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Hi my name is Nicole Gonzalez Howell, and I am an Assistant Professor in the Rhetoric and Language Department, as well as the Mellon Scholar Coordinator here at USF.
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So I came to universal design for learning through an LLC that was offered in 2016-2017, and I was really motivated for professional reasons and wanted to create a classroom that was as accessible as possible to as many students as possible.
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It just so happened that, within about a year of doing my FLC, my son was also diagnosed with ADHD and anxiety disorder, so my understanding of UDL and the importance of being accessible for student learning became both professional and very personal.
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So what does it mean to be accessible?
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Some of the more typical types of things we can do, right away, is make our syllabi screen reader friendly.
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We can also use videos that have closed captioning, and this is good on multiple levels for multiple people.
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We can also adapt our grading policies so that they are more flexible for students that are different kind of learners than what we may have typically expected.
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So I'll give that one quick example of what revising my grading policy did for me.
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So I use a grading contact which is meant to be equitable in the classroom, and students get awarded their grades based on the labor they put into earning their grades.
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I also have a relatively strict attendance policy to go alongside that.
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And I had a student, even after I had done the FLC, who called me out for having such normative behaviors being rewarded in the class.
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And after negotiation with her and some deep thinking, I knew she was right and wanted to find a way to make my classroom more accessible.
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So I've added an accessibility clause in my syllabus, and that is echoed in my grading policy.
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What that did for me in subsequent semesters was I had a student that had a chronic illness, and she read the accessibility clause, and she knew that I would work with her should she miss more that the three allotted class periods.
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And at the end of the semester, she came to me and had been able to achieve her A and said, I want to thank you for that.
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It's the first time I felt seen and it's the first time I felt like I wasn't asking for a favor but that I was being accommodated for an issue that she had challenges with.
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And that means everything to me that this student did not feel less than or outside, but rather, included in the class, and that my policies were there to meet the widest range of needs possible.
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So I say to you, be an accessible teacher. Adopt some of these UDL practices.
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Understand that you're not going to do it all at once. Start with one syllabi. Start with one assignment.
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Start with an accessibility clause in your syllabus and think about how that might impact your grading policies. But start.
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So I hope you have a lovely day, and feel free to reach out to me or get my contact information and we'll do this together.