Welcome to Episode 143 of the Think UDL podcast: Accessible HOUSE with Trevor Boland. Trevor Boland is an Assistive Technology Officer at the DLSS (Disability and Learning Support Service) at Dublin City University in Dublin, Ireland. I had the good fortune to meet Trevor at the AHEAD (Association for Higher Education Accessibility and Disability) conference in Dublin recently and wanted to bring his great ideas about how we all can make our classes and workplaces more accessible, and how it isn’t just the instructor’s job to do so either. In today’s episode, we talk about a very entry level acronym for accessibility called HOUSE that you can share with your students as well as the Marrakesh Treaty, lots of accessibility resources, and what to do to start this process in your area. If you want to learn more you can find Trevor’s contact information along with the resources mentioned in today’s episode on the ThinkUDL.org website under resources just before the transcript for this episode.
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Empathetic Design with Jimena Vergara Sanz
Welcome to Episode 142 of the Think UDL podcast: Empathetic Design with Jimena Vergara Sanz. Jimena is an Assistant Professor of Industrial Design at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. A teaching and learning college of mine introduced me to Jimena’s work, so I’d like to thank Derek Eggers in our Center for Teaching and Learning for Student Success for this fantastic connection. In today’s episode, we discuss empathetic design, human-centered design, adaptive design versus universal design, and of course, universal design for learning. I learned so much from the exercises Professor Jimena Vergara Sanz has introduced to her students and so have her students and also, so has she as we will discuss. We talk about her interesting journey as a professor in a foreign context, that is being an international professor teaching in the United States, and also how having a physical disability informs her teaching practice. And we end with hope. So much hope! And how we need empathy in the world and how empathetic design makes the world so much better–not just in education, but in politics, the medical and medical insurance field, and just everywhere. I am so excited to bring this conversation to you and if you want to learn more you can find Jimena’s contact information along with the articles mentioned in today’s episode on the ThinkUDL.org website resources just before the transcript for this episode.
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Strategies to Support Neurodivergent Learners with Jennifer Pusateri
Welcome to Episode 141 of the Think UDL podcast: Strategies to Support Neurodivergent Learners with Jennifer Pusateri. Dr. Jennifer Pusateri is a Senior Universal Design Consultant at the University of Kentucky, as well as a talented author, speaker and educational consultant with whom I love to work and with whom I have worked often! I was so excited to participate in a workshop of hers entitled “10+ UDL-Aligned Strategies for Supporting Neurodivergent students” at a recent conference and I knew I needed to bring this to my Think UDL listeners. In today’s episode we discuss neurodiversity, terminology, and multiple strategies to support neurodivergent students in areas such as focus, attention, and motivation, organization and structure, unspoken expectations, time management, emotional and sensory regulation. And what we talk about today isn’t everything in this power-packed workshop, so if you want to learn more you can find Jen’s contact information on the ThinkUDL.org website resources for this episode.
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Professional Development Programming with Saskatchewan Polytechnic
Welcome to episode 140 of the Think UDL Podcast: Professional Development Programming with Saskatchewan Polytechnic’s Heather Touet, Tasha Maddison, and Myra Zubot Mitchell.
All three of my guests today work at Saskatchewan Polytechnic which is located on Treaty 4 and Treaty 6 territory and has campuses in Moose Jaw, Saskatoon, Prince Albert and Regina. Tasha Maddison is an Educational Developer in the ILDC (Instructional and Leadership Development Center). Myra Zubot Mitchell is a Learning Technology Trainer with the Learning Technologies Department and, like Tasha, is in the Learning and Teaching Division. Heather Touet (pronounced “Tway”) is an Instructor with Learning Services in the Student Services Division. In today’s conversation, we discuss the programs that these fabulous multi-disciplinary folks are offering including a UDL Institute which is a yearly event in March, and the intersection of UDL, Artificial Intelligence and accessibility, and a really fun idea they have implemented called UDL mini-challenges. In addition, we discuss how UDL and indigenizing the curriculum are related at their institution among other ideas.
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Emotional Capacity and Intercultural Competence with Tara Harvey
Welcome to Ep 139 of the think UDL podcast: Emotional Capacity and Intercultural Competence with Tara Harvey. Dr. Tara Harvey is the Founder and Chief Intercultural Educator of True North Intercultural. She assists educational institutions in reaching their internationalization goals through consulting, training, and coaching and helps educators develop their capabilities to incorporate intercultural learning into their work with students. I took a course from Tara several years ago and have found so many connections between intercultural learning and UDL over the years. In today’s conversation we discuss the recently updated UDL 3.0 guidelines released in the summer of 2024 and pay particular attention to the section on emotional capacity. Quite a few changes took place in that section of the guidelines and I thought that a discussion about them through the lens of intercultural competence may help listeners to understand what those changes really mean. Even if you are not familiar with the old or new guidelines, this conversation is helpful for anyone –and not just in higher ed. It is helpful in teaching and learning, but it is also very helpful in life in general to think about how we act in the world and how different we may be from each other.
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