Welcome to Episode 119 of the Think UDL podcast: Contextual Pathways with Lee Dale. Lee Dale is the founder and CEO of Say Yeah!, an educational tech company based in Toronto, Canada. Lee saw the accessibility gaps in online education and decided to do something about it, he created his company Say Yeah! to help unlock the potential in everyone. In this conversation, we discuss instructional design, using technology thoughtfully, and creating contextual pathways in online learning. If you have wondered how complicated teaching itself is, we discuss the various roles that are needed for online learning to be successful which include the subject matter expert, the educator, and the role of technology in online learning.

Welcome to Episode 118 of the Think UDL podcast: Badges, Modules and Praxis with Thomas O’Shaughnessy. Thomas O’Shaughnessy is an Assistive Technology Officer and UDL Project lead at the University of Limerick in Ireland. I thought I might introduce him and this episode with a poem:

In Limerick, Tom's praxis did shine,

Inclusive practice, his paradigm fine.

With UDL's broad scope,

And tech breaking trope,

Access for all, his constant line!

In this episode, Thomas outlines how UDL has bloomed at the University of Limerick with a national UDL badge, faculty and staff training, and large-scale awareness and implementation of UDL. Thomas has been championing the implementation of UDL and creating more accessible and inclusive educational spaces for all and shares his great work with us today. Thank you for listening to this conversation on the Think UDL podcast.

Rachel Combs is a Disabilities Accommodations Consultant and Professor in the School of Information Science at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky. In this conversation, Rachel and I discuss her work with Project ENABLE which stands for Expanding Non-discriminatory Access By Librarians Everywhere and which seeks to raise librarians’ understanding of the library and information needs of disabled students and develop programs, services, resources, and technologies to meet those needs. We also discuss what she is doing at the University of Kentucky to reach all students and patrons and decrease barriers to access for all. You’ll find resources associated with this conversation on the ThinkUDL.org website and thank you for listening to this conversation on the Think UDL podcast.

Welcome to Episode 116 of the Think UDL podcast: The UDL Gears with Loui Lord Nelson. Loui Lord Nelson is an author, leader, consultant, and educator in  Universal Design for Learning in a global context. She is also my esteemed friend and colleague as well as the host of two podcasts on UDL, UDL in 15 minutes and UDL Research in 15 minutes, both of which cover a multitude of subjects focussing on UDL around the world mostly but not entirely focussed on K-12 . Together we cover a lot of UDL ground and I am so happy to have her on the Think UDL podcast today! In this episode we discuss a fabulous new resource Loui has created to help all of us understand and implement Universal Design for Learning a little better called the UDL gears. Through this tool, Loui has created an accessible visual representation of the mindsets, skills, and practices of UDL practitioners. And in this conversation we discuss how these three things are related and how we can dig a little deeper into them together. You’ll find a link to the UDL gears and some supporting materials on the resources page for this episode on the ThinkUDL.org website. Thank you for joining us to learn more about UDL.

Welcome to Episode 115 of the Think UDL podcast: UDL at Scale with Tom Tobin. Thomas J. Tobin is a founding member of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Teaching, Learning and Mentoring as well as an author, speaker, and consultant on UDL, evaluating online teaching, copyright, academic integrity, and alt-ac careers (non-traditional and non-faculty career paths). Not only that, Tom is my long standing UDL friend whom I have already once interviewed in episode 3 of the Think UDL podcast. And he is back on the show again to move us far forward from that conversation way back in 2018. In fact, this conversation is about how to systematically implement UDL at scale. Tom has been doing a lot of research and work on how universities and systems can be successful in implementing UDL at large, not just in classrooms or in departments, and he has some sage advice and actual real evidence of what has already worked, and what we all might be able to do to accomplish this goal. It is an incredibly helpful and enlightening conversation based on so many conversations that Tom has had with UDL practitioners around the world! And let me also say now, too, that Tom says by the end of this episode that he wants to hear from you and your strategies and successes in implementing UDL at scale. So please look over the resources for this episode and reach out to Tom, too!

 Welcome to Episode 114 of the Think UDL podcast: HEQCO’s Key Recommendations with Rachel Courts and Ken Chatoor. Rachel Courts is a Researcher at HEQCO, the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario and Ken Chatoor is a Senior Researcher at HEQCO as well. Together with their co-authors Jackie Pichette, Ofure Okujie and Ryan Tischoff, they have extensively researched UDL in Higher Education in Ontario and written a fantastic and extremely helpful work for any UDL practitioner entitled, HEQCO’s Dialogues on Universal Design for Learning: Finding Common Ground and Key Recommendations from the Sector. In this episode, Rachel and Ken outline how they and their colleagues assembled the ideas for this practical work. We discuss the thoughtful ways that the authors and collaborators researched and collected stories and information from their colleagues about the use and implementation of UDL in Ontario’s higher education institutions including their challenges, opportunities and successes. And from this they have produced recommended strategies for others to implement and institutionalize UDL in their universities. You can view HEQCO’s full report in the resources section on the Think UDL web page for this episode along with the other resources that we mention throughout the episode. Thank you for tuning in to hear how you can implement UDL successfully in your institution with the help of my guests Rachel Courts and Ken Chatoor.

Welcome to Episode 113 of the Think UDL podcast: Equity Frameworks in a UDL Course in Context with Joanna Friend. Joana Friend is a Professor in the School of Early Childhood and Faculty Facilitator in the Teaching and Learning Exchange at George Brown College in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Over the last several years, she and her colleagues have put together a fantastic course on Universal Design for Learning that is couched within their own context and within larger equity frameworks. In today’s episode, we discuss the context surrounding the impetus and creation of the course as well as what has been learned through various iterations of the course in the last several years. If you are interested in creating a course for your college or university, you will be enriched by this discussion which provides a step by step process including questions to ask, ways to facilitate the learning experience, stakeholders to consult, and general advice on how to attempt something in your particular area. Everything is context specific, so we will delve into George Brown College in particular, but this discussion is helpful to replicate in any context. You’ll find several resources about this course, Universal Design for Learning: Inspiring Equity and Inclusion in Higher Education, on our web page for this episode.

Welcome to Episode 112 of the Think UDL podcast: Simplified, Authentic and Engaging Library Science with Amanda Nichols Hess. Amanda Nichols Hess is an Associate Professor and Coordinator of Instruction and Research Help, as well as the Liaison Librarian to the School of Education and Human Services at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. She has researched, written about and created many resources for library science that focus on UDL. In today’s conversation, we will look at the role of the librarian on campus and how she has incorporated UDL into many different areas, from small projects to campus-wide initiatives. Even if you are not in library science, you’ll benefit as an instructor to hear how collaboration with librarians on your campus can bring benefits to both you and your students. Amanda has supplied her work as resources and you can find them on our website ThinkUDL.org for this episode. Thank you for listening!

Welcome to Episode 111 of the Think UDL podcast: Digital Ethics in ePortfolios with Kristina Hoeppner and Kevin Kelly. Kristina Hoeppner, M.A., is the project lead for the open source portfolio platform Mahara, working at Catalyst IT in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington in Aotearoa New Zealand. She traded hemispheres and careers in 2010 and enjoys supporting and working with the New Zealand and worldwide community of educators, learning designers, and education innovators in both formal and informal learning settings to create positive and supportive learning environments. Since 2019, she has been a member of the (Association for Authentic, Experiential, & Evidence-Based Learning) AAEEBL Task Force on Digital Ethics in ePortfolios and, since 2021, a member of the Executive Committee of FLANZ (Flexible Learning Association New Zealand). In September 2022, Kristina started the podcast ’Create. Share. Engage.’ in which she interviews members of the portfolio community to share their stories in a contemporary medium, making these stories accessible beyond academic articles and conference presentations. Kevin Kelly, EdD, works with colleges and universities as a consultant to address distance education, educational technology, and organizational challenges. He also teaches online courses in the Department of Equity, Leadership Studies, and Instructional Technologies at San Francisco State University, where he also previously served as the Online Teaching and Learning Manager. Kevin is a member of the AAEEBL Board of Directors and the AAEEBL Task Force on Digital Ethics in ePortfolios. He co-authored with Todd Zakrajsek the 2021 Stylus book, Advancing Online Teaching: Creating Equity-Based Digital Learning Environments which is featured in episode 55 of the Think UDL podcast. In today’s podcast my guests explain the ethics of ePortfolios and how they are aligned with UDL principles. It turns out, there is a lot of overlap between the two! Kevin, Kristina, and their colleagues on the task force have done all of the heavy lifting so that you don’t have to, and you’ll find links to the digital ethics for ePortfolios on the Think UDL web page for this episode. 

Welcome to Episode 110 of the Think UDL podcast: Teaching STEM Students with Dawn Tamarkin. Dr. Dawn Tamarkin is a Biology Professor and Chairperson in the Department of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at National University which has multiple campuses with its main campus in San Diego, California. Almost half of the enrolled students at National University are in the military and many are first generation college students with an average age of 33 years, and most students attend National University online. Dawn is also the founder and CEO of CellZone, Inc., a company that makes models and other manipulatives for science instructors to help students better understand and connect with learning complex science concepts. We will discuss how Dawn accidentally became a business owner through her own UDL teaching journey. In today’s conversation, Dawn will explain her theories about how STEM students learn a bit differently from, let’s say humanities students, because of the course material, how she started making models because of a particular need in her class, how using hand-held manipulatives has changed her teaching, and what shifts we need to make in our own teaching to help our students thrive. She also provides several free resources that she created with a National Science Foundation grant that outlines how to teach STEM courses using UDL. You’ll be able to find those resources on the ThinkUDL.org website.