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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56:21
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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55:04
Neuroinclusive Advising with Rachel Adams and Fred Zinn
Welcome to Ep 138: Neuroinclusive Advising with Rachel Adams and Fred Zinn. Rachel Adams is Associate Director of Education and Training, Disability Services at UMAss Amherst and a Doctoral Candidate, UMass Higher Education and Administration. She offers education and training around disability and also teaches undergraduate students at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Fred Zinn is Associate Director, Digital Learning in the College of Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and focuses his practice on teaching teachers how to teach and teaching with technology as well as educating others about accessibility. In today’s conversation, Rachel, Fred, and I discuss how faculty and staff in the role of an advisor can support undergraduate and graduate students, both formally and informally. We discuss best advising practices specifically with a neuro inclusive lens. You’ll hear my new favorite term in today’s conversation “unconditional positive regard” in relation to supporting neurodivergent students, but it seems appropriate to me to use in many other situations. I hope you enjoy this thoughtful conversation on the Think UDL podcast.
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1:09:18
Deconstructing "College Material" with Cate Weir
Welcome to Episode 137 of the Think UDL podcast: Deconstructing "College Material" with Cate Weir. Cate Weir is the Program Director for Think College for the Institute for Community Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. She has written and managed grants to create programs for students with intellectual disabilities to attend college and continues to work with, improve and grow these programs nationwide. In today’s conversation, we talk about the history of and need for college programs for students with intellectual disabilities, what the benefits are to the students enrolled in these programs as well as the benefits to professors who teach and the general enrollment students who take classes in which students with intellectual disabilities are co-enrolled. Throughout the conversation we deconstruct what “college material” has been and how it has changed over the years and we end with thoughts on how instructors, students and universities can design environments where all students, including those with intellectual disabilities, are included.
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1:04:48
Centering Disability with Katie Grennell
Welcome to Episode 136 of the Think UDL podcast: Centering Disability with Katie Grennell. Dr. Katie Grennell completed her PhD in American Studies from the University at Buffalo in 2016. Her dissertation, entitled The Making of the ‘Fame Monster’: Disability Aesthetics, Bodily Deviance and Celebrity Culture delved into the distinctions between deviance and normativity by analyzing representations of disability, bodily difference, and deviance in American popular music and popular culture of the late 20th and early 21st century. She has worked as an adjunct in the disciplines of history, American Studies, American popular music, and disability studies for 17 years at multiple institutions throughout Western New York. She currently works as an Accessibility Strategist at Anthology, supporting institutions using Ally. Her first book, Disability and Accessibility in the Music Classroom: An Instructor’s Guide (Routledge) was published September 1, 2022. In this conversation, I ask her about UDL in performance-based classrooms and how disability access has shaped her teaching. In addition, we discuss what disability culture teaches all of us and what her vision is for the future of inclusive education.
Portugal