Designing for Neurodivergent Learners to Thrive with Megan Kohler
In this episode, Megan Kohler discusses the complexities of neurodiversity, debunks common misconceptions, and introduces a research-grounded model to support neurodiverse learners in education. We explore practical strategies, the role of AI, and how to foster inclusive learning environments.
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Transcript
Luke: Megan, welcome to the podcast!
Megan: Hi! Thank you so much for having me.
Luke: Absolutely, it's my pleasure. We've already been chatting a bit before the show, and I could tell this is going to be an awesome episode. So I'd love to just dive on in. Megan, would you mind introducing yourself? Tell us a bit more about who you are and what it is that you do.
Megan: Sure. My name is Megan Kohler. I'm a learning designer at Penn State University, but I also own my own consulting firm on the side. What I focus on with the consulting firm is how we can better enhance our teaching and learning practices with a very specific purpose in mind, and that is to support our neurodiverse learners.
Luke: Absolutely — and that is the topic of today's episode: it's all around neurodiversity. Where I wanted to start from is that when I hear about neurodiversity, whether from Google, AI, LinkedIn, or anything else, there's a lot of misinformation online around exactly what it is and what it is not. So just to make sure we're starting off on the right foot, would you mind giving us a clear definition of what it means to be neurodivergent?
Megan: That's a great question — and it's also kind of a trick question.
Luke: No! Not trying to trick you, I promise.
Megan: The reason it gets tricky is that neurodiversity is something that is incredibly personal to a lot of people, and there are a lot of people who fall into a variety of different groups. When it comes to neurodiversity, there are people who have very specific perspectives who believe that neurodiversity in and of itself is a construct that is rooted in white supremacy. Then we have people at the other end who think that neurodiversity is something where we need to be relying on the medical models, because that's what works best for them. And there's a wide variety of perspectives in between. There are a couple of things in there that I hope we'll talk about later on in the podcast — I've made some notes in the back of my mind to make sure we get to those.
But my definition of neurodiversity has to do more with the idea of a person who has some form of cognitive difference, usually the result of some type of neurocognitive condition. And this is where it gets a little sticky, because when we say "neurocognitive condition," a lot of people tend to think of autism or ADHD — and that's kind of where the conversation ends for them. But the reality is, it's so much broader than that. We have things like Tourette syndrome, fetal alcohol syndrome, PTSD, age-related cognitive decline, and even things such as prolonged grief disorder. Interestingly enough, prolonged grief disorder was not actually considered a neurodiverse condition until after COVID.
Luke: Interesting — I have never heard of that being categorized as such. That's the first I'm learning of it.
Megan: And that's the really interesting thing: our understanding of neurodiversity is very much in flux right now. There are even people who don't want to use the word "autism" anymore — they prefer ASD. So even the language is still in flux. That's why, when you say "give us a clear definition," I really can't — because there's so much that's changing right now. But we'll use those as our two pin points to engage in this conversation, if that works.
Luke: Sure. Well, you also just answered for me why I found such a variety of information online. For some of the things you read about, you think, "I don't know if I would classify it as this — is this actually helpful for someone?" And from what you just described, with so many different pockets and areas, I can see how it would be confusing to try to lump everything into one category, when really we're talking about a number of different folks — the individual and their experience. Trying to put a neat bow on something doesn't seem to work for this.
Megan: Right. And the whole lived experience piece is something that needs to be part of the conversation. But at the same time, we also need to recognize that there are some boundaries that should be put into place. So — speaking of lived experience — I just recently had an example of this. A colleague of mine and I were trying to publish a paper on the challenges that neurodiverse learners encounter in higher education, and you would not believe the feedback that we've received from people on the review committees. Surprisingly, a lot of their perspectives are grounded in their own personal lived experience rather than the research. They're leaving notes for us, and I'm thinking, "Okay, but how can you use some research to validate this perspective?" And because we're talking about lived experience *in the paper*, it's actually kind of ironic to some degree.
Luke: Very meta, yeah.
Megan: There was one person who read the paper, gave us feedback, and said, "Well, this was not my experience, and you can't be perpetuating these myths." And I'm like, wait a second — these are not myths. These are legitimate statements from students who participated in interviews. We're not making any of this up. But the lived experience is bringing a very interesting perspective into the conversation. That was actually one of the things I was hoping to talk with you about today. Have you looked at any Reddit forums?
Luke: I do my best to stay off of Reddit, so no, I have not. What are you talking about, though?
Megan: So there are a number of posts on Reddit — one that I read recently was a person saying, "I'm so disappointed in the people in my neurodiverse community, because they're getting really aggressive and making statements that are not accurate." And that's where we're starting to see a lot of *lateral violence* coming into the conversation. I think that's something that is very dangerous, and we need to be aware of it.
Luke: So fighting amongst fellow community members, basically. We always want to be on the same side of things, especially when it comes to education and learning and development. But naturally, within our educational sphere, you'll have people with very different points of view who butt heads, and at the end of the day you're like, "We're actually doing way more harm than good." So they were saying that what they were currently experiencing was not being accepted by other parties, or denied, something along those lines?
Megan: Exactly. Lateral violence is another term for intercommunity discrimination. Any time you have any type of discrimination, there's always that tension that comes about as a result of people disagreeing about things and, quite frankly, treating people very poorly as a result of those differing perspectives. Within the community, we have all of these different pockets, like we were just talking about, and it's a matter of trying to reconcile all of those different perspectives. People are very passionate, and they're very tied to their definitions and their perspectives about neurodiversity. So it's a really interesting dynamic to be working in this space right now, because there's so much opportunity to bring clarity and, hopefully, a voice of reason and balance. Because we *need* all of these different perspectives in order to find true meaning — we need the medical model, we need the social models, we need the lived experience. All of it has to be part of the conversation, but we need to find the right balance. Otherwise, we're never going to get anywhere. We're never going to make any progress.
Luke: I feel like what you just described is what I've also been seeing on LinkedIn with UDL. Some people are champions of UDL — "this is fantastic, we need to do this more" — and then you see other people who are basically saying, "While we understand the principles of UDL, here is why it's wrong and how people are actually implementing it incorrectly and therefore making things worse." So you have the UDL community fighting amongst themselves. I've seen a lot of that recently online — very passionate educators who still deeply care, clearly, at the core of this framework, but they're constantly going at it and debating. Nothing violent, but definitely debating in that social-academic sense. I keep seeing that more and more, which is really interesting.
Megan: Yeah, I agree.
Luke: Which also ties into everything we're talking about — situations where there's good intention in mind, and then unfortunately things go awry. Something you mentioned before coming on the show is that condition-specific approaches can actually cause harm by reinforcing stereotypes. Can you give us an example of how a well-intentioned workshop ends up making things worse?
Megan: Yes. This actually ties into my inspiration for creating the model that I want to share with you today. I attended a conference presentation where two women were talking about neurodiversity, and they started out pretty solid — they were sharing information about their students, what they were seeing, and the trends. That information was great. But then they pulled up a Padlet and said, "Okay, based on what we described, tell us all of the different strategies you can think of for how we could support neurodiverse learners." And it just became this free-for-all of things that *seemed* like they would make sense.
For example: if you have a person diagnosed with ADHD in your classroom, doesn't it seem like it would make sense that, if they're having difficulty focusing, you let them get up and move about the room whenever they need to? Let them take these "brain breaks" — that's what they referred to them as — to create a safer, more inclusive space for those students. But the reality is that this can actually work *against* the brain. Our brain needs those hard tasks. It needs that work in order to produce dopamine, and dopamine is what our body needs to help us focus. So when you're allowing a student with ADHD to get up and move around — and this is just one example, and it's definitely not a one-size-fits-all situation — you can actually be causing them more harm, because they're not engaging in the hard work needed to get the dopamine hit they need. What you're allowing them to do is continue to *not* find that focus. Some people think, "Well, activity produces dopamine" — but not a simple walk to the back of the room and back to their seat. That's not producing enough dopamine to help that student. So things like that are not necessarily beneficial.
I also think about this: my daughter and I both have ADHD. She and I share the same genetic material, but our forms of ADHD are very different. I have a lot of challenges with working memory. She does not. Anything you say around my daughter — it's like there's a little recorder going. Even if you think she's not paying attention, we'll be sitting around the breakfast table and she'll say, "Mommy, don't you remember last year when you said this thing?" And I'm like, "No, I don't remember that, but I'm so glad that you do!" Because of my challenges with working memory, I really do not excel in mathematically related things — that's a struggle for me. But she's brilliant in math. She's working math problems two grades ahead of where she is. So: two people, same genetics, same condition, completely different needs. When you take the perspective of "here's a person with ADHD, they need X, Y, and Z" — that's not necessarily the case.
Luke: Right — there's not a one-size-fits-all solution for the individual, which we always try to do in education. Every year, that's the goal: some company, some theory, someone's going to make something that solves all your problems, and it's always like, "Well, it's a good idea, but it doesn't solve all problems." There isn't anything that solves everything, or else we'd be in a very different world at this point. Instead, we're still trying to figure things out here and there. And that's not to dismiss new ideas — I'm glad we keep having new things — but there's this marketing pitch behind everything that it's going to be revolutionary and change everything, and then you're like, "Well, it's okay, but it's not changing everything for how I do things."
But you, as an educator and researcher, have created a new type of conceptual model. I'm curious — what was the moment that made you say, "We're not doing enough for designing learning experiences for all folks, and we actually need a new type of model to help us out"?
Megan: So I had been attending sessions like the one I just described to you, seeing this free-for-all of strategies that seemed like they would work but weren't necessarily grounded in research. And when I was looking at lists of conference sessions — that's the word I'm having trouble with today, actually, working memory, the words are not coming! — you started to see this explosion of neurodiversity. But the interesting thing was that a lot of it wasn't about *neurodiversity* — it was condition-specific. It was "here's how you support learners with autism," "here's how you support learners with ADHD." And that's kind of where the conversation ended. There was not a lot for dyslexia, Tourette's, fetal alcohol syndrome — all these other conditions we know exist and are part of neurodiversity. Nobody was talking about them. And the really interesting thing is that autism isn't even the most commonly diagnosed condition in neurodiversity — it's dyslexia. But dyslexia was largely being overlooked too.
So it was this recognition that there are a lot of people talking about this, but there's also a lot of advice and guidance being put out there that isn't grounded in research. I thought we needed to find a way of creating a model — some type of guidance for people that is reliable, that is grounded in research, that takes into account the most specific needs as well as the more generalized needs. We need something that is not going to be a one-size-fits-all solution, but a starting point we can branch out from that allows us to accommodate for some of those more condition-specific pieces.
That's really the inspiration behind all of this. I saw what was happening within the field and thought, "We need to change what's happening, because this is not going to be productive — we're just cycling through the same advice." We need to start drawing some lines in the sand. We need to start making some progress. And knowing that my daughter has ADHD, I thought: someday she's going to be in our classrooms, and I want to make sure she has the best experience possible. I'm a learning designer — this is what I do. I design learning experiences. So I'm going to sit down, take a deep dive into the research, and see if I can create some guidance for people that they can reliably look to. And that's how this model was created.
Luke: So I also have a daughter, and I know I'm going to instill everything learning-design into her head — to the point where I have this weird new irrational fear that she's going to go to school and be like, "But Dad, nothing's designed well!" And I'll be like, "I'm so sorry, this is how things are." I'm sure your daughter's going to say the same thing — look at something and go, "Mm, that wasn't flexible. That wasn't the best choice of words." It'll be interesting to see how instructional design parents and their kids handle things with education. How old is your daughter?
Megan: She's currently ten.
Luke: My daughter's one, so I have a long way to go. New dad here. But I'm already thinking, "All right, how much can I share with her to really get her invested — when the time is right, obviously."
Megan: You know what? Seek out those Montessori schools.
Luke: There's one right down the street from me. Literally right there.
Megan: Perfect. Get her enrolled as soon as possible, because we had such a fantastic experience with Montessori. Actually, that was how we found out that my daughter had a neurodiverse condition. They called me in for a conference and said, "So, we noticed there are a couple of things that are a little bit different with your daughter." And that's a whole other long story we can sit down and talk about some other time. But if it hadn't been for her having that Montessori experience, with the phenomenal instructors she had as part of that program, I don't know when we would have recognized it otherwise. So yes, I have so much love for Montessori experiences. They're fantastic.
Luke: And they knew what to look out for — credit to them. Some real educators right there; it's great to have them in that school system. Going back to your model, though — can you walk us through your conceptual model? You mentioned that yours is more grounded in research, and that's what separates it from other frameworks that exist. Please feel free to share more about what really does separate your model — I'd love to hear about everything. The floor is yours.
Megan: Great, thanks. So this is going to be a somewhat lengthy explanation — I'll try to keep it succinct. And I know you were interested in some examples too, so I'll work some of those in as we go along. My model is reflected in a parallelogram that's divided into three layers, or three levels, and I'll describe it for your listeners.
Luke: I'll put it in the show notes too, so they can pull up a visual if they want to follow along.
Megan: That'd be perfect. So essentially, the first piece is those foundational skills, such as executive functioning skills. The example I have to share there is Dr. Russell Barkley — I'm not sure if you're familiar with him — a very well-known psychologist who specializes in ADHD. When I listened to one of his podcasts, one of the things he talked about was that ADHD, in his opinion, is not really "attention deficit hyperactivity disorder" — he claims it should be renamed *executive functioning disorder*, because the executive functions are at the heart of it.
Dr. Barkley talks about how, in learning experiences as well as everyday experiences, we have an executive functioning "battery." As we go through the day and rely on those executive functioning skills, that battery slowly gets drained every single time we have to use them. So when you think about our learning contexts: if we create learning dynamics that don't accommodate for those executive functioning skills, we're draining those students just as they're trying to keep up and understand what we're asking of them. If we don't provide clear instructions, they have to use those executive functioning skills to try to decode and understand what's really being asked of them. When we design *for* those executive functioning skills, we're reducing those barriers and allowing students to expend their energy on learning rather than decoding. So that's the first step.
Then we move on to accessibility. I think this is a great place where we can have that UDL conversation, because UDL is a fantastic framework — it really is. It brings a lot to what we do as educators. But it's also important to understand that UDL is not a complete solution. It's not an end-all-be-all — like we were talking about before, there is no complete solution. When we talk about accessibility from the perspective of my framework, what I tend to rely on are the WCAG principles, because they are more in line with ADA compliance. That's where my model comes from. But absolutely, people can look at UDL and bring some of those principles in at that level as well. Addressing the accessibility challenges works toward helping students who have more of those applied neurodiverse conditions — things such as dyslexia and dyscalculia.
From there, you move on to more of a custom approach for your learners, and what you're really building toward is learner agency. When you get to that custom portion, first and foremost you're looking at modifying the way that you, as an educator, communicate — incorporating strengths-based principles into your instruction. The example I always like to give people is when you design a rubric. What are the labels you most commonly see across the top? "Excellent," "satisfactory," "poor," right? Those are labels — and when you put the label of "poor" on someone's work, it's almost instantaneously defeating.
So what we need to do is employ strengths-based language. Instead of "excellent" — well, you're an *expert*. If you use the term "expert," you're instantaneously saying: you've achieved this, you have a high degree of proficiency. And when we go back to that label of "poor," we can transition it to something like *novice*, because "novice" implies that you're at a starting point — there's a journey you can go through, there's still growth that can occur. That strengths-based language is very critical. In that custom area, that's also where we can integrate things like interest-based learning, because everybody has different interests — so let's customize it for people as much as we can. I think of an essay assignment as a great activity educators can leverage to achieve that.
There's also some room within that custom space for condition-specific supports, but I think we need to think of it less as condition-specific and more as *individual-specific*. Somebody who has ADHD might benefit from these supports; somebody who has autism might benefit from these things — but that's going to be different from the person who has PTSD as a result of a wide variety of life experiences.
Then there's a gray bar that goes down the center, and that's where we talk about system design. This is more at the institutional level, but the reason it's an important piece of the model is that I think people need to understand the barriers people are experiencing as a result of institutional models. This is where we have things such as accommodations. Even if we're designing for accessibility, there can still be individualized accommodations that need to be integrated into our work — and sometimes it can be really difficult for students to get those accommodations. The example I think of is here at Penn State, where I work: we have a temporary accommodations plan that can be put into place if somebody doesn't have a diagnosis but suspects they might be neurodivergent. We'll give you one semester's worth of support — but after that one semester, if you don't have a formal diagnosis, that support drops away. And that's not taking into consideration the fact that people might have financial challenges that prevent them from attaining a formal diagnosis. There are a lot of other things that go into those system barriers, and we can design for some of them, but not all of them.
Then we continue on with the model on the personal belonging side. The bottom level has to do with validation, and this relies on things such as social-emotional learning. One of the great things about social-emotional learning is that if you integrate it, you're not only helping students with that social learning — you're also helping them reinforce those executive functioning skills. There was one research study I came across that talked very specifically about how pairing those two together had one of the most dramatic impacts on student learning for neurodiverse individuals. So that's why those two are paired together right there.
When we move into the middle layer on the personal belonging side, it's about recognition. This is where we get into things like instructors modeling for students what it really means to be accepting — to create a space where all perspectives really are valued. I think this actually has the biggest opportunity to address some of that intercommunity discrimination, or lateral violence: making sure that people understand what it is and how to circumvent it.
The uppermost portion of personal belonging has to do with acceptance. This is where we start to engage in things like collaborative design or fail-fast processes, so that people learn that it's okay to be different, and that we can try these different ideas out in a safe space — try them out really quickly and see what works and what doesn't. The reason I think that's so important: there's more and more research I'm coming across about productivity and neurodiverse teams, and it's fascinating. There's one research study — this was in a K-12 environment — where the productivity of teams consisting of neurotypical individuals was approximately 17%. When they brought in a single individual who was neurodiverse, that productivity jumped to 88%.
Luke: Wow.
Megan: I mean, any type of productivity anywhere — who doesn't want to be more productive in the work they do? Research teams, corporate teams — having that neurodiverse perspective, that differing perspective, is really valuable because it challenges things. But if we don't create those spaces where people feel like it's perfectly fine to be different — where we make it clear we *want* those diverse perspectives — we need to create those dynamics where people feel like that's welcome. So that's the model in a nutshell, with a couple of examples worked in there.
Luke: I appreciate the examples, because every time I look at something and think, "Great, that makes sense" — "How do I apply it in action?" is always the follow-up. I love the rubric one, by the way, especially as someone who's written many rubrics over the years. I was like, "Ooh, I like that more." That's a much gentler way of saying things — and of course my feedback aligns with that. My feedback does not align with "you're poor and you're terrible, what are you doing in my class?" It's much more supportive, caring, and guiding, rather than hitting them over the head.
What I want to know next, though, is how do you handle this: within my classroom, I always ask for feedback. The school sends out an official course evaluation, but I also have my own, because I want their feedback faster so I can actually incorporate it back into the classroom. One of the things I've always gone back and forth with is *conflicting* feedback. One student will say, "This is the greatest thing you've ever done, Dr. Hobson, I love this thing," and then the next piece of feedback from another student is, "This was terrible — why did you put this inside the course? I found this to be busy work." So let's say we have one student who functions best with structure, guidance, little wiggle room for error — they love that type of cadence — and another who thrives on ambiguity and total freedom. What is the solution to support both folks?
Megan: That's a fantastic question. And the reality is that there is no perfect solution that fits everybody — we've said that multiple times, right? I think the challenge with that — well, actually, it's not a challenge, it's an opportunity. The opportunity is for you as an instructor to gain better insights into what your students need.
This was the philosophy we had when I was going through my instructional design program just a few years ago: you don't design for the middle. You design for the *margins*. You design for the people who are going to excel, and you design for the people who are going to struggle, and then everybody, hopefully, will find where they fit within that spectrum.
When it comes to making that actionable, my philosophy is: for the person who's going to thrive on ambiguity, let's find some activities we can integrate that are going to be more supportive and conducive to what they need — but then also have those activities that are really well structured. Maybe what you do is, for those activities that are a really significant part of the student's grade, shift those toward the step-by-step guidance, because now you're making sure all of your students fully understand what's expected of them. Then you can still integrate those less-defined activities, but maybe in a way that involves a group dynamic. That way, the students who thrive on ambiguity can be the ones who step up and say, "You guys, I totally got this — let's think about it like this and this and this." That gives them the opportunity to exercise their abstract thinking. And at the same time, the people who don't excel with a less concrete set of instructions can benefit from seeing how other people work when there's ambiguity. Again — social learning. Let's create opportunities for that type of dynamic to be integrated.
I love the way you asked that question, because so much of the time we think, "Well, we have to design the assessment one way, and it has to be like this." But we can have flexibility. There's a lot we can do as educators to provide enough clarity, but at the same time create enough ambiguity that people can still feel challenged. It all comes back to good design, right?
Luke: It does. The best solution I've found is that I've created multiple learning pathways, and I give them the choose-your-own-adventure. You want the structured guidance, that type of cadence? You got it. Or if you want to go more in another direction, let's talk about doing an assessment that way. To give you an example: one of the courses I teach is all about ADDIE — tried, true, everyone knows ADDIE, right? Within that course, you can either do something more traditional and academic — thinking about a real-life problem you're currently experiencing and writing about how ADDIE can help you design and improve things, more of a traditional paper. Or, if you don't want to do that, you can find an instructional designer, interview them, and record the interview as your assessment: "Tell me, how do you use ADDIE in the real world?" Great — you can do that too. So I give them options A and B, and I keep trying to do that more.
Right now, one of the things I'm attempting to reduce — because I know I get this from my doctoral students all the time — is the amount of discussion boards. I was an online student; I've been there, I get it. There's only so many discussion boards you can write. The thing I did for one class — the timing was really hard, but it was effective, so I'm still trying to figure out how to balance it — was that instead of a normal discussion board, they could record themselves answering the prompts and send that in instead. So now it's much more of a real communication dialogue, which was awesome. It was still asynchronous, still recorded. But that meant, for me as the instructor, I was watching like 40 videos every week and trying to give feedback on everything. And I was just like, there's got to be a better way — but they love the option, and I love that option, and I want to give it to them more, but I have to give feedback too. And of course I always say, "Can you keep the video within three to five minutes?" — and sure enough, half of them are like, "So sorry, it has to be 15." And I'm like, no, no, no, no! So I'm still personally trying to balance and figure out how to support everybody in a way that doesn't just have me grading nonstop 24/7. That's been my struggle with flexibility.
Megan: Well, two things. One: I love the fact that you're creating those learning pathways. That's absolutely phenomenal. I hesitate to recommend things like that on podcasts like this, because I don't want everybody to think, "Well, that's not going to work, because I can't create all those learning pathways." But if you're the person designing the course, and you have that flexibility and that desire, absolutely — I love that you're doing that. Kudos to you.
And then I think you could integrate peer review processes into that. I mean — I think you're as passionate about teaching as I am, so you'd still want to be involved, actually giving the grade and the student feedback. But I think that's a phenomenal opportunity for students to see what other people are doing and hear other people's perspectives. It's fantastic. I love that strategy.
Luke: It's funny, because I have done that. Apparently this podcast episode has become me vocalizing with you about how I can better my class! What I then found is that there needed to be a section in the course about how to actually *leave* feedback. If we're going to do peer reviews, I need to teach you how to give real feedback. And that's a whole other can of worms — just as we were describing about better terms for a rubric, there's a better way of doing this too. With peer-to-peer feedback, I found that if it's a cohort-based model, they know one another really well, so they take that feedback really to heart — and most times it's great, it's wonderful, because they know each other so well and they know how to give that feedback. They've been talking to each other for years. Very helpful — and very different from a brand new class, a brand new cohort, giving feedback. And this is not my current students, this is another outside project I've seen, where you read it and go, "Ooh, that's harsh." That was not a good way of telling someone how to improve — it's cutthroat and very dry. And you're like, that's a different angle of peer reviews. I love the idea of peer reviews, but then you open up another side of it: "All right, now how do I fix this one?" It's always interesting.
Megan: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's another great opportunity to teach students about strengths-based language. We also need to make an important distinction: strengths-based language is not about walking on eggshells. You can still provide meaningful feedback to people, but you can do it with a tone that is supportive and kind. It's not "feedback is 'you did great'" and "constructive feedback is 'this is terrible.'" That's not what it is at all. But a lot of our learners may come in with that understanding, because that's the type of feedback they received in K-12 or in other learning experiences they've had. So you're absolutely right about resetting their understanding of what it means to give feedback — and not using the sandwich method. Just for anybody listening: do not use the sandwich method. It's so terrible.
I was actually looking at a piece of technology for a faculty member recently, and I was on the phone with the rep, and I said, "Okay, I think there are so many great things about this technology, but you're using the sandwich method, and I've got some concerns with that." It turned into a really lengthy conversation which ended up not making any progress whatsoever, which was really disappointing. But yeah — sandwich method: bad.
Luke: That's what a lot of people do, because that's what they've been exposed to, as you were saying. That's what they know, so that's what they practice. And then you're like, let's not have people go through a roller coaster of emotions trying to read feedback — up and down and up and down.
Speaking of common mistakes, though: when it comes to neurodiversity, what mistakes do you see instructional designers make? They might be well-intentioned, but in trying to serve neurodiverse folks, what are they currently doing, and how do we help correct things?
Megan: I think one of the biggest things we need to keep in mind when we're designing experiences for neurodiverse students is — like we mentioned before — not aiming for that condition-specific piece. That's largely what I see a lot of people doing: going back to "here's the ten strategies for ADHD." We need to have greater flexibility than that.
The other thing I don't think we're accommodating for enough is that *personal belonging* piece — that really needs to be a component of this. My personal philosophy is: if you're not designing for personal belonging, then you're not actually designing for neurodiversity, because it has to be part of the conversation. If you're not designing for personal belonging, what you're designing for is skills and knowledge acquisition. There is so much research out there, and — as we're seeing with the discrimination and the lateral violence — we need to create better spaces where people feel more supported, where they feel as though they're allowed to be their unique and amazing selves.
The other thing is being aware of stigmas. There's a phenomenal research article I read not long ago talking about how the vast majority of people with autism, or ASD — I think the number was 44 percent — function at an average or above-average capacity. So when we have this notion that neurodiversity, or ASD, or ADHD, or whatever the condition is, is tied to a *deficiency* — that's something we need to pause and reevaluate for ourselves. And the other example I gave was my daughter: she has ADHD, and she's two grade levels above in mathematics. She's in the gifted program. She's brilliant. And here's another thing: in the general population, the percentage of people identified as gifted is 1%. But when you look at neurodiverse communities and the numbers of gifted individuals there, it's 2%. Right there, we've doubled it. Now, granted, we need to look a little more carefully at those numbers — general population versus a specific population — but we really need to be aware of those stigmas that are in place, and work toward helping other individuals step back from those stigmas and stereotypes, really resetting our understanding of neurodiversity.
That's actually where I start all of my workshops: "Okay — let's put everything you think you know about neurodiversity to the side, and let's have a conversation. Let's all work toward getting on the same page." That's where I always start, and I would encourage others to do the same.
Luke: I love that. Because certainly, if I were attending one of those — you've already shared things with me on this podcast that I've learned — I would have come in like, "All right, I know about X, Y, and Z, here we go." So instead, you say, "Put it over there, put it on the shelf, try to be open-minded." That works for me.
The thing I'm really curious about, too, is that the way a lot of folks are educating themselves nowadays — right or wrong — is through AI. Before you came on the show, I said to Claude, "Tell me about neurodiversity in the context of learning." And it went through and actually identified some things that came up in our conversation today — strengths-based framing, cognitive load and executive function, different design implications — saying that UDL is typically paired with neurodiversity, but there's more to it than that. So it wasn't wrong on things — but of course, that was just me trying it. And now, since our conversation, I can say with some confidence, "Okay, if I wanted to learn more, maybe AI can find different publications and research articles about this." But where does this fit into our space of using AI to support neurodiverse students? How does AI come into play nowadays?
Megan: I think one of the best ways that we as educators can encourage our students around the use of AI — and this is sort of a blanket statement — is how they can use AI not to do work *for* them, but as a study partner. And I think, more specifically for our neurodiverse individuals, one of the best ways we can help them integrate AI into their workflows in a really meaningful way is to use AI to help them identify some of those executive functioning barriers and navigate past them. The AI is not going to help us with the social-emotional learning, but it can definitely step in and say, "Okay, you've got this assignment that's due — let's break it down into some more actionable steps and make this a different process, one that works for you."
I've got a great example. Are you on Microsoft Office 365 at your institution?
Luke: Yeah, unfortunately. I'm not a fan of Microsoft products — but yes, I am.
Megan: It's okay — there's no judging! So, one of the things I just used Copilot for the other day: I was looking at my inbox, and I just felt really overwhelmed. Opening my inbox instantaneously skyrocketed the anxiety and the stress. So I pulled up Copilot and said, "Okay, Copilot — I have ADHD. My inbox is flooded. I need help navigating all of this. Can you just help me with this?" And surprisingly — because Copilot is integrated into the email client for Office 365 — it was able to take a look at my emails and say, "Here are 30 emails I think you can just go in and delete, because they don't require a response from you, nor do they require any action. I've flagged them for you." So I was able to go into my inbox, take a look at all the ones it had flagged, and think, "I actually don't need any of those." Delete, delete, delete, delete. It was fantastic.
And then it was able to look at some of the more complex ones and say, "Okay, I think you need to take these actions on these ten emails, and navigate these other ones like this." It was incredibly helpful. And even just having that conversation with AI, weirdly enough, reduced the anxiety level — because when I was sitting there looking at it by myself, it just felt so overwhelming. But having that conversation was almost like sitting down with a friend saying, "Okay, yeah, this does seem like a lot — but we can do this, we can navigate this." So I think there are a lot of use cases for how we can integrate AI into our teaching and learning practices. We just have to do it in the right ways. But I think there's a lot of opportunity there.
Luke: Yeah — that's always the biggest thing: really starting from the ground up, with the framework, the research, the different ideas. I'm not sure if you've seen this — I shared it online. When I was training a new instructional designer, he was asking, "How do I know which type of learning strategy to use, and when?" So we talked about case studies versus scenario-based learning versus gamification, project-based learning, and so on. And he's like, "How do you know 'this would be a good time to use a scenario-based problem'?" And I was just like, "From a lot of years of experience — that's how I know, to be honest with you."
So I ended up making an AI tool that broke down all the learning strategies: when to use them, how to use them, what the definitions are. It's just a drop-down menu, you can see them all, and it will say things like high cognitive load, low cognitive load, group setting, different modalities, and such. And what you were just describing — I was thinking, could we make something for neurodiversity? Something with all of these different areas to help educators — "when thinking about things from strengths-based framing, here are some examples, here's what to look out for." You've given me some ideas. I'm kind of curious — I bet I could make a tool, and I could send it to you and be like, "What do you think? Is it right, wrong, is it off?" I bet I could make something.
Megan: Yeah, definitely! So — a colleague and I — I don't want to put too much out there, but a colleague and I are working on something that hopefully we're going to get some funding for to get off the ground. So stay tuned.
Luke: Excellent! Stay tuned. Okay — you're going to do it? Awesome. All the credit to you. Love it.
Megan: Well, it's a little bit different than creating just a bot — and I don't mean "just a bot" dismissively; a bot can be incredibly helpful. But what we're aiming for is something that is much more encompassing — a much broader perspective in terms of the educational experience. So yeah, just stay tuned. Hopefully we'll have some good news.
Luke: Stay tuned! Awesome — I love that, and I love ending the show on that note as well. Megan, thank you so much for being here. Where can folks go to learn more about you, your work, and everything of the sort?
Megan: Sure — and thanks for asking. If you're interested in seeing the different models I've been working on around neurodiversity, you can go to my website, which is megankohler.org. But if you're interested in connecting with me, LinkedIn is really the best option. I don't post very frequently, but I do post any major updates I have on LinkedIn. And I'm going to be better about LinkedIn in the future, I promise! It's the whole social media / social anxiety thing — it just gets me. But I'm going to commit, and I'm going to start posting things more regularly.
Luke: It's funny — when I think of social media, nothing about it feels social anymore. It's just ads, it's brands, or it's rage bait trying to make you very upset — it's not real connecting. I was thinking about that the other day: why do I actually use LinkedIn so much? It's because I see real people. And yes, it's about things I care about in instructional design and the people I follow — but really, I want to see what my friends are doing in the space and being awesome. It's just real people, which is crazy. So I'm all in favor of using LinkedIn more. I think it's a great idea to use that one and not the other platforms — which don't have people on them now! It's just crazy.
Well, Megan, once again — thank you so much for being on the show. It was a blast.
Megan: Thanks — I had a great time!
