Today’s episode is a real special one. I had the privilege of talking to Dr. Katie Novak and Tom Thibodeau. They are the authors of UDL in the Cloud: How to Design and Deliver Online Education Using Universal Design for Learning. What’s UDL? You’re about to find out and it’s going to change the way you design your next course.
What we discuss:
How Katie and Tom started in education and where they are today
Defining and explaining the UDL framework
How growth mindset leads to a well-designed online course and student experience
How educators can support and motivate students in online courses
How should instructional designers and teachers re-evaluate the course design process and current courses
The importance of instructor presence and how to build this presence importance of instructor presence and how instructors can build this presence?
How to manage time with UDL and new projects
The future of education with COVID-19
How to build instructor presence in newly designed courses
Their favorite examples of seeing UDL in action
To learn more about Dr. Katie Novak and Tom Thibodeau, check out Novak Education.
Do you want to become an instructional designer? Check out Idol Courses Academy!
Recording your own podcast? Check out Squadcast.
Transcript
Luke Hobson 00:03
What's up everybody? Dr. Hobson here and welcome into Episode Six of the Dr. Luke Hobson podcast. My purpose is to help you anything about online learning. I cover topics like instructional design, online teaching, supporting students and more. At the end of the day, I'm here to help you learn tangible skills you can apply to your career and classroom. Today's episode is a real special one, I had the privilege of talking to Dr. Katie Novak and Tom Thibodeau. They are the authors of UDL and the cloud, how to design and deliver online education using a universal design for learning. What's UDL? You're about to find out and it's going to change the way you design your next course. This episode was ridiculously nerdy, and of course, a lot of fun. Before we go any further in today's show, I want to talk to you about IDOL Courses Academy. The number one question I've been asked lately is how do I become an instructional designer. I was sending folks to a number of resources, but they weren't good enough. I wanted a platform that was going to give people structure, guidance and support for experts. And I found that with idle courses Academy, Dr. Sargent and her team have done an amazing job with focusing on what's important to be an instructional designer like storyboarding it models and theories, interviewing subject matter experts and focusing on project management tactics. They even cover how to make your resume and portfolio stand out from the crowd and have an impressive graduation rate with their students working at organizations like Salesforce, GM, and Amazon. Instructional design has become the number one sought after job because of every organization transitioning to online learning. So if you were serious about becoming an instructional designer, or looking to further develop your ID skills and build out your portfolio, I would highly encourage you to check out idle, check out the link in the show notes below to learn more. Now, let's get back to the show. So here they are Dr. Katie Novak and Tom Thibodeau from UDL in the cloud.
Luke Hobson 02:07
Thank you so much, both of you for coming on my podcast.
Tom 02:12
You're entirely welcome. It's great to be here. Yeah, happy to chat happy to nerd out always.
Luke Hobson 02:17
This is gonna be the by far the nerdiest podcast episode I have so far to date, like, without a doubt at all, because of when I first started off as an instructional designer, I why I am so glad to have both you on today is that I was looking for a mentor instructional design. And I found someone I asked her I was just like, you know, if I want to get my feet wet for instructional design, what books should I read as far as we're just starting off, and she recommended your book UDL in the cloud. And that's how all this started my career. And to this day at MIT, I am still using what I learned from your book, even now.
Katie 02:56
That I mean that that is so exciting to be a part of a framework that has such staying power. I think that a lot of the things we see in education today, there's people are so skeptical of like, how quickly is this gonna pass over. And you know, being able to, you know, encourage people to adopt a framework that has literally decades and decades of research. And there will never be a time that we don't say, we need to design for the learners that we have, not the design, you know, the students who we wish that we had. And and that's what's so cool about it is, you know, every time we get hit by something in education, it's like create this is another barrier we have to eliminate. Hmm, yeah. And it doesn't matter what the age of the student is, it doesn't matter the type of institution you're teaching it, the student should always be at the center of everything we do. And it is not our job really to try and teach just one of them. Our job is to teach all of them. And the only way to do that is to recognize that they're all individuals and that they all have unique or specific needs, or wants on that we can address through the use of universal design.
Luke Hobson 04:09
When I finished the book that were certainly some of my main takeaways, but as soon as I stopped, I was just like this. This makes sense. Why aren't Why isn't everyone doing this? Like it just Of course, I want to focus on the student experience, provide every avenue and opportunity for someone to learn and to deliver the best type of online learning experience possible. So why wouldn't I do this? So before we get too far into that, though, can you just tell the audience a bit more about yourselves and your backgrounds? Sure. Okay. Why don't you start?
Katie 04:40
Okay, so I'm Katie Novak and I am a lifer in education. I've been in education now for almost 20 years. And I started off as a teacher and I went to get my master's degree in my doctoral degree in curriculum and teaching and as as a teacher, I had the amazing opportunity to be trained in new UDL by Dr. David Rose himself, who was the founder of CAST. And as soon as I learned about it, it kind of felt like exactly like what you're saying. Luke is like, Why? Why am I not doing this already. And I think that we have this very public rhetoric in education that like, you know, all means all. But like, we don't meet the needs of all students until we meet the needs of students with disabilities until we meet the needs of our Black and Brown students until we meet the needs of our students who are non traditional learners. And, and I think that for so long it was, you know, you were a good student, if you fit into the system. And now we're recognizing that you're a great teacher, if you can make sure that everyone fits into your class. And so when I learned that it was like, you know, hell hath no fury I was like, all in. And I think that, you know, the learning for me has just been, how many more barriers? The more I learned about this, the more I listened to people who struggle with their own school experience, the more barriers I'm always cognizant of, how do we proactively partner with people to eliminate those and I am also the daughter of the my co presenter, Tom thibodeau. So I have always been, you know, I've been raised by two educators, both my parents were teachers. And I think that I always had the the view that, you know, we, our job as educators is not to fix students, our job as educators is to design our curriculum so our students can thrive. And I think that that is a huge mind shift that a lot of people still have not gone through yet in their careers. Yeah.
Tom 06:30
So I got started in education right out of college. Um, you know, I have a secondary English education degree from Rhode Island College, I graduated in 1975. In my student teaching experience, at a very, very nice suburban high school, I decided that I can't do this. Because we're not teaching at all, we're managing students with felt like we were hurting students, throughout the day that there was so little time to actually teach or educate that, you know, I decided I was just not going to do this. So I finished my degree, and I went back to grad school, and I chose broadcasting. And then I became a video specialist and a video editor and videographer for a production company for 12 years, when I saw an ad, for a part time teaching person at New England Institute of Technology in their video, their brand new video production department. And I had three young kids and I said, Wow, a little extra money would always be nice. So I started teaching at night to three nights a week, until a full time job opened up, coincidentally, at the same time as my production company was having some financial difficulties. And I switched over and I've been there for 30 years now. So it's been a wonderful background to come in depth to back into education with because lo and behold, when you find out about something like UDL, which Katie introduced me to,
08:02
you know, having video in your back pocket is a great way to provide on an on an alternative resource for your students. And it has been since I think we started working on the book, maybe in the beginning of 2014, and then publish the book in 2016, and have been working in UDL ever since I've been doing it at the college level. Katie has been doing at the K through 12, and more level. And we have collaborated with quite a few things. But unfortunately, I still get to learn about UDL from Katie, because I edit all of her videos.
Luke Hobson 08:44
That's awesome. I as soon as I read your book, and you know is talking about how we're going to come on to this podcast, I called my dad to just telling him there's another Nerdy family out there like ours, because same thing. My dad's in higher education. He's been a dean for a number of years, except my poor mom is not in education. So we're just going back and forth at the dinner table talking about things from competency based project, you know, like, you name it. We've talked about everything. And she's sitting there like, no page works. Yeah, yeah. So she works at a school but not necessarily for this. She's She's an administration. So it's definitely a little bit interesting, around the dinner table, talking about these things. So we've talked just a bit about UDL from a couple of different points and stances. But Katie, can you give me an exact definition and just describe to the general population what UDL really does mean stands for sure.
Katie 09:38
So it's a framework where it asks us to think really flexibly about the way that we design curriculum, really focused on firm goals and flexible means so we cannot design learning experiences if we don't start at the gecko really asking ourselves what is it that all students need to know and be able to do as a result of this learning experience? And once we do that, it really opens Up to recognize variability, to start to consider barriers that would be present if we design things in a one size fits all way. And then thinking about multiple pathways are the multiple UDL principles which what are the different ways that we can engage students? What are the different ways that we can teach students? And what are the different ways that we can essentially see what students know. And so when you think about that, really simply, when you look up a definition, it will often say a framework that flexibly designs curriculum. So all learners will have options and choices for how they're going to learn and how they're going to share what they know. And I think that in some ways, the the two critical components about that that must be truly embraced. First is the concept of variability and the concept of barriers. Because UDL is not like a fun meter. It's not like choice for the sake of choice. And I have seen choice menus go like straight down the tubes somewhere fast, because it's really about what are the pathways that would allow everyone despite barriers that they may face to end up at the same very rigorous, very challenging endpoint. And you know, it great instructional design has to start with those goals. And so, you know, there's a lot of curriculum work that I see out there, where it's, you know, students are, they have the choice, but it's like the choices have are so unrelated, that they wouldn't possibly land everybody to kind of the end the same endpoint. And so, you know, I think that in order to truly to design Well, we first have to realize what are our goals? We have to say, you know, what is the variability of our learners? And what types of barriers may they face? And how do we provide additional choices to eliminate those barriers, and I think some people just jump straight to like, Oh, I get it, we're gonna add choices. And you know, a classic example would be,
11:54
you know, oh, this is gonna be great. Because when I have a synchronous zoom that everybody has to be on, you can either do a breakout room, or you can do the chat, or you can do something else. And it's like, but what about people who don't have broadband strong enough to be a part of a synchronous zoom? Or what about students who are learning, you know, who are working at that exact time or, you know, who are watching their children at that time. So it's, it's not just look, I offered a lot of things, it's that I thought about the barriers and a barrier for some students is going to be synchronous learning that requires a very high quality broadband internet connection. And another thing which is very, very important about UDL is that it's a standards based framework, where it's so important that every teacher comes up with their objectives and their goals first, but a lot of situations from K, kindergarten all the way through higher ed, is that
12:48
the standards are given to the teacher, you know, that this is what we want this course to teach, or these are the standards for the sixth grade, or whatever they might be. And a lot of people get confused with that. Well, if I give too many choices, what about the easy choices? You know, isn't that going to reduce the standards, and the you know, the they have to stop and realize that the standards do not change, we're just giving people options and choices as how they get there. So if you're creating state arm options, and choices that are too easy, is too easy, that are not following the standards, you're not doing this, right.
Tom 13:27
So it's, it's it's a bit of a challenge to really, truly embrace all of this on right at the beginning. Because you know, it's, it's, it sounds too easy just to make choices on making the right choices is where you earn your money, and how you craft those for your students. Is it so terribly important.
Luke Hobson 13:49
So let's start from the beginning, as we just talked about that, as far as for the barriers, the challenges, everything that we were describing, and no, the first chapter talks about that. And as soon as I was reading the book, and I got to see all the different types of student profiles and their own individual barriers, as an instructional designer, it was almost like panic immediately. It was like, how do I design for all these people who come from all different walks of life and have all these different types of things? I was like, Where do I really begin? And this was certainly a challenge of mine, when first starting off to be an instructional designer. Is that what's the very first step? And you actually mentioned that as far as rigor, the first step is to have a growth mindset. You talked about Carol Dweck and her work out of Stanford. So with this growth mindset as that type of a top priority, how does that mindset lead to a well designed online course and thinking about the student experience?
Tom 14:46
Good question. Well, first off, it sets you up in the right position, to not be satisfied with what you've got, and where you're at. But where you want to go. You know, that's that growth mindset is not the grade, it's not the quality of my PowerPoint presentations, it's not any of that it's the end result of what the students going to learn. So I think, you know, identifying the students as part of the process. But a lot of times, you don't get a chance to do that until, you know, the courses begun, you know, they walk into the class, you know, but you already have to have something, your course has to be designed at that point in time. So how do you do this? With that in mind, and if you have 30 kids in your class, you also can't design an individual curriculum for each of them. It is, you know, impossible, that's all you would ever do, on in terms of curriculum creation, if that's what you're going to do. So you have to figure out a way to present your course or your curriculum, so that it is accessible from all of these different angles. And there aren't 30 different angles and reality there are, you know, groups of students in the classroom. And you're also going to be in a situation where you don't want to
16:07
define it for them, you want to actually give them real choices. And that means that you're going to spend a lot of time investigating what these choices should be, and finding the resources to offer these choices. And then you are actually going to let the students choose. And a lot of instructors, teachers, faculty have a lot of trouble with that whole concept. What do you mean, we're going to let them choose? And, you know, it's, it's like the first step of engagement, if, you know, we can't get them to find something they like, if we're just going to force everything on them. Boy, we're walking uphill, we're pushing that rock uphill like pythias, right, where we're gonna always be struggling against this. But if we can get everybody pushing this rock up the hill with us, where we're gonna be golden.
Katie 17:01
And I think one of the things too, one of the first steps, I think, that people can recognize is that we can predict a lot of these barriers, you don't need to meet your 3100 or 700 or I don't care how many learners there are, you know, as as a somebody who designs for adults, that is what I do. Now, I am not in a classroom with students. So I design a lot of professional learning and graduate courses for adults. I know right away that given the the the wide group of students who are going to be a part of any courses that I create, there's going to be students who are very, very strong readers, and there's going to be some learners who still, you know, who will struggle with basic, you know, basic comprehension. And so having a text heavy course, when you're one of your objectives is not truly teaching about, you know, like, if you're doing like a contemporary literary analysis course, maybe one of your objectives is actually about reading critically, that is generally not the goal of courses. It's about like building content and building skills. And yet we still assign, Oh, my gosh, the over reliance on printed text is ridiculous. It is boggling. And I actually had a conversation the other day with with a group of high school teachers who said to me, but doesn't every student have to read? And I said, No, no, they don't is reading valuable? Absolutely. Do I, you know, do I believe that it's a skill that should be explicitly taught throughout, you know, high school when there are standards focused on that? Absolutely. But the reality is, is you can be a brilliant engineer, carpenter, lawyer, Doctor, I mean anything in the world, if you know how to be resourceful and access something that would provide you with an audio version of a text. And so so many people are like, I'm not going to offer an audio version as if students can't get it themselves. And so, you know, the, the reality is, is that you have to be really flexible, I can predict I'm going to have adult learners who are going to experience significant conflicts with getting work done on a very, very tight schedule. Most of them are working other jobs, they have families, you know, especially now I teach teachers who are trying to adopt a COVID. And to say, you know, that, like it must be done in this way by this date, is setting learners up for failure because I know what people are dealing with. And I think that if people were really honest, you would say that I can predict if I were to get 100 students that there's going to be some students who are going to struggle with reading comprehension. There's going to be some students who struggle with organization. There'll be some students who struggle to meet deadlines, there'll be some students will have a hard time carving these things out. If I know that, then it's my responsibility to design for that proactively. And then to continually ask for feedback to co design better choices as we move forward.
Tom 19:38
Absolutely. I just finished the course. Yes, last night, actually, it was a one week intensive course on universal design for learning and online courses. And I had only seven people in at this time, which was wonderful. And they were a couple of music teachers, a couple of composition teachers. You know, a wide mix of People, all professional educators. And many of them were starting off saying, you know, I'm a very traditional teacher. And I'm taking this course because I've, I've heard that there are other ways of doing this. Amazing. But you know, they would show their lessons. And, you know, was step one, read this step two, write this step three, read this step four, write this. And it was right from, you know, the 1940s. It felt like in terms of a sequential learning system, and they were thinking that, well, I'm scaffolding the learning, which is a really good idea. But they were giving no choice whatsoever. And as I looked at one of instructors resources, I said, Well, I think the thing you have to realize here is what you're doing is you're actually, you're doing it to the students, not with the students. And because you're doing it to the students, they have absolutely no buy into any of this. And they are maybe even going to do well in this course, but they will not remember any of this because you've disengaged them from the process.
Luke Hobson 21:16
As soon as everything happened with COVID-19. The first thing that I did was I tried to put myself in the learner shoes to be able to figure out how would I as someone who really does generally enjoy being a nerd and loves learning, I still like to go to physical courses, I've taken hybrid and whatnot. But what would it be like if I had to sit in a chair for about six to nine hours a day actually doing online courses that were not designed? Well, and that there were remote learning because there was online learning, not the same interchangeable is remote learning where because of the nature of the world, many educators were only given about two to four weeks to take their traditional face to face classes, and then make them into some for the online remote presence. And clearly, as we're talking about all these things, that's really not a lot of time, especially if you don't know what you're doing if you weren't trained on how to really do this. So I took a course on metal learning, and I was sitting there and I really enjoyed it. But after the first hour, I was like, oh, man, cuz Tom, it was just like what you were saying, like between reading essay, watch a video, read essay discussion board. And I was like, Ah, no, you've heard so much better ways to do this. And it sent me down this path of looking at different types of articles and blog posts of not the educators mindset. But what about the student mindset? And I wasn't seeing a lot of that, as it was happening was much more of teacher burnout, which of course, I understand this is a nutty time. But you know, what about the students? So from a UDL framework, in that perspective, how do we, as educators think about their mindsets, and then meet them where they are to support them. And to motivate them, I would love to hear your perspectives on that.
Tom 23:00
As Katie just said, you know, you have to predict, to start off with what you're going to have in your course. Secondly, then you then have to listen to your students. And you have to actively seek their feedback just as much as you have to actively give yours. Because, you know, especially in an online environment where you know, you're not face to face with them, you may never see them again, so to speak, you know, if a kid is always working the at the time that you're offering your zoom sessions, for instance, you know, you're never going to see their facial reactions, or be able to read their body language or any of that stuff, which a lot of faculty really rely upon in the classroom. So you're going to have to predict some things, you're going to have to provide some options based upon those predictions, you're going to get have to get their feedback, and you're gonna have to be flexible. And that flexibility is not only with the due date, and it's going to go into the length of the paper is if they have to do some writing, or the length of the project, the extensiveness of the project, you really have to be flexible, and then work with the student based upon their real needs. You know, that kind of a back and forth I think is really, really so important in the process. And if you're not lecturing in your any of this, you're going to have a lot of time to be able to actually interact with the students. And that interaction is going to give you the real information that you need to make everything better for everybody. And remember with Universal Design for Learning, once you find something for some student, you're going to make it available for all students because what is essential for some is good for all.
Katie 24:47
And one of the other things is ask, like I just finished teaching a graduate course and during the first module, I said, if I have concerns about any of your work, or I have some ideas or feedback or you're not checking in what's the The best way for me to contact you your own call, do you want me to FaceTime you do want me to send you a text to me send you an email. And it's amazing the variability of what people want. And I literally created in my, in my planner, I still have a pen, for goodness sake, I have a little planner. And in the beginning of the planner, I literally make a little chart and I say, Okay, these are the people who want me to text, here's their phone numbers, here's the people who want me to email. And then every week when I look at the course and see, you know, I look in Canvas, I see, you know what the participant dashboard look like, have I heard from them, and I will literally go down the list and some of them are like, send me a video, and I literally pick up my phone and send them a video and and you do that a couple of times and you build relationships and teaching is emotional work. This is about relationships. And a lot of the time again, they'll say I'm concerned about you, you know, your participation was down this week. Tell me what's what what's happening in your house, tell me what you can do. Are there any options that would have allowed you to do this better. And once I find that out, it's available to everyone in the class of the following week. And at the end of the course, every single student in that class, every single 100% finished the course and got an either an A or a B in the course. But anyone was allowed to revise anything as many times as they wished. I had, I ended up putting in live zoom sessions in lieu of exploring some of the module content because people were like, I just feel like I need to see you. And the course was changing every single week. And at the end, everyone was like, Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, that I had to turn in these things later, I didn't get to revise that. And I was I was like, there, there is no apologies, this is life. Like you're all administrators creating a school district that is preparing for like emergency remote teaching. And because of UDL, you still met every requirement and did really well in a very rigorous graduate level course. And that speaks to design, our learners are incredibly capable of success. Our design prohibits that a lot of the time, right?
Tom 26:54
I think so often, at every grade level. So much of education is wrapped around teacher convenience or teacher process, where you know, that is so so many times just the antithesis of student need when students process. And I know this is a job, I know that there is a schedule that grades have to be in a certain time that, you know, especially in standards driven operations, that certain topics have to be covered. All of these things are the facts of life and education. But I don't think any of them truly usurp the need of the student. And, you know, we shouldn't ever say, Oh, no, I'm sorry, the rules don't allow that. When the reality is, you know, if we give them an extra hour or two or a week, so what, you know, if they learn something in the process, man, we've just done them a huge favor. And we have made the next learning opportunity possible. But if we shut them down, if we say sorry, you know, it was 12 o'clock in you you're not in on, I'm not taking it on, you know, that's that that's something. Now that's kind of ironic that I say this, because you remember, I taught video production and I started specifically editing and editing is a deadline driven job. If you don't make the deadline, it doesn't air you don't get paid. It's very simple. So I always taught my editing courses as sorry, but if I don't get it, you know, I don't want it. And in 12 years of teaching at that level, I only had one student who wanted to try and challenge me at that. And you know, I said, but this is the rules. This is not my rules. I'm just trying to help you learn the rules on because if you want to be successful, you've got to follow the rules at some point in time. But, you know, these are college level kids, you know, they they can do this. And they all did amazingly. So you just got to be fair, you got to be on you got to be you got to communicate all of this stuff appropriately. And you got to execute it, you universally.
Katie 29:11
And I and I think another point there too is when we think about those firm goals, flexible means is, you know, the granted when I am at work, I need to meet deadlines. But I think the other thing we have to realize is as many of these people are putting are meeting the deadlines at work. They are meeting the deadlines for their kids. pointment. Yeah, when you are teaching adult learners, honestly, if something's got to give, it will never be my kids, and it will never be my colleagues. It's going to be my own education. And I always try to say that of like, I am a practitioner as well. And you know, as much as Yes, there is a drop dead deadline for me because I have to submit the grades to the college. Like I have no way around that. I can be flexible up into a point. But I say this to educators a lot too when you teach younger learners. is there's this this institutional belief that every learner has to try their hardest, every day at everything. And it's always like, but what if they choose the easy thing and it's like, Okay, I'm, I'm a very, very strong reader. If I choose an audio book, that's not an easy thing, if I have a two and a half hour drive after this, to go home, and that allows me to read while commuting, so it doesn't take time away from my kids. And you know, I think that, especially with adult learners, we have to realize that like your three hour class, when this person has children, and is raising a family, and is working two full time jobs, and is worried about finances, and is facing, you know, all this other insecurity that like, No offense, but like getting your paper in on time is not the most important thing in their world. And when you say, well, when can you get it to me? What does work? Tell me what your week is like? I think that's the magic. Because you don't want to say, Oh, do nothing all semester, it's going to be fine. I think conversation is when this is your job, you will be fired very quickly if you're not known to meet deadlines. So if you think that the deadlines I'm giving you right now, given everything else, you're juggling are unreasonable. I need you to advocate and tell me what can you do? What deadline Can you meet? Oh, you work until 2am on Saturday, and you want to catch it up on Sunday, and you wanted to get to me on Sunday instead? That's awesome. And so you know, a lot of the times we as you said, Dad, we say that we're scaffolding. And we're really just puppeteering in, you know, saying that it must be due on Sunday at midnight, because I want to correct on Monday. It's not real. That's like a unicorn deadline. It's made up.
Luke Hobson 31:36
Yeah, I mean, overall, it's just trying to get that student feedback. And that is going to then influence what you've done. That's what I've learned from your book. And it's what I continue to do. And even for teaching my courses online, I teach for seven New Hampshire University. And the minute everything started happening with the world outside going bananas, I got one email that was just like, Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, my mother got sick, I don't know what to do. And it's just like, as soon as I saw that, I made every announcement email video humanly possible to saying like, take care of yourselves, I understand it's a pandemic, like, I don't care if you didn't get it in at exactly 12 o'clock am for a discussion board posts, like it's fine. Like, we're going to be okay, we're gonna make it through. But I need that, you know, I need that student feedback to be able to even talk to them. And I really don't know where this concept came from, from education that we can't ask our students what they want, or what's the best way to serve them. I don't know how that myth or rumor or whatever it is that feeling that we can reach out to them, especially as adult learners. That's how I still design My Courses now is that I do a pilot program, for every single course I design, then the whole point is to get student feedback along every single module and what they liked, and what I could improve upon. And that by far has been the greatest asset for how I have designed things and for some things that I would have never guessed to put into the course. But then I hear from some folks are saying, you know, I want a template a way for you to give to me for to taking notes, I just want to template, the bullet points in the key takeaways for every module was like, easy done. Had some folks are kidding, you're talking about a commute, I have plenty of folks who are telling me that they're like, I have a 30 minute drive to work, if you can give me something to help me out. In that sense. I made a podcast where every course is like, Here you go, here's the course content, but it's in a podcast interview for you done. It's It's not that hard to do. But it certainly takes thinking outside the box and making that extra effort. And really that time commitment. Because Yeah, obviously, none of that was quick, that'll take months to be able to really get down perfectly from that sense. Yeah. And that's actually how we all start talking in the first place. Exactly.
Tom 33:44
And the reality is, is that you don't have to have it all at once. You know, this can evolve. And you can start off with your best prediction, and you can modify it, and you can react and you'd be flexible. And you can use the students to help you along with this by getting their feedback. And I in some cases, getting theirs on their resources, you know, make them partners in the course, you know, if you don't like these resources, go find your own, and please submit them to the group, that kind of thing. You know, why? Do we think that they need everything from us? Why can't we develop their own sense of knowledge and their own sense of curiosity in this process at the same time?
Luke Hobson 34:32
It's a great point. And speaking of everything from challenges and time and all the other things that are going on, I was speaking with someone last week, and she was asking me about just the instructional design field in general because of course now all eyes are on instructional designers to basically save the world from everything with remote and COVID. It's just it is what it is. And one of the questions that she was asking me was about what challenge do I see instructional designers facing going from And what I said is that the biggest challenge I can see that's going to be a significant challenge is taking all these courses and revising them to make them better. That is what I think we're going to be facing. So I'm going to throw that question to you, folks, if you are an instructional designer, and now you are how you have been tasked with trying to be able to revise a number of courses before the fall, because some people are actually opening up just like that, like clockwork, where should you start? What priority? Would you set? What What would you do for an order to be able to start tackling this list?
Tom 35:36
We're actually doing that in New England. Right now. It's a, it's a challenge that requires everybody to be on board, obviously, you know, at New England tech, a small Technical College, you know, we have 2100 students, and we provide probably eight to 900 core sections every 10 weeks, right. So we're now in the process of getting our summer term ready for rollout. And they'll primarily still be online for the summer term, except for the hands on stuff, which we'll come back to campus on a restricted format. So we have some departments who have embraced this idea very, very early. And they've met with the instructional designers and they've come up with kind of like a course template that each faculty member can work within and build upon. So that at least identifies the holes that are present in the current courses. Because the current courses were developed for in class instruction. And let's face it, faculty adapt very, very much off the cuff. Most cases, you know, they have their content, they are versed in their content, they have their exercises and assignments, but they respond to what's happening in the classrooms and change as they need to. You can't do that in an online and clap class environment, you know, you have to be ready for all of these options and choices. So, you know, in one particular department, you know, we're doing exactly that we came up with a departmental template, which gave some flexibility and some order. So the student didn't have to relearn the the canvas platform every time they went into a new course. And it gave a chance for the, in some cases for a production assistant, to go into the course make the transition into the template and identify the holes, Would you like something here, or this is confusing there. This isn't, you know, this, I found this one a couple of times where I've been helping out here, where people will modify their syllabus on the fly as well. And they'll do things in week four that they had scheduled for week five, and vice versa. But the syllabus is now wrong. We have to identify that so that they can fix it or bring it back the way it was and you just really identify first and foremost what they have, and what is missing. And so by doing that, we can at least get the layer to make sure that what we have is right, as all the instructions necessary has some sort of feedback loop on through is a discussion forums of surveys and all these things, you know, we start with what we got, because we can't start from ground zero and build, you know, in in that kind of a vacuum. And then we have to, you know, we can even do this in layers and start you know, once we have everything straightened out, just go back in and now saying, Okay, now I want to add more choices. Or now I want to add some variations in assessments or now I want to do this or now I want to do this because I'm responding to the variability that I know I'm going to get. And I'm going to respond to the barriers that I think we'll be there too. And
Katie 38:56
I think also I'm going to throw a wrench in that is I don't think we should be preparing for online classes, I think we should be designing hybrid classes. Because there's going to go back and forth from definitely. And what what scares me is that we're putting all of this time into a virtual class. And then eventually there'll be a vaccine, and eventually we return to class. And does that mean all this amazing design goes away? And we go back to textbooks and lectures. And so I think that as as we look to the future, it's how do we design a course that lives in a learning management system that at any time could become an in person course. And, and to not pin them against each other? Because like what my concern is always is well, this is what I really want to do. But because we have to go online, I'm going to create this and it's more flexible and it's more engaging. And then it's like Oh, good. Now we can go back. I don't have to do that anymore. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Tom 39:50
That's that's actually what we said in the book. You know, we want to create stuff that lives in a learning management system so that it could at any particular time, the available and the students would know how to use it in a remote or distance or online environment. So the challenge really is, you know, coming up with that wonderful mix that, you know, allows you to use your learning management system all the time, you know, this is not something that I'm just going to use for online. That one of the things which I've been promoting for a long time is the very simple fact that if you put everything that you use into your learning management system, the student actually can have access to that, whether they are in class, or whether they are home or at work, you know, so they do have access anywhere, anytime, to all of the learning resource materials, if you then add that wonderful layer of UDL to it, where they are able to access it from any one of those places, regardless of the conditions, they're in, you know, closed captioning on videos, and, you know, readable PDFs and things like that, you know, you have just started stacking up all of the possibilities to really support these students in a multiple ways, which is just wonderful.
Luke Hobson 41:16
And that goes to the point in the book as well to talking about the virtual snow days and the flipped classroom, which by far the best conversations and discussions I ever had in college, were the days where I had to read something beforehand, where I went online connected with folks. And so I have a discussion board. And then we went to school. And then we got to talk about a person and we got to either debate or, you know, whatever we were doing. And by far those were most the productive uses of our time compared to anything else I've encountered. So it's really interesting. I'm not too sure where we will go future wise, I think it's a great idea, Katie, I really hope that that goes that way. Because if I put my my futuristic thinking cap on, I live in New Hampshire, and I've been following all the schools in my area. And so far, there's only one that decided to continue to be online. And SNHU. Yeah, that's it. Everyone else is saying that they're going back to school. And I read Dr. LeBlanc statement this morning talking about why he wants to wait until there is a vaccine and to make sure we understand more. And of course, all of his precautions and everything he was talking about for his warning signs were true that yeah, you don't want to affect the entire staff. It's not just the students of the 18 to 22 year olds, there's way more people there's far more things to consider and what if they go home because the commuters and affect their family? And you know, there's a number of different things. So I really do wonder where this is going to take us but I think it's a step in the right direction, will take us back and forth.
Katie 42:43
Like I was just talking to my sister this morning. And I was saying like, okay, so there's a vaccine for this. But now we know that people can go remote. So is it now every flu season we go remote, or and I'm not even talking a big pandemic is as a public school administrator. There are there are times that 25% of our staff has to call in sick because they're either sick or they're caretaking for their children who are sick. And it's it's once we know that we have the infrastructure to be able to provide things remotely what is going to stop us from saying not only snow days, but okay, it's super hot, let's just go remote. Okay, there's a flu season coming, let's just go remote. It's too cold away to the bus stop. Let's go remote. I you know, I and I think that the schools that are going in person, I hope I'm wrong, are going to have to pull back and and to go virtual again before before being able to stay in that space. And it's we have to design knowing that like if I designed that course, and they were in person, I want to make sure I didn't do that design for nothing. But it could still be Hey, listen, like I'm having a class and if for some reason you can't make a class you can still learn online but I'd love you to come to at least you know three quarters of the classes or you know, could I could I have things could I have the option to zoom in, you know, while I'm on a swivel in my classroom like there's so many cool things we can do. If we say it's not online or or in person, it's how to design something that literally works regardless.
Tom 44:09
Yes, I agree.
Luke Hobson 44:11
Totally. And I am really curious too about the K through 12 environment same thing if they're going to be doing this something of like three days a week you go to school two days virtual or whatnot because they a side effect from all of this while Yes, the pandemic is awful in a number of ways for online learning and remote learning specifically, they are learning real tangible skills for on the job but what they do as I thinking and talking to some of my cousins who are Gen Z and they're like oh yeah, I use slack for school and you know, discord and all these other different things. It's like guys, like I use that for work, you're gonna use slack for the rest of your life until a new thing comes out like this is this is real on the job training that you weren't anticipating. But this is where we are. It is what it is. So for the instructors and the you know, in the instructional designers in a sense, we're talking about everything for remote learning, if we're going to stay on that topic is that one of the things I keep on reading about and hearing about is that there is not so much as a connection to their students as it would be if they were in a face to face model, the online version, for some reason, doesn't provide that relationship to them that they've always has been looking for. Can you talk about the importance of an instructor presence and how if we are going this way, in the future to do this hybrid, or whatever it may be, how can we ensure that instructors are building this presence inside of their classrooms?
Tom 45:39
The It is so important. I mean, I think the the instructor sets the tone, by how they present themselves and how they are present in their course, every day, that has everything to do with, you know, their willingness to share their image, you know, whether it be in video, or, you know, as a snapshot, or whatever it is, you know, so many instructors simply don't want to have anything to do with it, I don't want to see myself on camera kind of like thing. And the, it's, it's a silly little thing, which makes a big difference and bridging that gap between where I am and where you are, you know, being able to see and hear us, ours is a great way of making a human connection. And as Katie said before, this is all an emotional process. It's all a relationship building. And the more we can do to build that relationship, the better it is, I think it also comes down to the type of language we use in our text, back and forth in our communications and how we introduce things. If we're going to make everything strict and formal, that says something, it creates a little bit of a barrier between you and me. And that whole relationship which we have to then try and tear down in order to make that personal connection. What do you think, Kate?
Katie 47:02
No, again, show your cat pictures. Like everybody is juggling so many things. And one of the worst things that you can do we talk about instructor presence being you know, their social presence, there's cognitive presence, there is are you there to facilitate discourse? Or are you just like some, you know, not even talking head would be great. You are like some talking non head. But, you know, I think that the social presence is what allows us to feel like, we are working with someone that there's some sort of community and collaboration. And there is nothing worse than going through an online learning experience, or any it could be an in person learning experience. But I think people are much more likely to be present in person, where you feel like you don't even know the person like you feel like you weren't even there. And you know, a part of social presence is kind of that humaneness of learning. You know, there's amazing, amazing apps, there's amazing technology, those cannot replicate the humaneness of learning. And then sometimes when the more technology we use, the more personhood we lose. And the goal is really how do you maintain that social presence? Maintain the relationship, make sure that you have really rich discussions with everybody in the course that you're facilitating, you know, discussions among other people, and that the course truly exemplifies your craft of design is this is not all about will I know the content, I'm going to wash my hands and send it to an instructional designer, is we should be working with instructional designers. So our personality, our cognitive presence, our social presence comes out in the course, because otherwise we might as well have robots teaching the damn things.
Luke Hobson 48:44
It's funny the speaking of instructor presence, by far the most responses and most engagement I ever saw is that one of my courses that I was teaching was an announcement that I made because it was Star Wars Day on campus. And I found a storm trooper My name is Luke, obviously I had to go and find him. And this is a silly picture of me pointing to the storm trooper and by far everyone loved it. They thought it was like the greatest thing in the planet to know but I'm a real guy was like, yep, I'm a real person. Like I swear these announcements and emails coming from me but not a robot. It's real. You know? It's just so true. So last question before I let you on go cuz I know we're getting close to the hour is just to fully nerd out because I save this the best for last, obviously. What is your favorite example you've seen so far? Whether it is something you have seen or something that you have designed as far as for real UDL and action.
Tom 49:35
Then a couple of them actually, the the one that happened like two weeks ago, which I just thought was absolutely amazing. I shared it with Katie, it was one of my instructors at New England tech who runs a business finance course. Okay, talk about the challenge, right to get engagement, but he set it up for the final project that they could do. anything they want. That was his, you know, I don't care if it's a PowerPoint presentation, I don't care. What it is the only requirement is that it has to be factual. And it cannot be boring, not boring. And he had one kid who did a rap song about a financial act, I don't remember the name of this act, you know, the, the more your buyer Act, or whatever it was, and it was absolutely fabulous. And it, it actually stated what all of the information was, but it was in song to a famous tune. It was absolutely amazing. And the kid I bet you learn more from that song creation, you know, because he had to do it over and over again and work with it and work with it, then he probably did from any other thing in that whole course.
Luke Hobson 50:55
That's awesome. Katie, What about yours?
Katie 50:59
Oh, my gosh, this is such a hard question. You know, I would say that some of my most meaningful UDL work has when I have just said to my class, I have to tell you, I'm going with something. I am trying to design something. And this is the goal. And these are the barriers that I've come up with. And I can't think of a lot of really good ways to eliminate the barriers. Can you help me? And again, this has happened so many times, but recently it was people are so freaking clever. So my friend, George Coros, who is a presenter for innovation, he always says the smartest person in the room is the room that like the more you could crowdsource ideas, the more likelihood of getting a decent answer. And so I was doing this huge state conference in Washington State. And, you know, I wanted to give a choice for like, if you wanted to go into a breakout room, then that's great. But I know that some of you won't have audio and you won't have video. So like, it's just not a, it's just not a great option. Some of you might have the choice of you know, just texting your colleagues. But then I tried to like make the breakout rooms huge, knowing that there might have only been one or two people in there. And then there were breakout rooms with only one person. And so I came back. I'm like, Oh, my gosh, that was a disaster. I said, I really want to give you this option, I really honestly do. Because I recognize that like, sometimes my four kids are in the background. I can't do a breakout room sometimes. And it doesn't mean you're not engaged and not willing to have a conversation. It's just you can't do it. Then I said, Is there any way that I could organize it? And so they put out all these ideas and one of the ideas was, at the beginning of every webinar, play a game where you teach everyone how to rename themselves in Zoom. You know, what's your favorite cocktail? You know, what's your What was your nickname when you were little? And when it comes time for the options, just change your name to Yes, if you want to be in a breakout room. And I'm like, that's so good. And so easy. And I swear, I would have never thought of it. But it was like things like that. I think that sometimes we're like, oh, I have to ask the instructional designer what to do, and be vulnerable enough to say, I want to design something, can anyone help me? And that has has taught me more about design than I think I've learned any other way. It's just the ideas of the people who I am I'm learning with and for and about.
Tom 53:09
And what better way to model expert learning than that. You know, just to say I don't have it yet. Can you help me get it?
Luke Hobson 53:16
That's amazing. Have you both seen the meme that's going around online of one of the kids taking remote learning and he changed his name to reconnecting so he wouldn't get called in class. Incredible reconnecting dot dot dot his way changed his name to Students are smart. That's the whole point like they know what to do they figure it out they adapt is still funny. Well, thank you both so much for joining me today. This has been an absolute blast. Where can people go to learn more about you your work, your research and everything else?
Katie 53:51
So both of us are at Novak education comm if you click on meet our team, there's my Tom has a page I have a page. And again, what's been really cool about this, as we wrote, you know, we publish UDL in the cloud and 16. And in the past three weeks, we sold more copies than we sold the previous three years. And so like right now, the concept of like, how do we design better in the cloud is hot. And so, you know, again, I think that this shows that, you know, three years ago, four years ago, we talked about that, like, you know, someday we're gonna have to go online, and it's gonna be a barrier if we don't think about how to design online. And it's, it's great to be in a place where we realize just how important this is. And again, this is not a question about in person or online is at any time in the future, we have to be ready to go remote. And that means we have to design very differently.
Luke Hobson 54:43
Your book is the number one book that I always recommend to Facebook and LinkedIn groups for instructional designers when they ask, you know, what should I read? And I noticed right away that all the books started to sell out because everyone came back to me and like I can't find it like what you mean you can't find it on Amazon. Just go find it. Sure enough, was like, Oh, you're right there.
Katie 55:01
It's been wild, but we just did a big new printing. So we'll be good.
Luke Hobson 55:05
Awesome. Awesome. Well, once again, folks, thanks so much. I appreciate your time.
Tom 55:10
You're welcome Luke. Have a great day. Have a great day. Bye bye.
Luke Hobson 55:13
A big thank you once again for Katie and Tom for coming on the show. Without them, I don't know where I would be today. To find out more about them and their work. You can find the link to Novak education in the show notes. If you want to win a copy of UDL in the cloud. I'm hosting a book giveaway contest right now. Subscribe to the show and share the contest link to be able to enter to win. This contest is also free by the way and not like a weird enter your credit card for a free trial free, I mean legitimately free. The winner will be chosen by July 7 that is two weeks from today. Good luck to everyone who enters the contest for winning a free copy of the book. I also want to say a big thank you to a new sponsor of the show squad cast. If you enjoy today's quality for the podcast recording, it's all thanks to squad cast. If you are still using zoom or other platforms to record your audio files for podcasts, and for interviews, just switch to squad cast. Their platform lets you do video calls. But it only records the audio files and also gives you an individual file per guest. This way, you can still see the person that you're interviewing, making eye contact reading body language, but the bandwidth isn't all screwed up because you're recording the video at the same time. It's super easy to do. It's the right way to do podcasting. To learn more about squad cast, click on the link in the show notes. And if you purchase through that link, a big thank you as well. Who should I interview next? Tell me on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook. tag the person love to have a conversation with them and to bring them on board the show. To find out more information about the podcast, my blog or anything else head on over to drlukehobson.com. Subscribe to the show to hear the next episode and as always five star ratings and reviews they are always welcome. But that's it. That is all I have for you. My fellow nerds take care be well. I'll talk to you next time.