Welcome to Episode 121 of the Think UDL podcast: Reflection, Curiosity and Psychological Safety with Liz Norell. Dr. Liz Norell is the Associate Director of Instructional Support at the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss. In this conversation, Liz and I discuss several important UDL ideas including reflection and how to incorporate that into our classes and how beneficial it is for our own learning. We also discuss how to create psychological safety even within a course that could have many “hot-button” type issues, how to create choice and flexibility in your course, and what to do if there are too many choices for some students. We also discuss how students can essentially choose their own grade for a course based on their interests and efforts. Tune in for a very enlightening conversation with so many great ideas about how to infuse your course with UDL principles and thank you for listening to this conversation on the Think UDL podcast.
Resources
Contact Liz Norell via:
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/liznorell.bsky.social
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liz-norell-0523894/
Web: https://www.liznorell.com/
Email: eanorell@olemiss.edu
Liz mentions her piece she wrote in IHE as a guest of John Warner’s column.
And here are links to Liz Norell’s spring 2023 liquid syllabus and the content library
King and Kitchener’s Reflective Judgment Model
The Instruction Myth, by John Tagg (enthusiastically recommended by Tom Tobin)
Brené Brown’s Braving the Wilderness chapter, “People Are Hard to Hate Close Up. Move In.” (Liz notes that this really is like the mission statement of her government teaching!)
Transcript
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
students, learning, UDL, class, work, teaching, reflection, semester, writing, assignments, learner, information, create, library, read, government, credential
SPEAKERS
Lillian Nave, Liz Norell
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 121 of the Think UDL podcast, reflection, curiosity and psychological safety with Liz Norell. Dr. Liz Norell is the Associate Director of Instructional Support at the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss. In this conversation, Liz and I discuss several important UDL ideas, including reflection, and how to incorporate that into our classes, and how beneficial it is for our own learning. We also discuss how to create psychological safety, even within a course that could have many hot button type issues, how to create choice and flexibility in your course, and what to do if there are too many choices for some students. We also discuss how students can essentially choose their own grade for a course based on their interests and efforts. Tune in for a very enlightening conversation with so many great ideas about how to infuse your course with UDL principles. And thank you for listening to this conversation on 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. Welcome. It is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast today, Liz, I’m really excited to welcome you to the think UDL podcast.
Liz Norell 02:42
Thanks, I’m really excited to be with you.
Lillian Nave 02:44
I’m so glad we had our chance encounter at the pod conference and got to talk shop about centers for teaching and learning. And so it just sparked a whole bunch of questions. So I’m going to start in with my very first which is what makes you a different kind of learner.
Liz Norell 03:03
I love this question. And when you sent that to me, I thought what a great way to start a conversation. Because I think when we are in an educator role, we often forget that we are still learning. And so what makes me a different kind of learner, I think is that I’m an omnivore about information. I want to know more about everything. And in graduate school. That was a liability from my perspective, professors perspective because I couldn’t stop chasing interesting research questions outside of where I was allegedly supposed to be specializing. But I think that is exactly what made me a great community college professor, because there I was a department of one. And so I had to kind of know a little bit about everything. So what makes me different, I think is just that willingness to be driven by my curiosities, regardless of what the world might say I should or shouldn’t be doing.
Lillian Nave 04:00
So I’m a jack of all trades, kind of personality. And I must say I identify with that. I’m always very curious. And sometimes I get people tell me, I asked a lot of questions. So a podcast is a great kind of job for me to have. And I found that that idea of a jack of all trades can also be called a knave, which of course is not the same spelling as my last name, the K NAVE, but I always thought, you know, (K)Naves get a bad rap, but I think it’s a good thing to be curious.
Liz Norell 04:38
A writer terrible. And honestly, you know, we start off life as innately curious people and school has this way of beating that out of us by forcing us to sit in rows and be quiet. And that’s not our natural state. So I like to think of people like you and me, Lillian, if people who’ve just rejected that training, and retained our natural curiosity about the world.
Lillian Nave 05:02
Absolutely, yes. And, and I love that. Now as grownups, we have so many more avenues that we can, you know, fill that curiosity, you know, like, I am just so happy that I can go down all these rabbit holes. And then like an hour later, it’s like whoa, I Where did the time just go up in researching this very tiny thing that I found. So, alright, I love that that we we definitely think alike in that way. And so it was just so great to connect with you because there’s actually quite a few things I really connect with you about. So I’m going to start with one of them about your November 2023, Inside Higher Ed piece and I’ll link that piece in our resources for today’s podcast episode. And you spoke of the benefits in that piece of being on an academic team at the University of Mississippi, who also all happened to be reflective writers. And reflective is a important adjective there about the writing part. So I wanted to ask, What benefits does this have for your team and your work at University of Minnesota, Mississippi?
Liz Norell 06:13
This was an aha moment for me. So I was at a writing retreat in October. And I was thinking about how this team that I work on right now it is the most healthy and professional and wonderful. It’s just such a great team. And what is it about this team that makes it so easy to be myself. And what I came up with is we are all engaging in the practice of reflective writing about our work about our pedagogical commitments about our teaching, and what we’re learning about. We all do this in a regular way. And I think that that promotes a kind of humility about our ideas. So we’re constantly reevaluating what we thought we knew is true. And is there some new evidence that suggests that maybe we need to refine that belief, that kind of humility creates psychological safety. And it means that if one of us says something that’s just completely outlandish, we can say, maybe not, like, let’s let’s let’s rethink about, say more about that, instead of just immediately going into a defensive posture. So I really love working for this team, working with this team, because I know that we are going to consider new evidence in an open minded way.
Lillian Nave 07:47
And that’s where I think the learning happens. You know, one of the main tenants that I talk to students about is that we aren’t learning unless we’re reflecting on our own learning. And that’s, of course, let’s pull in Universal Design for Learning here. That’s one of our engagement strategies and points is that we want our students to develop self reflection, and see where their learning is because so many times we can perpetuate the same mistakes. And it’s not until we’ve looked back and said, Hmm, that didn’t work well, or let me think about that again, and see how I can improve me. That to me is learning. It’s almost like a straight on equal sign is the reflection is where the learning happens, right?
Liz Norell 08:40
I completely agree. And let me just say, I know you’ve had Tom Tobin on the podcast recently. And he, he is a huge champion of this book called The instruction myth by Tom by John tag, which I just finished a couple of weeks ago. And in that book, because I think we have this idea that reflective writing can only happen in certain kinds of classes. But John tag tells the story that I just found so profound about learning support math class, I think at a community college, where they had the students, regardless of their writing level, whether they were college ready or not, the students who came to the college who were not quite college ready and math, took this learning support math class and a writing class with it. So they would do some math problems. And then they would write about what they have learned. And all of them performed better than a class that was just math. Because they were doing that really key piece of reflecting about what they had learned. Yeah.
Lillian Nave 09:46
It’s it is amazing. And I think back about, like my schooling, let’s say in high school, and before that, and I my perception of reflection was that was a waste, that if I wasn’t achieving and moving on to the next thing, then I was behind, I was not hitting my mark, I wasn’t improving, if I wasn’t just immediately moving forward, and kind of ticking off the boxes. And it was not until graduate school, sadly, you know, that I started to really understand that wisdom that really comes from the reflection and, and that has made me I think, a much better Professor instructor, you know, to include that for our students. Because I can tell you a lot less about what I learned during that time when I felt like I needed to jump through hoops and get to the next thing, and I was just hurriedly trying to get a high GPA, in essence. Yeah, and I can’t tell you a lot of the things that I, you know, was so proud that I learned. And it’s not until later when I take the time to reflect that, it really, that’s what sticks, right? That’s the permanence. That’s the life changing and transformational type of learning. So I just think you’re right on spot on with reflection, and I really appreciated how you put it in a work context, you know, just in your, like, personal growth and your work, not necessarily just in the classroom. So you just opened my eyes to another way, that reflection is so important. And I think why UDL is so applicable, not just in our classrooms, but everywhere.
Liz Norell 11:39
Something that I say a lot. And this kind of grew out of that reflection on what I was writing when I was working on my book manuscript is that what’s good for students is good for us. And I just find myself saying that to myself, multiple times a day, if we say that it’s good for our students, we should probably be doing it ourselves.
Lillian Nave 11:59
Yeah, exactly. And it for me, it was like, Wow, I’m finding that this is really good for me the reflect, and then I put it in for students, because yeah, I had thought that was just not, not the right thing to do. That wasn’t the way I’d done it. And I would be kind of cheating if I did it and took me a while to really see that I could, and I should add that as part of my classes. So okay, so let’s switch gears and talk about some of classes, as well, because you’ve taught in a number of different institutions. And I’ve noticed you let me look at some of your courses. And I really appreciate that, that you include something that’s very important to Universal Design for Learning. And that is choice and flexibility in the classes that you teach. So I wanted to know if you could give us a little outline, or tell us a little bit about how you structure classes, and what choices you give your students in the course each week, that sort of thing. Yes.
Liz Norell 13:07
So I am a political scientist by training and have spent most of my career teaching the introductory American Government course. I also just started this job at Ole Miss in July of last year. So I’ve been there about six months. And I’m not teaching political science. So I will be teaching our first year writing course in the spring, which I’m so excited about. So excited about. And I have a master’s in journalism. And I’ve taught that before. So it’s, it’s not a new prep for me. But I want to talk about this American Government course that I spent many years refining, primarily in a community college context, and particularly after March of 2020. But even before then, I understood that my students come into a class no matter what I’m teaching, but especially American government, with very, very varied perspectives about the value of the class, and whether or not they actually want to be there. So a very small minority, maybe like 20% of the students are just like raring to go, they think we’re going to spend every class period having big time knock down, drag out debates about what you know, who should get elected, or what the policy about topic x should be. And the other 80% are horrified by the notion that we might ever have a debate about something that they just see as corrupt and distasteful and no fun. And to give my students all the same assignment would be to disregard the fact that some of them are very into politics, and don’t need to be refreshed on the three branches of government, but many of them are actively avoiding information about government. And so I set up I tried to create a class where students could kind of choose the level of depth that they wanted to go in terms of what topics they were exploring. And if you are so tired of your family, talking about abortion and Thanksgiving, and you never want to encounter a piece of information about abortion, I don’t want you to feel like you have to, in order to take my class. And so what I ended up doing was building this ever evolving content library of podcasts, films, book chapters, articles, videos, lots of different some interactive resources, where students could just choose each week, what they wanted to learn more about. So that curiosity that we were talking about before, yeah, trying to cultivate a little bit of that, especially for the people who see government as completely irrelevant to them. And I would ask them to choose a couple of pieces from the content library every week, to explore. And that’s what they would do their assignments on, they would write a reflection after each one. And there were some basic content, you know, there were videos that I had made, especially during COVID, you know, that first semester, explaining like how a bill becomes a law, but I tried to keep those very short and point people to resources, but I really think that you have to get the students interested, before you can teach them something that they don’t really care to know. Yeah. And the content library was a way to get them interested in figuring out the structural pieces.
Lillian Nave 16:36
Yeah. And I noticed that you had kind of two things going on, every week to you had some structured parts, like you’re reading from this book, or you’re, you’re encountering this part. And then like everybody is, is working through the same thing. But then there’s also this kind of experience or exercise part, that curiosity library that they could go into. And one of the notions I’ve come familiar with this year is the idea that college is maybe three things you’re learning knowledge, but it’s also an experience. And you should get a credential when you’re done. So. And it’s not just the knowledge, like you could get knowledge through surfing the internet, right. And the students are learning skills through those exercises, whether they’re processing things they’re writing, they’re debating, they’re presenting, right, that’s the sort of experience that the classroom can provide. And then of course, there’s the, the the knowledge that that you want them to know. And at the end, they might get credit, a credential, you might get a diploma at the end of the four years, right, that’s a credential that employers want to see. And you had split it up so that you were really hitting on all of those those points that yes, they can feed their curiosity, but they can’t avoid, you know, other things. Am I getting that? Right? I
Liz Norell 18:07
think that’s true. I mean, ideally, yeah, although I, I’m less concerned about this is a controversial thing. I’m about to say, I’m less concerned that students can perfectly explain government and how it works. When they leave my class, I’m more concerned that they can find trustworthy sources to find that information later, when it becomes relevant to them. Yeah. And so I see the point of so much of my teaching, giving students a reason to care and the tools to be critical consumers of information later, because those are the skills that we all need. Yeah. Yeah.
Lillian Nave 18:44
And, and those skills are, I think, so important, and why we have this higher education. Yeah, if we can find out the branches of government, and we can find out, yeah, that all of that information in a multitude of ways, but it’s that I think, regular meeting with others, and working out these things together, hearing other people’s perspective, that’s really big, too. How do you deal with that? How do you analyze and put together this information? I was just so impressed with how you had lots of ways for students to process that and to kind of do it in in multiple ways. Yeah.
Liz Norell 19:25
So let me just say a couple of things. First of all, I think that that flexibility and choice is really important. But for some students, that is over whelming, because the content library at last check, I haven’t counted in a while, but it’s got over 300 things in it. And I’m asking you to choose 25 over the course of a semester. So how do you even begin? And so one of the things that I did was, say if you don’t know what to choose, here are three things do this, and, you know, provide as much structure as students will need to be successful, because not all students can look at Without much choice, and not just feel completely overwhelmed, like some people just need to be told do this. And I would regularly you know, I had deadlines, but no late penalties. And when I first contemplated that I wondered, like, is everybody going to do everything the last week of class? And the answer is no, they’re not. Because I’m going to remind them, and they’re going to see, like, you know, the dropbox in Brightspace says, this is due tonight, and they want to get rid of that alert. And if they can’t get rid of it, then they’re panicking. And so a lot of what I was trying to do is build that structure, and then give students the freedom to adjust it as their life dictated it. But you know, when we talk about choice and flexibility, we have to be really careful not to create a wild west free for all, because there are a lot of students who need that, including students like me, and it sounds like maybe students like you. Yeah. The other thing is that I have always loved grading. And by grading, I mean reading student work, and giving feedback. And so assessing, really, but you know, we talk about grading. And the reason is that I have always found that process to be fun, because I write assignments that I want to know students reactions to, and that’s going back to what we were talking about earlier, the reflective piece, having the core assignments of this class be reflections on what they learned from something from the Content Library meant that I was never reading 30 of the same assignments because they were choosing different things. But they were coming at it from different perspectives. And I loved reading them because I was learning something about how someone else sees this thing that I gave you to look at. And so I was learning. I was seeing the world through different eyes. Yeah,
Lillian Nave 21:45
it’s like being in conversation with your student. Exactly. Right. You’re not seeing 30 essays of how they analyze this policy. That’s boring. To me, to us. Yes. Yeah. And that’s quite a skill, I think to this skill is as an instructor creating assignments that you are interested in reading or giving feedback on right. And I really appreciate your preferred path. That’s what I’ve called it when people asked me they’re like, Oh, well, what if I give so many options? Students have this analysis paralysis? And yes, not everybody is like us who are super curious and want to do all this. Many students, especially when you said that 80% are horrified that they have to take this class, they kind of just want to know, what do I need to do, right. And so providing that preferred path is a great way for for students who are not trying to be the omnivore of all American government, but just want to say, Okay, I’m really out of my depth here, I will do what you think I should do. And that makes it so much easier for students. So yeah, there is I think, too much choice and too much flex flexibility that some of our students just do not want. So providing that path, I think is a really great thing to remember to remember if any of our listeners are thinking about adding lots and lots of choices, which is a good thing, maybe having that, you know what, if you don’t know what to do, I suggest these three things, and if not substitute out, whatever you need. So you just kind of talked about grading there, which is a lot of feedback, which I appreciate as a UDL person, because feedback is a very important part of Universal Design for Learning, providing constant feedback and timely feedback. But you in it, I should say not. But in addition to that, you have an interesting way of grading, where students can essentially kind of choose their grade in the course, maybe corresponding to their interest and their effort. Can you explain how that works? Yeah,
Liz Norell 23:57
so I do a kind of engraving or alternative assessment where students, I give them some expectations. And it’s essentially kind of like a specifications or a labor based grading, where I say, at the end of the semester, we’re going to count up how many of these pieces from the Content Library you’ve engaged with. And my expectation is that you will do 25. And then there’s also a semester project that we can talk about if you want or not, whatever. And this is all online, anybody can look at it. If you’ve done that, then you have met my expectations. And I would you know say that that is deserving of an A. But I also recognize that an A is supposed to represent that you have achieved the learning outcomes of the course you have achieved the goals. And that is something that happens inside your brain and I cannot see that. I can see some evidence of it. I can see some artifacts that suggest it, but I don’t know what’s happening in your brain. So I don’t want to would be so presumptuous as to say that, I can look at what you’ve produced and say, Yes, you deserve an A or a B, or A C. And so, you know, this is the kind of give them a map of like roughly 25, roughly 20, roughly 15. Plus the project would be an A, B, or C, but you can propose your grade. And you’re going to do that by reflecting on what you’ve done through a very structured process. And then giving me a justification for why you think this grade makes sense. And generally speaking, I accept that the only time that I’ve ever changed it is when a student says, As actually has happened many times, well, I know that you said you wanted me to do 25 of these activities, and I did 27. But I could have done them sooner. So I think I should get a B. And I won’t just change it to an A, but I’ll say, Okay, you met the requirements. So tell me why you think that that means you should get a lower grade. And it’s almost always women. And I think it’s just that, like, you know, the cultural messages that we receive. And so I have never lowered a grade that a student proposed. A couple of times, I felt like an older version of me would have. But if I’m going to be intellectually consistent and honest about what I say, then I have to respect what students say. And as I’ve said, so many times, I would rather make the error where somebody gets a higher grade than perhaps they’ve earned them the opposite.
Lillian Nave 26:33
Yeah. Yeah. And you bring up a very good point, which is, what are we assessing? are we assessing that they’ve learned something by November, or by December? Or by September or whatever it is, in the first two weeks? Did they learn that? Okay, you get 10 points. But what if you learned it in the third, two weeks? Does that mean you learned it too late? And now we’ve taken off five points, right? And and that has to do with what is our goal, like, it is part of the goal, I’m teaching you punctuality, because you need this for this particular thing? Okay, then there might be some parts that are about punctuality. But if that’s not the goal, then why are we assessing it or, you know, subtracting points or something like that you, you just have to be really clear with your goal, which is, of course, a universal design for learning, imperative, know what the goal is, and then make sure there are multiple pathways to that goal, because not everybody is like us. And not everybody learns the way we do, right?
Liz Norell 27:43
I want to say something pretty controversial. And I say this a lot. So your listeners may have heard me or see me say this, I don’t believe you should be able to fail a college class. For reasons that are not the goals of the class. Yes. So if turning in something on time, if failure to do that can mean that you fail the class, then punctuality should be a learning outcome of your course. Yes.
Lillian Nave 28:11
And it should be clearly stated from exactly the very beginning. Yeah. Right. And we have a hidden curriculum. So often. I mean, that’s, that’s the word that came to mind. At first is we don’t say these things. But we actually enforce it. Yes. Even if we haven’t said it. So we just really have to, I guess be reflective about how we design our courses. And and what matters to us. And because our students can’t read our minds, either. And we just have to be, I think, really clearly setting forth what’s so what’s important to us. And, you know, on thinking kind of widely about this, if you don’t want to be grading everything on the very last week, then yeah, you do put in, all right, half of the assignments need to be done by this midterm spot, right. And that is going to be, you know, that’s going to be an important part of how I assess you as half of it needs to be done here so that you aren’t doing 80% of the grading right and the last week, and that’s an appropriate thing, as well, again, that choice and flexibility, but it has to work for both the instructor and the student, right.
Liz Norell 29:33
Because I’m not assigning a grade, I’m merely reading and providing feedback. I tell students that the longer you wait to turn in your stuff, the less time I’m going to have to give you feedback. And so if you’re submitting all of your reflections in the last week, I’m probably not going to have much to say to you, and I’m sorry, but I just can’t deal with that. So, you know, I want this to be a conversation as you said between us throughout the semester of what you’re learning and I will I often recommend based on one reflection, what students explore next, like, it sounds like you might be interested in this, here’s something that you might not have spotted in the library. And so I like to have that conversation. But if they’re turning in things towards the end of the semester, then, you know, I will be happy to give them feedback. But it may be after the semester has ended. Yeah.
Lillian Nave 30:21
Yeah, it’s just being a good, pretty much a good conversational partner, it seems, between you and each student, which is fantastic to me. Yeah. So another part I’ve noticed, that we’ve already spoken about is this reflective writing. And so you’ve already said, there’s a lot of that for your students. And so I just wanted to know, if you could elaborate a little bit more about that role that reflective writing plays in your course,
Liz Norell 30:51
nearly everything my students do, is some kind of reflection. Now, that’s going to be different in the first year writing course, that I’m teaching in the spring, because they have to, you know, write particular kinds of pieces of writing. But, you know, I think you mentioned earlier that incorporating reflection in your own classes sometimes feels a little bit like cheating. And it has to be two, because the subject of reflective writing is me. And we don’t think of that as academic Yeah. Because academic writing is supposed to take me out of the equation. But I think that that makes it more accessible for students. And there are fewer conventions around like how to do that in an academic way. And so it can really lower the bar for first generation students or students who have historically not done well in college classes, for whatever reason, they don’t have to write perfect prose, they just need to tell me what they think. And I can learn from them and about them, in their vernacular, whatever that might be. I also just want to say on the theme of UDL, I’m fine with students writing it, but I’m also fine with them recording it or making a video. Because, you know, I just want to hear what they think. And I don’t care how they share that with me as long as I can access it, access it. And so, you know, that is probably 90% of what I ask students to do in my class is just look at a thing. Learn from it. Tell me what you thought. And the their impulse at first is almost always to summarize. And I say, No, no, I already read it. Like I know what it says, Yeah, I want to know what you think. I don’t know that. Yeah. And as the semester progresses, I get to know them more and more. But importantly, they get to know themselves. Because they haven’t thought about these things before. No one’s ever asked them like, what do you think about the shadow docket of the Supreme Court? And if they did, they would say, I don’t even know what that is like, what’s the Supreme Court? What’s the shadow docket? But now they have a thought they have an opinion about it? And that’s kind of exciting for them. Yeah.
Lillian Nave 32:59
It is. And when you’re talking about that, reflection, versus let’s say that academic writing, like we I think had, I had always think thought I should say that the academic writing was really just a lot of analyzing other texts. And then you try to put your, you know, spin on it, and you try to say something new about these things. And for so long, it was trying to be right, like was that the right opinion? Did I do it the right way. And I believe that there’s more of that bias to do things that way. Because what we’re college is for for so long, it was for a very small number of people. It was in essence, kind of a finishing school. And it produced more and more academics. And now, that is not what it seems the main purpose of college is it’s really to educate a much wider population, and to help students learn how to think about things, not just produce academic materials and become researchers and kind of perpetuate an academic world. And so have our assignments and have our designing of courses. Has that moved that pendulum enough to really serve what the university is supposed to be doing now? Anyway? I don’t know. I need to reflect on that, don’t I? I
Liz Norell 34:36
have a lot of thoughts about like, what universities are doing now what we should be doing. But I I want to believe that a college credential, you know there are lots of thoughts about what the value of that is, but I want to believe that at its core, it represents a facility with critical thinking yes. And critical thinking does not happen when you deliver con intent and ask people to regurgitate it back to you. There has to be some wrestling and the wrestling is facilitated so nicely with this practice of reflection. Yeah.
Lillian Nave 35:10
And going back to the idea of college and universities being a credential, and experience and knowledge. I think that credential is like you what you said that why does a job require a college degree? Doesn’t matter what it’s in there, just want to see you have a college degree. And you know, so it could be biology, it could be math, it could be British literature, right? It doesn’t matter. But what does that credential say? And I hope it says that this is somebody who can have a long, sustained thought, and can for four years or so, really immerse themselves in thinking in being reflective in creating judgments about things and analyzing, no matter what it is that they have kind of showed that they have that ability, and exactly I agree with you. It’s not just, here’s naming all the parts of the body and I can regurgitate things, and know these certain things. Because honestly, we can get that knowledge in our fingertips on our mobile phone a lot of times, but what do we do with that knowledge? So what are the skills we want to include in our classes? And how can we do it? I mean, that’s just fascinating to me. Yeah. So and this is what I see you doing as is what I am also trying to say is, when I looked at your courses, I was like, holy, this is so great. I really appreciate this, because you are setting forth those ways that students are actually building the skills that they need to face a really interesting world out there that has a lot of ill structured problems that do not have easy answers. And the answers are probably going to be different with who you are, what culture, you’re from your background, the place you live, and whatever different things are going to happen. Yeah. So one final thing I wanted to talk to you about when I was looking at some of your courses, and you have mentioned that your field is can be dicey, right? Political Science, people can have lots and lots of very strong opinions. And I was always taught not to talk about religion or politics. As I was growing up as the polite thing in there I went and majored in religion as an undergrad and then went into art history, and that’s more polite, I think. So. And we’ve already talked about something you mentioned, called psychological safety, and even your first answer. And so in your course about American government, in which some of your students might have very strong opinions, and maybe they want to come in for a fight, right? And then you’ve got 80%, that are just not interested in that. That’s not who they are. How do you keep a class, a political, but also very interesting and engaging? What creates that psychological safety to allow students to risk and possibly fail, and kind of dip their toe in something that can be full of just minds out there? In order for them to learn in your class? How do you do that?
Liz Norell 38:48
I don’t know that I that there’s a magic formula. And whatever we do, as teachers, it must be authentic to who we are. And so what I’m going to share with you here is very authentic to who I am, which is that I initially went into journalism as an undergrad, that was my first degree, because I have this ability to try to see multiple perspectives on an issue. And so that is the orientation that I bring to teaching political science, American government politics. As I said before, a small minority of my students are stealing themselves for a semester long debate on every hot button issue. But I don’t like debate, because in my mind, a debate is me. Landing, punishing blow to your argument, and then not listening to anything you say, while I prepare to land my next blow. There’s not a lot of learning that comes from a debate. And if you’ve ever watched a presidential debate, you know, there’s no learning happening there. I want to have a discussion, but a discussion requires listening. So the first thing that I ask students to read in my class, when I teach a government class and often In other classes, too, is a chapter from Brene Brown’s book, braving the wilderness, called people are hard to hate, close up, move in. And in that chapter, she talks about the power of the question, tell me more, I, one of the things that I asked students to do in my class in that American government class is to find someone they know, who disagrees with them on an issue that they care about, and interview them without sharing their own opinion, to try to understand someone else’s perspective. And that is the same kind of ethos that I bring to our classroom discussions. So I never tell my students what I think I actively obfuscate my own beliefs. And that’s because if I always tell them, like, I know, you want to know what I think, but the second I do half of you are gonna think that I’m brilliant, and half of you are gonna think that I’m a monster, and neither one of those will serve my learning goals here. So you need to not be worried about what my commitments are, because they don’t matter. Yeah. What I’m interested in is how your thinking will develop. And I think if there’s one message that I want people to understand about politics, it’s that it’s way more complicated than you think it is. Yeah. And so if we’re going to appreciate the nuance, we have to listen, and we have to listen deeply. And we have to seek out as much information as we can. And that’s the, you know, the curiosity driven content library. So to create psychological safety. I don’t really care what the contents of your beliefs are. I care about how deeply you’ve thought about them. Yeah. And so you can have a belief that I don’t agree with. But if you’ve got some evidence to back that up, and you’re open to exploring the nuance of your belief, then we’re fine. I don’t care.
Lillian Nave 41:53
Yeah. So this is not a course about what to think? No, it’s a course about how to think, right? Yeah. And that reflective part, I think is so important. I must say, I work. One of the first things I do in my classes with first year students is talk about King and kitchenwares reflective judgment model. And I’ll put that in our also I’ve written down some of the things you’ve said, this will all be in our resources for the episode. But that reflective judgment model talks about our different levels of how we approach something. And so there’s a pre reflective, which judgment pre reflective judgment is when you don’t even have to think about it, and you answer immediately. So that might be an a political hot button, where you may have heard your parents say something or your preferred television channel, or your preferred media. And it’s like, clearly, here’s the correct stance on the border wall or immigration, right. Clearly, this is the answer. And that’s pre reflective. And then the quasi reflective is the idea that you know, what, there’s probably multiple answers. There are multiple ways to answer this question. And we may not know exactly what that right answer is. And then finally, the reflected judgment is when you have recognized and and been curious and asked questions and tried to understand what those multiple answers are to whatever that hot button issue is. And then you can say, at least for yourself, here’s what I believe. And I’m hoping that our students, usually, and I’ve read about this, that students in 18, to 22 are round, that pre reflective and quasi reflective, like they kind of know some things because they’ve been taught by some authority. But they haven’t quite figured out what they believe or tested or challenge those beliefs, because they haven’t been given the time to reflect. Yeah, and so hopefully, by the end of the class, they’re able to then explain why they might believe this way and understand that there might be other folks who believe exactly the opposite. So maybe by the end of the class, they would give the exact same answer, right, but they have a much better, more nuanced, greater understanding of how to defend that position, how to think through it, rather than just that knee jerk reaction, right? So it wasn’t necessarily I’m here to change your mind. You know, I want you to change whatever that answer was. I just want you to be really solid in and be able to defend your convictions to actually have them to know how to create them and have them and share them in a civil I guess, way. Yes, yeah. Rather than shouting down or whatever else. So is there is there a place for activism, then sure,
Liz Norell 45:03
in the semester project that my students do the interview with someone who disagrees with them as part of that, the last thing is to engage in some way with government. And that could be writing a letter, it could be going to a city council meeting, it could be volunteering, I had a student in 2020, who made phone calls for one of the presidential candidates, and got yelled at a lot. And I felt really terrible. But she found it to be just like a thrilling experience. I’ve had students volunteer and actually get paid for being Election Day workers before, which is really cool for them. So anything from going to a meeting to volunteering for a campaign would count, I also try when I can, to have at least one class period, if we’re meeting in person, if it’s not online, to have someone who represents something locally come and talk about the job of like a local representative. Because as much as we pay attention to national politics, the local stuff is where you can really have an impact. So I try to get someone from like a city council or county commission like that to come and talk to students about how they got into that work, and what their day to day is like, and, you know, what, what kinds of things they do. So there is a role for that. But I think, for so many students, the the hurdle is just seeing why they should care.
Lillian Nave 46:31
Yeah. Yeah. And I really appreciate that. Any of the, if it is activism, or just involvement, it is completely led by the students, and there’s no right or wrong, doesn’t matter? No, we’re only looking at this candidate, or we’re only supporting this idea that it is totally student driven, and what they want to do, and they would have to believe and trust that you would accept that, that they haven’t chosen the right and using air quotes on the podcast, chosen the wrong candidate. Right, that they wouldn’t be punished, because they haven’t kind of figured out, well, what is what is doctrine or well think about this, and I’m going to try to make sure she knows that I’m on her side, you know, or else and that way, I’ll get a good grade, which, you know, is is not what we should be about. It’s not what you’re about. And hopefully, is not what our students feel.
Liz Norell 47:32
Yeah, in the fall of 2020, I had went for that project for that piece of the project, I had the student who made phone calls for Joe Biden and Tennessee, and another student who went to a Trump rally with Marsha Blackburn. And both were fine and great. And I’m glad that they did the both like, it wasn’t so much the content of what they were doing it was that they were doing something and both had a great experience. Yeah. Wonderful. Fantastic.
Lillian Nave 48:00
I mean, that, and they are better able to understand their place in government by what they did. So and you gave them the choice and the flexibility to choose any of those things that really worked for each one. Yeah, so it wasn’t, it wasn’t everybody needs to write a synopsis of the debate between these two candidates or something. Yeah,
Liz Norell 48:26
you want to talk about something that I don’t want to read? That is something I don’t want to read? Exactly,
Lillian Nave 48:31
exactly. I’m just, I really appreciate this conversation. Because I do think that it’s a difficult time in the United States when we talk about politics. And I know I have listeners all over the world, and that there are lots of hot button issues in different cultures, and that there are ways to be teaching these things that allow for student choice, and flexibility. And that allow for students to like, really risk and fail and reflect and learn and improve. And that’s what we want our expert learners. And part of being an expert learner is like you said in the very beginning, being able to have the skills to when they do find an issue they’re interested in, they can find the right sources and they can analyze it and, and do things with a good critical thinking perspective. So I just thank you, thank you so much for sharing all of this. And I know we talked a lot about your course and you’ve got a great liquid syllabus where you introduce yourself and introduce the students to the course kind of outside of the learning management system, which I think is great. Also another UDL type of thing that engages our students. So is it okay if we add these resources for folks to look at as well?
Liz Norell 50:07
Absolutely. And I should say the content library was kind of Evergreen. And then I would build a new liquid syllabus for each semester. But the content library, the reason I started doing this was not some like philosophical commitment to liquid syllabi, it was because my students would say, I don’t want to lose access to this list of content at the end of the semester. So I built a website for that. And once I did that, I’m like, Well, you should just make a website for this list here. Because they may want or need to access that later on, especially at a community college where they’re going to be transferring, somebody might need to see what they did. And so take it out of the LMS so that students have access to it forever. So it’s just a Google site. It’s not going anywhere. Yes, you can share it, please do.
Lillian Nave 50:48
That’s awesome. Oh, I’m so glad. So well. Thank you so much for this conversation. Liz. I really appreciate the chance to talk to you and thank you for being on the think UDL podcast. It
Liz Norell 50:57
was a pleasure, great conversation. Thank you.
Lillian Nave 51:04
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 of 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 texthelp.com/learnmore 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 and I am your host, Lillian Nave. Thank you for joining us on The think UDL podcast