UDL During the Pivot to Remote Instruction

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Community involves doing what you can to meet the needs of others.  Right now in my professional life, this means helping my students complete their studies despite our unexpected shift to a “teaching at a distance” model. Over the past month, I have aimed to avoid overburdening my students with unrealistic amounts of work while being mindful that I cannot oversimplify content because all of the learning outcomes in my courses are important.

Those who already think about universal design for learning (UDL) are well positioned to analyze how this pandemic has exposed inequities in higher education.  In a nutshell, UDL asks us to plan for the diverse needs of our learners.  Even though learning is a complex process, a fair amount of UDL simply relates to making thoughtful choices. 

Some strategies that worked well for my courses have been:

1.  Recording content for students to access at their convenience.  Many of my students are working people as well as parents, and they all have different schedules.  By posting videos of lecture content, evaluation instructions and software demonstrations, students have been able to learn on their own time.

2.  Making this content available through YouTube, which includes the benefit of automatically generated captions, and also posting the video files directly to our course website.  (The YouTube videos are unlisted so you will not find them unless I have shared the links.) Streaming is easiest for most students, but for those with limited internet access downloading files to view offline can be a better solution.

3.  Being available through multiple services.  Most people in my network on LinkedIn appreciate the pervasive “on-the-recordness” of email, and since you are probably one of these people, ask yourself whether it is fair to expect someone who has never worked in an office – or even set foot in an office like yours (Hi Bay Street BigLaw!!) – to feel the same way.  Integrating into our professional work culture that is obsessed with paper trails and accountability is something that my students are still training to do, so if it is easier for them to ask for help through a DM on Instagram I am happy to respond.

In all of these examples, I have considered what is useful for my students before turning my mind toward what would be convenient for me. I am fortunate to still have a job in our new new-economy.  Using my skills and experience to assist the realization of Centennial College’s mission statement, “Educating students for career success”, is both a privilege and honour.