Duncan McHugh is a digital and instructional media producer at the Faculty of Land and Food Systems, creating and supporting the creation of digital storytelling and web design. He is passionate about empowering students and provides numerous digital media-related workshops to faculty, staff, and students. As a co-instructor of LFS 400, Duncan discusses his experience with UDL, the challenges and rewards, and the importance of student feedback.
How have you applied UDL to your LFS course?
The course that we have, LFS 400, is a podcasting course, so students are creating audio pieces. The initial UDL initiative we had in mind was to make the student work more accessible, useful, and relevant to people who would have difficulty hearing a podcast. At first, we thought about hiring people to do ASL interpretation. The funding we received through the UDL Fellowship covered the cost of having three of our student podcasts interpreted.
We also realized, more broadly than just ASL interpretation, the importance of transcripts. In previous years, we included an option to include a transcript for which students would receive bonus marks. This year, we made it a mandatory assignment and focused on having a TA develop resources and supporting students to create high-quality transcripts for their audio pieces.
What motivated you to participate in the UDL Fellows program and start incorporating UDL principles in your courses?
I would say that making the course accessible to all students has always been a goal. Being someone that works out of the Learning Center at the Faculty of Land and Food Systems and working closely with teaching faculty, I was aware of a lot of the approaches that the people in my faculty use and have always been inspired by them. I try to apply what I would hear from them in workshops and symposiums, and that eventually led me to the UDL program.
I would say one of the things that was very heartening when we started into the UDL training last summer, was to realize how many of the approaches that were being recommended were things that we were already doing. It all kind of came together with UDL. I think a lot of people that have focused on making their courses student-centered have already applied UDL principles by other means.
Did you experience any challenges with implementing UDL and how did you overcome them?
A challenge that we experienced was implementing late tickets that students could use throughout the semester to submit late assignments without penalty. I don’t think we incentivized them in a way where students could really use them meaningfully, which was difficult for both the students and us as educators. We’ve chosen to keep the late tickets for the new year, but reworking how many we offer and how we encourage students to use them.
Student feedback is crucial to figuring out where the challenges are, so we always try to implement student suggestions. For as long as I can remember, we’ve had mid-course feedback that we gathered before the reading break. After the break, we go through the feedback and we address and adjust the things that we can change and then if there’s things that we can’t change, we try to explain why they’re in place. If we experiment and the experiment doesn’t go well, we’re ready to recalibrate for the next year. If something was a bit challenging for the instructors, we’ll try something different.
How have students benefited from the UDL strategies you implemented?
I think generally students really appreciated it. They really loved the measures we’ve taken to give them more options. We’ve kept up lecture recordings because of all the positive feedback we get in our surveys, despite the fact that it takes a lot of work to set it up. We often get great feedback on allowing students to choose the format that they submit an assignment in or express themselves, whether it’s in groups or alone.
It’s interesting that the things we get positive feedback on are also the things highlighted as UDL approaches.
Thank you to Duncan for sharing his story.