After participating in the 2023 UDL Fellows Program, Robert Pammett, Associate Professor Partner in the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Jocelyn Micallef, Manager, Educational Development, began incorporating UDL practices in PHRM 441. They share their experience making online asynchronous learning more engaging and accessible.
How have you applied UDL to your pharmacy course?
Rob: PHRM 441 is a mandatory one-credit asynchronous course for fourth year students disseminated across the province doing their experiential learning rotations. As part of our UDL efforts, the first change we made to the course was enhancing the welcome video to include some positionality pieces from myself as the lead instructor, as well as rationale regarding deadlines and course design decisions, so students know how they can be successful.
We’ve also tried to give students a lot more flexibility in completing their assessments and the opportunity to interact with each other in a more flexible manner. Previously, discussions only invited text-based responses, but now we’ve opened up opportunities for students to respond through multiple forms of media. We have a very large cohort of approximately 220 students, and we wanted this course to act as a place where they can get some of that belonging not just among their classmates, but also within the profession of pharmacy.
Jocelyn: We’ve been trying to make sure that the course is easy and clear for students to navigate and incorporates flexibility since students are often leaving and coming back to course content due to being otherwise busy with experiential education obligations. There are options to mark things as done as they go, so they have their progress saved when they come back and it’s easier to navigate on their own time.
What motivated you to participate in the UDL Fellows program and start incorporating UDL principles in your courses?
Rob: PHARM 441 struggles a little bit with the engagement of students since it’s only a one-credit course out of their very large course load, it’s online, and completely asynchronous. I have received comments in the past that the course feels like too much for students and they wanted to focus on their experiential learning. As someone who went through a similar program and was very focused on my experiential learning, I understood where they were coming from, so I really wanted to increase the flexibility of the course and drum up some improved engagement using UDL. I also thought that there would be lots of good general learnings coming out of the UDL Fellows Program that I would be able to incorporate into other online courses that I’d be delivering in the future.
Did you experience any challenges with implementing UDL and how did you overcome them?
Rob: I found it a bit challenging when I didn’t know how to implement certain changes in Canvas, but Jocelyn was very helpful in either fixing the issues or teaching me how to fix them myself. It was great to have someone else supporting me during the process.
At first, there was also an increased time commitment – I did spend more time last summer focusing on modifying the structure of the course to align with UDL guidelines than I would have traditionally year over year. But, I saw the return on investment from that time commitment while I was teaching the class. I was fielding fewer emails from students and not needing to send out as many corrective course-directing announcements because students were more confident in what was expected of them and had more freedom to go about the course in the way that was best for them.
Jocelyn: Rob mentioned the importance of having support, and having been through the program and seeing students’ positive response to UDL can really help when supporting others to think about how UDL might fit in their context. We can now wear the hat of capacity building for other folks. It allows us to move forward and make ripples and become future enablers and supporters of the process.
How have students benefited from the UDL strategies you implemented?
Rob: I think the engagement certainly changed.
We did an evaluation and generally the UDL-specific changes were seen as positive in terms of increasing choice for students and giving them more information on the important points of the course in the welcome video.
Students really appreciated the ability to move through the content at their own pace and work on their assignments when they really had the time to spend on them. I don’t think there was any change in the rigorousness of the course. These changes that we’ve made have enhanced the clarity of the expectations for students and provided them with the flexibility to engage in the same amount of content just in in ways that may be different from before.
Jocelyn: I think one of the things that I appreciated about the UDL Fellows Program this year, coming into it not as a fellow but working on the development side, has been getting direct student input and getting a better sense of the approaches that are really helpful for students. I think this feedback and evidence loop is really important to ensure any changes implemented continue to support their learning.
Thank you to Robert and Jocelyn for sharing their story.