly recently, I moved from a pretty traditional way of writing a literature review to allowing my students if they choose to do that as an audio or video submission. And it was tricky, because I didn't really think that that was possible, I kind of felt like it, it was the sort of thing as a paper that needed to be a written submission. And it was quite interesting. As I began allowing students to do this, it was remarkable to me how much that option changed the way in which not only the students were expressing information, but the way in which I was hearing it. And so students were required to format that paper, they were required to put in citations and references as audio in the same way they would have in a written submission. And it really was amazing how much more I found the students had organized their writing, really formatted it in a logical sequential way. And I saw really incredible submissions come in for audio recorded literature reviews, quite remarkable. So it definitely was a surprise for me, because I thought it would be more challenging to do it that way. And in fact, it works quite well. So expression and communication is really an ask to us to look at the ways in which we might be able to allow alternative ways of submitting than we may have even considered possible in our courses. Another example in this area is graduated levels of support. Have we considered the way in which we engage peer tutors, mentors, tutors available at the college and how those might be built in at intervals that are going to be useful to students as they progress in their, their learning, and they're demonstrating what they learn. In one example, in one of my courses, I add differentiated feedback in for each of my students and I do that in a course where I have a fairly small number of students, around 18. And they submit an electronic portfolio and I allow them to do the portfolio, portfolio, submit it. And then I meet briefly with each of them to give them very specific feedback after which they're allowed to resubmit the portfolio to address any feedback that was given and change their grade, if in fact, they do that. And so what I find is, it takes me less time to grade the portfolios this way, I thought it would take longer, but when I calculated the time spent giving feedback, and then the time to grade the final project, it actually was significantly less time. But more importantly, in fact, what I find is that students are able to really polish up those portfolios. And what I see I think, is far better expressions of their learning, because they had a chance to get real feedback on the very specific areas that they needed to focus on in their work. So that's another example. And then finally, in this area, the third piece or element we're going to talk about is executive functions. And really, executive functioning refers to this idea of being able to plan and organize, it's kind of how your brain thinks about pulling all these things together. And this is one where I've often left it to my students to kind of plan and organize. But what I realize is that if I want to get the expression of their learning, if I want to really see what they know about the content we've been working with, if I build in mechanisms to help them organize and plan and keep track of their work, in fact, they do better, they again, are able to express more clearly what they know. So in one example that I use, and this I developed as we moved into the pandemic, because I realized many of our students were struggling, struggling with organizing their space, given that they, their classrooms, were now in their home. And so I created an online checklist that helps students not just prepare for the online content, but also to consider their physical space, you know, have they set up an area where they're able to work? If that's a possibility for them? Have they considered lighting? The chair they're sitting in? Do they have a desk or a table? This this particular assignment that they get called the Online Learning checklist? Also ask them to consider how they're using their space, you know, have they created maybe a sign that they put up for their family that tells them I'm in class now Please don't disturb me? Have they notified people that share their space when they will be unavailable? Because they're in class or working on assignments? And so there were so many areas in this that students hadn't considered things like, Do you turn your phone off when you go into class, and if you're the kind of person who likes to be on your phone all the time, maybe you set your phone across the room when you're doing other work so that you're not tempted by that. And so feedback from students was that it was so helpful for them to in fact, get ready for the semester, and really think through some of the challenges they may face because they hadn't planned to be in their classroom, in their home. And so again, it's one more way in which we can help students to really get organized and be planful, around their learning. And so when we consider these three areas, the idea of physical action, you know, how we're helping students to navigate how we're using tools and adaptive technology, the expression and communication, have we considered the ways in which students could complete their assignments and still achieve the learning outcomes? And finally, that area of executive functioning, that being organized and having a plan for moving forward when we consider all of the things these things what we know is we know that as teachers we often teach, and in fact create assignments in often the ways that we've learned best or that we've seen the majority of our students learn and express themselves the best in a UDL classroom, what we're really doing is we are creating a space where all of our students can really experience those same levels of expression that many of our students have been able to do in the past. And so this simply creates a space where everyone can engage in that rich, diverse ecosystem in a way that benefits everyone. And so as you consider this, I'm going to share one final story, and I don't think it would be possible for me to have this kind of conversation without considering trees. So the final story is about this incredibly cool project that I heard about actually quite some time ago called Flash forest. And Flash Forest is a a group that is working to address reforestation issues. And the problem is, we are in fact losing around 13 billion trees every year, for a variety of reasons. And what we know is we're actually only getting about half of those trees back through all of the ways in which we put trees back into our planet, they do it we plant them, reforestation projects, and those sorts of things. And the health of our planet really depends, as we know, on that rich diversity of trees and a strong ecosystem. And so the problem is when we're losing so many trees, and we're not able to put trees back at a rate we know that causes lots of long term problems with carbon emissions, and all those wonderful things. And so, when I first found out about flash forest, I thought it was this really incredible way to consider the health of our rich, diverse ecosystem. This group recognize that we have traditionally been reforesting, damaged ecosystems through fairly traditional ways we go out and plant trees, but there is a limit to how much we can plant and a limit to how we can afford to plant rich, diverse ecosystems when there has been significant damage. And what this company has done is they have looked at ways to increase a very diverse planting in areas that have been damaged by using adaptive technology and really, maybe not quite adaptive technology. But what it is, is they're using drones as a way to plant large amounts. In fact, they can plant 10 times more trees than we could plant in more traditional ways. And given we are losing so many trees, and we really have to start healing our ecosystem. And so I leave off with that final example. Because it is another way in which we understand that even though this is not the traditional way, we may have planted trees, we're actually able to support growing rich, diverse ecosystems that our planet desperately needs. And we can do that using the supportive technology to help that happen. And for me, that's such a great example that relates to what I try to do in my classrooms with my students, I recognize that I have traditional views of how I may have taught material and expected my classroom to function. But what I realize is that there are exciting new ways where we can get to the same place, which is high level learning, which in fact, creates rich, diverse ecosystems of students. But we may be doing that in ways that we've never considered before. So if there's a takeaway from this podcast, and if you've had a chance to hear the podcasts I shared previously, the takeaway is that for UDL, really to work, it means we all need to be open to there may be different ways for students to engage and act and express their learning. And that the more we're able to incorporate those into our learning ecosystems, the greater the likelihood that our students will, will do well and go on to be part of our very large, rich, diverse ecosystem. So I hope you've enjoyed this, and thanks very much.
Teresa Lee 19:21
Thank you for joining our UDL Conversation Cafe. Are you a Centennial faculty or staff? If you would like to join the hosts of our podcast episodes and other colleagues for a deeper live conversation on UDL, join us at UDL Conversation Cafe monthly virtual circles. Find more information in the COLT calendar or the upcoming COLT Compendium. We invite you to listen and subscribe to the Centennial College podcast on SoundCloud, Apple podcasts, Google podcasts and Spotify.
- kahoot.
- H5P For Centennial Faculty, learn how to access your Centennial H5P account (You will need eCentennial login to access the document).
- Padlet For Centennial Faculty, learn how to access your Centennial Padlet account (You will need eCentennial login to access the document).
- Additional workshops listed on UDL at Centennial College webpage.