Welcome to Episode 131 of the Think UDL podcast: Easing Academic Stress with Elizabeth Hitches. Elizabeth Hitches teaches across various universities in Australia in inclusive education and research methods, and is a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland. Her current research is exploring students’ academic stress through the lens of UDL and considering how stressors in the higher education environment might differ between students with and without accessibility requirements or disability. Her broader research explores inclusive education both nationally and internationally, drawing on students’ voices and lived experiences. All of her research is available on google scholar. Elizabeth also works to support professional development to empower higher education staff to take accessible and inclusive approaches. She is grateful to be a member of CAST’s national faculty, and an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. In today’s conversation, we talk about Elizabeth’s research on academic stress and what it looks like in the higher education environment, what it does to students, and how UDL can alleviate some of its effects. You might find a new way to consider your approach to your teaching and reconsider the learning environment we create. Thank you for listening to this conversation on the Think UDL podcast.
Resources
Find Elizabeth Hitches on LinkedIn
Hitches, E., Woodcock, S., & Ehrich, J. (2023). Shedding light on students with support needs: Comparisons of stress, self-efficacy, and disclosure. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 16(2), 205-214. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000328
Woodcock, S., Hitches, E., & Manning, A. (2023). ‘The hardest part is…’: Teacher self-efficacy and inclusive practice. International Journal of Educational Research Open, 5, Article 100289. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedro.2023.100289
Woodcock, S., Gibbs, K., Hitches, E., & Regan, C. (2023). Investigating Teachers’ Beliefs in Inclusive Education and Their Levels of Teacher Self-Efficacy: Are Teachers Constrained in Their Capacity to Implement Inclusive Teaching Practices? Education Sciences, 13(3), 280. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13030280
Woodcock, S., Sharma, U., Subban, P., & Hitches, E. (2022). Teacher self-efficacy and inclusive education practices: Rethinking teachers’ engagement with inclusive practices. Teaching and Teacher Education, 117, Article 103802. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2022.103802
Hitches, E., Woodcock, S., & Ehrich, J. (2022). Building self-belief without letting stress knock it down: Stress and academic self-efficacy of university students. International Journal of Educational Research Open, 3, Article 100124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedro.2022.100124
Hitches, E. (2024, June). A UDL approach to Academic Stress. 7th International Conference on Education Quality. Power of Potential: Sharing Experiences from Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Journeys In collaboration with INCLUDE, Inclusion by Design, at the University of Worcester.
Hitches, E., & Woodcock, S. (2023, September). “Enacting UDL at university: enabling equitable and inclusively engaged learning”. Presentation at the Inaugural ADCET UDL Symposium: UDL in Action: The What, the Why and the How. Online.
Woodcock, S., & Hitches, E. (2023). Case Study 2: Understanding UDL in Case Studies: Understanding UDL (Universal Design for Learning). A compilation of practical application of UDL in Action. Australian Disability Clearinghouse on Education and Training. p. 8-12.
Transcript
55:53
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
students, stress, learning, UDL, stressor, academic, thinking, campus, higher education, reduce, class, barriers, engage, learner, space, research, peers, experience, inclusive, access
SPEAKERS
Elizabeth Hitches, Lillian Nave
Lillian Nave 00:02
Lillian, 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 131 of the think UDL podcast, easing academic stress with Elizabeth Hitches. Elizabeth Hitches teaches across various universities in Australia in inclusive education and research methods, and is a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland. Her current research is exploring students’ academic stress through the lens of UDL and considering how stressors in the higher education environment might differ between students with and without accessibility requirements or disability. Her broader research explores inclusive education, both nationally and internationally, drawing on students’ voices and lived experiences. All of her research is available on Google Scholar. Elizabeth also works to support professional development, to empower higher education staff to take accessible and inclusive approaches. She is grateful to be a member of CAST’s national faculty and an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. In today’s conversation, we talk about Elizabeth’s research on academic stress and what it looks like in the higher education environment, what it does to students and how UDL can alleviate some of its effects, you might find a new way to consider your approach to teaching and reconsider the learning environment we create. Thank you for listening to this conversation on the think UDL podcast. Thank you to our sponsor text, help a global technology company helping people all over the world to understand and to be understood. It has led the way in creating innovative technology for the workplace and education sectors, including K 12 right through to higher education for the last three decades, discover their impact at text, dot help forward, slash, learn more. That’s L, E, A, R, N, M, O, R, E, all right. It is my great pleasure to welcome you Elizabeth to the think UDL podcast. Thank you for being here.
Elizabeth Hitches 02:59
Thanks so much. It’s lovely to join you.
Lillian Nave 03:02
It is fantastic that we can finally be together across 14 hours and halfway around the world. So I’m going to start in with my first question and say, What makes you a different kind of learner?
Elizabeth Hitches 03:15
I love this question. I love that it makes each person reflect on how they approach learning. And I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me this before. So, you know, thinking about it, I think what really drives me as a learner would be joy. So I get a lot of joy out of learning, and I can see that it’s probably shaped basically everything about my life. So you know, I’m in research, and teaching and learning is the primary component of both of those. If you look at research, you have a question or something that you think needs to be explored, you do all the investigation around it. You seek different perspectives, and essentially, what comes out is learning, and then you’re sharing that learning with others, and teaching is the same. Every single class is going to be different. Each student has a unique set of characteristics, and so know the inclusive strategies that you might have applied the same way to a couple of classes need to then be responsive to a different set of classes and a different set of individuals, and that’s trial and error to make it as good as it possibly could be. And through that again, is learning. So I think for me, learning is joy. And I think, you know, making spaces inclusive is going to be a lifelong journey. So hopefully, lifelong joy. Fingers crossed, and yeah, ideally, if I could make that happen for students, if I could make Joy happen for students in their learning, that would be the ultimate so that’s what I’m working towards.
Lillian Nave 04:48
Wow. What a fantastic start to this conversation. I love it and what, what our listeners can’t see, what we can see as we record it, because we can see each other as we record. Is that the entire answer, you were smiling the entire time as you’re talking. I don’t, I think some people could hear that in the voice, yes, exactly, very much, embodied joy. And just you’re so curious too, like you always have a question as long as I’ve known you and what you’re doing and, of course, and it just brings you, I can see how it brings you so much joy. So, yeah, nobody’s ever said that, and I love it. That’s fantastic. Wow. What a great way to start. Okay, so that’s actually quite the opposite of what you’ve been studying, though, Joy. When it comes to my next question, it is? It is about not joy. It’s about the opposite, because you have been studying academic stress, and so I wanted to ask you about that your research is about academic stress, but which is so interesting too, because you’re really trying to solve an important problem to get back to the joy, I think so what is academic stress? And specifically, what is academic stress in the college or university level context?
Elizabeth Hitches 06:12
Oh, that’s a great question. And I think what I’d start with is just by clarifying something that people can sometimes misunderstand with that term academic stress, they think that it might relate to academics or the staff in those workplaces. And of course, their stress is very important. You know, we’re seeing burnout and things like that, but academic stress is really about students stress. But let’s take a step back to what stress is in itself. So if we look at something like stress, an individual can experience that stress if they come across a particular demand, or what we call a stressor, and they’re really weighing up, do I have the resources to meet this demand? Do I actually have the ability to cope with this? Is it helpful? Is it harmful? Thinking, you know, is this a threat, or is this just a challenge? So they go through this process of weighing that up, and if it weighs up that actually, you know, they don’t have the resources, they don’t feel they have that ability, then that’s when stress can be experienced. So for others, you know, one stressor could be something like an exam, and students could go into that exam thinking, Okay, I’ve done loads of study. I feel fully prepared. I’m stressed because I don’t know what those questions are going to be, but I feel like I’ve got the resources to face this. So for them, walking into that exam might be not so much a negative stress, that stress might be more of a motivating factor, and that adrenaline gets pumping, and they do their best in that exam situation. If we think though, what if a student has maybe a chronic health condition, or let’s imagine that they’re caring for somebody, and multiple aspects of that study week have been taken out with either medical appointments or other things in their daily life. And so they walk into that exam thinking, Okay, I’ve done my best to study, but I may not have had the amount of time that I’d usually have to go in here and feel my most capable. And so they might start to experience that stress in a negative way. And think, is this a challenge, or maybe this is starting to become a bit more of a stress, bit more of a threat to my to my resources and to what I want to do. So when we then take that into the academic context, when we’re looking at stress specifically for education, that’s where that term academic comes in. So academic stress is purely in relation to students academic pursuits, and those kind of stresses or demands that also impact on those academic pursuits. So if we think about what that might actually relate to, we know that students can experience stress in relation to their learning. It could be in relation to their workload, having too many things to be trying to chip away at at once. It can be things like assessment and achievement. It could even be academic expectations, so what they’re expecting of themselves and the pressures they’re placing on themselves, or, the pressures that they feel that others place on them and their expectations. It can be things like the way students see themselves as a learner. Do they see themselves as fitting in that environment? Do they perceive that they actually have the academic capabilities to do what they feel needs to be done, and then, of course, navigating that educational experience. So, you know, it could even be trying to navigate what school looks like or or navigate what that higher education context looks like, but we know this is going to look different at different levels. So you know, if we look at an elementary school level, for anyone who’s who’s working in that context. Next, we know that it can be things like the pace of activities or different time constraints on students ability to complete that work. So they know they’ve got a task they may only have 15 minutes, and they think, I don’t think I can actually complete this in 15 minutes, or even things like worrying that they’re going to forget content, or worrying about peers criticism, those little stresses can actually cause stress in that elementary context, and then moving all the way up to the opposite end that higher education space, our universities and colleges, we then have things like navigating university life so students go from very personalized learning environments that that high school environment to suddenly a space that is less personalized, much more generalized, and for any student who’s seeking support, that responsibility suddenly all on their shoulders, whereas before there would be a lot more a lot more personalized support. In that space, they could go straight to a teacher that they know, or the teacher would spot their needs and perhaps implement some strategies. But, you know, in higher education, they might be having to take that scary first step of going to a disability or well being support service and saying, Actually, I’m experiencing this barrier, and, you know, having to do that all on their own for the first time. So, yeah, the stresses can look different in different areas and different for different individuals as well.
Lillian Nave 11:34
Yeah, you’ve hit on quite a lot of what’s going on across the world, not just in Australia, but in every academic context. I think for higher ed, yeah, we have all of those. I have that in my own family, yeah, my in my young adults, all of those that you mentioned. So, okay, so, I mean, I think we need to be considering that, but, but why? Why would you think we should even consider this stress? I mean, everybody has stress so but why? As as faculty, as instructors, as the deliverers, you know of information, as the people who are trying to get our students to learn to an end goal. Why should we even consider this stress when we think about this college and university learning? And are there like multiple or different considerations that we should keep in mind for students or different kinds of students that, as you mentioned, might have, well disabilities or accessibility requirements.
Elizabeth Hitches 12:42
So I think we need to be thinking about the fact that we do have those positive experiences of stress and those negative experiences of stress. So in a positive way, as I mentioned earlier, we know that some stress can be beneficial for performance. And research is actually showing that you know, if students are having a positive response or a positive experience of a stressor, or feeling like in some way, they’re benefiting from that academic stress, then that can actually be associated more with their life satisfaction. But what I’m really going to focus on and what I think we need to be deeply considering, especially as you know, education staff in that higher education space, is that high level of academic stress that is not having those positive benefits. So that’s where I’m going to focus the conversation. And the reason I’m going to do that, and the reason why I think we need to be thinking really deeply about this, is that academic stress, just in and of itself, is known to impact students learning capacity. It impacts academic achievement. It also can impact students physical health. So their physical health can be affected, their sleep can be affected, which has a number of knock on effects. You know, if you’ve also got a student who might have an autoimmune condition, we know that stress can be really bad for that sort of condition. So a number of physical health challenges, it can also impact their mental health and quality of life. So not even thinking about all of the other aspects of students’ lives that can do that, academic stress, in and of itself, can have that sort of negative implication if it’s at high levels or for an ongoing period of time. Now, why am I really considering this now? And why do I think we should all be considering this now? I think for anyone working in the higher education space, we’ve probably seen that it’s been a very busy, very interesting couple of years. You know, we’ve got everything that happened with the covid 19 pandemic. And, you know, in Australia now we have what we’re calling a rental crisis. So for students who might be studying in the higher education space, Southern. Finally, their rent has gone significantly up if they’re if they’re living out of home and they’re renting, and at the same time, we have challenges of inflation. So you know, the food shopping has gone up, and suddenly students are, you know, managing their study, but managing that at the same time as managing some significant financial pressures. Now, when we look at research that’s started to compare that pre covid to since that onset of covid, we’re seeing that internationally, there is a higher level of stress being experienced by students. And you know, there are some research saying that students ability to cope might also be impacted as well. So now more than ever, I think it’s really imperative that we’re thinking about what this stress can look like in our higher education spaces, and also ways that we can reduce this. But I think you pick up on a really interesting point about, you know, are there different ways that students might experience this stress, or, you know, different groups of students that we might like to consider specifically. And that brings me to some, what I believe is some really interesting research coming from Australia and Canada. And so I was involved in some research with some colleagues, so Stuart Woodcock and John Eric from Australia, and what we did is we were having a look at that academic stress and seeing, you know, is it different between students who might have accessibility requirements or disability so things like chronic health conditions, learning difficulties, anything that would make them eligible for that accessibility or well being support in higher education? Are there any differences between stress levels of those students and students without accessibility requirements or disabilities? And what we saw was that for any student who had disability or accessibility requirements, there seemed to be a trend that they’re experiencing higher stress than those without and so when we were digging a bit deeper and thinking, Okay, what about those students who have a disability or have accessibility requirements and go to our higher education support services, what happens for those students who have sought support and are being accommodated. And this is where it got really interesting. So there seemed to be no statistically significant difference between those who had sword support and those who hadn’t. And so that brings up a couple of questions for us. Either, you know, the students seeking support had a really high level of stress, and that support is then brought it down to the level of their peers who didn’t seek support, or there are so many academic stresses no matter which pathway you take that our current services are not making a huge impact on that academic stress level. Now, when we dive into what might be driving that stress, you know, we know that students who might have a chronic health condition or might have a disability, there can be barriers to accessing learning. So I believe in a previous podcast, you were talking about accessibility and the accessibility of resources. And you think coming across that kind of demand that can be a stressor in that environment. If you’re watching your peers able to just pick up their learning and get going, and you can’t access that content because it’s not accessible, that can be a stressor. We also think about how students participate and engage in their learning. So, you know, you might be in a classroom, perhaps you’re experiencing pain or illness while you’re there, and you know, being part of that discussion, you might have one part of your mind on the discussion and one part of your mind on managing symptoms. So you’re juggling a lot in that environment, and that itself can be a stressor. And then we think about participating and achieving. If you’re someone who is really driven to achieve, but you’ve got extra time out at medical appointments, or perhaps your exam is in a paper based format. And you know, writing a paper based exam is going to be a bit of a barrier. You’ve got extra stresses there that perhaps your peers wouldn’t have, and these things can really get in the way of students achieving their full potential, to their to their very fullest potential. And many of these barriers shouldn’t be there. These are unnecessary barriers. So I think when we think about, okay, why might we not see a difference between those students who sought accommodations and those who didn’t? You know when we look at the research around what that accommodation process looks like, we know that when students are reaching out for support, it can be. Really emotionally challenging, especially for students who might be disclosing experiences for the first time or or going through that for the first time, or even knowing what that process looks like and and how to go about it. But we know that if students are getting insufficient accommodations, this itself can be stressful, but to seek, to organize, to receive those accommodations, can also be stressful. So whether or not you’re seeking support, there are academic stresses in that process. But yeah, it was a really interesting finding that there wasn’t a great difference in stress between those students seeking support and those who didn’t. And I think that really speaks to the fact that we can’t just set and forget. We can’t just think that, you know, accessibility and wellbeing services solve everything. There’s so much we need to be doing in the processes and in our own higher education classrooms to reduce unnecessary stresses wherever we can.
Lillian Nave 21:00
Yeah, yeah, there’s so much everybody can do, right? In one of the recent episodes with Rebecca mushter, we talked about the whole campus. There’s so many roles that everybody can play, and there is, there is something that we can do in each individual class. So, you know, I’m coming from the faculty perspective, right? That’s where I’ve been for all of my career. Is as a faculty person, and there are things that we can do that that creates a much more accessible classroom. And it’s not up to send your student to accommodations or send your students to Disability Services, right, for all of the reasons that you just mentioned. And yeah, all of these barriers that we often don’t know, can’t see and don’t realize they’re all many of them are invisible. It’s very easy to see some of these barriers, I will say something that’s quite visible on our campus in the winter time, are some physical limitations where our students can’t get around campus because they broke their ankle snowboarding, right? And so they could not we had students who could not get to class. We can see that. I can, you know, record the class. Yes, very clear, but it’s all of those things you mentioned that are invisible that are causing so much, yeah, friction that we really need to be aware of all of this stress that it’s it’s causing our students, because it is, I didn’t really think about all of those actual physical, you know, issues that It causes to the stress, not just the academic anxiety and but also kind of wearing them down and motivation tanking all of and persistence, that’s one of the key metrics of all of our universities, is persistence and graduation rates. And if we just keep having these kind of, I’ve heard of the expression death by 1000 paper cuts. This is more like, you know, it’s more like leaving the university 1000 stresses. Yes, by 1000 stressors, exactly. So, okay, so I guess the first step is awareness that we need to know all of these things are going on, and you’ve, I’ve really appreciated the way you framed this. I mean, I’ve talked about and listened to a lot of folks who deal with many of these things, but I really appreciate the way you’ve framed it in the stress stressor and academic stressor language and so, well, what are we supposed to do now that we’ve identified these problems? How? How are we supposed to work in this situation? What are we supposed to do?
Elizabeth Hitches 23:53
Well, I think step one is never to be daunted by a challenge, but to see that, you know, we’re all empowered. There are things that we can do. There are things that we can try, you know, becoming more aware of what’s going on for students in our in our learning environments, and also seeing where those unnecessary stresses might take place. But I think one of the things we can really think about is, you know, if we have barriers in our environment and and we think that, you know, we know all the negative things that high stress can do, can you imagine all of the positive things if we could reduce the unnecessary stresses? You know, perhaps the the benefits would be, you know, equally impacting and equally various. So if you think about all the negative things that stress could do in terms of physical and mental health and quality of life, well, what does it look like then, if we reduce unnecessary stresses, we might actually have benefits in each of those spaces. I think that’s exciting to think about and exciting for. Us to strive for. But what we really need to do is think about, well, okay, how do we how do we start, how do we start even thinking about how to reduce these stresses. And I think this is where UDL can really possibly play a part. So when we think about UDL, we have a proactive approach. So we’re proactively thinking about what’s happening in that environment, what barriers might be in that environment, and we’re aiming to really reduce those barriers before they’re even encountered. So if we think about what academic stresses might be in that environment. What might some of the unnecessary ones be? Those ones that are going to hinder students learning, not benefit their academic challenge? What’s going to actually hinder their learning? If we’re taking a UDL approach, thinking proactively, perhaps we can actually reduce these stresses before students even encounter them. The other thing we can think about is UDL is a universal approach, so we’re thinking about every single one of our students. So rather than identifying perhaps some one stressor for one student and thinking, Okay, this student is not currently able to access this particular resource because the resource is inaccessible, rather than thinking about it on that case by case basis, we could be thinking, How would a diversity of learners interact with this resource? How can it be accessible for a diversity of learners and without even knowing? Perhaps we’d be reducing unnecessary stresses for a wide range of learners before they even encounter it. So I think UDL could have a really positive part to play and be a really useful framework. And when I look at that framework, so thinking about the current one, not the 3.0 to come, which I’m really excited about, but during on that one that we probably all know really well so far, we have particular checkpoints in that engagement sphere, and this really aligns well with thinking about academic stress. So we have aspects there about, you know, we want to minimize threats and distractions. So unnecessary stresses are going to be those threats and distractions that are not beneficial challenges to learning. We also want to think about the ways that we can support beliefs and optimize motivation, and there’s some interesting research that shows that academic stress is actually associated with students confidence in their capabilities to do a particular educational task or to achieve in their education. So how can we reduce stress and perhaps draw on that relationship with confidence? How can we build students confidence and reduce stress at the same time? So that comes down to that checkpoint, 9.1 beliefs that really optimize motivation. And then, of course, we have another, another checkpoint that talks about facilitating personal coping skills and strategies. So what I’m really interested in exploring is when we get to that stage, you know, perhaps we haven’t managed to remove that unnecessary stressor the student is experiencing stress. What do we do then? Is it accessible? Is it inclusive? And something that’s really got me thinking, I attended a university mindfulness class, and it was really just a Yeah, out of interest, a learning experience saying, you know, if I was a student going to this university and I was looking in at this particular happening, what would that experience be like? And you know, one of the first, one of the first sentences in that particular mindfulness class, which might sound very familiar to many of us who have ever come across those types of activities, is that line of, you know, close your eyes and ground your feet through the floor, and you think, okay, there aren’t options for different ways to engage like that. That particular sentence, the way that that’s been said, it’s really implying that, okay, closing my eyes is going to be a meaningful experience. It’s going to change that experience in some way. So it’s probably, probably assuming that that I’m a sighted student and grounding my feet through the floor. It’s assuming that, you know, for one, I have those physical attributes, and two, that that sensation of grounding through the floor is going to be relevant to me. And so what’s really piqued my interest at the moment is thinking, well, for students who do experience stress is what’s out there actually accessible and inclusive? Are we doing a good enough job to reduce that stress once it’s happened, or are students perhaps approaching these stress reducing strategies or workshops or events and. Maybe not getting the same access as their peers. So I think that’s the other thing we need to think about. How are we going to facilitate personal coping skills and strategies and do that in a really inclusive way? So yeah, some really great alignment with the UDL framework. And I think it’s great when you can pick up a framework, look at the approach and see actually a proactive, universal strategy might be a really great way to go.
Lillian Nave 30:25
Of course, of course, it would be a really great way to go. And I appreciate your your critique there of that may not work for everybody that met. It mindfulness and meditation, and I have seen and felt the same way. It’s not going to work for everybody, and some students are going to be turned off by that. Some students are really not going to be able to access that at all. And for some students, it’s really going to work. And so providing options like some students, this is going to be great, but this may not be your jam.
Elizabeth Hitches 31:04
Maybe something, yeah, how can we keep all those core aspects of like this is just taking one example, the mindfulness class. But, you know, you could even open up options in that. So perhaps you might like to engage in this way, or perhaps you might like to ground your feet through the floor. You know, maybe some could be even some really subtle language changes that just show that. You know, this is for a diversity of individuals, but we need the research and we need the evidence base. And I think, yeah, that’s something that’s really worth striving for. How do we do this inclusively? And as you say, options, mindfulness works really well for some, not so well for others, how can we make sure we’re giving students that learn a choice and empowering them to take agency over those experiences and know where that support is, and yeah, have options to access it in A really inclusive and accessible way?
Lillian Nave 31:59
Exactly, yes. So okay, so now we know what we have a great design framework, and if we can be, yeah, proactive. And I know that you already have done some joyful research, by the way, so I wanted to ask you about how can we do this? What can you provide some examples for in in person and online classes, and maybe bring in some of the research you’ve done that that could reduce that friction, reduce that stress, and maybe put some of these UDL pathways and flexible options in to practice. Okay, so
Elizabeth Hitches 32:44
I had a particular experience a few years ago when I was teaching an inclusive education class, I had a student approach me, and they were letting me know that they were about to have a well, a bit of a long term hospital stay, I think we’d say so they were going to be in hospital for a number of weeks. And now our sessions or semesters run for around 13 weeks. I think they were going to be away for might have been, yeah, about four or five of those. So quite a large chunk of that semester. And this student was really academically driven. They wanted to continue to engage in their learning. They were feeling really concerned and telling me that they were experiencing stress thinking about how they were going to catch up, because their degree was really important to them. It was something that they wanted to do. It was something that was going to lead to the next steps in their life that they’re excited about, and they didn’t want this hospital stay to impact upon that. They didn’t want to have to drop out and, you know, set their course backwards by a semester, or have to add extra time to that. And so, you know, luckily, we’d already considered that this class would have a recording, and so there’d be a recording available. But what it really prompted me to do was to think about what happens for students when that recording is the primary way they’re going to be engaging with learning. You know, it’s not just re watching content. It’s not just missing one class and using it as a backup, it’s actually a really fundamental way that they’re going to be engaging with that course for a number of weeks. And when I was thinking about how that recording would look, what that experience would be like, it was very clear that the way that many, many different classes and courses, including this one would do recordings. You would have an online class or an in person class. You would hit record at the beginning of that class, and the student would just be looking in at a class that’s taking place, so they’re an outsider and watching everybody else experience the joy of learning and. They’re an outsider to that. And I thought, okay, if we think about what inclusion really means, if we want every single student to have access to learning, okay, we’ve got access in some way. But do they really feel like they’re valued? They’re a valued member of that learning community, that they truly belong and that they’ve been considered? I don’t think those recordings would do that. So even thinking about the way online recordings work with, you know, breakout rooms, you might suddenly see all the students move into a breakout room, and then you’ve got about 10 minutes of just no blank air time or or just the black visual on screen, because everything happening in that breakout room is being captured elsewhere. It’s not being captured on that main recording. And suddenly everybody comes back having a conversation that you weren’t part of, you haven’t, you know, engaged in or learnt from, and then the class moves on to the next thing. So, you know, we don’t even have equitable access. We can’t actually say that that is a quality learning experience. And it’s definitely not one where students would feel that they were really valued and belong. Now, this student was letting me know about that, that stress about catching up, and I’ve heard from, you know, colleagues across a couple of different institutions, sometimes a bit of an attitude that, you know, the recording is just a backup, and if you can’t make it to the live class, you know, what else can we do? Or I actually think there are some really simple steps for us to reduce that, that stress of the students to reduce that fear that they’re going to miss out on learning. And you know, the UDL framework provided a way to do this. So if we think about how we can build that really safe and inclusive space where, you know, where all learners feel that they can bring who they are and what they’re experiencing to class, if I’m doing an online recording, I’ve got my online live class, I will just simply welcome students who are joining me live and those who are watching the recording. So in that first sentence, the students know their mode of learning or engaging with that content is valued and accepted and considered. And then when we get to things like the breakout room activities, I send the students in that online class into their breakout room. And then when it’s just me in that rain room on the recording, just me by myself, that’s when I know. I speak to the students watching the recording, and I’ll say something like, Okay, so those students are now in their breakout groups working on this group work task. Here’s how you can engage in this. And you know, here are the links to those shared documents, so you can see what learning has been taking place and also participate in those documents. And we’re going to come back together in 10 minutes, and we’ll discuss this together. So converting group work tasks into things that students can participate in themselves from home. You know, I don’t think everybody has the privilege of having a group at home that they can quickly call on. You know, might just be some cats, and they’re not the best learners in some some cases. So, you know, how can we make sure we’ve got this quality learning environment? If it is just you and your laptop or you and your phone trying to engage in that learning. So really, minimal tweaks, but yeah, making sure there’s access to learning and that welcoming culture.
Lillian Nave 38:31
That’s fantastic. Yeah, I think, as our landscape is changing, as you’ve mentioned, post covid, so many changes for our students. Earlier on, you mentioned this kind of rent crisis, how expensive things are in inflation. The same thing is happening. Where we are for our students at our university, is very expensive that having a campus, you know, living at the campus is increasingly hard, and so making a much more flexible opportunity to come to campus maybe one day a week, instead of being there all the time, if you’re not actually living on campus, right? And that paradigm of living on campus and paying for the dorm versus commuting to campus. And then there’s all the problems of paying for for for gas, or, as you say, petrol, right?
Elizabeth Hitches 39:29
So true.
Lillian Nave 39:32
Then those are all those friction points, those stressors, and there are ways that we can reduce it, and that has nothing to do with the academic parts of the learning, does it? Yeah,
Elizabeth Hitches 39:46
yeah. It’s just providing access in different ways. And that’s something we’re really looking at at, um, at one of the campuses that I’m working on, is how do we make sure that there are multiple ways for students to access that learning? And. So I work with a really fantastic, really inclusively minded convener, Stuart Woodcock. And you know, we’ve been looking at this particular course over a couple of years and every iteration, you know, taking that UDL approach and taking it one step further. It’s almost like a plus one. You know, we’ve done this. What can we add to that, how can we continue to improve it? And you know, we have some students who join that traditional in person once a week class, and they do that because, you know, learning for them. They’ve told us, we’ve gained feedback. It chunks it up for them. They learn a little bit at a time each week. It makes it manageable. And you know, if they lack motivation to be working on things at home and they need that structured environment, they can go into that structured place. They know that’s when the learning is going to take place, and have that confidence that they’re going to walk out with that learning experience. But we have other students like you say, who are really trying to manage some really financially challenging circumstances, and we don’t want them to have to be choosing between putting food on the table and having a roof over their head and their educational pursuits. I don’t think we can do that anymore and say, you know academic work is your primary focus, because you know students need to eat. You know, they need to eat to be able to learn and have that capacity to learn and reach their full potential. So it is going to be a juggling act. And we have some modes available where, instead of being that weekday course, students can come in for two intensive days. So that’s where, you know, rather than having the 13 weeks of content, they might do seven weeks in one day, and there’ll be a whole day of learning and going through that content, and then in a few weeks time, they come back for another whole day of learning. And for some students, that works really well. They don’t have to choose between trying to get daycare set up, or childcare set up, they don’t have to, you know, take time out of work, especially if, if work is inflexible and you can’t take that time out, you know, they have a way of accessing that learning. And then we have our students who join online and they say, you know, for them, it’s actually reducing their travel costs. It’s, um, you know, if they’re experiencing a health condition that’s impacting their energy, they don’t have to walk down to the bus stop, get a bus get to campus, which can be, you know, Australia is a really big place for some students, that might be five minutes away. For others, they’re traveling. I think one student told me they were traveling about 400 kilometers to get to the campus. I don’t know what that translates to in miles, yeah, but yeah, it’s a really long way.
Lillian Nave 42:47
How long is that? Yeah? So it takes a long time, right?
Elizabeth Hitches 42:50
Yeah? And yeah, online classes, they just turn on their laptop and, you know, all of those additional stresses that could get in the way aren’t there. But I think one of the key things that’s really come out, we’ve had students say, knowing that the online class is available, or knowing that there’s a recording available if something’s happening in their life that is really unexpected. You know, a vet trip comes up that they weren’t anticipating, or a child gets sick at school, and you know, they need to be with them and be that, that carer for them. They don’t have to stress that they’re missing out on learning. They don’t have to stress that, oh, I’ve just missed a week’s worth of content, and I have to catch up. Or, you know, the learning experience is not going to be quality. I’m not going to get the same as my peers. How do I make up for that so my grades don’t drop? They’re telling us that that stress is decreasing because they know there’s an option. They know there’s a way there. And you know, it’s even reduced my time as well. You know, I used to have students who would email and say, I’m going to miss this week. How can I catch up? And I’d be saying, Okay, well, we have the recording available. Here’s how it works. Here’s how you can access it. If you have any questions, reach out. But because we’ve built that rhetoric into the course, and students know that it’s there for those times that you know it needs to be there, or you know if they need to take learning at a pace where they can pause it and rewind. Now I get students who just email me and say, you know, Hi, I’m not able to come in today, but I’m going to watch the recording, and I’ll let you know if I have any questions. So what used to be, you know, a really long, long email and replying to each of those aspects and reassurance students is now just Okay, fantastic. Let me know how it goes, and reach out if I can do anything. So yeah, UDL, it is time saving reduces stress for students and saves time for me as well. It
Lillian Nave 44:50
sure does, yeah, and you know, as we’re talking, I know we’re giving a lot of examples for commuters, for more like regional. Campuses, or community colleges or technical education or things like that. But even, like if, if there’s anybody listening who’s at like a traditional campus, it’s the same thing, right? There’s like I mentioned before, if you’ve got a student who has an injury just getting across campus can sometimes be difficult, and so having that, yeah, having a recording or having accessible materials, having multiple ways to get at that experience is still needed because of unexpected things to or, like, what you mentioned, an illness, right? We all cannot go back to the the ignorant bliss that we had about, well, you’re sick. Well, you’re just going to tough it out and come to class. No, no, no. We don’t want you there.
Elizabeth Hitches 45:55
No. Think about fairness and equity if the health reasons, we don’t want students who are sick and spreading viruses in that classroom and spreading it to their peers, then we need to be sure we’re making a really fair and equitable way to access that education so students don’t feel like they’re getting the second grade option. You know they’re getting the yes, the slightly defected learning environment? No, it needs to be quality. It needs to be inclusive. And yeah, speaking about those, those on campus courses and on campus classes, we can even think about the ways that students typically participate and engage in those courses. You know, for some students, putting their hand up and answering in front of all their peers is fantastic. They get to test out their learning. They get to have feedback from from the tutor, from their peers, for other students, that is not going to be a comfortable learning experience, right? And so, you know, you can think about UDL approaches to how students engage. You can have, you know, almost anonymous ways of engaging. You could put up something like, like a slido, or like a like a slide share, where students are putting different comments or different feedback onto a shared space, and there are no names attached. And for that student who might really want to participate, but might be a little bit afraid to kind of dip into that. It could reduce that barrier enough that they can then give it a go, test out that experience, and perhaps build their confidence in participating. So there’s so many different different barriers we can consider, and so many different ways that UDL can be a really great problem solver for that.
Lillian Nave 47:38
And I love that example, because that allows the class to engage with the idea without the worrying about the person right or the student doesn’t have to worry about, are they looking at me, or did I say it the right way, or that sort of it’s the idea gets out there, and so the professor can engage with that and say, Oh, this is really interesting. We haven’t talked about this yet, and or, and it could be somebody’s not quite sure about it’s like, well, this is a little bit off, and they haven’t outed themselves as not quite understanding, but they could actually learn the correct understanding without, you know, saying, you know, everybody looking at them and saying they they ventured and they were incorrect, right? So that’s it. It’s all about the ideas and not necessarily the person. And of course, they could be the one saying, I’m the one that said that. And I have a, you know, a further question. I want to put my name with it, but they don’t have to exactly options, yes. Back to options, exactly, yeah. So I mean it. I know your contacts. And right now, well, I have both contacts now with the kind of the commuter campus and then the in person campus, but they’re all of them. It’s so important to have this because they are stressors we don’t see them enough, or we don’t recognize them. And it is, I think, all of our jobs to really understand all of these things that are happening, because it does impact the learning and and we often are misattributing the, I guess, the the lack of success, saying maybe the students aren’t trying, or they’re not doing well enough that I thought they were and it’s not because they didn’t want to read, or they or they weren’t doing what they were supposed to be doing. It was because of all of the things we’ve just mentioned. They couldn’t make it to class because of X, Y and Z, they Yeah, they couldn’t access their readings. Or, you know that there are these levels and different layers that caused all of this friction for them in the first place. So if we can get rid of at least some of them, that’s going to help all of us out. And again. Make our lives easier, doing it so true. So okay, Elizabeth, what’s next? You have so much joy and so much fun in your learning, in your research. So my last question really is, what’s next in your research, as you continue to learn about all of this?
Elizabeth Hitches 50:18
Well, with the with the more practical side thinking about that inclusive education course it’s about to go through. I think it’s third iteration of this really UDL approach, and we have been really looking at how all of those different modes, different ways that students can access and engage in that learning can be made as inclusive and accessible as possible, and we’re just busy thinking about how we can make that learning space even more inclusive for students who might be absent from the classroom and and really, you know how we can make sure that they get that same sort of formative feedback that happens in the live classes? Have that happening in a way, in that asynchronous mode. So that’s what’s next for the practical side. In terms of the research side, I am right in the middle of looking at what’s contributing to academic stress for students, and really looking at differences between students with and without accessibility requirements and disabilities. But I’m really excited that we’re going to have a co design stage kick off very shortly. So we’re going to be working with students to design solutions. We’re going to be working with stakeholders to see, you know, what does this look like in the higher education space, and working with experts in UDL and inclusion and accessibility, to think, you know, how can we make whatever we co design as inclusive and accessible as possible? So that’s all kicking off really soon. And you know, it’s a big thanks to everyone in that space who is so supportive of this type of work. And yeah, it feels really empowered by it that, you know, okay, there’s a lot of stress out there. But you know, there are things we can do. There are things that we can do as educators, as disability and well being service staff, you know, any members of faculty, even down to, you know the person who greets students at that front desk, and is that, that first face of the university, all the things that each of us can do to reduce unnecessary stresses. So, yeah, lots of joy coming.
Lillian Nave 52:24
Yes, yes, that. You know that is a trend, at least in in my podcast lately, and the people I’ve been interviewing is the CO designing with students. We’ve got a couple coming out. That’s it’s we really are getting that student feedback and that working relationship with the students. They are really just helpful partners as we are doing this work. So,
Elizabeth Hitches 52:47
so important. You know, some things are really visible, and other things might be, you know, invisible to us as educators. You know we’re not going to be experiencing firsthand what it’s like to encounter our own resources without already knowing what they are, or, you know, go through a particular learning experience without having that hindsight of exactly what it’s meant to be and what the outcomes are meant to be. So yeah, how do we get that first hand perspective? And that is our students. We need to hear their voice, and we need to make sure they know they matter. And how do we do that? We listen and we provide that space.
Lillian Nave 53:25
I could have said it any better. Elizabeth, it’s been such a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me early, early in the morning, late at night. For me for connecting halfway across the world, from Australia to North Carolina. Thank you so much for the research you’re doing, for the joy you bring to this, to this UDL universe, and thank you so much for your time today.
Elizabeth Hitches 53:51
Thank you so much. You too. It has been, in and of itself, an absolute joy. Thank
Lillian Nave 54:02
you. You can follow the think UDL podcast on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to find out when new episodes will be released, and also see transcripts and additional materials at the think udl.org website. Thank you again to our sponsor. Text help. Text help is focused on helping all people learn, understand and communicate through the use of digital education and accessibility tools. Text help and its people are working towards a world where difference disability and language are no longer barriers to learning and succeeding. With over 50 million users worldwide, the text help suite of products includes read and write, equate SEO and orbit note they work alongside existing platforms such as Microsoft Office and G Suite, and enable them to be integrated quickly into any classroom or workspace with ease. Text help has changed the lives of millions worldwide and strives to impact the literacy and understanding of 1 billion people by 2030 visit text, dot help forward, slash, learn more. That’s L, E, A, R, N, M, O, R, E, to unlock unlimited learner potential. The music on the podcast was performed by the Oddyssey quartet, comprised of Rex Shepard, David Pate, Bill Folwell and Jose Cochez, and I am your host. Lillian Nave, thank you for joining us on The Think UDL podcast.
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