Welcome to Episode 154 of the Think UDL podcast: Slow Pedagogy with Constanza Bartholomae. Constanza Bartholomae is the Interim Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island. I’ve worked with her several times and we share a passion for engaging environments and, of course, UDL. Today’s conversation centers on Slow Pedagogy and UDL. You’ll learn not only what Slow Pedagogy means, but also how to implement more thoughtful, deep-learner driven interventions into your teaching practice. And perhaps, give you another way to think about how your students learn and how to go about designing your courses. You’ll find the resources mentioned in this conversation in the resource section just before the transcript on ThinkUDL.org.
Resources
Contact Constanza Bartholomae on LinkedIn
Mays Imad – Learning Sanctuary
Ken Bain – What the Best College Students Do
Transcript
53:41
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Slow pedagogy, UDL, learner variability, deep learning, reflection, cognitive processing, inclusive teaching, flexible learning, intentionality, time management, student engagement, metacognitive learning, learning sanctuaries, human rhythms, pedagogical tool.
SPEAKERS
Lillian Nave, Constanza Batholomae
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 154 of the think UDL podcast, slow pedagogy with Constanza Bartholomae. Constanza Bartholomae is the Interim Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island. I’ve worked with her several times, and we share a passion for engaging environments, and of course, for UDL. And today’s conversation centers on slow pedagogy and its intersection with UDL, you’ll learn not only what slow pedagogy means, but also how to implement more thoughtful, deep, learner driven interventions into your teaching practice, and perhaps give you another way to think about how your students learn and how to go about designing your courses. You’ll find the resources mentioned in this conversation in the resource section just before the transcript on think udl.org our podcast website, as always. Thank you for listening to the think UDL podcast. Welcome to the podcast. Constanza, I’m really glad to have you today.
Constanza Batholomae 01:54
I’m so excited to be here and to be able to chat with you today. Lillian, thank you for having me.
Lillian Nave 01:59
It is so great. I’m excited to talk about slow pedagogy. And as you and I know, we get excited and talk really fast, so it’ll be some fast talking about slow pedagogy, which has been, I think, a lot in the at least in articles we’ve been sending back and forth to each other lately. So I’m really excited to talk to you about that. But first I wanted to ask, what makes you a different kind of learner?
Constanza Batholomae 02:25
Yeah, I love this question. Thank you so much for asking. I would respond and say My parents were both instructors. So growing up, I was very much aware of practices that could be more inclusive towards neurodivergent learners, which proved to be so helpful to me in life and in the classroom. And I would also say my parents met in the romance language department at Middlebury College, and they they both were studying Spanish, and that also opened my eyes to ways that we could be more inclusive of language learners, especially English language learners. My dad’s first language was not English, nor was his second English was his third language. So that’s something that yeah, wicked smart, as we say, yes we say, here in Massachusetts. So that was, of course, wicked smart. Wicked my mom too, for that matter, but yeah, that was something that was always front of mind and something that I thought about quite a lot, because it impacted me daily. You know, the grocery list that I would get as a 17 year old could be in three different languages, and you know, there might be some fun notes in Spanish or German on them so very much impacted my day to day interactions and made me think differently about how it might impact the experiences of others in the classroom.
Lillian Nave 03:52
Oh, my goodness that. Okay, that is a whole entirely different topic that we need to maybe record later, but definitely talk about, because language is so interesting to me about how it’s encased in our cultures, and how just thinking even about like gender, definite articles, like a bridge, might be in in one language masculine, in another language feminine, and it’s just an inanimate object, right? And that changes how we even think about it. So we might think of if a bridge is a masculine definite article, we might think it’s strong and powerful, but in another language, it’s feminine. We might think it’s elegant and beautiful. It’s so interesting to see how that culture really changes how we see the world in language. Yes, it’s so interesting.
Constanza Batholomae 04:40
And then you study a language like German, where you have nouns that could be feminine, masculine or neuter, and the rules are not straightforward, and so you have to learn the gender with each word. So yes, we could have an entire conversation about that, and I’m here for it.
Lillian Nave 04:57
Yeah, yes, okay, all right. Well, we’ll have to, like, slow it down and talk about what our topic is today, because we could talk about a bazillion of these things, and what we have been discussing off and on for the last couple of months that I thought would be really interesting for the think UDL listeners is this idea of slow pedagogy in today’s crazy, fast paced world. And so I’ll start off with the easy question, which is, what is slow pedagogy, Constanza?
Constanza Batholomae 05:31
yeah, that’s a great question. So slow pedagogy is designed to intentionally slow down learning, to resist overload and acceleration. It prioritizes depth, meaning, making and cognitive processing over speed and coverage, which in today’s world where everything just seems so fast paced, and we’re trying to figure out how to save time, just seems counterintuitive, but it asks us to use time as a pedagogical tool, and it emphasizes things like reflection, iteration, productive, struggle, so the good kind of learning, stress and valuing process alongside product, and sometimes focusing more on the process than on The end result itself.
Lillian Nave 06:19
Yeah, that is not what we usually do. It seems in higher ed or in DC, we’ve got a curriculum, we’ve got things we’ve got to get done. And this seems very counter cultural at the moment, yes,
Constanza Batholomae 06:34
I mean, in a society where if you don’t want to cook dinner, you can, you know, use Door Dash or Uber Eats or your app of preference to get dinner delivered to you, or you don’t have enough time to go to the store, well, you can get toothpaste delivered to your door. I didn’t mean for that to rhyme, but it did. You know also, if you don’t have the, you know, if you don’t have transportation or the means, you know, maybe you live in an area that doesn’t have bus access. There are things like Uber that you can call so we live in a very fast paced world where we actively look for things that might be able to save us inconvenience or might be able to save us time. So we’re in what I like to call a shortcut culture, right? How can I save time? And faculty are always saying, I just don’t have time. I have so much content to cover, and it’s stressful. And that’s the way that we’re framing, you know? I shouldn’t say that we’re all framing, but that’s the way that we’re framing learning. There just isn’t enough time, you know, and, and it’s a real struggle that folks come to me with all the time in the teaching center.
Lillian Nave 07:45
Yeah, that overstuffed curriculum seems to be a big problem, and especially if, if we’re talking to teachers starting out, if you know new instructors, there’s just the overwhelming idea. There’s so much to cover. How can you cover all of it? But this is, I think, a conversation that asks us, well, what is it that we should cover and and how this is kind of a follow up on the same question, how does UDL relate to your ideas on slow pedagogy?
Constanza Batholomae 08:21
Yeah, well, as we just talked about, we’re in a moment of intense cognitive overload for both students and faculty, and truly in a fast paced world. And so the tendency for folks to say, How can I automate this process is real and it’s there. And that occurs both on the learner side and on the faculty facing side, right. Students will ask, What do I need to do to complete this assignment, or what do I need to do to get the points? And faculty will say, How can I automate this process? You know, a lot of times this process is the process that takes a while, like grading. How can I make this quicker? And so when we use slow pedagogy in combination with UDL, we’re reframing time as a deliberate pedagogical tool. So rather than looking at the glass being half empty, we’re saying, How can I really utilize this tool to the point that you just made. How can I focus truly on what the learning goals are and make that be the focus, rather than covering content? And so UDL ensures that slowing down is structured, accessible and flexible, and it really works nicely if we frame it with slow pedagogy and just reframe how we’re thinking about time, right?
Lillian Nave 09:44
So what could an intervention, like a slow intervention, include that you’re talking about?
Constanza Batholomae 09:50
Yeah, so many examples, but it could be something like reducing weekly content by one reading and replacing a reading with a guided reflection. It could be. Building in a pause week, which is so counterintuitive to how we design courses. But I’m speaking, as you know, with you right now from New England, snow days happen, and so they do. Yeah, there was nothing more stressful. I mean, before pandemic learning and before the option to perhaps move classes online remotely. There was nothing more stressful than having your class schedule all mapped out and then losing one or two days to a snow day, and then figuring out how you could make up that content. Right? So I love building in a day to just pause or reflect into my syllabus before the semester starts, or if I’m noticing as we’re moving along through content that my students need some more time, giving them that time and slowing down rather than speeding up or keeping with the pace that perhaps I had planned for.
Lillian Nave 11:01
Yeah, and in those pausing times that reflection, that’s to me, that’s really when the learning happens. You know, we don’t learn from experience. We learn from reflection upon experience, one of my favorite sayings, and so it’s a time, you know, if you’ve said to me before, for that synthesis to happen rather than go, go, go, go, go, and then it. We just don’t have time to like, log it into that file cabinet in our brain to then retrieve it later. If we haven’t been able to, like, sit in it or really think about it, synthesize it, make it, hang it on to something we know, rather than, all right, you learn this All right. Next week, let’s go. Let’s move on. Let’s go on to the next thing without having the chance to really understand actually what we just learned.
Constanza Batholomae 11:53
Yes, and as you’re saying, it gives students time to process, but it also gives them time to actually realize that they’re learning, right? Because a lot of times we’re moving through content, we’re moving through content, and we’re not giving students enough time to connect to how their learning is growing. Jim Lang and in small teaching, talks a lot about how things like connection notebooks can help students really pause and reflect on what it is that they’re learning and how it connects to their lived experiences, or how it connects to other material that they’ve learned. And so again, we need to give students that time to say, oh, yeah, I’ve I’ve grown in my knowledge in this area, instead of just moving on to the next thing.
Lillian Nave 12:40
Okay, so I get a lot of people naysayers about Udo right, that say, Oh, you’re just making it easier, or you’re dumbing it down. And so a naysayer to slow pedagogy might say, this is anti efficiency. This is not this is not the way we do things. This is not how a college course should go. How do you respond to that that? Yeah, the all these great things we get from slowing down a bit. How do you but what would you say to someone who said that?
Constanza Batholomae 13:17
Yeah, I would say it’s not anti efficiency, but it’s anti acceleration. It’s intentionality over rush. It’s thinking about how can Bain has framed learning. It’s deep learning versus surface learning, right? So it’s having students take the time to process, to revisit, to think more deeply about what it is that they’re learning. It’s intentional. It’s deliberate on purpose and speed often undermines rigor through skimming or outsourcing thinking. So slowing down and giving students that time restores rigor by allowing reflection and meaning making that otherwise might not be possible. And I’d also like to say that, you know, in terms of UDL, you know this process supports UDL through flexible and accessible learning, but also gives teachers, professors, instructors time to see and reflect upon what their students might feel really strongly about what they might feel confident about in terms of their learning and what might need to be revisited. So it’s a it’s a check in too. And let’s be honest, I’ve never heard an instructor say I have too much time. You know, I’m flying through my content. I’m going to be done with this course by the middle of the semester. It allows us, too, to just take a pause and take a breath in an intentional and deliberate way. It doesn’t mean that we’re lazy or that our students are lazy for engaging in this way. It means that we’re being really thoughtful and. And I know that, you know, for me, I’m in teaching because I care about my students a lot, and I think that, and I hope, and I believe that, that most people in education are in it for the same reasons as I am, and this helps us all. You know, it’s a it’s an added benefit for the entire room.
Lillian Nave 15:19
Nice, yes, yes. So I can see that you’re asking faculty to really reframe those like multiple assignments, or maybe as the students, as as the students these day. Call it busy work, right? Instead of multiple rushed assignments or busy work, that’s like, you’re replacing it with, like, maybe one, like, multi step assignment, like, or a, well, scaffold one, is that what you’re saying?
Constanza Batholomae 15:50
Yeah, I’ll give you an example. So I teach Spanish just like my parents. It’s one of my subject areas. And so in beginning Spanish one, we’re learning how to conjugate verbs in the present tense. So this means, typically, in a language classroom, there’s a lot of practice with conjugating those verbs. And so we need practice. We do it. We do need practice, and we do need repetition. Because unfortunately, I think it’s not unfortunately, but unfortunately, you know, there isn’t a shortcut to learning languages, just like anything else, it takes time and patience and a lot of practice. And what I used to do is say, okay, here are a bunch of exercises that will have you practice conjugating these verbs. And in my early stages of teaching, I thought that this was a great strategy. This this has, and I hate to say this now, this has worked historically, right? I hate that, yeah, but I was like, You know what? This is how I learned other languages. And it worked so, so, and this is common practice. Let’s try it out. Now I do that, but instead of maybe assigning 30 exercises where students have to plug in those conjugations, it might be 10 or 15 with an explanation of how they got there,
Lillian Nave 17:13
so they’re reflecting on what they’re doing. Yeah, and
Constanza Batholomae 17:17
this used to infuriate my students who, well, all of them, let’s be honest, but, but also my students, who might have been native speakers of Spanish, because the immediate response that they gave me, oftentimes was, Well, the answer is this, because it just sounds right or Dutch. That’s just the answer right. Because there truly is, you know, typically, only one way to conjugate a verb, but I want to know why you chose that conjugation, and I’ll never forget, I had a student during the pandemic who hated this process, and vocally made it known that she hated this process, and I explained the pedagogical why over and over, But she said, I know the right answer, and that should be enough. Wouldn’t you know that after we returned back to in person, learning I was out to eat, and this student happened to be my server, and she came up to me, and she said, I owe you a thank you in an apology. And I said, really? I said, why? And she said, remember how much I hated giving you my Whys about verb conjugating? And I said, Yes, I do. I don’t think you loved that process. And she said, No, I hated it. You knew that. And she said, I was at a family dinner, and someone was asking, why we say something in a certain way in Spanish, and I was able to explain it. And in that moment, I realized that there was purpose and intentionality behind what you were doing. And I had one of those moments which I, you know, encourage us all to reflect upon, to jot down, to keep with us, maybe in a jar or a notebook, where I was like, This is why I teach script. And I was so happy. I was so happy, but it was a painful process for this student, every time I asked her to give me a why it was and
Lillian Nave 19:18
it was only possible because you slowed the thinking down. You slowed the the repetition, the the way you’ve always done it, and it actually brought about that deep learning. And I, too am a huge Ken Bain fan. In fact, this week, my students are reading what makes an expert, which is the chapter in his book. He has two books, what the best college students do, and What the Best College Teachers Do, and the what makes an expert. Chapter is about the surface learning that you mentioned, deep learning and strategic learning. And the strategic learning is when you want to get the grade, but you you just like memorize for the tests and and you want to have the highest GPA because you’re very strategic. Strategic about it. It’s the students that say, is this on the test? And then they’re like, Okay, I care now if it’s going to be on the test. But it’s the whole idea is that we forget all of that stuff we do to be a strategic or a surface learner, and the real learning is when we actually think we reflect. We have this slow, slower process to say, oh, do I really understand why? Because then you’ll get like an irregular verb, right? And then you would understand that, okay, well, that doesn’t work this way, because if you only just memorized it on the surface, this is what, how these verbs conjugate, but you didn’t know the why, then you would be completely out of luck not understand, you know, what happens in these weird case scenarios, right? But if you have a deep understanding, you’re actually learning, yes,
Constanza Batholomae 20:47
and we think you know as instructors, sometimes that slowing down is inefficient, but it’s efficient. And our students, again, are often asking, What do I need to do to get the points right? What do I need to do so that my instructor is pleased with this assignment? What do I need to do to move forward rather than slowing down to think about that metacognitive learning that is so so important for our students’ growth, because ultimately, when our students shortcut learning they’re practicing, you know, potentially harmful skills that can hurt them professionally later, right? So a lot of this also has to do with professionalism in the workplace, because if we don’t do things like quality control or reviews of emails before we send them out, things of that nature that can potentially be really damaging, or it can lead to rework, or it can cause us to have, you know, issues later on. So we’re not only helping students with the learning, but we’re helping them develop these skills so that once they leave our academic settings too, they carry those skills with them?
Lillian Nave 22:01
Yeah, absolutely. And there is a lot of overlap with UDL. And so I wanted to know, where do you see slow pedagogy and UDL intersecting most powerfully,
Constanza Batholomae 22:16
I guess. Yeah, I think that’s a great question. I think they both have a shared commitment to learner agency and to intentionality. So again, this is intentional. We’re not slowing down without justification or reason. Also, UDL loves to reduce unnecessary barriers, and we’re here for it, right? So let’s, let’s combine these two techniques to do just that slow pedagogy questions and reframes pace and volume. Again, we look at time as something that we’re not running out of, but as something that is a resource that we can intentionally use, that we can intentionally reframe, and that we could even if it made sense in the context of a course or a class period, that we can co design with students to say, how can we best utilize this time that we have in today’s class together? UDL provides multiple paths, formats and options for doing this. Again, co creating time for a class session is just one of many. But again, these combinations of these two or this combination of these two techniques, supports inclusive and sustainable courses and gives us all a little bit of breathing room as well, so that the hope is that together, we feel a little bit calmer or tranquil as we’re engaging in this process,
Lillian Nave 23:43
that’s great, and I definitely see the overlap between the two, especially when we think about that reflection piece in UDL. If we don’t intentionally put in some time to pause, some time to reflect, like you said before then all of the, all of the other things we do, the multiple means of representation, the all the choices and assignments, I don’t think if we don’t give students time and give ourselves time to then create the big picture, or say, you know, here’s how unit one and unit Two actually, you know, move together, or they, they reinforce each other. And instead of just going full barrel unit one, and then we get through it, and then we’re going to go full barrel unit two, but if we don’t take the time to connect them, then we’re not getting that. I guess, going back to the deep learning, we’re just not getting into that deep learning,
Constanza Batholomae 24:38
yeah, and so go off of that. This shows up a lot in my work with faculty, and so I love a good set of tips for how I can also apply this to my time as well. Yes, and so I’ll often have faculty say to me, not because they are trying to shortcut their work, but rather they’re trying to maximize their time. Time. How can I automate grading, or how can I automate designing this assignment? And I recognize that there are some instructors out there that are teaching lecture type classes that have 200 plus students, I recognize that some suggestions that I might give may not apply to these contexts every single time because of the overwhelming amount of grading that an instructor might have to do. So again, UDL provides choices, right? But at the campus where I work at our class sizes are not that big. They are big, but not 200 or 300 student size big, and so I talk with with faculty about again, perhaps rethinking how many homework assignments that they are providing, and instead of looking for ways that our learning management system might automatically grade An assignment for them, choosing to grade that particular assignment themselves, or choosing to review, if they have a class of 35 students, 15 of of those assignments, and then talk about what they’re noticing with students, because that’s also how we get to know our students. So if we automate the grading process, or I had a faculty member ask me, How do I make it so that I can keep track of participation more effectively? And I thought about that one, and I said, Well, if you automate that process, which may or may not be what you’re asking me, then how are you getting to know your students? Right? So I really sat with that question for a while. It allows us to connect with students. It allows us to really understand what it is that they do and don’t understand in terms of what we’re trying to cover. And so using the fastest way or the automated way may not, she’s
Lillian Nave 26:55
using air quotes, by the way, when you’re saying fastest and automated that only I can see. So, yes, you’re saying maybe this isn’t the best thing, the fastest in air quotes and automated Go on. Go on.
Constanza Batholomae 27:09
Thank you for that. Lillian, no, I appreciate that. This is all you know rooted in in folks being human and being tired and not because they have a lack of care or curiosity, but truly just trying to get through the day. And so I look at this, not again, as trying to shortcut work, because our instructors complete a lot of work day to day, semester to semester, but again, it allows instructors, this time to pause and reflect, and on this note, too, I ran a session last semester called optimizing your calendar, and I talked to instructors, and I said, How many of you block off time on your calendars purely for grading? And in that room, no one had and I said I didn’t do that either when I first started teaching, I blocked my calendar for when I was supposed to be in class, but I didn’t or in my office hours or my student hours. I didn’t block off time for grading on a consistent basis. I didn’t block off time for reflection or for, you know, looking at my notes of what might have worked and what didn’t, and then giving myself that grace to to think about how I might reframe certain assignments based on that feedback. No, I just found the time wherever I could, and that was stressful too, right? So we can think about, how do you apply slow pedagogy and UDL to how you’re approaching teaching and learning and how you’re approaching your time too.
Lillian Nave 28:43
Yeah, when you said earlier, this is a little bit off script here. I mean, you just made me think about using time as a pedagogical tool. And one of the things that you’ve mentioned to me before is is like an intervention, a slow for slow a slow pedagogy faculty intervention would be something like replacing a high stakes final with something you’ve mentioned, the staged checkpoints and feedback, and when you framed it like using time as a pedagogical, pedagogical tool, it makes me think about how time is used in Each of those things, there’s a high stakes final and then a staged checkpoints and feedback. And with the high stay with me here. I’m still trying to work this out in my head. The high stakes final is it gives the students, it seems like it makes the students then responsible for how they’re going to manage their time. I get it, but it’s it seems so rushed, and it’s a high stakes, like I’ve got to study, study, study, study, and then I’ve got this two hours to prove everything that I know. And so time seems to be working against the learning in that case. But if we flip it to staged. Checkpoints with feedback, then time is actually working with the learning process, meaning you have all of this time to offer feedback. The student can then reflect on what they did. Change it, move forward, give another chance for feedback, and therefore time becomes the good thing, like, Oh, thank goodness we have all this time in order to, like, get this right, whatever it is the learning goal in that versus the high stakes final, which is, you only have a little bit of time at the end of the semester to get everything together in your brain, and then you have a short timed, like never enough time to write down everything you know, or my fingers hurt you know from it used to be in the blue books and all that. For art history, it was a lot of essay writing, and time is working against you. And honestly, that’s an aha moment for me that you just helped me to see. So if people are thinking that you’re you’re watering down what you’re doing by taking away that high stakes final like this is what we do. This is how we tell if students know their stuff. And then we start thinking about time as that pedagogical tool. Then it flips the script for me and saying, oh, no, no, no, we need to use time in a way that actually supports the learning. So they have the time to reflect, they have the time to learn, they have the time to reframe, they have the time to make it better. Is, I guess, is that how you’re presenting it?
Constanza Batholomae 31:36
Yes, yes. And I was wondering whether I should bring this up or not, but let’s do it. Anyone heard of AI? Okay, we’re talking about it. So a lot of folks have been asking me, you know, I’m concerned because my students are perhaps engaging in passive learning, where they are outsourcing or offloading their learning, especially in those beginner learning experiences, potentially to AI, what can I do to have them deeply learn, like Ken Bain has said, and so one thing that I find to be really, really helpful in order to engage in that process is to scaffold these are things that we have been aware of in higher education, but we really need to be intentional about how we help our students to chunk their time with assignment. So to your point, about a high stakes final, what if we had check in points where students submitted small pieces that then led up to instead of a high stakes final, a different form of representation of their work. I had an instructor of management who worked together with me, and instead of giving the same high stakes final that she had been giving over and over and over again, we talked about using a concept map instead and saying, all right, if this is the topic or the question that you want to ask, students do it. They can then take their time to connect different ideas or concepts to that original question. And then you can see their creative process at hand, right? And in, you know, in hand, I should say. And so that was a really cool way to reframe the assignment. And of course, then the question is, how do I evaluate it? And that’s a great conversation that folks at your teaching center would love to have with you, but that’s another way for you to think about how you help students to change their perception of time, to reframe time for a high stakes assignment. And the same can be said for us if I know, and this is where I admit to my own guilt here, if I know that I have a deadline that is two months away in my mind, I say, oh, it’s two months away. I have plenty of
Lillian Nave 34:00
time start on it at all.
Constanza Batholomae 34:03
Right, no, it’s two months away. I’ve got time, and then suddenly it’s two weeks away. And much like my students, I then panic because I say, Wow, I have this big task to complete, and now I only have two weeks. And oh, life happens, and maybe that week suddenly, hopefully not, you know, I get a cold, or I be, you know, the flu, or something, something, and then it becomes one week, and then I’m really, really anxious and feeling that pressure, whereas if I tell myself, and this is one of my strategies for faculty, again, I’m going to spend one hour on Friday, and In my calendar, I’m going to write that the introduction for that deadline is what I’m going to focus on. I don’t just block off prep time, because then prep time becomes whatever consanza needs it to be, and then I put in, you know, some meetings with other faculty, because that’s my jam. In terms of consults, I love them. I. I know what I do. I know I know what my habits are in terms of how I think about time, and so I intentionally block off time and say, here’s what I’m going to accomplish with that time, much like learning objectives, and then saying to students, here’s your checklist. By the end of today’s class, you will and list the things that we’re going to do and list the questions that you know we want our students to be able to answer so that they know. Okay, if I’m still not sure about this time for me to check in, here we go, yeah.
Lillian Nave 35:34
Oh, I love it. So there’s, I love that we’re getting into some really concrete examples, too. Of what course activities can be that blend slow pedagogy with UDL. I think that the switching from a high stakes final was one example to those the time. You know, giving feedback is a really great way for the deep learning. But can you give some some more examples? I know you also gave the concept map instead of timed quizzes. That was another great example. But what are some other examples that might blend slow pedagogy with UDL?
Constanza Batholomae 36:16
Yeah, instead of assigning long text to our students, being really intentional and using short excerpts is one way to do this. You can provide structured prompts for deep analysis. So really guide the course in the direction that you think is most helpful to your learners, and spend extra time on a couple of questions, rather than perhaps giving them a sheet of 20 questions to answer. You can allow responses in multiple modalities. So maybe I’m thinking about our students, who are athletes. Maybe it might be easier for them to respond in an audio recording because they’re in a hotel room or they’re, you know, returning from practice, then it might be for them to sit down with their laptop. You can also revisit an example multiple times over the course of a semester. Maybe this example is a case study, or maybe it is a recurring theme in the course. Those are some examples of ways that you can implement this in the classroom.
Lillian Nave 37:20
Yeah. And you know, I would say about 20 years ago, if you had said that, revisit one a case study, multiple times in the semester, I would think, Oh, that’s I would not have seen the value in it. I don’t know what I would have said, but it probably would have been dumb that came out of my mouth. But now never like, oh, we already did that. We’re going to move on. And I did. I was such in a different headspace, because I didn’t really understand how people learn and how that deep learning works. But now that I feel like I’m on the other side of that threshold concept about deep learning, the idea of visiting a case study, I see it as such a rich experience, because the next time you look at that like, maybe, let’s say, in the first month of the course, you’re looking at a case study, and maybe, if we’re thinking about, I’m just going to pick one like social work, right? So you might see the case study, and you might have an idea about what you might do in that particular case study, how you might help the client, how you what, what ideas you might apply that you’ve learned to it. And then you go two months later, in the course or six weeks later, and you’ve learned about multiple more theories. You’ve learned about family dynamics, you’ve you’ve also heard many, many more examples of something that might be similar. And then you go back to that case study, and you think, Oh, I never would have thought of this. I never would have seen this other result that could happen if we did this right. And then if you go back to that same case study later on, after you’ve learned even more about what to do in a situation, or learn more theories about it, or you know what sort of frameworks you could apply going back, is that way that we can learn about our own learning and see how much we’ve grown. And I never would have thought that was an appropriate thing to do, like I was repeating myself, and you really couldn’t get anything I’ve already done that problem. But when time then becomes, like, the big player really in our learning, then it really can be helpful, and it’s just a new way of thinking about it that I didn’t have a long time ago. So I I really appreciate how you’re like, parsing all of these ways for us to think about it. And so let me ask you another thing about time. We just talked like two examples about time being a really good thing that allows us to go into deeper thinking. But how Tell Me More ways time can be helpful. Let’s, let’s take this. Even a little further as a design tool, I guess so.
Constanza Batholomae 40:04
To go off of what you’ve just said in our classes, if we imagine our classes like being video games or movies, we’ve already played the video game, we’ve already watched the movie. Right To your point, if I think about artwork, one of your fields, you’ve looked at this painting, okay, like we’ve looked at this piece of artwork, our students haven’t. So I think about this a lot in film analysis, when we watch a movie for the first time, there are a lot of things that we don’t know, because we haven’t gotten to the end. And then once we get to the end and we rewatch that movie, we might see some foreshadowing that we thought was just an unnecessary, you know theme. We might be able to more deeply analyze our feelings around why we have a strong disliking for a certain character, or maybe we realize at the end of that movie that the character is actually the hero, and so we look back, right? So for all these different reasons, it’s really great to say to students, hey, look at how you viewed this assignment, this case study, this whatever it might be at the beginning of the semester or at this point in the semester, and now to your point, with additional knowledge and theories and skills, what’s changed? I think that’s great. Let’s revisit our work so it it does a lot of things for us. It shapes our cognitive load, our attention and emotional bandwidth. Also to revisiting material is great because students can say, okay, yes, maybe I’m already familiar with this, but if we explain the why behind it, and we explain to them, okay, you have a different lens and a different framework that you’re working with now to view this material that can be really, really helpful. It also allows for folks to reflect, but also for folks who may not have spoken up the first time to participate in class and say, you know, when we were talking about this piece back at the beginning of the semester, I didn’t say this, but here’s a thought that I had. So you’re giving space for learners who might not be, you know, like myself, one of the first to raise their hands, because they really enjoy talking and participating out loud in class, right? And so it helps make the assignments clearer, the why clearer, which our students today are so pragmatic they want to know the why. They’re really curious about why this matters to them, why they should care, how it’s applicable. And so that helps with that process, too. And you learn something along the way a lot of the times, because your students will provide these really insightful pieces of feedback on whatever it is you’re learning about. And oftentimes I find myself saying, Wow, I never thought about it like that before. And so you learn too, and it’s a great thing.
Lillian Nave 42:51
Yeah, it is time. I think if we just flip that, that time is now our our buddy, our, you know, our assistant in learning, rather than the enemy. I think it really changes how we can design, you know, our classes. So anytime that we have, I’m saying time a lot now, but anytime that we have that fixed deadline, or I know you’ve mentioned something like having a 48 hour submission window, instead of just the fixed deadline, it’s saying we don’t want to rush the thinking of our students, but we want to engage them, or give give them enough time to, like, think through something and even scaffold it right so they’re having multiple small deadlines to be thinking about it, rather than we know, just like we talked about, we procrastinate, push it off.
Constanza Batholomae 43:45
Yes, and I love that you brought up the 48 hour window, because a big complaint I hear from students in general about learning when they have fixed deadlines is, well, life happens, and if life happens to my instructor, they have the authority and the agency and the ability to make adjustments that work for them. I wish I had that same level of grace, right and so for all intentions that student might really, really intend to get that assignment done, and something happens I’ll never forget in the fourth grade, I left an assignment in my locker, and the instructor told me in front of the whole class. And of course, I’m still thinking about it. Of course, you can’t go get that assignment. It was fun. It was in my locker. If I had just had the grace of 30 seconds to go get it, I would have been able to hand it in, right? And so I think about that a lot. You know, our students, whether they are and I’m going to use air quotes traditionally age or air quotes non traditionally aged students, have a lot going on. If they’re at a residential campus, they’re adjusting to being away from home, doing. No laundry, potentially for the first time, right? All these different things that they’re adapting to, not to mention making new friends, getting to know their instructors. And if they are commuters, it’s getting adjusted to that new class schedule, figuring out if they’re parents, because I’ve had plenty of students who might work the night shift to be responsible for multiple children, making sure that their children arrive safely to school, making sure that they arrive safely to school, right? Because my night shift students, my goodness, I don’t know how they did it. I’m always in awe of them, but you keep me awake all night, and I will not be able to be the best student you’ve ever seen in class, but they still showed up, right? And so they’re all these invisible struggles that our students or challenges that their students might be going through. So just giving them a little extra time and grace. You know, life happens, and it might be too that you have some tokens that students can use for an extension. It might be that there’s always a 48 hour window, right? But, but just letting them know that it’s not a one shot opportunity that they have, I think is so helpful. Yeah.
Lillian Nave 46:13
So I love this idea of the tokens or a 48 hour submission window. And so those are some kind of easy interventions that put time on our on the side of learning. I should say, not on our side or their side, but on the side of learning. And so let’s say there’s somebody listening, a faculty member that’s listening to this episode, and they’re thinking, Okay, I am interested in maybe some slow pedagogy. What advice would you give a faculty member who might feel overwhelmed, who is like, I’ve got a whole bunch of stuff that I need to do, but they feel overwhelmed and they want to start small in this low pedagogy kind of interventions. What are some things they could do?
Constanza Batholomae 46:59
So I talked to them about the UDL plus one approach, and I’d say, think big, right? But act small. So what’s one thing that you can do to reclaim your time, or to reclaim the time of your students? One thing, right? It might be pausing at the end of your upcoming class and giving five minutes of reflection. What’s one thing you can do? And it could be something that you implement right away, like that, or it could be something more long term, what’s one thing that I might be able to start doing in three weeks? What’s one thing that I could start doing as I am engaging with my students this semester, getting to know them and understanding what they might need. Maybe I combine two smaller assignments into one assignment that with more questions that engage that deep thinking, rather than surface level thinking. So those are some small steps that can create some breathing room for you as an instructor, but also for your students, too awesome.
Lillian Nave 48:05
So if we’ve got some folks who are interested in some small interventions, what’s the mind shift you are saying we should have then? So not just little things, but what’s it going to be? What is if there’s one mindset shift you wish higher ed would embrace. What is that?
Constanza Batholomae 48:25
Yeah, I think we need to move from how do we get through this faster, or how do I get through this content, to what pace actually supports learning, right? Because covering 12 chapters on paper might make you feel good, although I think you might be rushing to do that, but if your students are struggling with understanding chapters two and three, and you move ahead anyways, are we really supporting learning? And I would, I would argue that we are not that we need to slow it down and that that is far more beneficial than rushing through material just to say that we got through the content.
Lillian Nave 49:06
Yeah, agree, and in each in all of this conversation, we’re really prioritizing people, and we’re prioritizing the learning rather than the curriculum or what we have to get through, because just because you’ve covered it doesn’t mean they learned it. I correct? Yeah, I had to learn
Constanza Batholomae 49:24
a long time ago. Oh, same I think, I think we’ve all been there, right? And that’s, it’s unfortunate. But again, it’s shortcut culture, and it’s an inevitable, inevitable response to overload, right? So I understand why we do this, just like I understand that if I see a deadline two months away, I’m not going to necessarily act on it today, unless I intentionally say to myself, here’s one small piece of this that you can work through today. So we just need to prioritize learning over speed. You know, if there’s any mantra. That you enter 2026, with learning over speed. That’s it.
Lillian Nave 50:06
I love it. I love it. So, I mean, that is a huge takeaway learning over speed is there? Is there something that you you hope listeners of this podcast might take away about slowing down and slow pedagogy in general. Yeah.
Constanza Batholomae 50:22
I mean, just remember that we can use slow pedagogy in combination with UDL to design for human rhythms, to not design for content, but human rhythms. This is a pathway to deeper learning. It’s not a barrier. This strategy restores attention depth and reflection, but also learning thrives when designed around human needs. And so if we’re revitalizing our classrooms, if we’re thinking about our classrooms like maize Ahmad does, which I love, as learning sanctuaries, how do we make those learning sanctuaries as supportive and as inclusive as we can, let’s reclaim our spaces we might not get to choose the physical classroom spaces that we’re provided with, and that’s a whole other conversation. Yes, it is, but we can reclaim our time. That’s one of those pedagogical tools that we have control over. We can reframe our mindset as to how we view time, and I think that’s a beautiful thing. So if there’s one takeaway, I would say again, just rethink your approach to time and how you’re demonstrating that approach to students, and rethink prioritizing learning over completing content.
Lillian Nave 51:42
Oh my goodness, fantastic. This is huge. I can’t thank you enough for actually, all of the time you spent thinking about this in preparation for our conversation today, but just in reframing, you really changed the way I do think about time as a really positive thing that we need to work into our learning and just the whole rhythm of what we’re doing. So thank you. Thank you so much, Constanza for talking with me about slow pedagogy and UDL today.
Constanza Batholomae 52:17
Thank you so much. No pun intended, but I’ve had a great time talking with you about time today.
Lillian Nave 52:22
It has been a great time together. Thanks. 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, think u, d, l.org, the music in each episode is created by the Odyssey quartet. Oddyssey 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 Appalachian, 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.