 Hello and welcome to today's workshop. Can, first of all, can everyone hear me? If you can either pop in the chat, if you can hear me, that would be great, please. Great, thank you. And if I could ask for people to, in this workshop, we're gonna primarily be discussing via the chat. There will be an option to use a microphone throughout, but for now, if you could meet your microphone as we get started, that would be great. I believe I can hear someone typing. So if we could just mute that, that would be ideal. So welcome to today's workshop, practical tips, how to make your teaching more inclusive for neurodiverse and disabled students. My name is Dr. Miranda Melcher. I am representing my current employer of City University of London, as well as my previous institution, Kings College London, where a lot of this research and practice was initially developed. These tips are based on about seven years of university teaching and about four years of intensive research on pedagogy related to students with disabilities and learning differences, which is the particular lens that we are going to be focusing on today. This workshop will be obviously a workshop. It will be interactive. So I will be asking you to use the chat. We're gonna do a bit of padlet stuff towards the end, but please feel free to pop in any comments or questions as we go in the chat. You don't need to wait for a particular point. So you are welcome to if you would like. We're gonna be talking about practical tips today. So there's gonna be a bit of theory, but how we apply it is the key thing and is applicable for any kind of teaching that you do, whether it's online, face-to-face, something in the middle, whether you are the one creating the content or whether you're just the one delivering it. So this is equally applicable to lectures, creating modules, to GTAs delivering it, to professional services, creating events. These are widely applicable tips that you should be able to implement in your teaching pretty much immediately. So why are we looking to improve inclusivity in our teaching? Now, presumably the fact that you are here in this workshop today, you already have some ideas about why this is, but let's go over a few general principles to give you some context for what we're looking at today and what my research focuses on. So the first one is that we have actually quite a huge population of students with learning differences or disabilities in the UK. Our last official government data from before the pandemic in 2019 suggests that it's probably a minimum of 17% of students coming into higher education in the UK with some kinds of declared disability. Within the different types of disability that can be declared, specific learning differences is the largest category, but 17% is likely much lower than the actual number. And it is already quite high. So even if we don't necessarily know whether our students have disabilities or not, the chances are statistically, it's quite likely. And so this is a provision that we need to be thinking about and ensuring our teaching is accessible to. The second is this idea of the social model of disability. Traditionally, we have a medical model of disability, which is that the body is meant to function in XYZ way. And if your body cannot do those things, you are somehow deficient. It's essentially on the individual and it's something that is lacking. The social model of disability, however, focuses on how we as a society and as institutions can make things accessible for people. And so the idea is that you shouldn't have to fit one particular model of how your body works in order to participate in society. So one really great example that we're all familiar with are wheelchair ramps. It used to be thought of of if you're in a wheelchair, well, you have to sort out how you're to get around and if you can't get into a building, well, that's your problem. We as a society have moved on to thinking that actually it's the institution's job, it's society's job, it's transport's job to ensure that we have ramps and accessible options for wheelchair users. And that's the idea of switching from the medical to the social model. And in our teaching, we can be part of this transition as well. So instead of saying that our students have to fit into our particular mold, it's about making our teaching more broadly available to people. There are also legal requirements. We have the 2010 Equality Act and we also have the more recent Web Accessibility Act, both of which have pretty high standards for anti-discrimination and accessibility for disability. And so there are some pretty strict legal requirements that I'm sure we're all pretty aware of at this point. This also fits into the wider equality, diversity and inclusion agenda, which of course covers many different issues. But disability and neurodiversity is often one that we don't maybe think as much about. In many ways, this is because they can often be more invisible. And so there's still quite significant societal stigma for people to come forward and disclose. And this is something we can work to address in our teaching. And then finally, what a great reason to improve inclusivity in our teaching is that it's actually applicable to all of our students. All of the tips that we're gonna be talking about today benefit students with disabilities and neurodiversities, but also benefit many other kinds of students as well. So some of the things we're gonna be talking about, for example, make a huge impact for students for whom English is not their first language, for example. So that just adds to the number of students that can be helped through these things. And the beautiful thing about these tips is that no students are disadvantaged by making these tweaks to your teaching. So there's lots of great reasons to improve inclusivity. So we are going to be focusing on three practical principles of inclusive teaching. We're going to be working through what they all mean, how you've encountered them, some specific scenarios, asking questions, and where everything's gonna kind of revolve around these three principles of inclusive teaching. They're very simple. The first is be specific. The second is be transparent. And the third is be mindful. We're gonna go through what those mean, and I'm gonna ask you to have a think and contribute a bit of how you might encounter these in your teaching practice. So how can we be specific? Being specific means clarifying a lot of information that we probably already know as teachers. To give you an example, we know when we ask students to do something, generally what we expect the outcome to be. If we're asking students to participate in a discussion seminar, we have an idea of what participation looks like. We probably have something like, well, we want students to be asking questions, to be participating in group work, but participation doesn't mean that you have to be the one who speaks the most or always have the right answer, right? We know that participation means a bunch of different things and we generally know what that means in our particular context. But if we simply say things like, we want you to participate in this discussion, our students may not fully understand what that means in this context. And so by being specific, we can make it easier for students to participate, to have a go once they know what's expected of them. Similarly, if you're giving, for example, a writing assignment, I'm sure I'm not the only one who field seemingly endless questions from students about things like word count. We know what the word count is, we say it, we make it clear, but students really appreciate that specificity so they know what to expect. Similarly, things like, I'm sure a lot of you have used forums in the last year. It's one thing to say, post in a forum. Okay, when? Add a deadline, post in a forum every Monday. Great, but when we say post in a forum, do we mean 100 words? Do we mean one sentence? Hopefully, what are we expecting from our students here? And this is the sort of thing that can be really, really powerful. It reduces, if students understand what to expect, it's not about giving them the answers, but it allows it reduces anxiety. It enables them to manage their time and their energy more effectively, both of which can be particularly difficult for students with disabilities and our diversities. And again, benefits all of our students. So this being specific is a really key principle for inclusive practice. It is a workshop, it is interactive. So I am gonna ask you at the moment, if I can get three ideas in the chat please, what other ways can you think of to be specific? I've mentioned forums, I've mentioned word count, what other things can we think of where specificity might be helpful in the teaching context? I'd like to get three separate ideas in the chat please. Familiarity with grading rubrics, great, thank you Vicki. We're actually gonna talk about that in a minute, that's a good one. How long each activity should take, Tilly, that's incredibly important. Thank you for raising that. So again, it's not a hard and fast rule, what writing something might take one amount of time for one person, different for another, but giving students an idea of in general, this should take about this long is incredibly helpful. Q&A, provide examples, yep, those are great. Number of examples you'd like to give, great, thank you Lynn. This is exactly the kind of idea of specificity. How students can get feedback, examples of models, yeah. So these are all great ideas of being specific. Now, they're obviously gonna be different depending on your particular teaching context, but some basics to keep in mind. When are they meant to do the thing and how long is it going to take? Making sure that the instructions are available somewhere they can go back and look at them. So this can be posting it on Moodle, putting it in an email, even during a live session, for example, if you send students into breakout rooms, having the instructions on an attachment in the chat if it's Zoom or keeping it in the chat if it's Teams, so that students can go back to it, it can be incredibly powerful and massively reduces the number of repetitive questions you get. Who needs to do what? What are the roles here? So especially in group work, this can be really important. So clarifying, for example, this group of five is gonna go off and discuss this and they come back and one person needs to report back. You've now clarified that one person needs to be the one presenting, which makes it much more possible, for example, for anxious students, maybe autistic students or maybe less confident students generally to feel willing to participate in the group knowing they won't have to present back to the whole class. Depth and lengths, are you expecting, for example, in a forum post a sentence, 500 words? Is it a discussion question? Is it something where you're expecting them to have citations? So these are the kinds of things that can really help inclusive teaching. And again, the great thing is that you already have all this information in your head. So it's not about changing how you teach or what you teach, just adding a bit of extra information. Our second principle, how can we be transparent? So transparency is about explaining explicitly the norms and expectations that we have on our teaching. We often, by the time we get to a position of teaching in higher education, we've been in academia for a while one way or another. And we often forget how alien some of our expectations and norms can be if you're coming in from the beginning. So this can be what Vicki mentioned earlier, marking criteria. I'm sure that my department is not the only one that requires all of us who mark to go through training to make sure that we're all interpreting the marking criteria in the same way. If we have to go through training for the marking criteria, our students don't. Do they understand what it means? Even if we give them access to the marking criteria, which is a great first step, that may or may not be enough. We all, I'm sure, have come across marking criteria that are incredibly vaguely worded, for example. One instance of this that can be especially powerful is it's worth thinking about whether you're marking criteria, how much it cares about English as a language, grammar, punctuation, typos, et cetera. Maybe in your discipline, that does really matter. But I'm guessing that in a lot of disciplines, my own included, actually, that's not a huge priority. In my discipline, we care about sources. We care about depth of understanding. We care about structure. But if you have a few typos, we don't even take off marks of that. It's literally not in the marking criteria. As long as we can understand what students are trying to say, that's fine. You would be astonished by how much more willing all kinds of students are to get drafts, to try something out, once they know that perfect grammar is not an expectation. This is not just for written assignments. This also is things like the chat in a live session. So simply saying something like, I want everyone to put something in the chat. Don't worry about your English. A few typos won't matter. Go ahead and get a go. Can be incredibly, incredibly powerful to our students. So similarly, it's your turn to participate. What other ways or what other aspects of our teaching can we think of that maybe aren't transparent or could be more transparent for our students? Can I get three ideas, please, in the chat? Where might we need more transparency? Areas that are being assessed? Yeah, okay. So emphasizing kind of what counts and what doesn't. That's really important. Great, thank you, Sheila. Acceptable use of quotes, length and referencing. Yes, thank you, Lynn. The purpose of an activity. Tilly, this is brilliant. Yes, this is really important for transparency. Why are you asking them to do this? And why are you asking them to do it in this way, right? Why, for example, do we in academia care about footnotes and referencing? What's the basis for that requirement is really important. If students are asked to work together, explain why and what they'll get out of it. Olivia, exactly, right? Why is group work important in this instance? What is the purpose of not just the content but doing it in this manner? Breaking down jargon, like office hours, extenuating circumstances, formative summative. Yes, Vicki, this is incredibly useful. I have colleagues that have literally built-in glossaries onto their Moodle pages for exactly these kinds of things. The marking process, yeah, will it be double-marked? Will it be moderated? What does moderation mean? These are all really great ideas. So, transferable skills generated by tasks, yep. So some general things to remember, right? What counts, what doesn't count, and why? Where are you coming from? What are your preferences? So things, for example, like yes, in my module, I'm assigning a lot of group work. This is because I think group work is really helpful for teamwork, which improves your employability, right? We all know as teachers, we have different preferences. It can often be really powerful to just acknowledge and explain that, not in a defensive manner, but to help students understand more of why you're asking them to do things. Another important one about transparency is to indicate openness for accessibility improvements. Simply saying, in the first few sessions of your module, if you have any accessibility needs, please feel free to come let me know. It's incredibly powerful. Students may not need to come forward. That would obviously be the ideal that everything's already accessible for them, but simply the fact that they know they can can be incredibly helpful. In fact, a lot of the feedback that I've gotten from my students has been around this. Thank you for saying that I did need this or I didn't need this, but it was good to know I could. And again, that just takes a sentence. And then the last one, as we've mentioned in the chat, explaining how does academia work and why? So things that often seem second nature to us, but may not be for our students. So transparency is incredibly key. Finally, we have a third principle of being mindful. And this is actually a skill that we've all hugely developed in the last year. So things that maybe two years ago we would have had trouble with, like, oh yeah, maybe this event is not going to be able to include people in this time zone. We've gotten a lot better at that. If I had a cat that decided to walk across my keyboard right now, I think everyone would probably smile rather than go, oh my God, how unprofessional. We've gotten quite good at being mindful in a lot of ways, but for all of us, this is an ever-evolving journey and process. So things that may be easy for you may not be for others. Things that may be hard for you may not be for others. And the idea of being mindful is making sure that especially in what can often be sort of throw away chit chat comments, making sure that we don't sort of put across biases that we don't mean to. So one thing that happened a lot a few months ago, obviously, was lectures and teachers sort of starting off a live session saying, you know, it really sucks that we're online. Really wish we could be in person, but like, fine, let's get on with the session. Fair enough. I'm sure of people it was really difficult. However, for a lot of students with disabilities and neurodiversities, but also for distant students, for example, students with care and responsibilities, the fact that so much more was available online was actually a huge benefit to their education and learning. And so they comment at the beginning of a session from the person on the other end of the power dynamic saying online learning is bad and I don't like it, immediately creates an atmosphere that is exclusionary to those people for whom they do like it. Now, it's not to say you have to deny what you think, but even balancing it out just a bit by saying things like, I know that I'm still adjusting to online learning and it may not be my favorite thing, but I'm sure we can make it work and have this be a good experience, right? You're not denying what you feel, but making sure that you're not assuming everyone is in the same situation. So that's one particular example. As before, can I get three ideas in the chat please of other ways in which we can continue to improve our mindfulness? What other things should we be considering? Providing ample time for students to answer questions. Emma, this is great. I was actually gonna mention this. So giving people thinking time and response time is really key. Breaks for online sessions, for stretches, eye relaxation, Lynn, great idea. Thank you. Allowing space for learners to reflect and ask questions. Yeah, Mark, that's a great one. These are all really good ideas for being mindful. We're gonna come across some other ones later. Prompting students to ask for help. Yep, great, Olivia. Allowing responses by a different format. Yes, some would prefer a mic, others prefer to type. Pat, that's a great point. At the moment, I am not doing that. I'm making you all reply via chat. But later on, we will have that option. And considering ways of learning. Yeah, so great. So that's what being mindful entails. And some things to keep in mind. Assume best intent. So we're gonna come across this later on in one of our scenarios. But quite often, especially with transitions, whether it's a new module, whether it's a different mode of delivery, we often, we're under stress. Our students might be under stress, but we as teachers can be under stress. And it can often be easy to assume that if something's not going the way you want, it's on purpose. And yet the vast majority of the time, it's not. So one thing to kind of keep it the forefront is always just assume the best intent, right? We can't possibly know everything that's going on. And it's probably not malicious. Assume that there are invisible disabilities in your class. As we talked about, it's a minimum of 17% of our students have some kind of disability. It's probably a lot higher than that. So even if you haven't received any sort of notice about this particular student or that particular student, in general, assume that inclusivity is going to be important for at least some of your students. This is one that was brought up, I believe, by Tilly. Apologies if I got that name wrong from the chat. I'm not looking at it right this second. But giving response times and time estimates. So for example, I'd like everyone to take a minute to think about this. And then I set a timer for a minute. Or if I'm asking someone to do a task, it should take you about this long. Consider caring responsibilities. This is really key. We know that there are a lot of them, and particularly right now. And those are not trivial things. And those are not things that people, that they do have to take into account with their learning. Consider behavioral norms and expectations. This is really key for some of the learning differences in our diversity. So for example, autism. The stereotype is relatively true that some people with autism do not like eye contact. And so either in in-person class or an online class, making eye contact with other students or the lecture can be incredibly uncomfortable. And yet we do have this norm that one is meant to make eye contact. This goes back to assuming best intent. Do they need to be making? Do all of your students need to be making eye contact in this situation? How would you feel if they don't? Is that feeling in the spirit of assuming best intent? So we now have gone through our three principles and we've come up with some great examples of areas that we can think about this in our teaching and learning. We are now going to go through four scenarios that I'm gonna ask you to take a bit of time to think about and then using either the chat or your microphone entirely up to you. I'm gonna ask for some ideas about responses. Now I'm not gonna say that everyone needs to give a response. This is, you know, feel free to participate as much or as little as you feel comfortable. We are gonna have four scenarios and we're gonna go through them one at a time. So our first scenario, you ask all of your students to present on a set topic for 10 minutes to develop their presentation skills. You're explaining why they're doing it in this way. Two students approach you and say they have a social anxiety disorder and ask if there's an alternative option. How might you respond? I'm going to be silent for a minute and just ask you to think and then I'm going to ask for people to either put responses in the chat or raise their hands. So I'm setting a timer for a minute. Okay, can I please ask for ideas in the chat or if you'd rather use your microphone please feel free to raise your hand and I can then call on you. Sheila, they can do it at the end of the session just you and maybe students, they feel comfortable. Yeah, that could really work, right? Enabling them to still do the important bit but maybe they don't have to do it in front of a big audience. Kat, a good alternative would ask them to record it if they're comfortable and play the recording class. Yeah, so they're definitely still presenting but again, without that live audience. Option to pre-report. Yep, Tilly, you have the same idea, lovely. Narrated PowerPoint, so they don't even have the video aspect. That can be an important thing to assess whether it's a live audience. If that's the thing that's making them nervous or being on video or both, pre-record, work with the students, co-author an alternative. So Mark, this is really, really key, right? Mark's highlighted this point that there are many different ways of going about this. There's Narrated PowerPoint, pre-recording, small audience, other formats, doing it in a shorter time period, pair up to present, there are loads of different options but the key here that Mark and Olivia have highlighted is the first step surely is to ask them, right? What are you nervous about? How can we make this better and to work with the students rather than assuming that there's only going to be one solution? But this is exactly the idea of being inclusive is that we go, hmm, didn't really think about this or haven't had to deal with this before. Let's have a discussion and see what we can do to make this work. So these are great ideas, thank you. We are going to move on to scenario two, scenario two. You notice that students seem to keep their cameras off in live online sessions. How might you consider this and respond? I'm gonna set a one minute timer again and then welcome contributions in the chat or by microphone. Okay, feel free to pop things in the chat or raise your hand. We've got some ideas already. So from Sheila, have a discussion about the group about it and set up a group decision. So this is really important, right? The idea that the group gets to decide what they want to do. So this can be a way forward. I would say that this tends to work best if you either do this right at the beginning to kind of kind of set a contract for the group or do it after the group knows each other pretty well. It can be tricky to do kind of in that middle period because you tend to get the kind of most dominant people speaking up rather than a more even continuation. Ask if there's anything you can do that make them feel more confident about turning their cameras on. Yeah, so that's interesting, Olivia. I will say that that does have an assumption that turning the cameras on is better. And one of the things that's worth thinking about for this is is it better? Why do you want cameras on? The first thing is to think about that, right? You notice that students seem to be keeping their cameras off. Why are you noticing that? Is it because it's bothering you? Is there some educational reason that it's better for them to have it on? Or maybe on reflection, does it actually not seem to be impacting their learning? And maybe they don't need to have them on, right? This is a really tricky one because it comes back to the idea that we have preferences as teachers. We're not neutral actors. And before we make decisions about how to go about doing something, we have to know where we are coming from so that that can be part of the discussion as well, right? So explore why in discussion or ask them privately why this may be. So exploring the discussion again can be powerful. I would say, or asking them to message you can work, though that can create some problems in terms of asking people to justify or explain themselves. See whether it's different breakout rooms, okay? Yeah, Emma. I think, Emma, you've come up with a really nice compromise, right? Say at the start of the session that it's optional, that if you feel comfortable to turn it on, you should, or to have an agreement that for certain pieces, we're all going to agree that we're gonna have them on or off. So, Emma, I think that starts a really nice balance of being inclusive, but also kind of signaling that that may be something you want. Lynn, alternatives, cameras, but tilted down, photos or avatars rather than cameras. Yep, those can be good alternatives. Right, so Kat, this is really important, right? Cameras should not be mandatory as a hard and possible. There's a lot of different reasons. And this is the key thing, right? It can be caring responsibilities. I literally have had students that have been in my sessions with toddlers on their laps or infants on their laps, and they don't want to be on camera for that reason, but are perfectly able to engage and follow along in the session, which seems pretty reasonable to me. We know, for example, there are cultural reasons. For example, students studying online at home who wear hijabs, and if they're at home, they aren't wearing their hijabs, and then we would ask them to put them on just for class, even though they're in their own home. We also have the idea of going back to behavioral expectations, things like eye contact. We know that for students with ADHD, pacing or fiddling can be incredibly helpful. It's not conducive to being on camera. Students with physical disabilities might have impaired mobility or it might be painful to be setting up for a long period of time. The way that one is expected to on camera. If we are in a situation where we're asking students to justify or explain themselves on a case-by-case basis, you can see how this might get quite problematic. So the idea of compromises of first understanding what are your reactions and why, and then trying to come up with alternatives, and the key thing is giving people options and agency. So this can be quite a tricky one, but important for inclusivity. The third one of four is scenario C. You are notified that one of your students is autistic, but you're not given any accommodations that are relevant to live teaching. So for example, the accommodations listed might be things like being able to check out library books for longer periods of time. How might you adapt to this information? Going to set a one-minute timer and then ask for contributions in the chat or by raising your hand. All right, can I please get some ideas in the chat or raising your hand? So we've got some already, asked what has worked well, not well for them on previous courses, how can you help meet their needs? Right, so that's a great idea, right? Building on what we've talked about before, the idea of actually asking the student what has worked for you, what would help in this situation. Great. Discuss the issues with them and any support they've been giving, see if there are any practical solutions. So Sheila, you're exactly on the same page. Ask the student themselves. So I like this idea of assistive technology, but also let's think about what can be wider than simply technical solutions. Provide a chance for people to reflect on their needs. Yeah, so these are some really, really great ideas. In a way, some of this is actually a trick question because especially when we talk about autism, which is one of the most common learning differences that we may come across and also one of the ones that maybe doesn't have the most accurate reputation, is that actually a lot of the things we've already talked about in terms of specificity and transparency can actually already be a lot of the pedagogical accommodation for students with autism in particular. And so one of the things that's worth thinking about is when we get notifications or accommodations, asking the student is an absolutely brilliant way to understand what they need, but also understanding that quite often what they need and want is more clarity, specificity and understanding of expectations rather than specific, please change this activity or please give me this piece of tech, right? The pedagogical and the behavioral side that can be done quite simply with some of the tips we've already discussed can actually sometimes make an even bigger difference. And the final scenario that we're going to be discussing today, you notice that during discussion seminars, either online or in person, students rarely participate freely and there are a lot of awkward silences when you ask the group for thoughts and opinions. How can you improve responsiveness in your class? Same as before, I'm going to set a one minute timer. Okay, what ideas do people have in response to this scenario? Allow discussions to be through the chat rather than cameras or microphones. Sheila, this is great, especially for online learning. We have this wonderful function called the chat, why not use it? Use a variety of approaches such as getting students to react with emojis or the waterfall techniques where they type their answer ahead of time and press enter, mixing it up. Cat, these are great ideas. I in fact use both of those in my teaching and they can be incredibly effective, especially straw pulls through emojis, for example. Emoji for their answer, lower stakes activities like a word cloud, yep. Mark, another low stakes one is often an icebreaker question at the beginning of a session where everyone just has a one or two word answer. But if they've said something like, what's your favorite ice, what ice cream flavor do you feel like today? That's an incredibly low stakes way to get engaged. Parent small group activities, jigsaw type where groups feedback. Yeah, one sentence chat somewhere. I really like that idea, Lynn, right? That's going back to being specific. It's not just about being in small groups. It's also having quite a small task that is clear of what you need to do at the end of it. Polls and other tools that are anonymous. Yep, great idea. Nominate roles. Yes, we talked about this in transparency, asking students to appoint a spokesperson and rotate the role, turn taking, what are the norms? Exactly, these are really, really fabulous ideas. In fact, the best set of ideas I've ever had from doing one of these workshops. So that's really, really great to see. So now that we've gone through these four scenarios and we've applied the three principles, we're gonna kind of open it up a bit and look at this idea of inclusive teaching, neurodiversity more broadly. And just building up exactly what Olivia said, we actually have an anonymous padlet that I have popped into the chat. And this is for any questions, comments you might have. So things that have worked well for you if you're willing to share them, questions or concerns you might have, tricky situations, you're not sure how to navigate. It's entirely anonymous, the padlet. And we're gonna do exactly what we've done before. So I'm gonna be quiet for three minutes to give you a time to put in whatever you want, react to people, et cetera, and then start going through and giving you my thoughts on the things put into those, that padlet. So three minutes in the padlet, please. Okay, the three minutes is up, but I can still see some typing. So I'm gonna add one extra minute. Okay, so feel free to continue adding to the padlet, but I'm gonna start responding to these questions. You will still have access to this padlet after the session if it's of interest to you. So please feel free to continue adding to it. Additionally, if you have answers or comments, please feel free to pop them in yourself or put them in the chat as you prefer. So teacher confidence. I think I often worry about asking, what do you prefer as a teacher? You don't wanna create pressure to kind of come up with a solution or be an expert on inclusion. So I think that's a really understandable concern to have. But the idea here that we can avoid is specifically asking each learner their preferences, what works for them. So it's different from saying, student, how do we improve inclusivity? That's a huge question that maybe does create some pressure and is not the most fair. But if you're asking it from the place of, what can I do to help you learn? What works for you as an individual? That actually is something that the student is quite literally the expert in and it can give them a lot of agency and empowerment to actually have the ability to contribute that. So I would agree with your comment, right? You should feel more confident in asking them, knowing that when you're framing it in that way of what works best for you, it is actually quite a different question from how do we fix this massive societal problem? Not wanting to stand out. How do you approach a student who's picked out but does not want to be pointed out as different even privately, but you feel they might have needs you're not meeting? So I agree. This is definitely a tricky situation. Now there are a few things here, right? Often it's about how well do we know that student? Is it something where we can get to a place where they might be more open if in a private situation you ask them, how are you doing in the module? Is there anything I can do to help you with this module to make, are there any needs you have or anything I can change and adapt to make it more possible for you to succeed in this course? Maybe you can get point, but maybe not. Now there is kind of a limit to some degree of what we can do. We're not trained therapists. We're not necessarily personal tutors. We don't know everything that's happening. We can't force people to do anything. But there are a number of things you can do that will make it more likely for students to be comfortable. So the first one is big statements, public statements at the beginning of every module consistently throughout of if you have any needs, please come talk to me. Repeating that over and over rather than just kind of one off a sentence on a Moodle, making clear that that is a conversation you are willing to have. And even specifying things like if there's things that you're struggling with in the module, please come speak to me. So it's not just about you have to have an official diagnosis with an official piece of paper before you can come talk to me. Similarly, if you're noticing that this student is having some issues, are there things about your teaching that you can adapt without them having to say anything? So if you're noticing, for example, that they're having trouble in group work, are there experiments you can do with tweaking the instructions you give or the way that you run the group work and see what might help more with that? If there are issues with, for example, writing, can you experiment with the kinds of guidance and instruction you're giving around written assignments? So are there things that you can experiment with, try out in your teaching, to see if they might help those needs, even if you don't have the full picture or the student doesn't want to talk about it? But there might be a limit. We can't force people to come talk to you. And that's perhaps unfortunate, but there is sometimes a limit. Sometimes lecturers confuse being too specific with being patronizing or too low level. Yep, definitely a thing that I've come across, unfortunately with some of my colleagues. The key thing here is the use of the principles, being specific, transparent and mindful. If you notice when we explain those principles, it's not about the content, it's not about giving the answers, it's about clarifying what you are actually expecting from the student. And in fact, a key thing that seems to work when working with some colleagues I've come across that have this issue is helping them understand that actually the things the students want specificity on are things that the lecturer already knows and actually would be perfectly happy to give the answer if asked. It's just never occurred to them to give that answer freely. So things for example, like so colleague lecture, when you have students create reading responses, is that like half a page, is that one page, what are you looking for there? And they go, oh, well of course I want it to be one page. It's like, great, how do you told them that? So working through kind of specific things to help the lecture understand where those particular issues might be. And every single time I've seen this done or done this myself, it's actually been quite quick for my colleagues to realize that the theoretical concept of, oh, I'm giving them all the answers, it's too patronizing. When they actually work through the particular areas that this might be relevant to their teaching, they realize that actually, they already have all the information, it doesn't dump anything down and it takes them five seconds to give it. So it's about kind of moving things from this theoretical idea of, oh no, but to the like, wait a second, what would this look like in practice? Tens in my experience to be the most effective way of getting over that particular issue. It can sometimes be tricky to encourage students to be understanding of each other. Unfortunately, I don't think you're the only one who's experienced this. Perhaps others have different recommendations, I'd love to hear them. In my experience, this is where the importance of kind of the teacher, the chair, the moderator, setting the norms of understanding can actually be really important. So I forget who said it in the chat, but saying things like, having your cameras on is optional. There might be very good reasons you don't want to have it on, but you should feel free to put it on if you want to. Making sure that that's incredibly clear from you at the beginning can reduce students getting annoyed at each other for cameras on or off, for example. So making clear that you, what your expectations are can be quite powerful. What practices do you think will remain from our digital transition to improve inclusivity when we turn to face-to-face teaching? Not to be a total downer, but I'm actually not particularly optimistic that the inclusive improvements we've made in the last year will actually stay, unfortunately. But I do think it depends quite significantly institution by institution. So maybe there are areas for optimism. Sometimes people aren't aware they have a specific disability, but can surreflect them how they learn what they need to help them. Yeah, no, that's a great point. And that's why this whole idea of inclusive teaching is applicable to all of our students. It doesn't rely on a student having to go through a whole process of diagnosis and disclosure. We can actually, for example, making things more specific helps a huge number of students, including in this particular instance, students who might be autistic, but don't know it. And so this is where kind of the applicability generally can be incredibly powerful. So I don't see any raised hands or additional comments in the chat. I do see a new one that's just gone in. Learning Journal. Yeah, so Learning Journals can be really powerful tools. So great, thank you. That's a great example to pop in there. I appreciate that. So as I said, you can continue adding to this or put it in the chat, it's entirely up to you. And now that we have all these ideas, these principles, these scenarios, lots of answers, I'm going to ask you to do some sort of thinking, reflecting and planning about what you might take from this for your teaching in future. So I've popped another link in the chat for a two and a half question, entirely anonymous form. And I'm going to now be quiet and ask you all to fill it out. It should take you about a minute. And I'm looking, there are eight people in the chat. So I'm looking for eight responses. It's entirely anonymous. So I will only know the number of responses. But if you could now take two minutes during which I will shut up to have a little reflection in this form. Great, I can see the form is working. We've got two, three responses. Thank you. Great, we have just the two minutes and we have eight responses. Thank you very much for filling that out. Hopefully it will be a useful reflection for you to think about for your teaching going forward. So the last thing is just a thank you for being such great participants in this workshop. I really do appreciate it. And a few further resources. So a lot of this is based on my inclusive teaching guide, which is a much longer document that has a lot of different examples of instances of ways you can improve your teaching. So specific ideas of phrasing, for example. Podcasting article about utilizing the chat. This can be a really, really powerful way of being inclusive in online learning. And if you are ever interested in talking more about these issues, please do feel free to get in touch. So I will go ahead and stop sharing and pop these links in the chat if you're interested. And thank you again for participating in such a great workshop. I will stay on for a few minutes if people have any questions or comments. But yeah, no, if you need to leave, please go for it and thank you very much. Thanks, Miranda. That was a really good workshop, really interesting, seeing everyone getting involved as well. We've actually got a resources channel in the Discord. If you'd like to put the links and stuff into there, that would be really helpful. Sure. I might still put them in the chat because I've not been able to access the Discord. Ah, okay. You could put them in any way. Yeah, I can help you access Discord if you want some assistance with that as well. Yeah, I select the link and it just says,