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So my name is Kari Kumar and I am a lecturer in the Faculty of Health Sciences at U.O.I.T.
I teach in the Nursing Program.
My background is in microbiology actually. So I have a Bachelor of Science
and a Master’s of Science in Microbiology.
I have been teaching for about eight years in higher ed and over the last couple
of years I've gotten really interested in learning more about
education itself
and so my current passion is now learning about how to make education
more inclusive and more accessible
and that's actually the current focus of my doctoral research.
There were a couple of things that took place when I first began teaching
in university that got me… triggered my interest in Universal Design
for Learning.
One of those was that when I first began to teach I was a very
successful student
and I thought I know exactly what students need to do to succeed
and I know what I liked as a student from my teachers so this is how I'm going to
teach my class.
And I quickly realized that I was quite naive and that my students are quite a
diverse group of people. They don't necessarily learn the same way that I
like to learn
and I needed to think about reworking my teaching practices to be more inclusive
of their different needs.
At the same time I used to teach very large classes and so I used to get quite
a number of Accommodation forms from students from the Centre for Students
with Disabilities.
And I wasn't aware of this as a student that such a centre existed
and I really didn't know what these Accommodation forms were about. I didn’t
understand why some of my students requested for example: extra time on
tests.
So I felt there was somewhat an air of mystery about
what this was all about
and I wanted to learn more about the needs of students with disabilities.
Several years later, once I began to become
more interested in
in education itself and becoming formally trained as an educator,
I decided to take some courses specifically related to students with
disabilities
and that's when I became much more enlightened
and that's when I became aware of Universal Design for Learning and since
then Universal Design for Learning I would say the major component of my
teaching philosophy
and has also shaped my research interests and activities as well.
So UDL or Universal Design for Learning is a framework that we can
apply towards thinking about how to make education more accessible or inclusive
of the needs of our students.
So there are various sets of guidelines that can sort of act like
a check list in the sense if you will in terms of how to make your courses more
accessible to the needs of your students.
So there are various iterations of UDL. The bottom line though is
that UDL suggests that
we should be more flexible and more adaptable for the needs of our
students.
If we can impart more flexibility and adaptability into the curriculum into
the way that we design and deliver our courses
then that takes the burden of adaptability off the shoulders of our
students and essentially puts it into the course.
And that really makes a lot more sense
to be as flexible as we can without compromising on the academic rigor of
our courses.
UDL is important because
flexibility, adaptability, these are things that every student is going to
appreciate.
So all of our students will appreciate different choices with
respect to how to demonstrate their learning for example
and in particular students with disabilities also can benefit
perhaps the most from flexible course design
so this may negate the need to request accommodations as frequently as they
would otherwise
so that can be very beneficial.
Requesting accommodations in disclosing disability is something that students
with disabilities often feel very uncomfortable with
so enhancing the flexibility of our course can perhaps
alleviate some of that discomfort
and it also demonstrates to all of the students that we have an interest in
meeting their needs and that we recognize that they’re a diverse
group of people
and there is a lot of value in that.