Welcome to Episode 124 of the Think UDL podcast: Inclusive Impactful Instruction with Kevin Merry. Dr. Kevin Merry is the Head of Academic Development and Associate Professor of Learning, Teaching and Assessment at the Center for Academic Innovation and Teaching Excellence at DeMontfort University in Leicester, United Kingdom. His most recent book is Delivering Inclusive and Impactful Instruction: Universal Design in Higher Education. In today’s episode, we talk about the changing nature of higher education, mastery, feedback, and the cheese sandwich, but not the kind you eat. Tune in for an enlightening conversation with Dr. Kevin Merry and thank you for listening to this conversation on the Think UDL podcast.
Resources
Find Kevin Merry in “X” (formerly Twitter) @Kevinudlmerry or via Kevin’s LinkedIn profile or at Kevin Merry’s website or via email: kevin.merry@dmu.ac.uk
Delivering Inclusive and Impactful Instruction: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education
Transcript
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
learners, learning, students, higher education, feedback, teaching, cheese sandwich, people, udl, cognitive skill, skills, important, work, podcast, content, variability, book, classroom, changing, mastery
SPEAKERS
Lillian Nave, Kevin Merry
Lillian Nave 00:02
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 124 of the think UDL podcast: Inclusive, Impactful Instruction with Kevin Merry. Dr. Kevin Merry is the head of academic development, and associate professor of learning, teaching and assessment at the Center for Academic Innovation and teaching excellence at De Montfort University in Leicester, United Kingdom. His most recent book is delivering inclusive and impactful instruction, universal design in higher education. In today’s episode, we talk about the changing nature of higher education, mastery feedback, and the cheese sandwich, but not the kind you eat. Tune in for an enlightening conversation with Dr. Kevin Merry. And thank you for listening to the think UDL podcast. Thank you to our sponsor, Texthelp, 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 learn m o r e. Well, I’d like to welcome you Kevin Merry to today’s podcasts. And thank you so much for joining me today.
Kevin Merry 02:15
Thanks, Lillian. I’m thrilled to be here.
Lillian Nave 02:19
It’s really great. And I’m going to start in with my first question I ask all my guests, and that is what makes you a different kind of learner. What
Kevin Merry 02:29
makes me a different kind of learner? That’s a really good question. I’ve always been the kind of learner that has a natural curiosity for things that I am interested in. So you know, I might watch a documentary on the TV about a true crime or something. And I can’t just leave it at watching the documentary, I have to go and find out about the backstory to that particular case, who the main people involved were, what the outcomes were where the case went beyond that, I can’t just leave it at enjoying the documentary or the TV TV program, I have to, I have to keep learning more and digging a bit deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. But that tends to be the case, when I’m really naturally interested in things. If I’m not as interested in things, I tend to be quite a strategic learner, you know, I would be the learner that sort of asks the teacher, you know, tell me what I need to do to pass the assessment, or indeed, to get a good grade in the assessment. So I suppose what makes me a different kind of learner is that I am underpinned by variability. You know, my approach to learning varies from context to context, subject to subject. You know, like I said, if I’m interested in something, it’s very easy for me to get engaged with it, because I have that natural, natural sort of intrinsic motivation for it, and that natural passion for it and that curiosity to want to learn that particular topic. And that’s usually irrespective of how well it’s taught. You know, if it’s, if it’s not taught particularly well, it can sometimes be a bit of a battle, of course, but generally speaking, I’ll have the sort of discipline and the self regulation skills to continue wanting to learn it and to continue having that motivation and that passion for it. As I say, on the flip side, if I’m less interested, I would think the way in which it’s taught is probably more important to me. So I had some rather traumatic experiences as a traumatic they weren’t really that traumatic, but they were quite difficult and challenging experiences with mathematics when I was at school. So our sort of Secondary Education sort of certificate that we aim for in the United Kingdom is called the the GCSE The General Certificate in secondary education, and I actually failed my maths GCSE the first time I took it. I managed to pass it the second time, but I was just really anxious about this particular subject. because it did like it, and I didn’t engage with it very well. And it wasn’t taught particularly well, either. So I think that would also make it make a bit of a difference. But I guess, you know, to sum up, I’m a variable learner, you know, I am subject to variability that changes from context to context, as well as changes from person to person, a different learner might have a completely different viewpoint on what makes them the kind of learner that they are.
Lillian Nave 05:26
You’ve just given such a very reflective answer like that you’ve thought a lot about how people learn how, what motivates people to learn. I just saw like, a huge chord of universal design for learning throughout that entire answer, right? Knowing about learner variability, that’s, that’s kind of shaped the your self perception, and it certainly has shaped mine, too, and understanding how to teach using UDL. So it’s like, oh, well, this is like a UDL expert answer about, about why we learned, like, what motivates us to learn and how we learn and what what those variables are. So it’s actually not surprising that, that you had such a very thoughtful, reflective answer that is applicable, I think, to all of our learners, that that we have variability. Yeah,
Kevin Merry 06:21
I think I think just in response to that, learning more about universal design has helped me to make greater sense of my own learning, particularly when I was young. And when I was still at school. And when I was in secondary education. You know, I just used to often think that I wasn’t very smart. But actually, the more I learned about the fact that we are all variable, and that we’ve all got capability, providing barriers are removed. It made me think, yeah, actually, perhaps the barrier for me in maths wasn’t necessarily my own capability, perhaps it was in the way in which it was taught, it was taught in a very disengaging way, we all had to sit on individualized desks. So you had nobody to turn to for support. And we often got picked on as well, you know, we had the kind of teacher that would sort of make us come to the front of the class, and solve an algebraic equation on the blackboard, mostly out of some sort of strange form of punishment really kind of knowing full well that you wouldn’t be able to solve it correctly. But it’s like you weren’t listening or you were disengaged, I’m gonna pick on you. So yeah, it helped me to make sense of a lot of those experiences, I think UDL.
Lillian Nave 07:30
Wow, yes. So true. And I know that experience that you just mentioned about being called up to the board and trying to make an example of a student, you’re not the only one. And that’s why so many students have a lot of anxiety that whether it’s about math or, or something else, we really have to understand, you know, how that D motivates a student and what we can do better. So luckily, you’ve thought a lot about this. And you’ve written a book recently to that caught my attention and had had me reach out to you. So you begin and preface the book about talking about higher education and the changing nature of higher education. So I thought I’d ask you about that and kind of give us a summary of like the the preface and situate what you’re writing about? So what is that changing nature of higher education?
Kevin Merry 08:31
Yeah, so as you mentioned, the book is mostly focused on on higher education contexts. And obviously, my context is in the United Kingdom. So what I say might be a little bit flavored by the UK context, but I’m sure the listeners will also resonate with many of the things I’m saying so I think, I think the changing nature of higher education is underpinned by a lot of different factors. I think, obviously, certainly in the UK, we’ve had a huge expansion of the higher education system. So there are more students actually going to university now than there were, say 2530 years ago. There are also more students coming from much more diverse backgrounds than there has ever been. So there’s been very strong drives to widen participation in UK higher education over the last 2025 years. And that’s meant that the level of diversity among our communities of learners is far greater, which means that their level of variability is also far greater than it’s ever been. Because of that, we obviously have to find a slightly different way to support their learning than perhaps we did in the past. And, you know, the past was very much about one size fits all. Certainly, when I was an undergraduate student, it was one size fits all, there weren’t many options and choices in relation to how you learned, but obviously, the more diverse communities of learners get, we have to think more about that personalization. And that customization of learning in the best way possible. I think the other changes certainly those that I referenced in the book, are based on things like the changing nature To have learners. So obviously I read Professor Jean Twenge, his book, IGN. And I was really, really impressed by that, because it obviously talks about this generation of, of learners that are born, I think, between 1995 and 2011, that are the first generation that have been born totally immersed in digital technologies in the internet, you know, it’s a, it’s a fundamental part of their life, right from birth. And that changes the way in which they engage with the world and the way in which they they see the world, you know, we’re all sort of getting used to services now aren’t we like Netflix and Spotify and, and Amazon for our shopping, where everything is on demand, you know, if I want to watch television, I watch it through Netflix, I can binge watch the whole series, you know, I can pause it and go out into the kitchen and make a cup of tea, I can skip the boring parts, and I can watch it all over again, if I want to. So this kind of idea of personalization, and customization is, is is leaking into our lives more generally. And I think that gives rise to an expectation that learning will also offer that level of personalization and customization to, then obviously, there’s the rise of technologies like AI and chat GPT, specifically, which are going to change things and change the way that we learn and also the way in which we teach and how we approach learning. And there’s also change, obviously, in the jobs market. I mean, you know, for many, many years, people have been able to make a fairly good living, doing doing jobs that are a probably now already automated, or at least at some point in the future will be automated. So you know, the capability to think deeply the capability to, you know, apply higher order cognitive skills, I think is going to be really, really important moving forward for, for all learners. I mean, we might have to have quite sophisticated cognitive capabilities just to get a job in the future. You know, the ability to solve problems, for example, I think is going to be very, very important for us. I think it changes certainly the picture in higher education. So there’s some of the things I talk about in the sort of opening chapters of my book to sort of preface why we need to think about designing instruction in a more universal way.
Lillian Nave 12:13
You know, you mentioned it’s in within your context in the United Kingdom, and all of the things that you said certainly are true in the United States, with and Canada with the amount of so in all of North America, the amount of students who are now entering higher ed is a much wider variety, there used to be only a certain section of society that would go into that higher ed, you know, just sort of a finishing school or wealthy, you know, that it was a much smaller percentage of the population. And like in the UK, in North America, we have a wide variety of cultures and large amount of new immigrant populations that are have been here for 2030 and 40 years. So far more diversity that’s happening in higher ed. And I know we have a lot of listeners for my podcast in Australia as well. And a huge amount to influx of more students, more diverse students in higher ed. So it certainly is not just in the UK, I know it’s all over Europe, as well. And so it seems to be a real worldwide issue. And and certainly why I think UDL has been catching on a worldwide connection across countries, that we are seeing that diversity of learners. So I also appreciated you said that personalization and customization of learning. And I have three children who are between 17 and 22. And their ability to personalize and customize almost everything makes me think about their educational choices and how that must be, it must seem like it’s the cave man age, you know, to them to walk into a classroom that really hasn’t changed very much in the last 100 years. And we really need to be thinking about matching up what we’re doing in education with the modern world. Like it’s just, it’s changing so fast to like, when you mentioned AI and chat, GBT, it is changing so fast. So I appreciate that answer. Yeah, absolutely.
Kevin Merry 14:38
I mean, what you said previously about, you know, only sort of certain types of people going to university in the past. I mean, that was very much the case in the UK. I mean, I’m from, I’m a first generation university student, so I’m the first person in my family that ever went to university and certainly when I was growing up, my view of university in higher education was that it was for people that were either very very smart, very clever, get the opportunity. Or it was for people that were quite sort of middle class. And I came from, I come from a very working class background, as we would describe it in the UK. So certainly when I was when I was very young, it didn’t necessarily seem like it would be an option for somebody from my kind of background. Thankfully, through widening participation initiatives, I was obviously able to go and I really did benefit from a university education, it was fabulous. I opened my eyes, and I really, really enjoyed it, too. But yeah, also what you just said there about, you know, the level of personalized legislation and customization in general life. I mean, it’s, you know, it has to, you know, I was just saying to somebody on a on a, on a podcast that I recorded earlier, actually, with a guest that, you know, I’ve just finished all of my Christmas shopping, but I did all of it online, you know, I’ve been able to get online, you know, in the middle of the night, at the weekends, you know, when the shops are closed, I’ve not had to set foot in a shop to buy any gifts this year. And wow, you know, I mean, imagine not having the capability to do that, you know, I don’t think I’d find the time to actually go shopping. And I’m not a great shopper anyway. I mean, I like buying things, but I’m very much I need to know what I’m gonna buy. And I just go and get it.
Lillian Nave 16:19
Yeah, totally true. And what you know, what people can’t tell on a podcast is, I’m a six foot tall woman. And yeah, I can’t find clothes, you know, in a store, it’s useless. It’s useless for me to go shopping. So I order everything online, that’s, you know, has tall long ways, you know, that sort of thing. And yeah, my life would, would be so much more difficult and less fun and less functional. If I had to do the kind of schlepping around to try to find stores that would carry those things. And again, I don’t have the time, I don’t have the time to do that. So I think about that a lot. When I think about our students who often has have jobs, in addition to going to school full time, who have commitments to family, who, you know, have so many other things going on in their lives, that it’s not like the old way, 20 or 30 years ago, where you would just sort of live on campus in a bubble. And you didn’t have to worry about the news. And you didn’t have to worry about anything, because your food was there. You know, everything was there. And it’s just not that way for many students anymore. So we do we have to think about how we’re going to teach differently. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. And you talk about mastery. That’s which is a major theme. In Universal Design for Learning. We want our learners to be expert learners, we want them to attain mastery. And I wanted to ask you to help us understand that. So what is the meaning of mastery to you?
Kevin Merry 17:56
Well, it’s good that you raise that question, actually, because the original working title for the book was called Mastering UDL, we obviously changed it at the advice of the publishers, which was fine. I think he’s got a better title now anyway, a bit a bit catchier. But yeah, mastery. So for me, mastery is an aspect of expert learning and expert learning is effectively about two key characteristics. The first of those key characteristics is gaining mastery over the content of learning. So whatever it is, a learner is required to know or be able to do, as part of the goals of their learning experience or the outcomes of their learning experience, they are able to know it and do it to the fullest extent, unable to able to demonstrate the acceptable evidence for knowing it, or being able to do it. So that is effectively what we mean by mastery. But the other part to that represents the other characteristic of the expert learner and that’s having personal knowledge of how you as an individual achieved that mastery over learning. So how you are able to achieve knowing whatever it is you need to know or being able to do whatever it is you need to do because it will be different from learner to learner. And it will be different within each learner from context to context. So you know, the way I might have approached a subject like sociology, which I really enjoyed when I was at school, and master that particular subject might be very, very different to the way that I might try and master mathematics for example, you know, I can immerse myself in sociology because I have a natural curiosity and interest in it. You know, it’s not a problem for me to spend long hours reading and immersing myself in the content and thinking deeply about it even when I’m not in the classroom. Whereas maths, I need a very structured ordered guide really to help me make the most of my learning experience in that particular scenario. So that personal knowledge of how to master the content Learning is probably the most important part really, because that’s the bit that’s transferable to different contexts. And it’s the bit that helps us lifelong, isn’t it, you know, if we, if we, it’s effectively about learning how to learn if we if we know how to learn in different contexts, if we’re able to apply those skills, then that has benefits for us, our entire lives, whatever situations and scenarios in which we find ourselves whether it’s in a, in a working environment, where we’ve got to learn a new job, or learn new skills for a new job, or, or whether it’s we have a hobby or a pastime, and we’re going to learn how to play the piano or the guitar, or we’re going to learn a new language, having that personal knowledge of what works best for us, is a really, really powerful tool that, that all learners can leverage in all contexts. Really.
Lillian Nave 20:44
Yeah, it’s very contextual, is what I’m hearing from you. So like, what may work in one subject is not going to work in the other like in math, maybe a continuous, like quizzes and flashcards is something because because the material is very different. And the way you approach that material is very different. So we’re, again, we’re back to that learner variability and how important that is to recognize it, and then to offer multiple ways to get to that learning goal. And you also in your answer was, I think, was also very reflective. So you’re, you have to go back and think about, well, when I study math, and I’m just reading through the textbook, it does not sink in, right, I have to try and do a problem set, right, or I have to get some feedback, like my first five steps of the problem, four of the steps are wrong, you know. And so needing that feedback to then learn how to do it differently, is, is really important, and, of course, contextually different than what the sociology that you’re talking about, which also I have a big interest in but didn’t even know about it and didn’t even study it in college and then found out like, all the stuff I’m interested in is pretty much sociology, because I find it very, very cool about intercultural working is also a big part of sociology. So, I appreciate that very reflective look. And we have to be reflective learners, which again, is a big part of UDL, it’s on that the bottom of the green engagement column to become self reflective learners, because that’s really the only way we learn is we have to think about what we’ve just done. Absolutely.
Kevin Merry 22:37
And I think it goes back to, to variability again, doesn’t it? I mean, you know, it, let’s say a teacher provides me with two types of learning resource, one of them is a reading, and another one is a video. And I might think, well, actually, my preference is to use the reading rather than the video, let’s say for another class a week later. My preference might be to use the reading, but I don’t have time to read whatever it is, I need to read, because I’ve got childcare commitments, and I’ve got work, in which case, I’ll have to use the video, because my time on any given day or any given week is also a source of variability that fluctuates, it’s a it’s a moving target. So having those options and choices is obviously really important. So yeah, I think, you know, it’s, it’s important, isn’t it to understand, on a personal level, what works in given scenarios. But of course, if we’re only ever given one option, if it’s one size fits all, we never get the opportunity to think about what might work best for us. In in given scenarios. We don’t know what we need, or we don’t know what’s best for us if we’re not provided with those options and choices in the first place.
Lillian Nave 23:45
Yeah, and you know, in talking about this, I think it’s so important to get out this, a conversation like this, because when you just mentioned those two different things like your time is variable. And you might choose the reading one week, and you might choose the video or audio file or something another week because of whatever. The if we go back to 20 3040 years ago, there were not options. And people were not given those options. But then again, it was a different kind of educational environment where only a few people went. And when they went to school, it was different. There weren’t other jobs, other competing things, you’d got to sit under a tree and read a book, you know, that was kind of all you needed to do among other things, but it’s just a very different environment now with different students and different demands and a different world. And it’s it’s practitioners like you who are helping us to, to bring education and higher ed especially, which is so ingrained and well that’s not the way we’ve always done it. This isn’t rigorous if you don’t read 40 pages. There’s still some you know, a bit of that attitude. That’s the And I think it’s detrimental to our students.
Kevin Merry 25:02
I think you mentioned it earlier, I was talking to a colleague earlier today, and they said, in higher education in the UK at the moment, we’re almost experiencing a kind of end of free time for students kind of model where, you know, certainly when I was a student, you know, there would be time where you could just sort of hang out in your student house or, or go on an all day drinking session or something like that. And, you know, apparently, students, you know, what they’re telling us now is that they don’t really have much free time because they’re required to work, they might have childcare responsibilities, they might have other kinds of responsibilities, they might spend a lot of time commuting if they live far away from campus, for example. So actually providing those flexibilities in how they can access learning how they can be provided with resources is removing potential barriers. I mean, if you are working two or three days a week around your studies, perhaps you don’t have time to sit down for two solid hours reading a book chapter or several chapters, for example, perhaps it’s much more accessible for you to listen to a podcast when you’re on the walk to work, or when you’re in the gym, or when you’re on the school run or something like that. So it’s about thinking about what, you know, helps people to remove them reduce barriers in their lives, really.
Lillian Nave 26:16
Yes, and I, you made me think of one other situation where I had a young, a young mother who is a student, and being able to put a child to sleep. And sometimes that takes a very long time, from my own experience, it might be an hour or so. And so being able to listen, you know, with earbuds in to whatever that story or, or book, whatever it is. I had never thought of that before. Like, oh, you know, I can’t have the lights on and read this book, necessarily, right now, I kind of need a quiet room, and I need to hold this baby. But I can at least listen to this. Again, that flexibility. So important. So you also bring up an interesting concept in your book, and it caught my eyes. So I thought I would ask you about the cheese sandwich. What do you mean by the cheese sandwich?
Kevin Merry 27:13
So good. Very good question. So thanks, thanks for asking that. So the cheese sandwich is really an approach to instructional design. So we, we don’t talk about sort of classes. In the book, we talk about learning experiences, because we talk about what learners are doing between classes. So effectively, the cheese sandwich really repurpose is the time that learners spend with their teachers and with their peers. So in the higher education context, what we want our learners to do is develop deep learning, we want them to achieve mastery over learning, as I mentioned previously, and operationally speaking, and what that looks like is basically being able to do all of the skills in Bloom’s taxonomy. So we often say that learning anything deeply requires you to be able to apply all of those skills. So not just the lower level skills, the the lower order cognitive skills, which are sort of defining recalling, describing things we want you to be able to apply, evaluate, analyze, synthesize, etc. Now, what we’ve tended to do in higher education is we’ve tended to support learners to develop the lower order skills by transmission of content in lectures, they’re able to define things describe things, recall facts and that type of information. But overwhelmingly, we’ve relied on them to develop those higher order cognitive capabilities for themselves during self directed study. And approximately two thirds of the higher education experience, particularly in the UK is self directed. So learners have to put in effectively more work when they’re out of the classroom than they do when they’re in it. Given the level of diversity in most higher education contexts, I always felt that was a little bit of a gamble. And that actually our time as teachers would be better served if we flipped that around. So, you know, rather than focusing on content transmission, when learners and teachers are together in the classroom, let’s focus on the development of those higher order skills. So focusing contact time, whether it’s in person or virtual on the development of those higher order skills would represent the cheese in my cheese sandwich. Yeah, the slices of bread would represent perhaps content transmission. So learners might engage with some fundamental content before they come to class through a video or podcast or reading an independent learning activity, for example. And then we would do the kind of deep learning work applying those higher order cognitive skills to that content in class. Because, you know, one of the most important resources a teacher will ever have is the learners. And one of the most important resources learners have is each other. So you know, working on that skills, developing those skills, practicing them. Using what we call feedback corrected practice. So learners get the opportunity to practice a cognitive skill, receive feedback on it, and then practice it. Again, it’s a case of trial and error. The whole point and purpose of the cheese sandwich really is that we feel that there’s a much greater likelihood that we will achieve that mastery over the content of our learning. If we bring the more challenging cognitive skills into the classroom, and intentionally practice them with feedback, than if we leave it to the chance of saying, Well, you go away and figure this stuff out for yourself, which is kind of how higher education has traditionally played out. And that was probably fine. 30 or 40 years ago, when universities tended to handpick the most capable of students. Whereas today, universities tend to recruit large groups are very, very diverse students. So we can’t necessarily assume that they’ve all got the capability to develop those skills effectively, for themselves. So we have to give them a little bit of support with that. And then the final slice of bread might be to recap and reflect on some important skills and content that we need to obviously learn, but also maybe to formatively assess what we’ve learned, but also to reflect on on that learning to learn piece as well. So, you know, what worked, what was supportive? What resources helped you to learn this? What teaching approaches were actually useful? Which ones weren’t actually useful? What are your areas of strength from a learning perspective? What areas from a learning perspective, perhaps you need to develop? And we would sort of try and design instruction based upon that kind of broad approach really?
Lillian Nave 31:49
Brilliant, okay. I, I see that as as little. It’s reminds me of the flipped classroom, right. But it’s not, but you’ve gone a little further there with that with your cheese sandwich. So the flipped classroom would be that you might put a lecture together, and the students would watch that before they come into class. And when they come into class, they’re doing maybe problem sets, or they’re the lab or, you know, small group work, right, that sort of thing. So that’s actually pretty similar. But I see that you’re also saying this, that cheese part, by the way, I love cheese, it’s one of my favorite tomato. So that is like, yeah, it’s like the best part. It’s totally the best part here is where you leverage the, as you said, the best resources, the variability in the room to bring whatever they have done ahead of time to life, like, here’s Okay, so you have this background you’ve learned about the subject matter. But how do we get those higher order thinking skills, analyze, synthesize, create, how do we really get that done? And it seems like, really, my schooling was like this, too. We just assume that happens almost magically, in the students mind by themselves after class, like that’s, they’re all They’re supposed to synthesize it. And then, and I realized, now this is the worst part is then you give them a, an instructor would give a student a paper, and then they hand that in, and then you never hear anything, like you’d get a grade. But you don’t get any of that feedback. You You’ve brought this all into a much better understanding of how students learn from that, I think feedback loop. And I appreciate that you said like that cheese part. The in class part is all about, like feedback from each other. And feedback from the professor. Is that right?
Kevin Merry 33:54
Yeah. And also self feedback as well. So self reflection on how well they’ve been able to apply whatever cognitive skills they need to apply. But also self reflection on on all those things I mentioned. So whatever resources have been provided, are they useful? Are they working? Do they support their learning? What else do they need in that particular learning scenario to continue to learn effectively? I mean, the process is, is very similar and is quite strongly based on on flipped learning. What we’ve tried to flip around is the ways in which learners develop those cognitive capabilities more than anything. Because what we’ve tended to find, I think you hit the nail on the head there, you said, there’s an assumption that learners will go away and figure it out and make sense of it. And I think a big UDL idea is this, you know, we can’t assume anything really, you know, if I was to set a learning goal or a learning outcome that was something like, you know, by the end of this session, or this course or this unit, you will be able to critically evaluate the impact of Brexit on the UK economy. Well, You know, I can’t assume that the learners know what critically evaluate means. And I can’t assume that they can’t assume that they can do it either. So actually, I need to spend some time supporting them to understand what it means, but also supporting them in knowing how to apply that particular cognitive skill. What we’ve tended to do in higher education is rely on what I often call the osmosis model, they’ll just automatically pick it up somehow. And some do. Yeah, you know, some do very, very well, but others don’t necessarily and still have that level of uncertainty and confusion. So it’s just really intentionally saying, Look, you know, here’s a learning goal, let’s dissect it a little bit. Here’s a cognitive skill or a set of cognitive skills that need to be applied to some content, let’s separate the content from the cognitive skill, but focus on the more challenging bit, which is probably going to be the application of that particular cognitive skill. We can focus time in the classroom where students can leverage support from their teachers and peers to master that particular skill. And then they can master it and utilize it in multiple contexts. The final thing I’d like to say about that, really, is that I think your higher education in many educational contexts really have been very much about content, broadcast and content transmission. It’s about learning stuff, learning things, learning facts. Now, my academic background is actually in exercise physiology. I’ve got a PhD in exercise physiology. But I don’t use any of the content that I learned to gain any of my physiology qualifications. But I use Bloom’s skills all the time. You know, I’m always evaluating I’m always analyzing, I’m always synthesizing, I’m always applying. So it’s so so important to make sure that learners are competent in applying those skills, because they’re transferable to multiple contexts. And the content of what they learn might not always be that transferable.
Lillian Nave 36:57
Did you learn about Bloom’s Taxonomy when you were getting your PhD in physiology? No,
Kevin Merry 37:04
I didn’t actually the first I ever learned about that was when I did some teacher training. So I was in a unique position where I, I’d started teaching in higher education. And I’d been teaching in higher education for about four or five years before I received any formalized training in it. And my own teaching was very much all about, you know, being the sage on the stage, you know, just the broadcast model, I’m going to give you a load of information, and you’re going to write it down and go away and remember it and make sense of it. And because I was always quite a confident presenter, I thought I can do this. This is easy, isn’t it? This is great. And it was only when I went into a different context. And I was taught about teaching and blooms and active learning and, and the fact that learners have different needs and differentiated instruction. I was like, I’ve got a lot to learn here. Yeah,
Lillian Nave 37:50
yeah. And just because you cover it, I’m using air quotes with my fingers here, you cover that information? Doesn’t mean the student has learned enough. What if they missed class that day, right? Or what if they were daydreaming during that time, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve learned it just because you’ve covered it. And you make me think about the role of the instructor here, because I appreciate your idea that or calling out the broadcaster somebody who’s broadcasting information. And then at the end of the term they evaluate Did you get it or not? Did you remember it? Were you able to put it on the test? And so that was the role and and I do think we still have a general idea that a college professor, or lecture think of those two terms, you are supposed to profess what you know, or lecture to people tell them what you know. And magically, they will learn it. But what the cheese sandwich is pointing out and telling to me is that it’s an you are not as the instructor, you’re not a professor not professing. Neither Are you lecturing, but you’re the facilitator. And that’s a huge difference. And that brings in the active learning, it brings in that feedback, it brings in that student trying to risk and find out, like how do I put this knowledge into into play and how is it going to be useful? And that we we don’t have that as titles, you know, there’s not a chief facilitator of learning, right? There’s that’s not anywhere because we still have I think, that old idea that the professor is supposed to profess to be the sage on the stage. And then this magical thing happens about learning and that’s what I appreciate about your appreciate so much about your book is that you’re exploding that like pulling it apart and saying no, no, no. We are kind of emphasizing the wrong things. We’re making a college instructor a broadcaster and evaluator, and we need to make make them into facilitators. Am I getting that? Right?
Kevin Merry 40:06
Absolutely. I mean, I make no sort of secret of the fact and I don’t beat around the bush in the book where I say, Look, you know, this whole model is very much predicated on teaching and being an effective teacher. And that you actually have to do some teaching, not just some content broadcast, which is kind of great for people like me that are interested in learning and teaching anybody that isn’t as interested in learning and teaching and is quite wedded to the broadcast model. might not like to read that otter to hear that. But I just think that the changing needs and the changing sort of demographics and profiles of the students mean that we we have to have a more teaching focused role, a role that’s more focused on supporting their learning as a facilitator, as you mentioned, rather than just somebody that that pontificates content.
Lillian Nave 40:56
Yes. And the reason I asked you whether you knew Bloom’s Taxonomy and learned it in your graduate study was because I didn’t either. And most of the faculty that I work with, are not trained in how to actually teach what they know, they just, we, and we do this, like, I’m gonna say, we as in all of the world, our model for higher education in creating those PhDs is really to become an expert in the field, a researcher, but not necessarily someone who’s going to be able to teach and help others understand these things, they’re going to be the held holder of the knowledge. And they get it quite a lot of privilege in that, you know, we really respect this. And that’s, you know, great for, for those who hold that position. But then what are you supposed to do with that knowledge? hopefully make the world a better place in many ways. And one of those ways is actually teaching other people about that subject. We don’t have a mechanism that does that.
Kevin Merry 42:02
Agreed. I mean, when I first learned about things like Bloom’s Taxonomy, I thought, wow, it would be really useful to, to let the students know about this particular secret, wouldn’t it because it would kind of frame for them, what we’re actually trying to get them to do in a higher education context. And it’s almost like it’s a kind of secret in many ways. It’s like, if we were very explicit about Look, here is a set of skills. And I know not everybody’s a massive fan of bloom, I know that it has its critics, and I get that, but I’ve always liked it, because I think it reminds us that higher education is more than just about knowing lots of stuff. It’s about what we can do with that knowledge and how we can apply it, and how we can use it to solve problems, for example. So actually, if we kind of were a little bit more open and upfront with the students about all that stuff, they’d probably go okay, yeah, I kind of understand why we’re doing these activities now and what I’m expected to actually do so yeah, I think there’s probably something there too.
Lillian Nave 42:58
Yeah, absolutely. And, and being able to tell the students why you’re doing something like this is going to help you in your life as a nurse or as an architect, or, you know, whatever you want to do, being able to, you know, communicate well with your clients or being able to analyze this equation, you’re going to need authentic assessments, also a big part of UDL. And if we could just tell our students why this is important, then they’re much more motivated, right to to do what might be tedious in their eyes, they’ll say, Oh, I see the meaning behind this massively. So you also have a good bed where you talk about feedback. I’m a big proponent, also of feedback. So I wanted to ask you, what is so critical to you about feedback?
Kevin Merry 43:51
Well, for me, the criticality of feedback reflects that many of our approaches in higher education are very much grounded in the cognitivist and constructivist, you know, theories of learning. Really, you know, constructivism, obviously, is about us constructing our understanding of any given topic or concept based on what we already know about it. Now, in some circumstances, what we already know about it might be entirely incorrect. You know, when I’m teaching my trainee teachers, I often say, Look, if you ever doubt the persuasiveness of constructivism as a theory of learning, speak to a small child about an adult topic. Speak to them about work, speak to them about politics, money, religion, relationships, they will be able to tell you something about all of those topics. But what they tell you might be entirely incorrect. It might be absolute gobbledygook. The point is they’ve constructed their understanding of those things for themselves. However, in order to modify their understanding, they need some feedback. So feedback, in terms of modifying understanding from a constructivist point of view is apt salutely essential. So constructivism effectively won’t really work without feedback in some form. And also, it obviously solidifies, you know, our understanding when it is correct. And it’s useful to hear from people that yeah, actually, the way you understand that topic or concept is right is correct, fantastic. We gain confidence, we can move forward onto the next learning objective, but particularly in terms of that modification of understanding. The other important aspect of feedback that I try and kind of get across in the book is around how we don’t really talk about feedback in terms of instructional design, in terms of where it fits, how it’s delivered, when it’s delivered. You know, even thinking about, well, you know, how are students receiving feedback as part of their instructional experiences outside of the more formalized assessment process? You know, how are they just getting feedback when they are participating in a learning activity. So let’s say I set a learning activity that’s going to get the learners critically analyzing something, I might even get them to critically analyze something completely unrelated to the content just so that they can practice the skill, they’re going to need some feedback on how well they do that critical analysis. Otherwise, they’ll never know if they do it to the required level or not. But it’s important, actually, to signpost where that feedback fits in, it’s important for us to note that down when we are designing instruction and saying, right, this is where the feedback opportunities are going to be. But it’s also really, really important to let the students know where those feedback opportunities are going to be. And actually make them aware that they are receiving feedback, and how they can use that feedback. In addition to that, you know, I talked about students supporting each other’s as peers, you know, giving each other feedback is potentially an important way, to better understand various topics and concepts. You know, it’s often said that the best way to learn anything is to teach it to somebody else. So I would say that feedback is an important part of teaching. So if you are engaging in that peer feedback piece, there is the potential for you to better understand and more effectively learn whatever it is, you’re trying to learn, because you’re trying to support the learning of somebody else, in relation to that particular thing. And then, of course, from a metacognitive point of view, and a learning to learn point of view. So this part of the expert learning characteristic, that’s about knowing how to personally master learning, that requires self feedback through self reflection, you have to kind of feed back to yourself on how well you’re doing things and how well you are actually getting on, you know, do I understand this content? Can I apply these skills? What aspects of my learning Am I Am I good at? Where are my strengths, but equally, what things are not so good at? What do I need to develop? But also how can I develop those things? So feedback is absolutely essential, really, to this cheese sandwich approach that we discussed earlier.
Lillian Nave 48:01
Yeah, and a lot of, as you said, a lot of reflection. So not just the instructor giving the feedback, but we need to be thinking as the instructor where that feedback goes, and what’s the best way to do it. And then the students also need to think about what they’re going to do with that feedback, and how that they can better use that right? In the future. Yeah, and it made me think about the something you said earlier about the classroom, that the when you have the cheese time, when you actually have people together, that is where you get this enormous opportunity to showcase the variability in the room to use all of those brains, because when you’re going to have them, like they’re everybody else will be reading or doing, you know, watching the lectures or reading the stuff by themselves beforehand. And that’s kind of individual activity or can be. And then what can we do during this really special time, like, we only get 50 minutes, three times a week, or we get an hour and a half twice a week or something like that. That’s an amazing time. We have to capitalize on that. And some of that feedback may be okay, well, here’s how I did the problem. And somebody else might be, again, variable very different. And they might say, well, here’s how I did it. And they come to the same answer. But you never would have known that somebody else could come to that answer from, you know, a completely different pathway. And I’ve I’ve certainly learned that like from my students who said, yeah, here’s the answer I got and I went this way is like, I’ve never done it that way. How did you even think about getting to that same answer that way, and we we just learned so much about each other. And it’s very humbling to me to find out, you know how another student another person might come to that answer, but in a completely different way. Yeah,
Kevin Merry 50:00
no, absolutely. In the book we refer to or I refer to a, I keep using the royal we don’t I? It makes sense. Yeah. We refer, I refer to a feedback cage. So it’s about sort of learners being surrounded by potential sources of feedback. So you know, one of those sources in the cage is self through through self feedback, self reflection, there’s the teacher, there’s their peers. And then there’s kind of alternative sources, which might be you know, study support services that exist in the library in the university. It might be employers that are providing feedback and given scenarios, but the point is, there is a, you know, a raft of different sources, rich sources of feedback that learners can learn from, and support their learning with and we kind of use a little, little diagram in the book that kind of demonstrates that that feedback cage if you like,
Lillian Nave 50:55
that’s great. Fantastic. And I know, we’re getting towards the end. I got one more question, though. And we had a big setup about how our learners are different now. So I’m sure that plays into this. But my my question is what brought you to write this book at this particular time?
Kevin Merry 51:18
What brought me to write this book at this particular time? Great question. I think in the higher education context, there aren’t really many, if any, how to teach UDL books. As I say, particularly in higher education, there are books about sort of policy and legislation and sort of institution wide adoption and creating sort of UDL mindsets, and attitudes and sort of broader, more sort of strategic adoption type texts. But there aren’t many texts that really examine and explore the sort of nuts and bolts of instruction. Now, that’s what I’ve always been interested in. That’s kind of what my job is about is about supporting people with the nuts and bolts of instruction, designing instruction and thinking about how we can best support variable learners. So I wanted to write it for that reason, I felt it it filled a particular gap.
Lillian Nave 52:11
Oh, fantastic. I know, I find a lot of my job is talking to faculty and saying, Oh, this is really great. That’s really engaging, and you’re doing this and like that’s part of the UDL. Yeah, so it doesn’t have to start all over again, nobody’s reinventing the wheel. It’s just such a great text. I think that you’ve given us some language. I love the cheese sandwich language, too, and some concepts to help us as instructors to be great facilitators of learning and to help our students be expert learners. So I just want to thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. I really appreciate it Kevin. 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, textile Texthelp is focused on helping all people learn, understand and communicate through the use digital education and accessibility tools. Texthelp 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 Texthelp suite of products includes Read and Write equates to an 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. Texthelp 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 earn m o r e to unlock unlimited learner potential. The music on the podcast was performed by the Oddyssey quartet comprised of Rex Shepherd, David Pate, Bill Folwell and Jose Cochez an I am your host, Lillian Nave. Thank you for joining us on The Think UDL podcast