Curriculum Storyboards with Maureen Ruby and Kimberly Hellerich

Welcome to Ep 168 of the Think UDL Podcast: Curriculum Storyboards with Maureen Ruby and Kimberly Hellerich. Maureen Ruby is the Isabelle Farrington Endowed Chair of Social, Emotional and Academic Leadership and Associate Professor and Kimberly Hellerich is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Educational Leadership in the Department of Educational Leadership at Sacred Heart University. I was able to hear about their topic, curriculum storyboards, at Goodwin University’s UDL conference recently, a fabulous annual conference focussed specifically on UDL in Higher Education. I was very interested in the ways that these storyboards match up with so many UDL guidelines to engage college students and help make a college course understandable especially to first time students. In today’s conversation, we discuss what curriculum storyboards are and the problem of practice that they solve for novice learners in a discipline or course, how UDL connects to them and how neuroscience underpins these storyboards. You’ll also find several visual references in the resources for this episode and how you can do this yourself!

Resources

Reach out via email to Maureen Ruby (rubym@sacredheart.edu) and Kimberly Hellerich (hellerich@sacredheart.edu)

Storyboarding for All: Visual Curriculum Blueprints as a UDL Strategy Slide Deck

“Establishing the Construct of Storyboard Methodology: A Synthesis of Narrative Cognition, Cognitive Science, and Systematic Design” Article Forthcoming in TechTrends

Streamlining Your Curriculum with the Storyboard Approach with Allison Zmuda and Heidi Hayes Jacobs (Video, 52 min)

Behind The Scenes: Curriculum Storyboard Institute (video, 1 min)

Streamlining the Curriculum: Using the Storyboard Approach to Frame Compelling Learning Journeys by Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Allison Zmuda (book)

Storythinking: The New Science of Narrative Intelligence by Angus Fletcher and Peter Lerman (book)

How Storyboards are Transforming Professional Development by Allison Zmuda (5 min read)

Visualizing Success: The Power of Storyboards in Doctoral Research and Educational Leadership (Post by Allison Zmuda)

The Visual Dissertation: From Proposal to Defense with Allison Zmuda, Maureen Ruby and Ashley Freeman (45 minutes)

Storyboarding for Inspiration: Girls Future Firefighter Camp (6 minutes)

Aligning Curriculum Storyboards with NGSS (8 minutes)

Overview

Curriculum storyboards make a course’s purpose, sequence, and learning targets visible to students, creating a more coherent and inviting entry point into learning.

Purpose And Design

Maureen and Kimberly described storyboards as a student-facing complement to—not a replacement for—the syllabus. A storyboard uses panels for course units or modules, with a title, strategic visual, brief narrative focus, and student-friendly objectives, “I can” statements, or standards.
The method helps educators identify gaps or “magical leaps,” establish a through line across lessons, and decide what to keep, cut, or create. Its components are required, while the storyboard can be revised as course content and student feedback change.

UDL And Learning

The approach supports engagement through relevance, clarity, belonging, and reduced anxiety; representation through narrative, text, and intentional visuals; and action and expression through visible learning targets, progress, and opportunities to set goals.
Maureen connected narrative, pattern recognition, emotional safety, and memory to learning. Kimberly emphasized that the design process itself prompts instructors to clarify and revise how they communicate a course.

Evidence And Next Steps

In a study with 149 student respondents across undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral courses, 65% strongly agreed that the storyboard made the course purpose feel more relevant; 82% strongly agreed or agreed it was easy to understand; and 65% strongly agreed or agreed it helped them feel prepared. Students also described the course as more manageable and less intimidating. Most wanted both the storyboard and syllabus.
Maureen and Kimberly offered resources and support, including faculty workshops and a possible Zoom PLC. Maureen noted a forthcoming TechTrends publication on the methodology; its publication timing was not yet known.

Outline

Learner Experiences

Maureen recalled struggling with social studies until a focus on big ideas revealed the subject’s larger patterns and purpose.
Kimberly described an outline assignment that lacked clarity about why particular details were required, motivating her interest in meaningful, engaging education.

Problem Of Practice

Linear curriculum maps can prioritize covering content without showing coherence or connections.
Storyboarding helps expose gaps, build a through line, and make the course journey visible to novice learners.

Storyboard Components

Panels represent chapters, units, or modules.
Each panel includes a title, visual, short narrative focus, and student-facing learning targets.
The storyboard augments the syllabus and can be revised without rebuilding the entire course document.

Research Feedback

A study collected responses from 149 students in undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral courses.
Survey results indicated perceived relevance, clarity, and preparation; students also reported greater manageability and reduced anxiety.
Most respondents preferred having both a storyboard and a syllabus.

UDL And Neuroscience

The discussion connected storyboards to engagement, multiple means of representation, and goal-setting and progress monitoring.
Maureen discussed narrative, patterns, emotional safety, memory, and learning; Kimberly highlighted the value of accessible visual and student-facing communication.

Creating And Revising

Begin by identifying the story and hook the course should communicate, then draft the required components and revise with feedback.
Resources mentioned included Streamlining the Curriculum by Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Allison Zmuda, webinars, faculty workshops, a possible Zoom PLC, and a forthcoming TechTrends article.

Transcript

1:13:07

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Curriculum storyboards, UDL, Neuroscience, Learner variability, Big ideas, Coherence, Student engagement, Narrative structure, Cognitive scaffolding, Learning targets, Visual elements, Emotional engagement, Memory consolidation, Pattern recognition, Instructional design

SPEAKERS

Maureen Ruby, Kimberly Hellerich, Lillian Nave

Lillian Nave 00:00

Welcome to Think UDL, the Universal Design for Learning podcast, where we hear from the people who are designing and implementing strategies with learner variability in mind. I’m your host, Lillian Nave, and I’m interested in not just what you’re teaching, learning, guiding, and facilitating, but how you design and implement it, and why it even matters. Welcome to episode 168 of the Think UDL podcast curriculum storyboards with Maureen Ruby and Kimberly Helerich. Maureen Ruby is the Isabel Farrington Endowed Chair of Social, Emotional, and Academic Leadership and Associate Professor, and Kimberly Hellerich is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Educational Leadership, and they are both in the Department of Educational Leadership at Sacred Heart University. I was able to hear about their topic, curriculum storyboards, at Goodwin University’s UDL conference recently, which is a fabulous annual conference focused specifically on UDL in higher education. And I was very interested in the ways that these storyboards match up with so many UDL guidelines to engage college students and help make a college course understandable, especially to first-time students. In today’s conversation, we discuss what curriculum storyboards are and the problem of practice that they solve for novice learners in a discipline or a course, and how UDL connects to these storyboards, and how neuroscience underpins everything about these storyboards too. You’ll also find several visual references in the resources for this episode. So if you want to do this yourself, you’ll be well on your way. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Think UDL podcast. Well, I’d like to welcome my two guests, Marine Ruby and Kimberly Hellerich, to the podcast today. It was really lovely catching up with you at the fantastic Goodwin University UDL symposium, and I loved your session. So I wanted to jump in to talking about storyboards. And my first question is always the same, and I’ll start with you, Maureen. What makes you a different kind of learner?

Maureen Ruby 02:40

Well, Lillian, thanks for first of all, thanks for having us. I thought about this question a lot, and I realized that something changed for me in terms of how I view myself as a learner. When I I’ve been learning for a long time, but when I went into my PhD program, when I changed careers because I was previously a dentist, and I was assigned by my advisor, who was had a contract for revising a book to work on a couple of these chapters, and I got assigned to do some work on the chapter on social studies. Now I was a biology major, and then I was in engineering, and then I went to dental school. I don’t need to convince anybody that I did not love social studies at the time. I never connected to it, so I was not real thrilled about being assigned this chapter. And then I had an epiphany when I was doing the work because I was working with another doctoral student, and he actually loved the you know history, and he said we have to think about it in terms of big ideas. And I said, what are you talking about? And he said, well, it’s not like you study this war and this war and this war. You have to think about the concept of war, and then how does it all fit in? And I went, oh my god! If somebody had ever said that to me when I was a you know a young student, I might not have been as narrow-minded about all this and close-minded as I was. So I had this epiphany, and it was like, well, a big idea. I can look at different wars and see similarities and differences, and because it gave me this overarching perspective. And so what I realized about myself then, which has colored everything that I’ve done since, is that I really need to know like where I’m going. I need to see the whole picture, and not everybody is like that. But for me, it was just like mind opening. It was freeing, you know. So when I think back into American history, which I took, I think in the 1800s,

Lillian Nave 04:47

there wasn’t as much to know then.

Maureen Ruby 04:49

What there wasn’t as much then, right? Like, no, honest, honestly, I’ll just tell you that when I thought about American history, because of when my kids were. In in school, I thought, oh, I’m so lucky that I’m so old because it like the book ended here, right? Like that was my old paradigm, and so you know when the teacher would say to us, and I can still picture him, and anybody who knows me, Mister Story, he was my um, I’ll never forget, you know, he was my history teacher, and he would say, and he was a lovely man, but he would say things like, “Okay, tonight read pages 165 to 209.” Okay, see you tomorrow. And I was like, I always did it because I was that student, probably out of fear. But I didn’t get into it. Now, if he had said to me, because now I know big picture thinking, if he had said, “Tonight read pages 165 to 209, or whatever I just said, and and be looking for this because tomorrow when you come in, we’re going to do X, and it’ll be really important. Like I would have been all over that, and so this is going to lead into why I think what we’re here to talk about today makes so much sense to me and to other people as well.

Lillian Nave 06:03

Wow, I love that, and what a great name, Mister Story, for as a history teacher. Exactly, exactly. Okay, so that I do think this has a lot of connections to what drew me to your presentation too. But before we get to that, let me ask, what makes you a different kind of learner to you, Kim?

Kimberly Hellerich 06:23

So thank you, Lillian, for having us on as well. So Maureen, this is going to be really funny because my epiphany is also social studies, but I’m going to go back to the late ’80s when I was in high school, and we had this assignment from my history teacher, who I cannot remember his name, so it’s not definitely not as cool as mr. Story. But they had us like outlining a chapter from the text, and you know when you do your Roman numerals, you got your big I, and then you indent, you got your capital A, and then you got your little A, and going through the chapter, and I’m trying to figure out what I feel is most important. And I had a little A, but I didn’t have a little B. And I had this whole conversation in class where the teacher was like, “But you need the little B.” And I’m like, “Why do I need the little B? If I’m going through and I only found the A, why is that not enough?” So you know, going from you know, I could be that compliance student and just find something for the little B. And in 10th grade, late 80s, I was putting my foot down and saying, “I only see the little A. I’m only putting in the little A.” And of course, I lost points. But that whole concept of like clarity of meaning and purpose. I didn’t have that with that assignment, other than doing what he said, because I was supposed to be compliantly doing that. I was not engaged in it. It made very little sense to me, so it set me down a path of trying to find ways to make you know education meaningful. Now the funniest part of this whole thing, my brother is four years younger than me, so but we’re five grades apart. So when he was in 10th grade, I was already in college. So he came home, you know, I came home for break, and he’s telling me this story of like, so they made us do this outline, and I only found like a little A, and he’s telling me I need to have a little B. And what he said to me was, “Do you know your sister said the same thing years ago?” And he’s like, “No, we don’t talk about that.” So I found that very fascinating. But in the big scheme of things, I think it would have benefited me if I had known if there had been clarity of purpose of the assignment, and I would have been way more engaged, and would have understood, or why I needed a B, or would have been okay that I just had the little A.

Lillian Nave 08:51

Right? Yeah, a little bit more would have been helpful to know what am I even looking for, right? Oh wow, well I know what’s coming, and I can see exactly why your your answers were like this, and it’s so helpful for us to be able to to as the the nimble brain or the expert brain to be able to help our novice brain learners understand you know what’s what’s coming up ahead. So I guess that leads into my the first question that I have about this is what problem did you notice in teaching? So, what is this problem of practice that you determined your intervention, which is storyboards, would solve?

Maureen Ruby 09:33

So, you know, let me start with that, Lillian. I would say that the you know the problems. Maybe I wasn’t really initially aware of them when I started looking into storyboards and thinking about storyboard method as a methodology, but I became acutely aware of it as I got more into learning about. Story thinking and using storyboard methodology as kind of a way to design curriculum that didn’t have what I what I personally call magical leaps. Other people call them gaps. I like magical leaps because I don’t know. Yeah, I like that. So you know, when we’re when we’re developing curriculum, and unfortunately, a lot of us who have to develop curriculum have not been trained as curriculum developers, which is another whole podcast. And so, we’re pressured. Sometimes we put the pressure on ourselves because we’re type A personalities, and we want to do everything you know well. And but sometimes it’s downward pressure or outside pressure to cover everything. And so when we develop curriculum maps and we do them linearly, and we’re making sure compliantly that we’re stopping on this on this timeline at all the places that we’re supposed to stop along the way, there’s not necessarily coherence and connection, right? And so one of the problems of practice that we have found, or I have found, we’ve both found that is addressed by using a storyboard is the creation because it’s a story. It’s the creation of a through line in the story, and so this is a way for us to be able to really think about what those magical leaps are. Actually, being able to see them so we know that they’re there because they’re magical. So we might not see them, and then we can deal with developing coherence amongst, and this could be amongst chapters, amongst lessons, you know, between them. And so it’s really important for all types of learners, particularly for learners who learn differently, or sometimes people say they’re challenged. I’m not so sure that they’re challenged, or the week, or they’re like me, not understanding like why I was supposed to read these pages, what the point was. So, if you’re reading a book and somebody had taken out chapter three, and you read chapter two, and then you went to chapter four, you’d be very confused because there would be a lot of stuff missing, and so by using a storyboard, it supports us in actually not doing a in not leaving out chapter three, or not leaving out the middle of chapter two, or not skipping sentences that are needed to really understand what’s going on, and so by eliminating these magical leaps, we create coherence. And you can even identify by if some districts have some schools give teachers programs that they call curriculum, and they tell them you’re going to use this. And if you just go through the act of creating a storyboard with a program that’s been offered to you as a curriculum. You can actually identify the gaps that will cause problems for students’ learning by storyboarding out that that program. And so, I think that this solves that problem, and we can do this by backwards designing. It allows us to synthesize, so we are able to clearly see what we need to. And this is from Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Allison Zamuda. What we need to keep, what’s really important, because there’s a lot of stuff that isn’t so important, and that makes it more difficult to cover everything. So, what do we keep? What do we cut? And what do we need to create? The storyboard allows us to do that, so we’re able to synthesize and get to what’s important. And then, finally, it solves the problem that we’ll go into probably later in our discussion of the visibility of what the curriculum really is for all learners, because we have to reflect, we have to select a visual piece, we have to make sure that we have an engaging title. You know the components of the storyboard and the focus of the story, and so what a storyboard will reveal. It’s like a gift that’s unwrapped. Will reveal to students the what is really in this journey that we’re inviting them to take. Because instruction is an invitational art, and you can know everything in the world about whatever it is you’re supposed to be teaching, but if the student doesn’t take that invitation, it doesn’t make any difference how much you have to offer. So I think that the storyboard is almost like a wrapped-up invitation.

Kimberly Hellerich 14:57

Yeah, for me, working with Maureen, you know, I. Work in the program that prepares future administrators. So, working with her on our advanced curriculum course, and she was kind enough to revamp it. There were some gaps as far as preparing our students to make effective curriculum change in schools. So, having curriculum storyboarding being part of the their learning, and also have it be modeled for them through the curriculum storyboards I have created for the courses, just gives them that other opportunity so that they can, as Maureen was saying, feel invited into the higher ed course, and if they’re able to experience it as a learner, it gives them that other emotional connection to the concept. So if they can understand how helpful it is to them as a learner when they’re thinking about bringing it as you know to schools as future leaders, they can then really truly understand how impactful it can be For their teachers, their students, their families, it just opens up a wide experience for them, and really credit that to Maureen bringing it to our program. So

Lillian Nave 16:14

it’s so amazing how much that the brain, the the expert brain, knows how all of the dots are connected, right? And the novice brain just doesn’t. Like both of your stories were about not knowing, you know, how to outline a chapter or what am I supposed to be looking for? And that’s what our students are faced with. And it makes me think of like the a kid.to dot coloring book, you know, kind of thing. And you just see a whole bunch of dots that are numbered, and you have no clue what it’s going to be. You have to take a long time to connect one through 150, and then it’s a dinosaur, or you know, or a plant, whatever it is. But there’s no way to know at the very beginning, and that’s what I feel like we’re giving a lot of students, especially with a big, long syllabus, or even though it might be really well laid out and tell you a lot. I think a lot of our students look at that like an empty.to dot and think, “What am I even supposed to be looking for or doing?” And that’s and and this storyboard connects the dots, right, and lets us figure that out, which I love. So, so we’ve talked a lot about it. What is it? What what is a curriculum storyboard, and how is it solving this problem? Can you describe a curriculum storyboard? Knowing that this is an audio podcast and it’s such a visual thing, I know I’m giving you a hard task, but can you yeah tell us more about this curriculum storyboard?

Maureen Ruby 17:40

So if you think of panels on a on a page, if you think about a, let’s just imagine a legal size piece of paper, and have it lengthwise in front of you, and you have panels, and each of the panels kind of Represents a chapter or a unit or a module, okay, and then it’s got a couple different components. It has a title, and underneath the title, so we’re going down the page, okay, longitudinally. Underneath the title, there’s an image, and underneath the image, there’s a very short narrative, a focus of the story. And then at the very bottom of the page, there are, depending upon who you’re teaching and what you’re teaching, there are either learner objectives, or I can statements, or standards that are in friendly language, not the not like nonsense lifted, cut and paste from a standard document.

Lillian Nave 18:55

Student focused language,

Maureen Ruby 18:56

absolutely. And then, so I love that you just said that because this is student facing, this is a student facing document. So, forget your jargon. Let’s be really honest and transparent about curriculum documents. Usually, they’re written by a very few select group of people, and they’re written for other people to use, and so these other people are your colleagues, the the teachers, and when they’re full of jargon and full of numbers and big words that nobody’s really unpacked for you because it came from some other document that some other person section

Lillian Nave 19:42

one point 2.4 point 17

Maureen Ruby 19:44

exactly. Then we have a document that isn’t even useful to the intended user, right? So it’s really hard to to be an educator and get handed a document that you have no relation. Neuroscience reveals that emotions aren’t obstacles to learning; they’re the engine. Once you understand the architecture behind the five castle competencies, everything changes: how you plan, how you respond, and why some lessons land while others never do. Let’s unlock the science of how humans actually learn and apply the Castle Five in the classroom, so that doesn’t tell you like we’re going to do this, so we’re going to do this, and we’re going to do this, so we’re going to do this. It gives you an overview, right? And then for the learning targets, I have I can statements, even though these are adults. It says I can explain how each castle competency supports academic learning from a neuroscience perspective. I can describe the brain-based principles that make social-emotional learning essential for all learning, and I can analyze how emotions facilitate or hinder learning in specific contexts. Okay, so that’s just one example. Not obviously not going to go through all eight, but each of the of the modules builds on the other module that the one that came before and leads into the next one. And so when you read the story, you’re going to see direct linkage. If you took one of those modules out of the storyboard, it it wouldn’t be coherent. It wouldn’t make sense. So I don’t know if that answers your your question.

Lillian Nave 26:34

Yeah, it sort of. So you just mentioned too that there’s a syllabus, and that’s this is not the syllabus. But what you also have in there are some of the objectives that might appear on the syllabus. But this is something; it’s a one-page document. This is what I really loved about coming to your sessions. We got to hold some of these and see what they look like. And it was this big idea, something that you both mentioned was really important, and that was student-facing. You’re teaching graduate students. It works for undergrads. You also gave us the example for like student teachers or teaching at elementary schools, where you’d have that parent focus section. But it’s really that for that novice learner who’s taking their first graduate class or their first time ever taking you know anatomy and physiology. You know what? What is it that they’re actually going to learn? Rather than all of these dots that don’t have any connection, you’ve got that the title, the kind of the subtitle of photograph or a picture, a diagram, and then a little bit like an abstract, a little bit of an interesting story. But it’s not an abstract that you would put into an article that you’re about to get, you know, you’re trying to get published. It’s very student facing, and then you’ve got the objectives, right? And then you’ll do that for however many modules.

Maureen Ruby 27:50

So, Lillian, I don’t know. We could have a surprise here for you because when when we met you, we referenced that we were doing a study,

Lillian Nave 28:01

yes,

Maureen Ruby 28:02

but we didn’t have the data. But I can share some data with you.

Lillian Nave 28:05

Oh yes,

Maureen Ruby 28:06

and so we had we had a group of faculty members teaching undergrad, first year and third year. One in in religious studies, one in marketing in the business school, we had master’s degree students of of Kim’s and doctoral students of mine, and so I had in the data set 149 students responded, and there we worked together. Kim and I taught the the faculty members who were interested how to create a storyboard. Kim, I don’t know if you want if you want to pipe in on that.

Kimberly Hellerich 28:48

Yeah, we just hosted a session for interested faculty members on a faculty institute day, and it was really powerful. I thought because there was a wide range of people who came, and we were able to share the current update of like the current status of the data, which is very raw, but overwhelmingly from the quantitative Likert scale responses and the open-ended responses that we’ve gotten a lot of powerful feedback on the the value of the storyboard as the entry point into a course, and the desire to still have the syllabus as well. So we’re we’re not here saying that the storyboard is going to replace. If anything, it’s an augment. It tells the story that supports that. As Maureen is rephrased it as that legal document that we do all need at the higher ed level, right? I mean, it’s a thing,

Maureen Ruby 29:47

and so I have I pulled up some quotes to share with you quickly. Oh, absolutely. So here’s here’s the storyboard made the purpose of the course feel more relevant to me personally, and. That was a statement, and 65% of the of the respondents strongly agreed with that. I found the storyboard easy to understand, which was important for us to know. 82% strongly or agree. The storyboard made me feel more prepared to begin this course. 65% strongly agreed or agreed. We had one of the things about this study is we had a lot of people who wrote neutral, like some averaging around 25%. So that’s something for us to consider going down the line to remove it. Yeah, but here are some things that they said in their own words. Now it’s pretty impressive that some of these students are freshmen in college. Okay, they have a lot on their plate in the beginning of their first course in in their college career. The storyboard provided an authentic example of storyboard methodology. This course course’s storyboard communicated the connections between each module and concisely conveyed the sequence of the of the content. Finally, the storyboard communicated that this course can and should feel like a journey and not a checklist, which is kind of I think one of our goals. That’s not this is not a checklist. One person said it helped me. It has something about how it helped me understand the reasoning behind what we’re learning, other than just being fed information with no explanation. I personally connected to that. I’m just going to quickly go through because we have hundreds of these. I feel like the storyboard format made the content of the course a lot easier for me to understand. I am taking the survey for my CIT class. That’s a freshman class, which is a SHU requirement. So SHU means Sacred Heart University. I personally don’t know much about this tradition, but after viewing the storyboard, I feel as if I have a heightened sense of understanding of what the course will have to offer me. Are you like that’s great? An 18-year-old student wrote that about this. One of the which I won’t continue to read these, but what we got overwhelmingly multiple students who said that the syllabus was something that they looked at to find out what they had to do and when it had to be in. Yet the storyboard gave them a personal connection, and we had multiple questions that said, “Oh, here’s one.” After reviewing the storyboard, when I first got access to this course, it really showed me how manageable this course would be for me. Oh, that’s fantastic!

Kimberly Hellerich 32:46

I was going to read some of the other ones too, where one of them had said, “Maurene,” and I know yet you know it. Like after reviewing the storyboard, I almost felt a cinematic approach to how the vision of the course was presented. That just speaks to the visual piece, and several students indicated I felt less intimidated. I felt less anxious about the course load, a little more at ease about the course. So it provides that, you know, that augmented opportunity for students to feel more welcomed into the course. Absolutely, more prepared,

Maureen Ruby 33:21

and this is what because it’s narrative. The storyboard is a story, so it’s a narrative, and because it’s narrative, it the brain is the human brain is set up designed for narrative. Narrative feels safe over the eons of time. I’m not going to give you dates because I’m not a history person. Remember, but over over the course of time, we didn’t have books. We didn’t have we we didn’t have. Thank God, we didn’t have the internet and all that stuff. We just it was oral tradition. Information was communicated orally, and so that is the natural way the brain works. Okay, we understand. You know, we teach it in elementary school that a story has a setting, it has characters, something happens, something else happens at the end, and so when you set up a storyboard to and you use student-facing language, no jargon, but you tell the story, it creates a sense of safety. If we think about Maslow’s hierarchy of learning, in the center of that is belonging, and students can feel belonging, a connection to the story. They can feel like they can be a character in the story. It’s safe. You, Kim, and I both talked about how students said. It decreased their anxiety. They felt like it was manageable. They could do it. So we’re what we’re feeling. They’re feeling is their feelings of safety, of belonging, of manageability, and you can only get to that highest level of you know Maslow’s hierarchy where you know you can you can move further is if you have all those things underneath and so this is aligned with cognitive neuroscience and we as we said before we are not saying oh throw away your syllabus this is this is a be all and end all. It’s not, and and we had comments in our data, which we’ll be publishing, saying we because we asked them, we said which would you rather have, and they said nobody said oh just give me a storyboard. There were a few people who said just give me a syllabus because they’re in a transactional relationship to their education, but the majority of the people said they wanted both, which was pretty impressive. And then the other thing we had a couple of students that said, “Please teach all faculty how to do this.”

Lillian Nave 36:14

Yeah, that’s what you want to hear. That’s so great. No, I feel like you’re already answering another one of the questions. Like you, you were just into the welcoming interests and identities and the UDL engagement, and I so I I want to get to the to the you know how does UDL connect to curriculum storyboarding? But I didn’t know if Kim, you had more that you wanted to add to that last question before we head on to that one.

Kimberly Hellerich 36:39

Yeah, I was gonna like just give a brief overview of the design principles, just so if someone’s listening now, you know it’s flexible and that benefits both. I think the person creating it and the students who are able to receive it. That 10,000 foot view that Maureen was highlighting before, that global overview, it prioritizes clarity and coherence, and Maureen had referenced that before. But boy, do I wish like that clarity piece was clear for me as a as a child. Student facing language, the strategic visual elements, and I do appreciate how Maureen described the visual that’s on her storyboard because I’ve seen it, and it was it’s very clear. If you go back and listen to that again, you can visualize it too. And that engagement over compliance. I mean, for me, one of the biggest challenges for me creating one was the focus of the story because you know I’ve not really thought about how am I going to communicate this learning to my students in this way, so I’ll come. I’ll talk about the revision process in the last question. That’s why I was saving that for. But I just know if anybody’s listening now thinking, is this going to be too hard to take on? It is not, and it’s a meaningful process as someone who has created them. It’s meaningful for you, and it really does flesh out what are you trying to communicate to that story to your students. So

Lillian Nave 38:05

yeah, and we’ll have some resources along with the podcast, so folks can see a visual representation like the ones that you showed that I was able to take a look at. I think that’ll be great for people to say, “Well, what is it supposed to look like?” Yeah,

Maureen Ruby 38:19

Lillian, to build on one thing that Kim just said, we had a student who was a business student, a marketing major, because we didn’t ask them their names; it was anonymous. But we did ask them to provide what course they were in, and this student wrote, “I really appreciate. I’m just recalling this. I really appreciate the work that my professor put into creating this because you know all of the things that we’ve just kind of said. You know, this is. I was just really overwhelmed and inspired by the feedback that we got from students because it was genuine. And when a student says, “I appreciate that the that my professor put the work into do that speaks volumes to me, and it’s about relationship. And I think we need to in this day and age of you know everything is online and everything is you know hybrid and all these. Which I I understand why we’re doing that, but we need to find a way to keep the relationship at the center of of things. Otherwise, I I fear for where we’re going to end up in in our our education practices. So this is a way of building relationships,

Kimberly Hellerich 39:38

and also building off of that for that instructor, it the process the design is so flexible that if after it’s built, if she needs to revise it, she can do that without having to start from scratch. So, really, is accessible for everyone. That was what I wanted to say.

Maureen Ruby 39:56

In terms of the flexibility, I just want to be clear so that people don’t. Get the the wrong impression. It’s a methodology, so it’s got goddess. Okay. Yes. The components are clear. So a framework is very loosey goosey. I’m not. That’s not judgmental. It’s just reality. You can. It’s a framework. You can just do. But this is a methodology, and so while it’s flexible, it’s not flexible in oh you don’t need to have that you don’t you you really need to have all these components for it to um for it to work for it to be so you can analyze it and so that it’s um it’s really um syncing with the way the brain works

Kimberly Hellerich 40:38

absolutely so thank you for saying that. If she changes a module, let’s say, or like a learning target changes, it’s it’s not starting from scratch. She can retell the story, retweak the story, and change that panel, so to speak.

Maureen Ruby 40:53

And it gets even better. Yeah, because because in some of the school districts I’ve worked with a school district where we want students to be the authors of their lives, right? Just let. So when you real, so this particular district has been doing work with storyboards and storyboarding their curriculum, and the iterative nature of of updating can also include asking the students. So now that you’ve done this, how would you change the story for other students? What are there other characters that need to be involved? Is there a different ending that we and so kids, little kids, big kids, adult kids can give feedback. And this is in in higher ed, which we’re kind of talking about a lot here. If you get those student course evaluations and they give you feedback, it’s not like oh I gotta redo it, you know. You actually on your storyboard can go in and see where the feedback that you get. I mean, they’re the consumers, okay? And so I think we need to really value their voice and invite them. I would like them to give me feedback before the course evaluation, so that we can maybe do it in time. And I think that Kim’s point is really well taken about that that level of flexibility and iterative just adaptation to the needs of the students. I think that’s critically important.

Lillian Nave 42:35

Wow! Yeah. So of course I love to hear all of that because UDL is about choice and flexibility, and working with our our students, and and having their have and listening to their voice, you know, because every learner is different. So, all right, so let’s talk about that. You’ve already started, but how does UDL connect to this curriculum storyboarding?

Maureen Ruby 42:59

Well, I think we beat the engagement drum. We

Lillian Nave 43:02

did. We got it. Super engaged, almost to death. So,

Maureen Ruby 43:05

and I think if you were looking at the cast universal design chart, you would be able to go down that engagement column and pretty much check all the boxes. I mean, especially, and I, I just being somebody who works in social, emotional, and academic leadership, I want to get down to the the last box on that chart, which is about emotional capacity. And one of the things that I think is really important is that, and some of the statements we shared connect to this: build student efficacy, and then because it can build student efficacy, it can build collective emotional efficacy of the class, which then feeds. There’s a feedback loop to the teacher’s self-efficacy and emotional efficacy. So I think we can just pass the baton to to Kim on representation.

Kimberly Hellerich 44:05

Sure. So thinking about the multiple means of representation, curriculum storyboards do clearly align with that. When thinking about the concept of perception as CAST outlines it, there are multiple ways for students to receive the information. There’s the title. There’s the essential questions. There’s the strategic visual element. So, not only are there multiple ways for them to perceive, but there are intentionally chosen visuals that are accessible to various different groups of audience members: students, educators. If we are talking about parents in K 12, although if my daughter’s college had a curriculum storyboard, I would definitely be looking at it. So I mean, I think that still fits for sure. They don’t, but I’m just saying I would definitely. Be looking at that, and it also makes it accessible for students whose first language is not English. So it really does open that invitation, as Maureen mentioned before, to invite all people, all students, all readers into it, and that the story itself, with the coherence, as Maureen was highlighting before, really helps build students’ knowledge. You know, when she was mentioning before, like the focus of the story could reference like our previous learning last semester in the last module, and it really, you know, aims to allow for patterns. Like the brain craves patterns, so brain brain seeks patterns. So it really does. I see it as directly aligning with that concept of representation in UDL.

Lillian Nave 45:52

Oh yeah, it seems like the the last section, which is about the as you said, designing options for building knowledge. Everything the storyboard is like exactly everything about that, connecting that knowledge, telling the story, highlighting patterns. You know how we move from one concept to the other because the syllabus doesn’t do it. It gives all those dots, and they’re not connected. And this is the way, yeah, that you’re connecting that, highlighting those patterns, and helping the student to get the big idea right. The generalization. It’s like shit. kiss of exactly what you’re supposed to do for that area of building knowledge in the UDL guidelines, for sure. Okay, and what about action and expression?

Maureen Ruby 46:32

So, for action and expression, I think this is this requires us to really think deeply about what it is that we want students to have for action and expression, and for in interaction, the fact that the the storyboard has these different elements and has a you know the visual, not the focus of the story, written in an engaging an engaging way. It’s not boring. It’s designed to a kind of. It’s like a hook. It’s a hook story, and so it gets the student to be engaged and interacting with the content of the course in a way that it just doesn’t happen with the syllabus, unfortunately. So the we optimize the access by having the the different elements that are gottas. There you can’t leave them out. Gotta meaning

Lillian Nave 47:36

you’ve got to have. You’ve got to have it. Okay, you’ve gotta.

Maureen Ruby 47:39

It’s a gotta. It’s part of the. It’s part of the methodology, and the the other piece is that if you, depending upon who the learners are, you the flexibility comes in where you can put a QR code in there where it it’s it speaks. You can easily translate the story the visual is going to be the same. It’s the universal language, okay, for those who have sight. But you can also have it be accessible if you have that type of technology where it can be just the the picture can be described to the students. It’s not a cumbersome document, so the translation into multiple languages is not a heavy, heavy lift, and so that also connects to the multimedia piece because we can adapt what is on the paper of the storyboard into other media to meet the needs of of students as they come up, and it gives the teacher flexibility because you can change readily change it. It’s very hard to change a 30-page syllabus that has all the legal components. Once you, in terms of gradual release of responsibility, if I could use that as a as an entry in this column for our younger learners, once you teach them what a storyboard is and you explain it to them every time you have a unit or every time you, however your design is, you can introduce it and then you can do it in a very direct instruction way and then you can gradually release so that over time you’re transitioning the storyboard goes out to people and then you have people in groups looking at the storyboard, talking about it, and then coming back into a full group discussion with the teacher. And so those teachers are standing up like they would have to in the beginning, and and direct and direct teaching. And we we really need to set meaningful goals for students and not different goals for all students, like we know what the what the goal is of our instruction, we need to figure out not a different goal for different kids, but how do we get all kids to that goal? And so, by having the the learner outcomes in I can statements or learner objectives. They are very, very direct, but they allow the teacher to without. I’m going to use the term shaming. You know that would not be intentional, but it’s it’s a it’s an unintended consequence sometimes for students when things are worded in a certain way. But when they’re alert, when they’re just dragnet, it’s just like you will be able to do this. Now we’re going to be able to work with that individual student as professionals to find out how they’re going to be able to do that, and so that fits perfectly into in my way of thinking into the this whole universal design framework. And the other thing that this allows is because they know upfront. Students know we saw that with the adult learners, with the the college students, that it this allows the students to see this whole story and figure out either independently if they can do that, or with support, or with a lot of support, if they need a lot of support, how to set their goals? Because it’s not a surprise. It’s not like me. Like, why am I reading 169 to 209? It’s it’s not a surprise, and they can set their goals and then monitor progress. And isn’t that really one of the key outcomes of learning? We don’t go to school to get good at school,

Kimberly Hellerich 51:21

right?

Maureen Ruby 51:22

Okay, so this this I think in closing that the alignment of the storyboard with the CAS design for learning guidelines really helps us not only meet the goals of the course that it’s designed for, but the ultimate goal of why we have children come to school to begin with, because we want them to be independent citizens at the end.

Lillian Nave 51:47

Yeah, it it makes me think that it’s such a great visual. the The ones I’ve seen and the ones that we’ll have as resources on this page, or on the podcast episode page, there’s the strategy development part of action and expression says monitoring your own progress, and I think it looks to me like when you’re taking one of those, like a a survey, and it has the progress bar at the bottom, it’s like you’re 35 percent done, you’re 72 percent done, and I love those. If I’m in some sort of you know form and I don’t know how far I might quit, honestly, I’m just not even going to finish. It’s like, am I going to have 10 more minutes doing this or 45? I’m I’m just going to stop. But with the storyboard, you can kind of say, all right, well we’re we’ve gone through the first two modules just visually, and yes, you could do that on a on a syllabus or something, but it’s a great visual understanding of how we’re moving through the course and seeing that like a progress bar. And I think that’s I do. I think that really maps onto that action and expression part, so that the students are kind of knowing where they are and they’re getting you know the different parts of the story. And they’re like, oh, I know we’re coming up to kind of the climax, you know, and then there’s the denu denouement at the end. We’ve got to, you know, follow through. Lillian, you make a great point, and the students said that in the survey because they said the storyboard made not. They didn’t say easier; they said more manageable. The storyboard made the course seem manageable. I can do this. It doesn’t make any difference how old you are if you don’t feel like you just said it. If you don’t feel like you can do it, Shark Tank, you’re out, right? Yeah, I’m out. I know. There’s no way I’m finishing the survey exactly. Well, this kind of leads us probably to the next question about neuroscience. You know, because I would definitely not finish something if I didn’t know how much longer I had. So and and that happens by the way in every part of my life. I go hiking a lot and I go with my partner and I’m like, how long is this? Is this and a mile and a half or is this seven miles today? Because I really need to know because I need to know first of all what I’m wearing and how much water I need to bring. But second of all, I will just totally. I am not ready for a seven mile hike today. I’m only doing one and a half. It’s an out and a back. I’m turning around. So just knowing that, I think, is part of who I am.

Kimberly Hellerich 54:10

But and Lillian, when I ask how long, I mean time. Yeah, I don’t ask distance. Yeah,

Lillian Nave 54:14

yeah, exactly. It’s important for us to know. So yeah. So how does neuroscience underpin these curriculum storyboards.

Maureen Ruby 54:23

Well, we talked a lot about the neurological reality of the fact that human beings are narrative. The brain is narrative driven, so I don’t think we need to beat that to death. It’s a it’s a it’s a hand and glove type of thing. What we may not have really highlighted, although we talked about it, is that you know emotional engagement is the secret doorway to learning. Okay, so learning is learning anything. Algebra is cognitive, social, and emotional. And when I hear things like that. Not talking about the storyboard, but like there’s no talking in math class. Like, what is that all about? I mean, people need to be social and they need to be talking about solving problems, and then that’s connected to the cognition, and that’s connected to their emotion and how they feel about their success. And so the brain has the cognitive component and the emotional component. The emotional component is connected to the social component, so that’s it’s all connected. You cannot you cannot separate the cognition and emotional parts of the brain, and so there’s we have this amazing evolutionary advantage because of the the way we had for eons, I’m saying cultural transmission, transmitted culture through the oral tradition, pattern recognition. We talked about that. The brain is when we are looking, like even if we don’t know it, we are scanning the environment for patterns. Patterns meaning what goes together, what looks familiar. Okay, and that’s one of the reasons why this is a methodology and not a framework because the storyboards visually there’ll be different, you know, creative components depending on who made it, but they’re going to have panels. They’re going to be coherent. They’re going to have the title, the visual, the story, and either at the bottom of your learning outcomes in some way, shape, or form. And then the educational implications, because of neuroscience, are traditional curriculum actually fights the brain. It makes you anxious and unsettled because it’s not presented in language. It’s not presented in patterns in a way that makes it. And so, when you are uncomfortable, you cannot access learning. There’s a filtering. There is an anxiety that gets up. Gets up. So storyboarding kind of eliminates all that. And emotional connection. When you have an emotional connection to something, that is tied. And I don’t want to get into the neuroscience, but that is connected to how the hippocampus is functioning, which is how memories are consolidated, and we don’t want students. If we’re teaching what we think is important, we don’t want it in one ear and out the other, or in one ear and out onto the test paper. We want we want it in there so that back connected to the pattern making, so that’s in there so that it’s like Velcro for more stuff that fits that pattern to stick to, and we have we creating memories, and so the narrative nature of the storyboard really is like a cognitive scaffold. And if people are really interested in this, we’re always available to to be connected with them. But if you wanted to get really down and dirty with the neuroscience, you could look at, and we could provide the slide that really has it very nicely, succinctly consolidated. But the there are different parts of the brain that do have different roles, and you know the amygdala is the emotional center processor of the brain. We talked about emotion, and emotion is involved in memory and encoding memories. And if you are in a negative emotional state, or your emotional state has caused you to shut down your thinking because you’re uncomfortable, you’re scared, you’re uneasy, you’re worried. You know, which as a student I felt that way. I don’t think anybody could raise their hand and say, “Oh, never felt that way about it.” You’re you’re you’re done. The hippocampus I talked about is associated with memory, and we need to consolidate memory. And you’re not going to do that if it doesn’t make sense, if you don’t see a purpose to it. So storyboarding does that. The prefrontal cortex, this part of our brain in the front, is where we do our higher order thinking. And if you have created memories and you’re in a in a good emotional state and you’ll feel safe, you’re going to be able to engage in more complex thinking about content and and what’s going on. And then we make connections in our brain. You know, I’m not going to get into synapses and neurons and firing and all that, but you know that that’s what happens. And story structure, we know that it creates mental maps, and when you create mental maps, that is that facilitates how we then can transfer learning from one context to another because we don’t want to have siloed learning. Like when I went to school, you know, you have social studies over here, you have math over here, you have science over here, and we want our students to be able to to map across. Their their neurological systems and storyboarding because of the the nature of story and its connection to brain does that and narrative structure like I said previously is a kind of cognitive scaffolding and so story will help us improve information retention because we’re going to be storing it like a story when we hear it like a story. You can remember a story better than isolated facts that are are disconnected. And then the the next step that we that scientists have helped us understand, you know, the the connection between the science of learning and and and teaching instruction is the the amazing neurochemical basis for what happens in the brain and in the body. And we have neurotransmitters, and you know we have cortisol, which can do bad things and can also do very very positive things to help us remain focused. Now, I’m not going to get into a lot of special ed types of things about attention and focus and labeling kids. A lot of children get labeled as being unfocused, and maybe they get a diagnosis when maybe that isn’t really what’s happening at all? Maybe they just their neurochemistry is set off balance, and their neurotransmitters like cortisol are becoming very high because that’s what happens when you get at. That’s a protective feature of how our bodies work. Dopamine. Dopamine is like the joy drug, the pleasure drug, and you know what? You know those guys, those kids that can’t pay attention, and we label them with stuff. Did you ever get them on a on a gaming device into something that they really like? Yeah, they’re pretty focused, right? Yeah,

Lillian Nave 1:01:53

dopamine seeking, and they’re

Maureen Ruby 1:01:54

and they’re focused because they’re getting dopamine hits that are making them feel really good, and those designers of video games, etc. I’m not a gamer, but they they know more about how to work with the the narrative nature and of of the brain in their games. Those games are stories, by the way.

Lillian Nave 1:02:15

Yes.

Maureen Ruby 1:02:15

Okay, they’re characters, and the student who can’t pay attention in school can pay attention to that game because he or she is a character in the game and interacting with the other characters. And the the designers are scaffolding them to be able to get to the next level or to be able to do whatever it is they’re doing. Unfortunately, they’re shooting people sometimes, but but and then they get another hit, and that wants makes them want to go on, and they want to go on, and they don’t want to stop. Well, we should be able to do that in teaching. We should, you know, make them be able to do that. And then we have oxytocin, which is kind of like the love drug. It’s an empathy facilitator, and when we have oxytocin, it improves relationships. The relationship between the teacher and the student, the students and the students, and then the other endorphins are off. Also, joy drugs. So we want students. Everybody talks about we need joy in education. We want everybody to be happy. Well, you have to. You can’t be joyous and happy unless you’re being successful. Nobody who’s having a hard time is leaving school at the end of the day joy filled and dying to go back the next day. So when you know a little bit about the neuroscience, and by no means, please do not interpret any of this as me saying that educators should be neuroscientists, I am not saying that. But what I am saying is that we need to know something about brain science because the future of education really depends upon it. And we didn’t do this; we didn’t teach teachers about this long ago because we didn’t know as much about it as we do now. And if they, if we have a multi-billion-dollar industry in video games, I think that we should be able to do something in education to support teachers to make their jobs a little less burdensome and a lot more joyful, and students to be have their needs met in the way UDL is supporting us to do it, and I think storyboard is a way to support both ends.

Lillian Nave 1:04:31

That was really really good neuroscience. I feel like that should be on every episode. But thank you very much. And so I feel like this is a huge, 100% endorsement of why everyone should use a storyboard. And so, what would you say? How would you advise a faculty member who hears this podcast and decides, you know what, the neuroscience makes sense, the UDL makes sense. I want to create a storyboard for my class. How should they go about it, and what are first steps?

Kimberly Hellerich 1:05:04

I mean, from my perspective, I think the place to start is to just really reflect on, like, what story are you trying to tell through your course, and understand that this is going to be a drafting process that you’re going to come back and back to. I know Lillian at the presentation I shared. This is my current version because you know I had revised mine several times, and so I’m not saying it’s done. Done. I’m going to get. I plan to get feedback from the students, and you know use that opportunity to revise it moving forward. But we think back to what Maureen said at the beginning about you know invitation, creating curiosity. What are some ways that you want to hook the students and tell your story? So I’ll just share my example of you know my my revision of the focus of the story because that’s the part that’s really supposed to be the hook. And when one of my earlier drafts had essentially, I wrote like a question and an answer, and that was how I had started my thinking and you know embracing the process of revision. So this storyboard is for our transformative leadership course, and it’s the first course students take in our program. Very, very much grounded in ethics. So, my first Q and A, my first focus of the story, not my last, but my first was how can ethical paradigm shape leadership thinking. Case studies serve as a foundation for discussion for applying ethical paradigms. Very teacher heavy. It’s a Q. It’s an A. It’s what we’re doing, you know. And I got some very valuable feedback of that’s not very engaging. So with some revision, I know people can’t see it. It was Maureen gave me the very candid, supportive feedback of that’s not very engaging, Kim. And I’m like, you’re right. I needed to see it through another lens. Yeah. So it’s currently the revision is. Did you know that decisions are not neutral? Values, beliefs, and ethics influence leadership decisions, whether we’re aware of it or not. Your case study is centered in diversity and social justice. You’ll examine if there’s one best that’s in quotes best ethical paradigm for leaders to apply. Spoiler alert: there isn’t. Your learning about ethics will challenge, extend, and shape your leadership decision-making lens. So, a couple of things with the revision. One, it now has you and Yule, so I’m really speaking right to the student, bringing them right into welcoming, inviting them, and welcoming them into the curriculum storyboard. But there’s also a couple pieces of like spoiler alert that sounds like me, so like I can you know represent myself in that way. Still started with a question. I thought that was a an effective hook as the forever English teacher. Like start with a question. So my I share that with the intention. My intended message with that is just know it’s a process. Be open to looking at it from a variety of lenses, and that it can be a current draft. You know, you’re never, you’re not necessarily done with it. But that piece of like making sure you’ve got all those key elements of the course title, essential questions, the strategic visual element, the focus of the story, and then the student-friendly learning targets or course learning outcomes, you’ve got those pieces there. I mean, that would be a great place to start.

Maureen Ruby 1:08:47

And I would add, that’s exactly right. And don’t punish yourself for your first draft. I mean, we tell students this all the time, but we don’t do it. I would offer some additional suggestions, Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Allison Zamuda wrote a book called “Streamlining the Curriculum,” and it’s about storyboarding. And they were the first people that I worked with. And they have you can you can Google them. They have a couple podcasts slash webinars out there, and when I first introduced the way back when we started, Ken was talking about how I revised a course and you know introduced this, and their book wasn’t out yet. I knew it was coming, but it wasn’t coming fast enough, and so I used webinars, and so the web you know the students could watch those webinars, and they were very supportive to supporting the students in being able to do one storyboard. I have done several webinars with Allison Zamuda and some of my students, some of whom I share with Ken. On how they used curriculum storyboard in their courses, and I had one webinar with a doctoral student, and how this is really out there, folks. How we she used a storyboard to number one defend her dissertation proposal, and then to present her dissertation defense, and we’re actually presenting that next week in Corpus Christi. And then the final thing is, well, not the final thing, but there we have. I have an upcoming publication in Tech Trends about storyboard methodology. I don’t know when it will be published, which edition it will be published in, or which volume it’ll be published in. But that really explains the whole thing in a very academic kind of way. And then I guess the final thing is we’d be happy if somebody’s interested in this. We’d be happy to have them email us and contact us, and we are doing, you know, a workshop at our university for faculty that are interested in. And if people who listen to this are interested in getting together in a PLC on a, you know, on Zoom, and we’ll walk them through it, we’d be happy to do that because we really think it can change outcomes for your students.

Lillian Nave 1:11:23

Great, I can add those references into the podcast resources so people can see it, and I’ll definitely have a way for folks to reach you as well. And whenever that article does get published, I can add it so it’ll come to that episode resources. So thank you very much. I really appreciate it, Maureen and Kim, to have this chance to talk about it. I’m hoping we’re going to see a lot more curriculum storyboards in higher ed. So thanks.

Kimberly Hellerich 1:11:49

Thank you so much. Thanks to everyone who’s listening.

Maureen Ruby 1:11:51

Thank you, Lillian. Take care.

Lillian Nave 1:11:56

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Think UDL podcast. New episodes are posted on social media on LinkedIn, Facebook, X, and Blue Sky. You can find transcripts and resources pertaining to each episode on our website thinkudl.org. The music in each episode is created by the Oddyssey Quartet. Oddyssey is spelled with 2d’s, by the way, comprised of Rex Shepherd, David Pate, Bill Folwell, and Jose Cochez. I’m your host, Lillian Nave, and I want to thank Appalachian State University for helping to support this podcast. And if you call it appellation, I’ll throw an apple at you. Thank you for joining. I’m your host, Lillian Nave. Thanks for listening to the Think UDL podcast.