Welcome to Episode 152 of the Think UDL podcast: OER Resources with Carolee Clyne from UDL in 15 minutes. This episode features Carolee Clyne from BC Campus in British Columbia. She shares her passion for Open Education Resources and how they connect with UDL. This episode is a feed drop of another UDL podcast called UDL in 15 minutes, hosted by Loui Lord Nelson, a scholar, author, and UDL advocate and consultant, and also my friend and a fabulously generous person! When I broke my ankle in 2023, she sent me a surprise care package with all the things I needed in my recovery since she had gone through the same thing! Funny story, Loui and I started our podcasts within a week of one another in 2018 and have been fans of each other’s work since then. Loui’s podcast focuses mainly on UDL in the K-12 setting, while Think UDL focusses on UDL in Higher Ed and beyond. I interviewed her for my podcast (checkout Episode 116, the UDL gears with Loui Lord Nelson, after you listen to this one!) and she has hosted me on her podcast, Episode 126 of UDL in 15 minutes: Using UDL to Design Campus Policies and Procedures. The reason for this feed drop is to make our listeners aware of the quality UDL work going on all over the world on behalf of learners of all ages. Check out the UDL in 15 minutes website to see many more episodes that intersect with UDL in higher Education, mostly in the teacher education area in colleges and universities, but there are a few other gems that are directly related to higher education, too. We want you to gain inspiration, build on the ideas you hear, identify new connections, and increase accessibility, equity and inclusion for all learners. Thank you for listening to the Think UDL podcast.
Resources
Contact Loui Lord Nelson on LinkedIn and find out more about her podcast UDL in 15 Minutes
Transcript
19:08
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Universal Design for Learning, open educational resources, Carolee Clyne, BC Campus, inclusive education, open pedagogy, digital divide, K-12 education, OER adoption, educational equity, UDL framework, expert learners, teaching practices, student engagement, digital resources.
SPEAKERS
Lillian Nave, Loui Lord Nelson, Carolee Clyne
Lillian Nave 00:00
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 152 of the Think UDL podcast, OER resources with Carolee Clyne from UDL in 15 minutes. This episode features Carolee Clyne from BC campus in British Columbia. She shares her passion for open educational resources and how they connect with universal design for learning. But this episode is a little different. It’s actually a feed drop of another UDL podcast called UDL in 15 minutes, which is hosted by my friend Louis Lord Nelson, who’s a scholar, author and UDL advocate. She’s also a consultant, and my friend, a fabulously generous person. I know this because when I broke my ankle in 2023 she sent me a surprise care package with all the things I needed in my recovery, since she had gone through the same thing and funny story, Louis and I started our UDL podcasts within a week of one another, unbeknownst to each other, in 2018 and have been fans of each other’s work since then. Louie’s podcast features mainly UDL in the K 12 setting, while think UDL focuses on UDL in higher ed and beyond, I interviewed her for my podcast. Check out episode 116, of the think UDL podcast, the UDL gears with Louis Lord Nelson after you listen to this one. And she’s also hosted me on her podcast, which is episode 126. Of UDL in 15 minutes, using UDL to design campus policies and procedures. So the reason for this feed drop is to make our listeners aware of the quality UDL work going on all over the world on behalf of learners of all ages. So check out UDL in 15 minutes and the website to see many more episodes that intersect with UDL in higher education, mostly in the teacher education area and colleges and universities, but there are a few other gems that are directly related to higher education too. So we want you to gain inspiration to build on the ideas you hear, to identify new connections and increase accessibility, equity and inclusion for all learners. So thank you for listening to this very special feed drop episode of The think UDL podcast.
Loui Lord Nelson 03:15
Hello and welcome to UDL in 15 minutes where educators discuss their experiences with UDL. I’m Loui Lord Nelson, UDL, author and leader. Today, I’m talking with Carolee Cline, who’s an Open Education Advisor at BC campus in British Columbia. Today, Carolee is going to share how UDL and open education are important concepts that support one another. Hi, Carolee. How are you?
Carolee Clyne 03:41
Great greetings, Loui, it’s so great to talk to you. This is exciting for me as well. I’m delighted to be here for this opportunity to share about UDL and open and inclusive education.
Loui Lord Nelson 03:53
Oh, great. Well, thank you. So first off, please tell us about your teaching background.
Carolee Clyne 03:59
Well, primarily my roles have included supporting education in post secondary since about 1993 in a range of areas such as technology, library systems, student services and online instructional design, my instructional focus has been to faculty and staff generally introducing new systems, while also ensuring that the services are working for students in their work. So I’m often in classrooms assisting, and have observed many times where there could be maybe another approach that might engage the students a little deeper, and that’s what led me to learn and study more about UDL.
Loui Lord Nelson 04:39
Ah, nice. So I know that people are wondering what BC campus is, and then what your focus is. So could you please share that
Carolee Clyne 04:48
super BC campus is an organization whose mandate is to support the adaptation and evolution of teaching and learning practices in post secondary institutions. Across British Columbia through collaboration, communication and innovation. BC campus is under the provincial Ministry of advanced education and skills training. The UDL framework is part of the key values that BC campus brings to teaching and learning practices. And I work on the open team focused on open education resources and open pedagogy. And in this role, I’m work I work with targeting institutions in the north covering an area of approximately 230,000 square miles, to bring the open education conversation to the forefront. I’m also get to be that voice pointing out the challenges encountered in the north and rural spaces, such as limited connectivity, accessing digital resources. So these these issues often are beyond just the realm of post secondary, and are often points captured under broader conversations such as the digital divide. Okay?
Loui Lord Nelson 05:58
And I also want to point out to folks that since we have listeners from around the world, literally, like over 50 countries now that British Columbia is in Canada, so I’m talking to a fellow North American, but in a different country, so from Canada, if people aren’t familiar with British Columbia. So okay, so for people who are not familiar with the term open education, how do you describe that? There’s a lot of different ways, right?
Carolee Clyne 06:25
Yes, yes. There are a couple elements to sort of that umbrella of open education. The simple, more tangible elements are the open education resources known as OER, which are the teaching, learning and resource resources such as textbooks or slide decks that, through permissions granted by their Creator, allow others to use, distribute, keep or make changes in them. The open pedagogy, or is also sometimes called open educational practices, are where teaching and learning practices where openness is enacted within all aspects of the instructional practice, such as including the design of the learning outcomes, selection of the teaching resources and the planning of activities and assessments. Open Education practices engage both the teacher and students with the use and creation of open education resources. It draw attention to the potential afforded by open licenses, facilitating open peer review and supporting participatory, student directed projects. Many of these key concepts are also embedded in the UDL framework.
Loui Lord Nelson 07:38
Yeah, yeah. So I was just going to ask that there’s obviously a lot of overlap here with UDL. I’m thinking flexibility, a lot of that, but so that I know, but what else? Where else do you see an overlap?
Carolee Clyne 07:52
Well, a lot of the overlap that I see between the UDL framework and open education are they’re both trying to help reduce the barriers for students, the more work that I do within the open realm, the more I can see the inclusive elements of UDL aligned within the open aspirations. The following is a statement from BC campus that I want to share that I think captures it well. Open and inclusive education opportunities go beyond financial benefits. Open pedagogy and OER enabled pedagogy look at the practices that can be incubated and nurtured when we unlock access to learning and investigate what students and teachers can do with it to improve the overall learning experience and outcomes. And I think this statement, for me, also captures the UDL framework aspirations. So the work I’m doing at BC campus provides me the opportunity to support the adoption, the adaption, the creation of open and inclusive education in BC, embedding UDL and all of that, and working towards this evolution of open practices, making way for open pedagogy to influence students and learning across the province and around the world, and moving away from the static and hierarchical approaches to yesteryear’s classrooms to kind of welcome these new methodologies are, I think we’re the future of learning, and it certainly aligns with the UDL goal of developing expert learners.
Loui Lord Nelson 09:28
Yeah, that’s exactly what I wrote down on my notes. I’m scribbling furiously as you’re talking. And the thing that I was hitting on in my brain was, was this is a is a tool. It’s a tool to help create an environment where we can establish the supports necessary to help learners move toward becoming expert learners. And what I also was hitting on in my brain was that with all of this flexibility, and like you said, it’s kind of kicking out. Hopefully. So that hierarchical stuff of I hold the knowledge, and you must learn from me as the sage on the stage, but there still needs to be design, right? The teacher facilitator still needs to take the lead on how they’re going to provide the steps into open access and how students will participate with the resources and the pedagogies, and that’s what’s going to lead the students towards expert learning. So hopefully I’ve gone down the right road here. Would you say?
Carolee Clyne 10:30
So? I think so. I mean, I think the exciting things with the open pedagogy is sometimes and it’s quite a shift for educators to shift away from being completely in control, but you enable students to have a voice, and you empower them in some of your conversations of what are we going to do and really hear some of their choice, I think is, is some of the shift That’s that aligns in the UDL, but it’s still, it’s still a transition. It still takes a lot to make that shift. Yeah, I’m sure.
Loui Lord Nelson 11:07
Well, I know that. I wanted to ask you about how you think all of this can or does affect K 12 education, and we’ve already started down that road a little bit. But why don’t you go ahead and address that, and then I just think we’re going to spiral out from there, because this is, this is great.
Carolee Clyne 11:27
Oh, good. I think it is a tremendous value to the K to 12 as context is so much a part of the UDL framework. And the ability to adapt the materials as part of the OER premise, teachers using OER, can adapt them to best suit their classroom, whether it’s changing the examples to be more representative of their students, or combining a few resources to best provide the materials that are determined to be needed for their class. So this enables teachers to decide what resources are more relevant for their students than just a static textbook? Because they can pick and choose, they can pull elements, they can adapt the elements as they find maybe something isn’t working. So that’s that’s part of it. Open resources also support educational equity with the open distribution. So there’s, some really exciting discussions happening about what’s happening in the pre K to 12 one campaign to raise the awareness of OER in this arena has been hashtag go open. It was a campaign started by the United States Department of Education in October 2015, and there’s a website that I was been looking at and sort of exploring some of this aspect of it. New america.org has several reports about OER in pre K to 12 that are discoverable, looking for OER, just saying, OER in the search. So I’d encourage people to go explore some of these, because some of these reports that I’ve looked through have got great ideas. There’s making connections, one that has information about tracking districts that have been using OER, and within that report, the suggestions to look at starting points, such as ideas when textbooks are due for renewal, or where the curriculum is lacking, and which is also really a UDL framework challenge. So this report had all kinds of resources to getting started in the classroom, as well as a list of resources for professional learning. Another report that I found on this new america.org was one of interest that aligns with BC campus as we do a lot of work in diversity, equity and inclusion. And it was a report about supporting LGBTQ inclusive teaching and how digital materials can help. This report had lots of about the barriers, removing the barriers, and I think removing barriers to learning, it’s the very core of UDL. So these inclusive areas are important and of great value to any teachers. So on that site, I would say there’s some really great material for starting the OER journey, which at its very core includes values aligned to the UDL framework. Nice.
Loui Lord Nelson 14:24
So let’s say we have a listener who is hearing this, and they’re like, oh my gosh, this sounds so cool, but we are not using anything that is OER. Did I phrase that correctly? Yeah, we’re not using anything that’s OER in my district right now, and I feel like I could go talk to my director of curriculum, or my director of secondary, Director of elementary, whomever would be part of that decision making. Where would they start? Where would they partner and start looking to try to gather more information?
Carolee Clyne 14:56
I think that that Cyto SPEAKING OF THE NEW. America.org. Had fabulous reports, and the one making connections was really a good document about looking at, where do you start, where the policies that need to be changed? How do you get the conversation? Who else is doing this? I mean, we all know there’s strength in numbers, so finding out other school districts that have been doing it like it lists the school districts. It lists the primary grade levels that have been targeted. It talks also with the content area that has been that has adopted the OER. So in a lot of the districts, I can see that it’s not everybody has jumped on board, but targets have, and if you can align yourself with whatever subject or grade group that you’re involved in, then you can probably find like minded people that you can start to build those alliances to help you bring that forward and sort of talk about the barriers that have been encountered and how they got around them. It lists a lot, I mean that one report, making connections, bringing OER into practice, certainly listed lots of steps, little things. There were several other reports throughout there about creating systems of sustainability, looking towards a long term. It’s not just about finding the OER to use it. It’s how do you sustain it? How do you make sure that it’s still got the quality that you want, and that there’s that dialog happening and there’s that commitment to that materials being available. So there’s lots of places to start on just that site alone, I thought had a lot to get people going.
Loui Lord Nelson 16:49
That’s fabulous. That’s like a gold mine. Well, this has been a great conversation. Carolee, we have hit up against our 15 minutes, and always goes so fast. But thank you. This was a great introduction. I think a lot of people are going to learn a lot, and nu america.org, is going to get quite a few new hits here after people hear this. So thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast.
Carolee Clyne 17:15
Thank you so much for inviting me. Louie, I have really enjoyed this.
Loui Lord Nelson 17:18
Oh, absolutely. So for those listening to this podcast, you can find supplemental materials, like an image montage with closed captioning, bat montage with audio descriptions, a transcript and an associated blog at my website, which is the UDL approach.com Finally, if you have a story to share about UDL implementation for UDL in 15 minutes. Contact me through the UDL approach.com and thank you to everyone for your work in revolutionizing education through UDL and making it our goal to develop expert learners.
Lillian Nave 17:56
Thank you for listening to this episode of The think UDL podcast. New episodes are posted on social media, on LinkedIn, Facebook, X and blue sky, you can find transcripts and resources pertaining to each episode on our website, thinkUDL.org, the music in each episode is created by the Oddyssey quartet. Odyssey is spelled with two D’s, by the way, comprised of Rex Shepard, David Pate, Bill Folwell and Jose Cochez. I’m your host, Lillian Nave, and I want to thank Appalachian State University for helping to support this podcast, and if you call it appellation, I’ll throw an apple at you. Thank you for joining. I’m your host. Lillian Nave, thanks for listening to the think UDL podcast.