BGSU Keynote - Why UDL is Step Zero toward Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, by Tom Tobin
BGSU Teaching and Learning Summit 2022
Keynote Address
Tom Tobin
Why UDL is Step Zero toward Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
We work with a wide variety of students, who vary in terms of their level of preparedeness, socio-economic background, family status, work responsibilities—there is no such thing as a representative university student. Because we support so many kinds of learners, our goals, processes, and methods have to be open, welcoming, supportive, and flexible enough to reach out to and honor that diversity.
Our biggest collective goal is to help students to achieve to their potential. We want our learners to stay engaged, come back for more, and experience their time in our classrooms as a positive part of their lives. We can all agree that making Bowling Green State University an open and welcoming space for everyone is the right thing to do.
But we can’t achieve true diversity, equity, or inclusion without students who feel that they are “a part of” and not “apart from” our campus communities. Too often, students have little time for studying or interacting with us, each other, and our subjects beyond our formal class meeting times. If there were a way to give everyone just 20 minutes more for sustained thinking every day, that could be the difference between struggling and success.
There is a way to uncover those magical 20 minutes every day: adopting inclusive design ideas in the interactions that we have with learners across campus—in courses and in our service areas, too. And it’s effort that pays us all back, by taking work off our plates: fewer students will be poorly prepared, we’ll have to do less re-teaching because everyone got a concept wrong on a test, and more students will stick with hard challenges instead of dropping out. The framework of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) powers this approach.
The magic behind finding those 20 minutes has to do with access. When we think about accessibility, most of us call to mind legal requirements, accommodation paperwork, lawsuits, and learners with disabilities. But “accessibility” means much more than just helping people with disabilities. It’s about finding time where and when our students actually have it (often on their mobile devices). It’s about designing interactions that allow learners to take agency in showing what they know. It’s about helping our students manage their calendars and their attention amid significant distractions.
In this interactive keynote session, you’ll learn attainable techniques for lowering access barriers that produce tangible results. You’ll also find out how to build on already-strong foundations in community with your colleagues. Specifically, by attending this keynote session, you will be able to frame diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts within a “step zero” need for access to content, community, teaching, and the wider world;
define areas in your own interactions with students that are good starting points for more-inclusive design efforts; draft the steps you can take in order to effect change within the boundaries of your available time, resources, and funds; and speak to leadership colleagues about accessibility as a mission-critical imperative for all programs and services, in language that resonates with their priorities.