From Land and Food Systems, UDL Fellows Kelleen Wiseman, who is director of the Master of Food and Resource Economics program and lectures in the undergraduate program, and Janelle Tan, who is the Graduating Projects Manager for the Master of Food and Resource Economics Program, discuss how they designed accessible syllabi and marketing materials for the new Bachelors of Food and Resource Economics Program.
What is your role at UBC, and how have you applied UDL to your work and approach?
Janelle: Our project specifically focuses on the Bachelor of Food and Resources Economics program, which involves the development of various course and informational materials.
Kelleen: As the Bachelors of Food and Resource Economics (FRE) program was just getting started, it seemed like a good opportunity to examine our entire course suite, advertising, website, and everything else from a UDL perspective, with the goal of creating an accessible program.
Could you tell me more about your UDL project and its implications for the Bachelor of Food and Resource Economics program?
Janelle: What we did for our project was essentially threefold. The first thing we tackled was developing an inclusive course syllabus template specifically for the FRE program. The template included generic categories for what should be in a syllabus, but it also included examples and ideas of what multiple means of Representation Engagement and Action & Expression could look like for FRE, so the UDL principles are in the context of the discipline.
Secondly, we focused on creating marketing and informational materials for the newly launched Bachelor of Food and Resource Economics degree. Because these are brand new first-year entry programs, we had to find a way to communicate with our audience, which in our case is high school students and first-year students who want to switch into the major. We needed an effective method to convey information about FRE to them. We ended up making informational posters alongside our FRE Undergraduate website. One poster served as a roadmap, explaining what a bachelor’s degree in FRE could entail. Two more posters were about each of the majors, Data Analytics and Business & Markets—visual posters that complemented the information shared in text-heavy web pages.
The third thing we did was establish a knowledge base and share my UDL knowledge with those who teach in the FRE undergrad program. We conducted various presentations that took the form of one-on-one meetings with five faculty members, a group presentation for FRE undergrad faculty members, and a brief presentation to the whole faculty in one of our faculty council meetings.
What challenges did you face when implementing UDL, and how did you overcome them?
Janelle and Kelleen: One of our biggest challenges is how much control we have over the process, because we implement these ideas through others. Faculty members were very open and excited to work on the project, but at the end of the day, it’s up to faculty members, who are often very busy, to implement UDL on an ongoing basis. Additionally, due to the university’s tighter budget and financial concerns related to international student enrollment, work related to accessibility may fall lower on the priority list, which is an unfortunate reality. To counteract this fast-paced shifting of priorities, we talked about using check-ins for faculty, which can function as a friendly reminder.
How have students benefited from the UDL strategies you implemented?
Kelleen: Although my course, along with four of the five faculty members we are collaborating with, have their courses scheduled for term 2 and have not yet incorporated UDL strategies into their courses, we have already observed positive outcomes from initial actions. For example, one of my colleagues, Carol McAusland, and I have implemented some of the UDL strategies we’ve come up with into our graduate courses we teach, and our students have benefitted from having increased flexibility and more ways to access course materials.
These strategies have made me more aware of the way I teach and how, because students learn in different ways, I have to teach material in different ways too.
Janelle: I received great feedback from Karen Taylor, who implemented our project in Term 1. We discussed how students benefited from explicitly stating implicit expectations. For instance, some students feel that office hours are something that they shouldn’t bother their professor with. In the past, Karen held office hours by appointment, but it was the student’s responsibility to request her time, a situation we realized some find uncomfortable. We worked through specifying a time, location and purpose for attending office hours in her syllabus. After a few months, Karen informed me that this approach had proven beneficial and that more students felt welcomed to attend her office hours.
Another thing that has already made an impact is the informational materials we made. At first, I was primarily working with the program leads to design them, but when I finished the posters, the Student Services Team assisting in Student Recruitment also saw them and asked, “Can we print this and take it with us to our sessions?” This was beneficial as it provided them with a resource to refer to when discussing the FRE program with others. The Student Services Team provided positive feedback for this initiative, and now these posters can benefit not only the UBC community but also prospective students who may find them informative.
What accessibility and inclusion barriers have you noticed at UBC? How does UDL help address these barriers?
Janelle: It’s often the most visible barriers students face that instructors notice and can address, like a student coming to class on crutches. Instructors can’t as easily see the cognitive differences in how students learn differently or if students are going through mental health challenges. UDL helps by raising awareness about different ways that students learn as well as ways our current pedagogy can create barriers for students. UDL also provides a framework for designing courses in which students with different learning styles needs can fully participate. The Centre for Accessibility (CFA) may have 6000+ students officially registered with them, but the true number is likely higher as there are many students who do not officially register with CfA. UDL provides the resources and tools that can help those students fully access their full learning potential. The CTLT has also been very helpful in helping instructors find solutions and new ideas for how they can create a more accessible classroom environment.
Can you share any resources, tools, or practices you found or created that were particularly effective in applying UDL?
Kelleen: The syllabus template we made and the presentation that Janelle gave were the two most effective resources we created that helped us apply UDL. Many people, including myself, didn’t really have a good grasp of UDL, because when you read about it, it’s very broad, but the way Janelle presents adds a high level of actionability.
Janelle: A lot of the resources that the CTLT shared with us, such as the CAST (Centre for Applied Special Technology) website, were very helpful, as were people from the CTLT who worked with us, such as Judy Chan, Sunah Cho, and Afsaneh Sharif.
Is there anything else we haven’t talked about that you would like to mention?
Kelleen and Janelle:
We want to mention how valuable it’s been for us to be a part of the UDL fellows program and have the opportunity to learn more about UDL. As educators, it’s our responsibility to help students learn. This isn’t about us, but how we can better serve that mission of helping students through teaching.