 Hopefully, you'll learn something that you can benefit from and apply to your own courses as you go. And one more note about chat. I personally have a hard time quickly writing up a chat to put in the box at exactly the moment someone talks about an idea I have. So, if it takes you a minute, feel free to still add anything into the chat. And even if the, it feels like the conversation has moved forward, we can circle back and talk about your, your points at a later point. Um, any questions before we move on? This, I'll just start diving in. All right. Let's go for it. I'm going to talk about what I'm calling the day 1, week 1 approach approach might be a little more of a formal term for it, but. That's the most, I guess quick, short hands way for me to express this as kind of a practice, you know, the day 1 week 1 practice. I'm assuming I'm talking from a college classroom point of view, but I'm. It'll apply to any classroom. We use the learning management system at university Washington called canvas. You might use something different. I will refer to canvas because it's the. The I'm most used to, but anything I say related to learning management systems will work across the board. So, first of all, a quick agenda for today. I'm going to start just by talking about the cognitive overload that students experienced going into the 1st week of the quarter. We'll do a brief overview of universal design for learning. I'm. I'm assuming that most people have at least a general familiarity with it. The review will remind you of that. If you, if you have a general sense, if you're brand new to it, hopefully my orientation will give you just the quick way to dip your toe in. We'll talk about examples of the approach and then if you want to delve deeper, I can share some resources with you as well. Then we'll get into the approach, talk about some examples. And then talk about the return on investment for students and teachers for really focusing in on the 1st day, the 1st week of the quarter. And you might wonder why we're starting kind of small. We're talking about universal design for day 1, week 1 of it's a 10 week quarter for those beyond the quarter system might be. I don't even know how long semester systems are, but why, why start with such a small focus? And I do that on purpose 1, for 1, I really think it's important to slow down that 1st day 1 week 1 to bring in all the students. The diverse types of students we have to make sure they all feel like there's a set platform or foundation for the learning. But also, because I talk to faculty all the time who really want to strengthen the accessibility of their courses and they really want to apply universal design for learning principles. But they feel overwhelmed. They feel like they have to tear down their entire course to the foundation and build it again to make it better, you know, as far as accessibility goes to to apply those best practices. And that's just that leads to task paralysis really for so many people and it leads to a feeling like there's so much to do. I don't know where to start. I don't know where to focus my energy and I truly believe that really improving accessibility and really improving inclusion. And applying universal design for learning is an incremental approach building it over time building it piece by piece and continuing that practice. That's what gets you much further than trying to do it all at once or being frozen into decision. So starting with day one week one, you know, we're talking about setting up in no tech and low tech ways, setting up universal design as a practice. Or students early on, and it helps if you're building your own practice. It helps gives you some. I don't want to say low stakes, but almost natural ways to embed it in the course as we go. Okay, so that's why we're starting kind of small. I think that has way more impact over the time over time for both us as teachers and our students as learners. So, just starting off, if we think about day one week one, we can have really experienced students, you know, we can be teaching a course full of college seniors and we feel like, oh, they know their way, or we have freshmen who are. You know, fresh out of high school who should be aware of how classrooms work, but so often. We don't think about the overwhelming preparation or the overwhelming sense of too much too soon that happens for a lot of students. And they don't have to have learning disabilities or any other accommodations needs. It could just, it's this way for so many multiple classes with different expectations, multiple professors with different personalities. Some are going to be welcoming and. And friendly and some are going to be intimidating and a little distant multiple learning management pages, you know, at University of Washington, we use canvas primarily. But when I was teaching in the College of Engineering, my students would say, well, I have 4 professors and they're all using canvas totally differently. So they have to spend all this time the first week learning how to negotiate different canvas pages. Multiple syllabi, you know, we all have required elements of a syllabus, but then how we design the syllabus and how extensive or brief it is can be very different. And so all this stuff is coming at once. Not to mention students lived experience invisible disabilities or visible disabilities, there might be economic circumstances are weighing on them. Maybe they're members of marginalized groups. You know, historically marginalized groups, they don't feel comfortable because of that veteran status parents with child care needs, you know, commuting students taking too many classes and working at the same time being a second language learner. All these other things are in the students lives while they're trying to negotiate just that first week, just that first day, developing ways to get through their courses. So that's why I really emphasize day 1 week 1. This is a chance for us to try in again low tech or no tech ways to cut through the noise, you know, all this stuff is noise for our students. And so what can we do to establish. What our classes for these students as we go forward and what we do these first 2 days can really impact the rest of the quarter for the rest of the term. So here's my first question. So I just wanted to know, I'm going to do a quick review of universal design for learning. I'm curious to see what you to gauge what we already know as a group about universal design for learning. So what I'm asking is for you to think about what what you know, or what what comes to mind when you hear the phrase or the the concept of universal design for learning. And you can just put it in the chat or raise your little icon hands and 1 of us will call on you. Just anything that comes to mind. It doesn't have to be a specific definition. And then I'll share my definition, of course. Susan says, allow students multiple ways to show mastery. Yeah, excellent. Multiple ways of presenting content. We're already getting that keyword multiple. Anyone else accommodating differences and learning styles. Yes. All true. For sure. I'm totally moving ahead here. Oops. I gave you my answer right there. So there I go. I'm a little hot on the, on the button there. I'm knowing and utilizing your students strengths from Sean. I look, I really like that one that. If we were talking about group work today, I would, I would harp on that quite a bit. But yeah, all these things are are exactly what universal design for learning is. And I, I have kind of scooched ahead on my slides, but I, I have a quote here on the screen. The original definition is from a book called universal design process principles and applications. By Sheryl Burke solid who happens to be the director and founder of do it and our current boss in many ways. And what I've done with her definition is I adjusted it a bit. And so there are 3 phrases in brackets where I've made it a little more specific to courses. I'll read mine. The universal design for learning is the design of course materials, classroom interactions and environments and higher education to be usable by all students to the greatest extent possible without the need for adaptation or specialized design. So the additional phrases that I put in there are student centered. But it's basically a design methodology. Universal design is a design methodology based on the built environment, but we're adjusting it for the educational environment. And one thing that always that I love about it, I guess, is it seems like it's kind of vague. You know, when we talk about the 3 pillars and people already mentioned the keyword multiple. It's not a to do list. It's not a, here's a framework and everybody must follow it exactly the same way. It's very broad because it's designed to for people to make it suit what they're doing in their courses. What I did in a technical communications course is going to be different from an upper level advanced biology course, you know, that's relying a lot on visuals and a lot of data. But the overall methodology works for both accessibility is an attribute of a course and it's an attribute of the design. And so when we talk about accessibility, which I'm going to touch on a little bit, but I'm mainly talking about universal design. We need to consciously learn some skills for accessibility, like some tools, some technology, but universal design makes keeps it top of mind all the time. So it's part of universal design. So all the answers that you gave about what you think of when you think of universal design pretty much suits this definition. And the word multiple, you know, we're looking at the 3 pillars of universal design for learning and the picture on the screen. I have a picture of 3 columns against a backdrop of trees. There are actually 4 columns. This is an iconic place at the University of Washington. There are 4 Cedar columns that are in the Sylvan Grove. They were the columns supporting the original, the roof of the first building in 1861. I of course wanted a cool picture for my 3 pillars, so I cut one off. But just now, maybe we'll invent the 4th pillar of universal design sometime. But the 3 pillars are multiple means of representation. There's multiple again, multiple means of engagements and multiple means of action and expression. And for those of you who are not familiar, these come from the UDL guidelines. I have this listed on my slide from CAST, you know, the organization that really has promoted this. And I just looked up the acronym, speaking of acronyms, because I never knew what it was. And it's actually the Center for Applied Special Technology. I haven't written on my post enough because I can never remember it. They go by CAST now. So they have really great resources online if you want more in-depth discussion of these 3 pillars. But let's just go through them briefly and then we'll talk about them. Applying them to the day when we want approach. So multiple means of representation. Someone already said this in the chat. Offering more than one format for students to access course materials and information. Okay. And CAST, my diagram on the screen is from CAST directly. They call the multiple means of representation. They're referring to the what of learning. So, a quick example for multiple means of representation. I'm in class giving a lecture with slides behind me and students can hear what I'm saying. Some students, and some students can see what I'm saying. So that's one representation of lecture. If I post the slides on the class website so students can access them on their own, that's another representation of the course material. If I post them as PowerPoint slides with my notes so they can see my notes as well, that enhances that representation. And then if I post a recording of the course of the class lecture with captions, that's another representation of the same thing. So that's those 3 ways to represent the lecture of that day. If we're talking about multiple means of engagement, the why of the learning. This is offering choices when possible. It depends on what your content is on how students interact with the material and how they participate in class. So a simple example, class participation grades. You know, when I was a student way back a long time ago, participation was you had to talk in class. So I'm sure my professors were taking little making little check marks by people who answered questions or brought something up or participated, which I always found a little limiting as a student. And it is limiting not everyone is comfortable speaking aloud in class. Not everyone has the ability to quickly form an answer when it's presented verbally. Not everyone feels confident in their language abilities. So that's one means of engagement with participation. If you want to add multiple means, maybe verbal, sure, verbal participation, great. Maybe just quietly be engaged in class and doing the activities as the rest of the class does them being part of a small group environment. That's another way to do it. Written responses to discussion questions. Another way to allow students to engage in class participation without having to do the traditional, I'm going to raise my hand and speak. So it can be written responses during class that they turn in to be written responses to a discussion question online. Or just watching them writing and don't collect it at all. But you can tell that they're actually engaging in some way. So those are simple examples of multiple means of engagement. And then multiple means of action expression. This is probably the toughest for professors, especially depending on the type of class. This is about assessment offering a variety of assessment types that allow students to demonstrate their knowledge in ways that don't disadvantage them. It's going to be really challenging. I talked to a lot of STEM professors and, you know, what, how do we make it accessible if this is a dissection, you know, physical dissection. Or students in a biology class have to come in and look at plants and identify them on a time test. How do we do that? Very challenging. But I think, again, my own experience, I'm a terrible standardized test taker. And so give me an essay test. I will knock it right out of the park. Give me a multiple choice test. I'm going to double, you know, second guess every question. And so one way you can do multiple means of action expression in an exam is offer different types of questions. So some multiple choice, some short answer, some true false, when possible, that allows students to who have strengths in multiple choice to have an option to do those strengths and short answer. So it offers more options in one exam for students to at least have some element that's going to benefit their learning style or their strengths. So again, those are quick examples that I'm just throwing out there, but I wanted to just reiterate some of those key pillars of universal design as we talk about taking these pillars and applying them to the day one, week one approach. Any questions or comments on this quick review before we move forward? And you can again, you can always raise your hand if you want to talk verbally or yeah, Eric. Yeah, Bernie has a question. Bernie, do you want to ask that or do you want me to read it? It was just a random thought. As you said, you don't you don't like this kind of question type and other people don't like other kinds of question types and yeah, I just take giving exams altogether. Yes, yes, I sometimes wish I could just say, well, do you really have to give an exam? And that is, it's yeah, it's still a question. Are there other ways to to assess and that's that could be a whole session of our own but I think particularly in high enrollment courses. It's really hard to figure out how to do other types of assessment when you have 100, you know, 100 students in your class or but yeah, we're on the same, we're on the same team on that. Other comments or random things. It's always, always applicable. Okay, so let's turn this lens to the day one week one approach. Again, this is I'm trying to talk about low tech or no tech ways to build these things in. Because if you if you're starting class next week, or maybe you're in week one already, you know, you don't want to be adding a bunch of high effort tasks to your job right now. So the simple practices we're talking about today can have huge benefits. For diverse students for students, neurodivergent students to students who have. You know, mobility issues or visual disabilities, any sort of thing like that, but also, like I said earlier, people with just life experiences that are interfering in their ability to focus. To be feel a sense of belonging. So, what we want to do on the 1st week is establish a sense of belonging, which does wonders for students ability to really learn in the course. And I truly believe we can teach the students how to be students in our courses. We can teach them how we teach and we can teach them how to navigate, like literally how to navigate through our course material. And there's an added benefit to taking this time. There's an added benefit for students who have accommodations at the University of Washington. The students go to the DRS office disability resources for students so DRS. So I probably refer to DRS as we talk about this, but for any students who have accommodations through school. And they've gone through the process build out the paperwork done all that that work. It might actually. Ideally, they would get the professors would get the accommodations request before the quarter starts. Ideally, they would have a chance to work with the DRS office to make those accessibility accommodations available. But in the, in the real world, it might be days after the start of the quarter that students get their accommodations set. It might be days before professors either to get the letter or acknowledge it. Sometimes not at all. So when that happens, those students might start the quarter behind because they don't have a structure foundation from the beginning. To hold them while they're waiting for the accommodations to kick in or while they're waiting for the professor to handle. So we don't want them to start behind. So by establishing a really well structured welcoming environment where students know what's happening, what's going on. We can really prevent them from from ending up behind because we're waiting for these other situations. It has benefits to for other students. It might be the student international student whose flight is canceled. They show up two days late for class. Someone's got COVID the 1st week and can't show up. There are all kinds of reasons students might end up behind at the beginning. And so we're trying our best in this situation to mitigate those factors as well. Step day 1. We want to say in so many words and actions. This is a welcoming space in my classroom. This is how the class works. I support you and you can talk to me and I know many of us go in there saying, hi, I'm really nice. I'm a really supportive instructor. I'm here for you. Trust me. It's great to say it, but they don't always believe it, you know, or they don't feel comfortable, but the title professor can be really intimidating no matter how nice you are. So we need to show as well as say, and we want to set that welcoming inclusive environment. We also want to model community norms around communication and support. What we assume is okay in a classroom. Many students don't understand that they feel like there's hidden social norms, hidden expectations that everybody else knows. The professor knows and they don't for whatever reason. So we want to model those community norms and talk about them explicitly. By doing this, we're showing not only that our communication pattern is there for them, but we're designing the course on purpose to be helpful to them. It also helps them see it's a safe space to advocate for themselves or ask for help, which is very intimidating. It doesn't matter who the student is. If you've noticed students don't ask you questions when you keep inviting it. It's because there's some sort of block between them and you in whatever for whatever reason. And so doing this day one can can really help even in a large enrollment class. Again, there's little things you can do to open those doors. So let's go in to day one and talk about the three pillars and apply them in small ways. But before we do any comments or questions before I turn to day one and the three pillars. Okay, cool. All right. So let's talk about the syllabus. How many of you think the students read every word of your syllabus? No, they do not. They do not read the syllabus. Why not? Well, they're getting four or five of them, three or four. First of all, often if I look back at my old syllabus, I read too much. It was this big long thing with all kinds of policies that made it look really scary. If you don't do this, then this is going to happen to you. You know, we know what they are, their contract, their tool, but students have too much on their plate. So first of all, we can design them to be easier to manage, like make them a tool that's skimmable. You know, that's my technical communications professor and me says that. So we can redesign it, but regardless, they do need the syllabus. They need it to refer to, they need it to know what they can expect from us. So multiple means of representation. Day one, let's offer a couple of different formats for them to access the syllabus. So designing it so it's accessible is job number one. Making it shorter or chunking it so it's short paragraphs with headings can do wonders for helping students read it, but also how are we giving it to them? So two to three different formats for a syllabus. My number one preference is to create my syllabus into a canvas page. So not a PDF, but actually write it in my learning management system in the page. You can copy or paste, you know, a current one that you've done in Word or Google Docs or whatever. You can paste it into a canvas page. So that's one representation. Another one provided downloadable Microsoft Word file. So in addition to that canvas page have a link to a downloadable file as well. So that's a second one. And then it doesn't hurt to have for hard copies. Some students really do benefit from hard copies still. Most of students don't have printers. So I have a few hard copies available because some students do like that tangible piece of paper. They like to tangibly write notes on it. We talked before the session about how I write a bunch of notes to myself on sticky notes because if I, if they're digital, I'm going to just forget them. So that's a third way to represent that document. And a couple, a couple of little tips about this with canvas page. It's easy to remember where it is because if it's on LMS with all the other course material, it's right there. Another thing in canvas and probably whatever LMS you use. There's the ability for students to customize their own learning with alternate formats. So within the canvas document, students can click on an icon. It looks like an upside. It looks like a thick A at the top with an arrow and it's alternative format. So students can download an audio file and have that page read aloud to them. They can download printable or electric Braille copy if they if they use a Braille assistive device. There's immersive reader. That helps them read more easily. It helps with they have beeline reader, which also helps with with focusing as students read. So there are multiple ways they can access that. If it's written into the canvas page, it's even easier for it to shift years there. So that's another reason to use that that offers for more representations for students for more options there. Great accessibility features in canvas accessibility checkers and canvas are great. Very helpful. They give you guidance and you can also use your accessibility report to see how accessible your pages are. So huge benefits there. Providing a file in addition to the canvas page allows students to download it and customize it. They can take notes in that word document. If you have a table of deadlines, they can say, you know, for students who need to work ahead or they like to be very organized in their work, they can add their own deadlines, you know, a day or two early. They can add questions. They can highlight things. They can write notes in there to remind themselves later. So it can be very beneficial for them to customize the syllabus that way. And hard copy. People just like it sometimes. So those are multiple means of representation just for the syllabus alone may not make them read it any more deeply, but it makes it easier for them to use. Okay. Multiple means of action engagement. Day one. And I would bring this up day one and then repeat it throughout week one and maybe come back to it midterm or couple weeks. I mentioned this before we might feel like we are so approachable and welcoming that students would have no problem asking us questions or coming for office hours. And then we find they don't show up. Or we ask them why they had a hard time or where they had a hard time or what they need and they don't. They had questions two weeks ago, but they didn't want to ask. I hate to overuse the word normalize, but I would like us to literally normalize asking questions. Asking for help is okay in this class. It is welcome. I want you to do it. And sometimes we have to be literal about it and offer different ways to ask those questions. So verbal questions during class. That's the most obvious and easy way to get information. It's easy as a teacher to forget to pause and say, does anyone have any questions? Because some students are going to wait for that invitation. They're not going to raise their hands. If you haven't said, does anyone have any questions? So explain those norms. In this class, if you have a question, you can ask it at any time. Just raise your hand. If you like being interrupted, you can do that, but most students will do it. So talking about when and how to verbally ask questions is really helpful, especially for students who are not used to or not comfortable at asking. On the other hand, you're going to have the student who needs to ask a question for every minute detail of the assignment. These are students who need to know the boundaries and need to know explicitly everything. We don't have 10 minutes to answer 20 questions from Jim about the assignment. If you see, you have a very verbal student who needs those details. You'll know that student right off the bat. And you can say, okay, we're going to answer that. If you have a lot of questions, let's meet once a week. I had a student last, the last quarter I was teaching. And I knew immediately he needed and wanted very clear questions answered before he could really move on things. So we had a meeting once a week. Just him and him, he and I. We had a meeting once a week. And he could ask me any question he wanted with as much detail as, as was helpful for him. And he didn't take a class time like he had originally. So overly verbal students. It's a good thing. But you don't always have time in class to really access that. So just, you can pay attention to that. And when they know what's going to happen, they're going to be like, but you don't always have time in class to really access that. So just you can pay attention to that. And when they know what the boundaries are around asking questions in class, then they're more likely to seek you out when you open that door for one on one conferences. Another thing, written, enter and exit questions for those students who can't verbalize right off the bat. What their question is, they have to think about it a bit. They might be intimidated about asking. Give them all sticky notes, the first day of class, three or four index cards. And those are the questions. And at the end of class, invite a minute for people to write exit questions about what was covered that day, or they can bring them in the next day and give them to you when they show up for class. It can be anonymous. They don't have to talk to you, but they're handing it off. And then you can address those questions verbally in class the next day. So that can be really helpful for students who just are not comfortable or need a minute to think about their question. And then the last one, weekly Q and A announcements. So these are all multiple ways to ask questions. One thing I started doing in COVID and then I, oops, I kept doing is a weekly Q and A class announcement. So every Friday I would take all the questions I had collected either through email, verbal questions, questions before, after or during class, and then exit and enter questions. And I would create a single Q and A class announcement, which had every question. Some of them were combined because you get the same ones. Easily identified Q1, Q2, Q3, and then my answer. They were anonymous. Sometimes I would quote them anonymously. It allowed everyone in class to see all those questions. It allowed students to refer back to them later. They could respond with a reply if they had in the moment clarifications they needed. And it also helped me look back over the quarter to see what the sticking points were. Where were students having problems? All quarter. And that allowed me to adjust for the next time around. So again, multiple means of engagement, focusing on questions, question asking and those class norms. I'm going to pause here because I've talked a lot for a few minutes. Does anyone have any thoughts, questions or other examples of what they've done either through multiple means of representation or multiple means of engagement just in those first, that first day. Rachel said, I love your Q&A announcement idea, which I also loved. I think that's a great idea. It does take a little time. It takes a little collection, a little thinking. So what I would do, because that's a Friday thing, I would start the draft of the announcement. Like on Monday, I would just have an open, like Google doc or something I could cut and paste and I would add questions as they came so I could save time later in the week. So if you like that idea, I totally recommend, you know, just a little bit every day leads to a really nice final class announcement. Any other questions or comments? Yes. Art, I see your hand is up. I'm a secondary teacher and, but even as an undergraduate and graduate student, when a prof says, do you have any questions, nobody in their right mind is going to admit that they don't know something, especially in front of their professor. And I too, like somebody put in the chat, I changed my questions to what questions you have because that assumes they have questions. And I tell even my students in the secondary level, if you don't have questions, you don't need me as an instructor and you don't need to take my class, you can just do it by yourself. But I'm going to assume that you have questions. And I'm going to invite you to, you know, what questions do you have gives that invitation to ask the question. Without admitting that you didn't know. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. What questions do you have? I do love that. I think, and again, like I was saying earlier, we're showing students what we, how we are basically and how they can be. And so that's, that's the admit that you are going to have questions. What are they? Yeah. What questions? Yeah, I love that. I wrote it down. I'm going to keep it. I'm going to give you credit next time I talk about this. Well, they're sort of addition or ideas like that. Super helpful. Okay. Yeah, we could talk about this all day long. Okay, so let's get into multiple means of action and expression. And remember, that's the one where we're talking about assessments. Hopefully you don't have assessments your first day. But there are ways to assess student understanding of what the course is and what their expectation is. This became very important for me when I was teaching technical communication, because when we were when I was teaching technical communication, it wasn't technical writing. It was technical communication. So some of it was writing some of it was visual communication like communicating engineering concepts, you know, visually to clients or to general readers. But another thing was verbal communication. So part of the course was delivering a presentation in front of the class with slides. Standing up in front of the room. Presenting into the class. And what I learned early on, fortunately, was students came to class thinking it was technical writing. None of them had in mind giving a presentation. And so I learned quickly that if I did not mention the presentation, the first day of class, students would have an unwelcome surprise a couple weeks in. And which for some students may have caused them to take a different class if they had very severe concerns about doing a presentation. So by, by starting to assess what they thought the class was going to be. I was able to clarify some confusion. To mitigate some unhappy surprises and to make sure. I was telling students, yes, you're going to have this, but we're going to work on learning how to do all of these things. So you're not going to be left alone doing this huge project or a big presentation without me guiding you every step of the way. So allowed a reassurance also, but also to avoid surprises. And because in our syllabus, which nobody reads, we have learning objectives. Usually in this course you'll learn how to do, you know, students will leave this course with these skills, right? If they're not reading those and they don't understand them. They're going to be surprised sometimes by our expectations. So for assessments and multiple, multiple means of action expression day 1. I'm looking for assessing what they understand about the course itself and how they're going to be learning in the course. So a couple of different ways that that I think are really important and also as a side benefit. When you're taking time to assess their understanding and to learn who they are and what their needs are. You're building their investment in the course a bit more because you're showing your investments in them as members of your classrooms. So the action expression day 1, I'm thinking of assessing what they understand about the class, but also what they need to be successful students or what they need for me to help them be successful students or comfortable students in my class. So this is about safe space to reveal things to you. So what I like to do, and there are different ways you can do it, but like a quick mini reflection before leaving class that first day can really help you see what you need to do for the rest of the week. So if you're talking day 1 syllabus, here's what we're going to do in class. Here's here's how you can be a student here. Before they leave having students take that exit sticky notes and write down 3 things they expect to learn in the class and they don't have to write anything big just a bullet list. Don't make it like high pressure. No sentences necessary grammar doesn't matter. But what are 3 things they expect they're going to learn in class just based on what they learned the first day. You can take that home with you go through it and any misconceptions the students have you can clarify over the next day or 2. So it allows them to start thinking what am I going to learn what am I going to pay attention to. If they're wrong. You can correct it. This is where I got in the you're going to be doing a presentation, but don't worry. I'm going to leave you step by step and how to do this. This is why we're here. So that's 1 thing you can do it's safe. They can make mistakes there. Student information surveys another way to help them self assess and help you assess where they are when they're coming in. It can be shorter long, but the 2 questions I always ask in a student survey is. Pronouns. That shows any student and it can be make it optional. They don't have to share pronouns. But that shows them you care about who they are. As individuals. And that you're going to do your best to meet them where they are and address them as their individual selves. And then another question. What should I know about you as a student? Most students who. Many students who would benefit from accommodations do not. Ask for them. I think the last data I had was about a 3rd of students who would benefit from accommodations official accommodations. Only about a 3rd request them for various reasons. It might be they don't know that they would benefit from them. Maybe they don't have a diagnosis. It might be. They've had bad experiences. Disclosing disabilities and having to deal with professors or the school system. And they're tired of having to tell their story again. There might be other reasons. So when you ask, what should I know about you as a student? And this helps people who don't qualify officially for accommodations, but. Need support. In one way or another. When you say, what should I know about you as a student? It could be what would you like me to know about your learning? Anything like that. That opens the door for them to safely say. I benefit from I need to see an example. Of what the assignment looks like, like a finished assignment so I can see if I'm following law. Or I need to really plan out my schedule because I have a lot to do and I get very anxious. If I don't control my methods, you know, so I need some, some coaching or help with time management. It could be, I need your understanding because I have a kid at home and daycare is spotty. Any investment you make in learning those things and offering that invitation for them to share. Shows your invested in them and they're going to be way more willing to be invested in in the course if they have a welcome. Open and for that. Respond. As needed. So some students might say, you know, I really benefit from examples. I hope you'll give us some, you don't have to respond to that student. Just noted. If it's someone who's petrified speaking in front of a class and that's one of your assignments. You need to respond or have a TA respond. We'll walk you through this. We'll talk you through. We can work together on this. So, judge the response you need to make, but leave that door open. And then you verbally adjust their expectations during that week, especially if they're way off that based on what they're going to be learning in that class. Questions on that one or comments. And I'm thinking, does anyone have anything to add on this one, especially if you're in a large enrollment course. I was really lucky to teach enrollment limited classes of 30 students. So this kind of self assessment of the class or their strengths or their needs might be more challenging if you have 150. Students, does anyone have any tips or. Feedback our ideas for. Opening the door for this self assessments. Self assessments and responding in kind if you have a huge classroom and you want people to feel. Invested or welcomed. Your TAs could be huge help in this regard. One thing you could do is do a class survey. Like an anonymous class survey and just ask people to class students as a whole. What are some things that I can do to help with setting for exams or help manage time or whatever in the class setting. And you could do a class survey of 1 or 2 things get some general information from students and then try to squeeze those things in as you go. So that's just 1 option. I'm always interested in large enrollment classes because. These things do. It does complicate things quite a bit. Okay. Am I missing any questions or comments in the charts? No, you're. Good. Okay. I'm going to move forward because I think I'm. It's time to, I don't want to use it too much. So I do want to crowdsource. I just started that, but. I'm going to just pause for like 2 or 3 minutes. And what I'd like everyone to do is just to think about your own classes. The ones you're facing are the ones that you've had in the past. And what are some things that might you might try or might implement or you already are doing for the day 1, you know, pillars, you know, multiple means of representation. Engagement or action and expression. And then. Maybe we'll we'll see if anyone wants to share anything before we move forward to week 1. Let's see. Let's I gotta pay attention to time to. Which is similar to. I know in the past 1 thing I seen professors do and like get really good feedback is if they do like it a commendation letter sent to them, they will like send an email to the student directly and be like, Hey, I got this. Let me know if there's anything in my course I need to change or adjust just. Hand being the 1st 1 to contact instead of putting that on to the student. I'm so glad you said that, Rachelle. That is so true. I can't tell you how many times I respond. I sent that email to students and they'd say, Oh, I'm a senior. You're the 1st professor in 4 years who's ever. Reached out to me about accommodations. So, yeah, definitely. Thank you for bringing that up. That is key. Absolutely key. Any other. Things to share on the day 1. I think I need to pick up pace a little bit done. I kind of timing. So, let's move forward. So. How does this. If we're applying day 1 week 1 or the day 1 approach like we just talked about. Quite a bit. Doing the same thing throughout the entire term basically is setting students up for success. So you're basically stretching it out. So for week 1. You're going to go further. This is how to navigate the course. Mainly the canvas page. This is how I have set up assignments and assessments. And I think this is even more important in a class that has projects. Students are, it's a little easier to explain. You're going to have 3. Exams this quarter on this day, on this day, on this day. Then it is to say, you're going to have 4 projects 2 of which are group. Collaborative projects that have a large. Maybe amount of time to work on it, but there's different sections of it. So I think you need to spend a little more time on those. But we reiterate every single day that 1st week I am here to listen. I am here to help. And this is how we do it. So taking some time week 1 to set up. Expectations. Is going to save everyone time down the road. So. I'm just going to talk about. 1 particular thing that I think is more important than anything when it comes to the pillars. And that is the tour of the course itself. And so I highly recommend taking this time again, it feels like you're taking a lot of time these 1st days are front loading, but it's going to save time later. Multiple ways to navigate the course and represent this show and tell during class, you know, have the page open your canvas page or whatever it is open on the screen behind you. Let students follow along on our own laptops. And do a show and tell this is the here. The 3 most important things to know about how I use canvas. Okay. Because there are other professors going to say, why don't use canvas? Just open the files and find everything there. So it's going to be different. Post a short captioned video tour. I started doing this because students were missing the 1st couple of days of class. And I didn't want to reiterate this and take up time again. So what I did is I created a short canvas. Tour in zoom. I opened a zoom meeting recorded myself going through canvas captioned it posted it on my canvas page as well. So those are 2 representations representation 1 and 2 of. The navigation and then another thing you can do is have a low stakes reinforcement. A scavenger hunt assignment to be participation points. It could be completion only. But have students fill out a quick survey, maybe an online survey. I'm asking them specific questions about the navigation to reinforce what you've told them already. Then if they weren't paying attention in class or they couldn't focus or they were absent. They can go back and watch that video and get that access again. Students can be embarrassed to say, I don't understand how to use canvas. They feel like they should know if they've been a student for a while. But the fault probably is they have professors using it in different ways. They just don't understand how to use it the way you want them to. So I think that's super important. And for the rest, we want to try to prepare them well for the 1st incidents of whatever it could be the 1st assignment 1st exam 1st group project. If we set a strong foundation for the 1st 1. That's leading them to understanding of the 2nd 1, the 3rd 1. All the way through the quarter. And so we start with and again, this is my technical communication background, but it's also the accessibility piece. Build a strong foundation in really good document and page design that students can easily access. They can access it through screen readers or through skimming and scanning use search commands to find things. If we have a consistency around how we design our assignments, the same have them in the same order, the same elements to each 1. Clear and concise instructions. Anyone who asks neurodivergent students will tell you that 1 of the biggest requests is clear. And concise instructions on how to do stuff. Not really long pages. Short easy to understand easy to skip. And that's true of any technical communication really. And design your pages. Accessibly as you're designing and building them run your accessibility checker. And let it guide you into best practices. If you can do that for every assignment every handout or. Web page you're halfway there in giving the students a scaffold they need to really understand how things work in the class. And for the 1st assignment 1st presentation 1st group work just take that time to really go over it in very specific detail. And give them a group project. I do the think pair share where I would have students pair up and they go through the assignment together. And teach each other what the expectation is of the assignment and write up 1 or 2 questions for me. They all turned them in. And then the next day I answer each of those questions in class to make sure everybody understands the assignment. So if you do that. Really in depth the 1st time. And you design all your assignment instructions to look very similar and have the same components. Then. When they get to the 2nd assignment they're going to know what to expect do the think pair share again. And you'll probably have fewer questions about how that assignment works because they know how to do it. So super important document zone. Okay, so let's practice. I can go on and on and give you a thousand examples, but I like to hear some examples from what you've experienced in your own classes. So if we're thinking about applying you universal design for learning to the 1st. You know, the 1st assignment 1st exam 1st group project, whatever. What are some things you might. What are some ideas you have or maybe practices you've done in the past. That pull in those multiple means of representation engagement action expression. With assignments like the 1st assignment. So I'm going to give you like 3 to 5 minutes to ponder think over your classes. If you're thinking of week 1 coming up. What are some ways. You can really emphasize how to do. The 1st assignment exam. It could be preparing for it. With your classes. And then hopefully people want to raise their hands or share in the chat. I have some backup ones just in case you're on quiet. So 3 to 5 minutes just to reflect. And how we can do this. Oh, and while we're waiting, I noticed Bernie says in the chat that. Students skip the video. Just start clicking around. Some students won't skip it. So you'll grab those ones. Okay. Deborah. Do you want to give us. Comments. Sure. Yeah, I was thinking about how I'm not currently teaching. I'm. Actually serving in a faculty development role at Baffle now, but. When I was teaching. I. When, especially with a group project, I'm thinking about how. You know, in terms of. The representation, like having it on the screen. Having a copy of it available as well of the group project to review. Having some way of the students discussing it together in small groups as we're going over it so that there's questions. And I would often to. Show like. An example of it or like something where I can provide some sort of sample or way of talking about it by showing an example so that they get some additional like specificity in context because I taught performance classes. So often it was abstract abstract to a point where. You don't want students to feel like it's so open-ended. That they are confused and lost. So kind of trying to find that specificity. So I'm going to go ahead and. Yeah, I'm actually in. So I say that and also with the caveat of like maybe there are things that I missed, but like wanting to try to. Provide things that are more concrete ways of viewing the assignment as opposed to just. You know, talking about it where it might be open-ended. Right, right. And open-ended is welcome to some students and. Terrifying to other students. Right, right. And open-ended is welcome to some students and terrifying to other students. Right. You are like, don't I want my, the boundaries. Don't say, oh, do whatever you want to be creative. That can be horrible, horrible example or horrible experience or something. Thank you. That's really great feedback. Really great ideas. Bernie, I see your hand is up. There might be others that I'm not seeing. Yeah. One of the courses I teach in is in an accelerated certificate program. And the students are overwhelmed by the number of courses they have to take mind just being one more added on top of them. And I have an assignment that's repetitive in the sense that they get to do the same format four times. And I really like this idea of devoting some time at the beginning where they can examine. I'm going to force them to examine the rubric which I use, which specifies I'm looking for these pieces of information in this assignment because students routinely don't watch the video example. Don't look at the rubric at the bottom of the assignment on the canvas page. They just jump to the answer because they have to move on to the next course. And some of them never self-correct. Even after feedback on the first assignment because they don't read the feedback, they're overwhelmed by the courses. And so I really like this idea of taking 15 minutes to a think pair share, go over that rubric, have them look at it. What does it mean to them? What questions do you have? And seriously, and I want to see if that gets them aligned much faster. Yeah. Excellent. Thanks for that. You're welcome. Other comments or concerns? A lot of the things my practices are through error, fixing what's going on, why aren't they? And it's the multiple means. Offering different ways to capture a lot. But yeah, taking that time saves time for everyone later for sure. Other comments or ideas of different elements? Because we haven't talked about like preparing for exams or anything of that nature. And that's a whole, you know, it's a lot different than a group work, girl. Susan had a comment in the chat. Oh, excuse it. Have students create a short video explaining a portion of assignment. That's a great idea. Especially if you're doing a large project, they can do a quick video on phones, you know, just a quick, like a TikTok type video. Just give us two minutes on what you think this means or teaching your classmates how this is going to work. I think that's a great idea. And if you did that, low stakes assignment doesn't have to be super fancy. You can create later a little library of those exact videos that you can archive and have students watch later. So that's a great thing. Case says, giving students a menu of different acceptable assignments allows students to engage with the same content in different ways. Students then pick just one of their choice. The menu idea could be modified for whichever task, exam, assignment, group project. Yeah, excellent. Excellent idea. Rachel. Yeah, I was going to, I was going to ask a question, but I feel like the last two comments answered them. So I just thought I'd say my idea, but my question was, so I work with a lot of running start students. And so one thing they struggle with, I think is just adjusting to like note taking and how to organize notes and that kind of thing. So having students create like a short video of how they take their notes could be really helpful for other students to see and for me to see if someone's really doing something, I think could be a good idea. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. I hadn't thought about that, but you know, my daughter was a running start student, didn't know how to take notes at all. And it took a professor literally showing them different options. And Eric was mentioning this before the call, different ways to do it. Yeah, that would be awesome, especially visual learners, maybe doodling or drawing a diagram is for them, not a traditional note taking. So you would learn a ton from your students that way. And Bernie says, some courses encourage note sharing. That's one thing that I was telling a faculty member recently about, she said, you know, an accommodation request she had was to provide lecture notes. And she was wondering how she was going to fit that in with all the other things she had to do because she was teaching multiple classes. And I suggested, why not see, have a note taker, you know, students volunteer to be note takers. Maybe they get some extra credit or something, but I have to be students who were able to. So extra credit may not be the best idea. But every day a different person could take notes and then post them in a class or two people could take notes. So Piper says, as a current student, note taking between my peers is super helpful since it allows me to catch things I missed or see information in a different way. Exactly. That's really taking advantage of the neurodiversity in our classroom. Having multiple people sharing notes, you're not going to catch everything. And note taking, I believe, when students are taking notes on their laptops, they're often just taking notes on everything their teacher says. They're not necessarily summarizing or picking out key ideas. And that could be a challenging skill to build. So you might miss something because you're trying to replicate it exactly. I think Eric might agree. We're running low on time. This is fantastic. All of this feedback is great because this is all related to what we're talking about exactly. All right, did you want to add something? Yeah. I, after being having taught for years and years and years in the secondary classroom, a couple of years ago, I sat down in my summer and said, you know, my kids aren't, my students aren't taking good notes. They are not keeping track of what's important. And I created for each, but it took me a couple of years to do this for each session, set up guided notes. And they were really a sheet where the big ideas are outlined a little bit, but space for them to write in. So in a geometry class, you know, what's the right angle? Well, the word definition for a right angle is in a space. And then there's space for them to write so that we can write down because they, you know, I had to actually teach them how to. And I think a lot of kids who struggle don't know what smart kids do. They think they're just smart. And they don't realize how hard they work at taking notes and keeping track of what's going on. And so I created that framework for them. My guided notes are the framework that I use. And I have a new one for each chapter that we go through and it's seven or eight pages long. And they just print those up, have it in class when we're working. And I say, okay, so let's formalize this definition or this theorem or whatever we're working with. But the idea of guided notes is just something that took me 35 years to figure out how to do that. That's, you know, I know there's kids who are on top of it or who seem on top of it. We have a lot of strategies that they have developed over time based on their learning styles. And if you just think, oh, it just comes naturally to those people, then you may not think, what are tools I need? And you're providing a tool right then and there. Teaching them how to do school. Or for your students how to do colleges. So a whole different world. Yeah. And in a college classroom, you know, if you're one good way to do guided notes is, and the only problem is this might show up after you deliver the lecture, unless you're super organized. But if you write up your lecture notes inside a PowerPoint presentation in the notes section and then post the PowerPoint, not as a PDF, but as a PowerPoint slide deck, then the students will be able to see those notes there. So if you're looking for a shorthand version of what art does, and in his class, that's one thing you can do day to day is have those key notes or key definitions in the notes section of a PowerPoint slide deck, post them, but not as a PDF as an actual slide deck. These are all fantastic. I should have opened with this so we could talk all day about these topics. I'm going to wrap up because I think we're getting to that point and then maybe we can have some more discussion afterwards. But I'm just reiterating the return on investments of taking this extra time. And it's set in that clear foundation. It's demystifying the unknowns. Students think we have this magic answer we're looking for. And they're trying to find what that is. So demystifying those kinds of unknowns, getting the surprises, unveiling those surprises, establishing yourself as someone who really cares, really supports their learning and success and creating that safe environment. You're setting this up through modeling, basically, all of these things. And two more things that we can talk about. I like this image of the five stones setting on top of each other because if you want to think of carrying these lessons forward, how are we moving throughout the whole quarter? And how do I go from one quarter to the next and keep building these things in? You want to just be looking for success points in your courses? What always works really well? Why? Am I, is it because I'm accidentally applying UDL principles that I didn't realize I was actually doing? Or is it conscious? What are the sticking points? What is the point that the students always, what project is it that students always start asking more questions than other times during the quarter? When did people show up at my office hours suddenly when they ignored them? All the rest of the quarter. What is that question on the exam that everyone misses every single time? As we observe sticking points over the quarter, the next time we teach the class, we might be able to apply some principles to adjust that. And that Q&A, that Friday Q&A, really can be a great resource for finding out what those sticking points are. Because we get involved in the class, in the course, we get busy, we may not notice them. But if we look back at our Q&A announcement, we might see. And I really encourage everyone to see a combination's requests as an opportunity to enhance the class, not as a chore or a burden or something to feel guilty about or like, why didn't I think of that? They should be seen as an opportunity to really, what can I do? Do I see this accommodation request often? If I do, what is a way I can integrate universal design into my course around this accommodation? So maybe I don't get the request anywhere because students don't need it, because I've already given this change. So it doesn't become a need. It's built into the course. I encourage you to see accommodation requests in a really optimistic and proactive way as a way to enhance an already good class probably. And then, okay, I'm going to skip the next one because that was, okay. Universal design is a design methodology, as we talked about earlier, but I think it's a mindset as well. It acknowledges the reality of our courses. We don't have average students. We have a diverse array of students. And so we want to welcome, you know, open that door widely for all the learners. And having, embedding these practices just makes it a habit of mind and starts making it something that is our first choice in design as opposed to an add-on. But it takes some thinking. And if you've already been along this path, then you're already there. We're anticipating what our learners need and what will help them the most. And then my final slide as I rush through, my little pep talk, it's an iterative approach. We build and build and build. You know, we're not tearing the house down. We're adding new, you know, new shutters. We're putting a new paint on and everything's improving and strengthening the course for us but also for our students. And it's a continual evolution. As we teach, as we learn from the terms experiences, as we get to our students. All right, Helen, did you say you taught before you realized your notes? Helen, did you take me to, you know, do the Q&A? But then I did it a little at a time, you know, one step at a time. Exactly. Yeah, you didn't take your whole summer and do all your notes all at once. Maybe? Yeah. You got it. Yeah. Each new class is when you can apply it. You know, each new slide deck is when you can apply something. So, okay, so that's all I have. I just want you to know, here's my, if I have questions later. Feel free to email me if you have questions, comments, or just want resources. My email address is mcj6 at ud.edu. I have two resources on my slide. One is the UW accessible technology website, which has a vast array of resources for accessibility in particular. Captioning, document design, you name it. Any question you have about accessible documentation is there. And then I also have the cast UDL guidelines. They have a very nice infographic with information. All the stuff, all the brains I showed you on my slides are there on their website. Okay, Eric, I'm turning it over to you. If there are questions. Yeah, we've got just a handful of minutes left. If there are any questions, be happy to entertain any more questions. I want to thank Mary Colleen for her presentation today. I appreciate it very much. Thank you. I actually came up with a couple of, you know, you made some comments that made me think, well, maybe there's a little series here. So we may have a discussion about that. Thank you to Rochelle and Piper for your help. We will have a recording and we will share that recording out once it's been processed properly to everybody who registered for the course. So I appreciate you all. No reason to keep people here if they're all good and ready to head out. I'm happy to stick around for a while if anybody wants to, but I will say, the students said PowerPoints, has a PowerPoint slide deck. You're super helpful. Thank you, Piper. Rochelle for bringing that up. Thank you all so much. Thank you, everyone.