 and welcome to another New Voices Seminar Series, Wednesday Lunchtime Seminar Series. My name is Amanda Chisholm. I am the organizer and chair of this event. And this week we're really excited to have another EDI cafe chat where we are welcoming Miranda Melcher to talk about particularly her authored teaching teaching to include everyone, a practical guide for online teaching of neurodiverse and disabled students. So Miranda, thank you so much for being with us today. Before we start, I guess I'll just briefly introduce who Miranda is. So Miranda is a PhD student who has submitted and just waiting for her Viva and work on post-conflict military reconstruction. And she's based in the School of Security Studies, but in Defense Studies Department more specifically. She Miranda is also a teacher, researcher and author of NVLD and Development Visual Spatial Disorder in Children 2020 Publication and a fellow for the Higher Education Association. So expert and enthusiastic advocate for broader inclusive teaching. So we're so pleased to have you come and speak to us today and participate in these EDI cafe chats. Miranda has agreed to speak for about 20 minutes on the broader of, I guess, her interest in this line of work and then the underpinnings of the guides that she authored and then just more telling us more about how we need to think about or include neurodiversity when we think about inclusive education. So Miranda, without further ado, I'll pass the floor over to you if that's okay. And then after Miranda's done talking, we can open it up to a broader conversation. So Miranda, the floor is yours. Great, thank you for such a lovely introduction. And of course they invite to speak as part of this series. I'm really excited to see that EDI topics are included as part of new voices and this great effort that war studies and the school security studies promote. So very excited to talk about inclusive education. Now, this is a really big topic, right? Higher education is massive, inclusive education. It's sort of a buzzword that we hear a lot and it means loads of different things. Now, I'm going to be specifically thinking about disability and neurodiversity in terms of inclusive education. But there's a really important point to be made that anything that improves education makes it more inclusive actually addresses a lot of different populations. So all of the measures that I'm going to be discussing today and that are included in the guide, A, don't disadvantage anyone. So we're not prioritizing the needs of one group over another. And secondly, actually have benefits far beyond students with disabilities or who are neurodiverse. And so I'm going to be talking about some of those additional benefits as I go through some examples. So why are we focusing on disability and neurodiversity? A lot of reasons for that. First, we've got the Equality Act of 2010, which includes a number of protected characteristics under UK law. And we're often quite familiar with these, particularly in 2021's climate. Race is really important and there are a lot of issues that remain to be addressed. Gender, we're making progress but there's still a lot of things to work on. Socioeconomic class as evidence, for example, by the digital divide that we're seeing much more in our daily life in the current conditions. And of course the intersection of these different things and how there are structural aspects, there are societal aspects and there are educational aspects, all of which remain things that we really need to keep researching on, keep exploring and keep improving our inclusivity in the classroom. And even in terms of getting people into that classroom in the first place. But one aspect of inclusive education that perhaps is not talked about as much is disability and neurodiversity. We know that in UK higher education, at least 10% of our students in the UK have some kind of disability or neurodiversity. This is almost certainly an under reported number because unlike characteristics like race, religion or gender, a lot of disabilities and especially neurodiversities are often invisible. This both means that it's harder to get diagnosed. So there are a lot of times where students may not even know they have disabilities or neurodiversities. Often these are actually diagnosed during university. So the 10% is of people coming in which is not representative. And additionally because of this invisible aspect because disabilities and neurodiversities come up in every population, every gender, every culture, there's often stigmas attached that people don't want to come forward and disclose. So we know that 10% of our students have a disability or neurodiversity but that's probably a massive under representation. Kings is actually already above the national norm. We have 12% of incoming students reporting a disability or neurodiversity. Importantly of those 12, fewer than 10% actually go on to register with disability services. And that suggests even within Kings, there's a gap between stated need and actually willingness or ability to take advantage of what resources we do have in order to help address those needs. And so that's a perfect microcosm of exactly the issue we have here with lack of visibility, fear of discrimination, especially because there are protections under the Equality Act. But as with many other aspects of discrimination, proving that you've been discriminated against because of a particular disclosure is often quite tricky. So the reason I'm focusing specifically on inclusive education with the focus on disability and neurodiversity is because it's a more underexplored topic, both in terms of pedagogy and just in terms of research. So Amanda mentioned the book that my co-authors and I published a few months ago on NVLD, Nonverbal Learning Disorder. It's in fact, one of the first books on diagnosing and treating both psychologically and educationally this neurodiversity condition that in fact might impact as many as 3% of the entire population, which is huge. And yet it's not even in diagnostic criteria yet because we still don't know enough about it to put it in. And that just gives you a great example of how much still remains to be understood about disability and neurodiversity. Now, to just do a brief definition, when I talk about disability, what I'm very much at the school of the social model of disability. So this is that disability is a social construct in a lot of ways. For example, we've chosen as a society to generally see that wearing glasses or contact lenses is a biological difference, but not a disability per se. And we've drawn the line between wearing a pair of glasses versus blindness. That's actually a great example of how there's been a societal construct of a line drawing in the middle. And the concept of neurodiversity goes into that as well, is that the idea is that there are lots of different ways of thinking and that society has sort of determined that these ways are kind of the normal ones that we design structures around. And then there are others that are essentially just meant to fit in. And so this is often where you hear things like difference or condition or disease or cure. All of these things imply that these types of thinking need to be fixed. Whereas those of us who use the term neurodiversity rather than divergent suggest that actually what we should be doing is as a society expanding our conception of ways that people can and do think and in changing our societal and educational structures to encourage and encompass that range. So that's kind of the social model of disability rather than a more medically focused one that just looks more at sort of surgery, medicine, disease, cure. So all the things that I'm suggesting in this guide are ways of doing that. And the really important point of this guide is that it is meant to be practical. It's meant for someone who is running a seminar in 10 minutes and wants to know, hang on, how do I explain to students what I need them to do? Cool, let me read this half page that says, here's what I need to do. Here are examples of how I can do it. And here's a brief explanation of why it makes a difference. Cool, I can go off and do that now, right? The guide is not meant to be a theoretical discourse on all of these things I've just talked about. There are entire fields of study for that. It's meant to very practically say what can we actually do in our teaching? Now, specifically what I focused on are things that I call low effort, high impact. There's a lot that needs to be fixed in our education system about assessment, about module design, about conceptions of learning. That's a big conversation. While we have that conversation, there's a lot that each of us as teachers can individually and immediately do without messing with module design at all. And so in a lot of ways, this guide is geared for GTAs, is geared towards those who teach synchronous or asynchronous, online or face-to-face without requiring that those using the guide actually have any control over the content or structure of what they teach. That's to some degree a separate conversation. So the three key principles of this guide, and I argue for inclusive education overall are be specific, be transparent, and be mindful. So being specific quite literally means actually saying all the things that maybe you think you're saying, but don't necessarily come through. So to give you an example, saying something like to participate in this class, you need to post in the forum. Great. When? How often? What length? When will the forum posting be open? You probably know all of those things. None of those are difficult things to figure out. But by saying you need to post in the forum, you've actually not specified that to your students. And it's very simple just to add an extra sentence to say, here's what I expect you to do. And yes, that might be on the module outline, but how much harder is it if they have to realize it, they have to go to the module, they have to go to Keats, they have to go to the module outline, they have to find the thing, and then they have to do it. When you already have that information, you could just add it in a sentence. So a really key one is simply explaining being specific about what you mean. This benefits neurodiverse students who often have difficulty understanding subtext and often have difficulty understanding underlying assumptions. Again, because neurodiverse students think differently, their pattern of mental assumptions and connotations are just likely to be different. The same way that we generally know that students coming from different cultural backgrounds may have different assumptions or connotations, something very similar is happening for neurodiverse students. In fact, that's exactly what I meant by it benefits more students, explaining things specifically helps neurodiverse students. It also helps students who are new to this education system. It helps students who haven't been in education for a while. It helps students who are part-time and don't have time to go dig around on all these things. So in fact, by doing something with a lens of improving access for disability and neurodiversity, you're in fact benefiting all of these other populations as well. And no one is harmed. You're not even harmed as the teacher. You're adding one extra sentence to your discussion. So that's what being specific looks like. Being transparent is about this world of academia that we live in. And by the time we get to a stage of teaching in academia as a GTA, as a professor, we've been here a while, right? By definition, we've been in academia a while. We know what looking at a source and finding the argument is. In fact, we don't even think about it really anymore. We know what the difference is between a GTA and a module convener. We know who has control of what sorts of things. Our students don't. And a lot of us, I think, forget myself included. We forget all of these things because we were in fact, never explicitly taught them ourselves. We all learned through trial and error and osmosis. And as much as that was to a degree effective, right? We all got here wasn't always necessarily pleasant. And just because it worked for a bunch of us doesn't mean we can't improve it. So being transparent means things like, if you say, we want you to take initiative with the reading list, what does that mean? What can that look like? Now, that's not the same as telling students exactly what to do, right? We do want to encourage critical and independent thinking, but you can and probably should give examples of what that can look like, right? Oh, you should look at an article that's core reading and then go through the bibliography and see what's interesting to you and read there. You're not telling them what to read or what notes to take. You are, however, giving them much more transparent guidance about how to actually build their knowledge. And that's what being transparent looks like. Last one is being mindful. This is something that we've all had a massive crash course in the last year, but extends in a lot of different ways. So we've gotten pretty used to being mindful of the fact that not everyone has a brilliant internet connection and so can't have their cameras on at all times. We've gotten pretty used to the fact, as evidenced here, people have pets and cats do not listen to instruction. And so we don't really care when a cat shows up in a camera anymore. We've gotten really good at being mindful in a lot of different ways, but again, there's still room to grow. So for example, saying something like, it would be lovely to have your cameras on, but I know not everyone has internet that is capable of handling that, so that's okay. That on the one hand is quite mindful of this idea of a digital divide. On the other hand, it implies that having bad internet is the only reason to not have your camera on. And so in fact, discounts situations where, and I've literally had students with all of these different things, the student has caring responsibilities and can participate in the class, but has a child sat on their lap the whole time and doesn't want to be on camera given that situation. We have situations around time zones. If you're attending class at midnight, your time zone, maybe you're not gonna have all the lights on to be visible on camera, but from a disability and neurodiversity perspective, there's some additional aspects that are literally just never talked about or addressed, which implies to students that they're not allowed to talk about them or bring them up. For example, if you have, if you're neurodiverse in a way that means social cues are more difficult for you, then the idea of sat in front of a screen, having all the same facial expressions and all the same gestures as everyone else, that can be exhausting. That can be really difficult because unlike neurotypicals as they're generally called, that takes effort for you to have those gestures and facial expressions. So actually it would be better to not have your camera on so you don't have to worry about that. And instead, you can actually concentrate on the content, right? If for example, you have a disability that means physical mobility is limited and fatigue is an issue, you might best engage with class lying flat. That doesn't mean you can't engage with the class. It does mean it's not gonna show up great on camera. Similarly, a common one with ADHD is pacing as a way of maintaining concentration doesn't look great on a camera. So really important part of being mindful is expanding that muscle that we've already developed so well in this situation around digital divide, around time zones, to include things like disability neurodiversity and ensure that those are not implied as negative or ignored entirely. So this takes me to, I've already talked about the example of camera, right? It's probably the most divisive issue entirely. But what I would argue is that we actually, cameras are both good and bad. And what I do, for example, when I teach is I give students the option. I literally will say it's entirely up to you whether to have your camera on or not. Some people think it makes things more engaging. Some people think it makes things more distracting. It's up to you, right? And that gives students the agency to do it. Whereas if you're asking people to put their camera on, there's inevitably a power dynamic and there's a lot of potential issues there. The other thing that I often hear from teachers is, well, but I need their camera on so that I know they're paying attention so that I can assess what's going on. And that is true. It's the most analogous change. A way to go from face to face to online is to have cameras on. But actually what that does is ignore the additional ways that online learning gives us access to other ways of figuring out what our students are thinking. So in Zoom, for example, we have the reaction button. So I do things all the time where I'm like, okay, I said four minutes to work on this. If you're happy with that, give me a thumbs up. If you need more time, use the heart emoji. And I can immediately get an assessment of where everyone's at. In Microsoft Teams, it might be in both of them, it could be putting things into the chat and then having students react in Teams to each other's comments. So you can find out who agrees and disagrees without having to just watch everyone's faces. So I completely understand the idea that we need to still know what our students are doing and need to have some way of assessing how a session is going. But by assuming that cameras are the only way, we're ignoring some of our other methods. And then finally, my last example is, again, this implication, this ignoring of disability and neurodiversity. And a lot of that comes through seemingly innocuous comments that are certainly not meant to ignore disability or neurodiversity but can have that implication. So we've already talked about that with one sense in terms of camera. The other one is something that often comes up at the beginning of a session. And I assume, and I think in most cases, it's about bonding. It's about creating some sort of engaged atmosphere where the lecturer or the presenter will say something like, how are you guys all doing? I know this is really hard, well done for turning up anyway and really committing to this, right? It's generally a sort of setting. It's not meant as a substantive comment. However, what that does is it assumes that online learning is negative for everyone. And in fact, especially for disability and neurodiversity, that might not be true, right? If you have mobility issues, the fact that you can now go to class from the comfort of your own physical setup, that's huge. If you are neurodiverse, the ability to take notes, to record, to have whatever setup you need, whether that's screen readers, whether that's different headphones, that is absolutely massive, right? You no longer need to go through a formal diagnostic process, then go to disability services, then meet with someone, then get a bunch of forms filled out, then get those sent to your lecturer in order to just engage the way that your fellow classmates do. But by phrasing things with the assumption that online learning is obviously horrible for everyone and everyone of course hates it and we really want to get back to the face-to-face classroom, the instant it's available negates all of those experiences. And so again, that's not to say, don't acknowledge the hard times. I'm not ignoring that at all. It is hard for a lot of people, but it's that balance. So for example, and again, this is in the guide, you could say something like, I know that this is strange for a lot of people and it's been an abrupt change. There are positives and negatives to it and you know what? We're gonna work together and make sure this works for everyone. It's doing the exact same thing that you wanted, which was creating some sort of bonding and acknowledgement at the beginning, but it's not negating anyone's experience. And so that's what being mindful can look like. So all of this and a lot more is in the guide, which is up on a whole bunch of webpages within Kinks. It's also been written about in JISC. I've written a blog post on JISC, which is the Educational Technology Charity for the UK that talks about this as well. And of course I am happy to answer questions and if people want to talk more about what they can do, please let me know. That's excellent, Miranda. Thank you so much for walking through that. I mean, I think I'm coming from the position of a module owner and designer. So I appreciate this, you know, you had mentioned that this was for, you know, GTAs largely or people who that you said the, what was it? The low effort, high impact. That's not what you call that you, but you had a fanci- Yeah, yeah, no, that's exactly what it is. Oh, great, good. I remember that. And I loved how you talked about the broader constraints because even as a module owner, we're faced with constraints over the portfolio simplification and how that means for assessments and what, you know, we want to be innovative in different assessments, but we have faculty and college district guidelines around all of this. So I like those really useful tips. And I think I've learned a lot just as a module owner, how to manage and think about designing modules and with a variety of different ways that students can engage in synchronous and asynchronous as well learning. I just wonder, you know, and I'm sure you're faced with this too when you're writing this report or writing this guidelines is there, as you know, with educators moving everything online and we're figuring stuff out together. There's also this huge condensed time, you know, where we feel we're always lacking time, right? And more stuff that we need to do. And I wonder how are, how best like, do you have any ideas on how best to communicate this guide? Because I can see a lot of people might just think, that's nice, but that's another document I need to read. So like, how would you think best to communicate the, you know, these important knowledge and this important research and tips and advice that you're dispelling, I think, not just for GTAs, but anyone who teaches and, you know. Yeah, so that's a great question. One of the ways is actually just writing all this down, rather than me ad hoc talking to people. Getting it on JISC has been great because that makes it available on the internet. And of course, nationally through JISC, promote it through various workshops and clinics. One of them is literally right now. We've also developed this into a workshop, which has now been delivered twice through Kings Academy, where we actually work through a bunch of these examples and people bring in things that they've found, they've like encountered and gone, wait, how do I solve this? So we've actually had interactive workshops and we're currently trying to get funding to make those workshops mandatory for GTAs and more studies and ideally beyond that, which would mean that it's paid time to engage with this and that you would have the written resource to go back to, but that it wouldn't just be you on your own at some point trying to read a document. Similarly with the blog post on JISC, that's like a super shortened way. So you're reading three paragraphs rather than a whole bunch of pages doing talks like this. So it's just kind of an iterative process. When I wrote this document, I pretty much thought like three people would read it. It wasn't really meant initially. Obviously the dream was to get it moved out, but the initial goal was just kind of, oh, I keep getting asked the same questions. I may as well write them down. So there's a bunch of different aspects to it. Ideally we would have more workshops through Kings Academy, which relies on people saying that they want them. And ideally we'd get funding in order to make the training part of the mandatory training that both GTAs and ideally lectures that go through the LTP course. Ideally eventually we can make this part of promotion processes, but make sure that this is something that actually gets built into requirements of teaching rather than continue to exist as an ad hoc resource, which is great where it is now. This is amazing progress since September, but I think the next step is moving it into institutional support. I mean, what you're doing is such fantastic work and you're right in that. If we build in from design of modules, but even programs with neurodiversity and the multitude of different ways in which we learn, that's just this best practice, right? And it just supports all sorts of learners. So you definitely have an advocate on this side. Anyway, I can help promote. I really wanna do that. And now as I'm saying this, I forgot what my question was going to be. Darn it. Oh, yes, that's it. I wonder, have you reflected or we, maybe something we can reflect as a community to going forward as Kings is starting to evaluate moving residential teaching again in September and what our work patterns are gonna look like as educators, but also as students. Where do you think this guide is gonna fit there when we return to like, what sort of would you be advocating for more of a blended learning model or what sort of way of teaching delivery do you think would be important for us to consider going forward? So I think the principles of inclusive education and this guide are actually completely agnostic to the delivery method, right? Being specific, being transparent and being mindful have nothing to do with where the classroom is or is not. To go back to my original example of you need to post in a forum when, how, how often, all of that still exactly applies to a face-to-face environment, right? If we're saying, and we already do this for summative assessments, we assume that when we say, you need to present on a topic that we should specify for how many minutes, roughly what you should cover, but we don't do that more broadly than summative assignments. And yet there's all sorts of things that happen in the face-to-face classroom that we're not necessarily specific about, right? The single biggest one is we're now going to have a discussion. Okay, you've got 18 people in a room that now have to talk about a thing, right? There's a lot of, and there's already existing mechanisms to improve that and make that more inclusive, right? Think, pair, share is a really key one. But just by being more specific, transparent, and mindful, those things can all apply. So be transparent, actually explain the marking criteria. War cities aren't marking criteria, really vague, really vague. GTA spend two entire training sessions trying to understand it. So, and yet that's actually not built in as something we automatically explain to our students. Being mindful, this really comes into play with disability and neurodiversity. Physical classrooms at Kings and at most universities are not at all friendly to disability and neurodiversity. Sure, some of them have wheelchair ramps, great. Can you actually physically maneuver around all of the different chairs and desks? What about the really incredibly bright lights? What about visual distraction? What about noise distraction? Also things like, for example, multiple groups talking at once, auditory processing is really difficult in that sort of situation. So wheelchairs and ramps is really the absolute bare minimum when it comes to physical accessibility and mobility. We also don't, for example, think about the difficulty traveling two Kings and what sort of fatigue and mobility problems that creates before the student even gets into the classroom. On the other hand, I don't want to say, yes, we need to do blended learning. Mostly that's because I haven't yet seen examples of how that can be done in a really good way. And I am very skeptical and very worried about the possibility that blended learning actually becomes a two-tiered system of you get everything you've paid for and everything you deserve if you can make it to the physical classroom. And if not, you get a watered-down version where you have to fill in the gaps yourself. And this is already, unfortunately, quite often what feels like the case, for example, with PhD students between those who are in London and those who are distance learners. And those sorts of inequalities way predated the pandemic. And I'm quite worried that advocating for blended classrooms without anything more specific, without quality control, without training will lead to the same sort of thing coming back. So even though I don't think that our physical spaces are very well adapted for inclusivity around disability and neurodiversity, I know that I can't stop us from going back to the campus, but I'm hesitant to therefore advocate for fully blended learning because I don't think we actually have a very good idea of what that really looks like and ensuring that the online experience is as high quality as in-classroom. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a good point too. You know, just again, from my perspective of trying to move content online and whatnot, and I found it increasingly frustrating that all of the structural issues just seem to get put on the educators themselves in terms of, you know, not investing in adequate support or software that supports us. And even closed captioning, right? The fact that, you know, just typing it out or typing out our transcripts and whatnot, that just, that extra work. So I guess too, I just wanna, you know, you've raised a lot of issues that, again, go beyond the GTA and the educator to, you know, estates, right? And what the college chooses to invest in. Can you reflect on what do you think they need to invest in if we're actually going to take neurodiversity seriously and we're actually going to have it at the core of our teaching? What would the college need to start investing in? That is a massive question. Great, that's out of my own interest. Yeah, no, I think there's a bunch of things. First of all, I think, and there's a bunch of different ways this could be done, but the first thing is we actually need to talk about it. We need to actually have conversations where students, staff, professional services, faculty, everyone actually feel comfortable talking about neurodiversity, mental health, disability in a way that they're just realistically not for pretty good reasons. And there's a lot of ways this can be done. Some of it is sort of bottom up, you know, humans of war studies type things focusing on disability and neurodiversity. A lot of it is going to require acknowledgement, not just once, but consistent acknowledgement from the very top of the institution. And ideally, perhaps some of the people at the top of the institution, disclosing about themselves. My personal research and experience suggests that academia actually has a much higher amount of neurodiverse people than the general population does. On the other hand, part of why that is true, I think, is because it's easier for your neurodiversity to be an asset rather than a problem. So there's a bunch of people who probably don't even realize that they're neurodiverse. But we need advocates from the top, I think, in terms of conversation and awareness. Additionally, we need processes around disability services to be much more streamlined and easier for people to access. That goes with how to actually get time and attention from disability services. That goes to what kinds of accommodations disability services actually able to offer. And that goes to communication between disability services and module conveners and GTAs actually working, which it mostly doesn't. And then a big part of it, though, is we do need to expand our conception of learning and especially assessment. Like that's such a big piece of this, because so much of how we teach is kind of working from the assessment backwards and how we design. And right now, there's essentially two ways of proving that you're good. You write a research paper or you sit and exam. That's kind of it. Neither of which are very creative. Neither of which are very flexible. And especially in the younger years, we don't even give students a choice between those. So we only have two. And except most of the time, there's actually only one because it's already been decided what the one option is. So we're actually starting from a pretty pathetic point when it comes to assessment design. And some of the other ones were further along, but there's more to do. Assessment design, like not even clear that that's a conversation. So I think for me, the things that I would, I think would make the biggest difference for Kings. Yes, there are straightforward ones that some of us are already working on, like better signage at the physical campus. Strand is a mess. Things like, you know, thinking about lights and brightness and whatever, but the really fundamental ones that I think would make the absolute biggest difference is assessment design. Like first and foremost is assessment design, but that needs advocates from the top. That needs buy-in the same way that we have over my time at Kings, I've seen increased buy-in around this idea of internationalizing Kings, both in terms of students and perspectives and experiences. There's obviously loads of work to be done there still, but we don't have anything like that kind of effort around inclusivity, accessibility and flexibility. And I think that's really what we need at this point. Yeah, and I worry that we're actually making that more narrow with a broader faculty move to portfolio simplification that has a very strict kind of word tariff that we can put on assessments that really make it difficult to do other innovative forms of assessment that I've seen across the UK talking to other colleagues. Some really interesting assessments. I've got one colleague at the University of Manchester who is getting students to do gifts based on weekly readings, right? So I think that's fantastic. And actually that requires so much more engagement than a summary of the reading, right? To actually think about visually, how do I represent this? The visual politics of what sort of images that are you reproducing and whatnot too. So, and it's one that also is fun, right? Like when they're done well, they're in enjoyment as GTAs or as educators to assess and look at in their enjoyment for students to do. And I'm not sure, I'm not convinced the way we're moving in faculty if we have that opening. And so that's in an important space to I think start pushing back too. And I think there's two aspects to assessment. One is creativity and types, but the other one is about choice and flexibility. And I think that there is a danger of saying, oh, look, for this module, you have this assessment and this one and this one and they're all different. This one's a gift, this one's a video, this one's an essay. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's accessible, right? Choice is a big element. And I think that's actually often the biggest problem that's implicit, that's not even talked about even a little bit, is that educators, we feel like we get to decide all the things, we're in charge, we set how this goes. And so the idea of giving students a choice, you could do it as a gift or you could do it as a policy brief, feels like a negation of our authority. It feels like a negation of our knowledge, feels like extra work because, oh, that's two different types of assessment and so we have to mark them slightly differently. And those sorts of instinctive responses against choice, even if there isn't a range of options, even if the choice is simply between an exam versus an essay, I think those are actually some really fundamental biases that we actually have to investigate first before we can start to look at, can I let them record a podcast or something like that? And just like this guide is hopefully showing, we can actually make those kinds of changes without those fears being realized. We don't have to sacrifice academic quality. We don't have to make our lives harder with loads of different marking criteria. We don't have to let the students run rampant and anarchic. But I think there are a lot of those built in fears and we don't even address those. I mean, we barely talk about assessment design as it is. When we do, we tend to talk about widening the range. We don't talk about it in terms of accessibility and agency, even though ostensibly, as a university, that's what we're trying to develop in our students. So yeah, I'm going to open up the floor to Emily and Laura because I feel like I've monopolized your time around it. I apologize, I feel like I'm abusing my position of chair for that. But Emily and Laura, do you have any questions or comments or experiences you want to share? Great for Laura. Okay, so yeah, Miranda, thank you so much for this presentation. I know that I have heard like bits and pieces before about your teaching primal, but this was really, really insightful and especially just having the opportunity to discuss this with you. So thank you so much, also to Amanda. Say, I have one question and it is, what are the implications of the inclusive teaching primer for teaching stuff? So I know that it is addressed to students. It has got students in mind, but teaching is ideally a two way road and it is something highly relational. And as you have said, it is ideally also a bonding experience. And since we have such a high number of students with disability or neurodiversities, I'm sure it is not just students. I'm sure that we also am confident that we have also teaching stuff on every levels that is also has some sort of disability or neurodiversity, even if it is not acknowledged as such. So I guess I want to ask, what are the incentives for teaching stuff, neurodivergent or neurotypical to engage with this teaching primer? So it is also especially for those who have not engaged with this topic before, which is kind of an EDI question, is such as EDI questions. So we are facing the same challenges and I guess also other working groups that are decolonizing working groups. So yeah, and I'm not just thinking about advocates from the top, but what are really the benefits for the teaching staff themselves to engage with this? So that's a good point and the answer is incredibly simple. It improves student engagement, full stop, right? Single biggest thing that all of us complain about is why do I only have the same three people talking? How do I get these other people to talk? Why is it so repetitive, right? That's both in terms of if you're assessed on your teaching, you don't want someone to come observe your teaching and be like, why are three people talking, right? Like it makes you look bad as a teacher. So there's a sort of reputational incentive. There's also a relational aspect. It's simply not as fun if you are teaching an hour or two hours and the vast majority of your classroom just doesn't respond to you, right? If you're stood there teaching and you ask a question, it's just dead silence. You're like, please speak and like the same two or three people do relationship wise. It's very difficult to build rapport with your students if they're not engaging and it's just not very fun as a teacher. It's kind of depressing if that happens. So there's an emotional aspect. There's a qualitative aspect in terms of more people engaging as we generally find that means for better discussion. That's why we have discussion seminars in the first place is for people to give their ideas. So there's a quality aspect. There's a reputation aspect and there's a relational aspect that all of these measures improve student engagement. Why? Because more students feel able to participate. Whether that's because you've specified exactly what you need them to do. It means they're not wasting energy or being anxious about wait, have I said the wrong thing or am I supposed to talk about this now? They go, oh yeah, no, this is the topic we're meant to be talking about. And right now I am meant to raise my hand and say what I think or I am meant to answer this question in this small group and then we're gonna talk about it in the big group. Knowing what's happening, knowing what they're supposed to be doing allows everyone to shut aside all the other distractions and especially anxiety and go, okay, great, I can engage with this. I can have a go. Being transparent, why are you making them do something that maybe seems terrifying? Oh, look, we want you to give an oral presentation in your first year. We know this is the first time you've done that. We will take that into account. We are not out to get you. The reason we think this is important is because jobs you've said you're interested in use it in this way, right? Being transparent about those kinds of learning objectives make students a lot more willing to go, oh yeah, okay, you're not just doing this to torture me because you're an authority figure and you can, there's actually a benefit to me. And then being mindful, again, this idea that being mindful of potential barriers to student engagement means getting rid of those barriers so that then they can engage. So why should students like this primer? They should like it because it should make it easier for them to learn. Why should educators like this primer? It's actually a pretty easy way to solve the perennial problem, which is how do I get my students to engage? And you don't have to care at all about disability or neurodiversity or EDI to not want to stand in front of a room and have absolutely no reaction from your students. I mean, I think that what I really connect it with and love about this too, and has been on my own education journey is, like you said, just explaining things that we get so ingrained and think that they're common sense, right? And that's part of the demystifying this kind of what, constituted in part of the hidden curriculum, right? And I reflect too, I'm the first person in my family ever to go to university and in my extended family too. So this was all brand new to me. And just little things that now, I'm constantly remembering that when I explain assessments, but when I explain even why, you know, attending, why synchronous learning and why coming into residential teaching, what do you get from that, especially with recap, right? What do you get from being in the classroom? And I think just explaining that, you're right. You get more engagement. You get uptake of these ideas because it's not assuming students know this, right? And the students know the benefit, but it's also building a sense of community where, you know, students are open to say, this isn't totally working for me. Can we try this, right? And it's all a part of that. And I think for me, what COVID's done and what moving to a lot of online learning has done is, I've drawn with my students of that, this is a journey we're on together. I haven't been here before. You haven't been here before. Let's make this work. Let's see, you know, what benefits we can draw from this, where some cool initiatives are doing. If you see something in another classroom where you're like, this is really working, can we adopt it here? Let's do that together, right? And I think more than any, I think this year reflecting upon it, I've built a strong community because of that, right? Because of that, we're kind of on a journey together. We're exploring this and there's certain aspects of the online that I want to continue for residential when we do move to residential teaching that works quite well, but those are just my general reflections on it. And again, Miranda, thank you for articulating this in a user-friendly, beautifully written guide. I really appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah, my head is hurting from nodding so much for this entire time. I'm just like, mm-hmm, yes, yes, yes. But no, it's really important work and this entire year, because I've been working with Miranda and the UDI Committee, kind of embracing this journey in my own teaching this year. It's been so, so good. And I enjoy teaching so much more teaching online than I thought I would, or that even thinking back to face-to-face teaching, which I also love and I very much consider myself like someone who loves face-to-face teaching. So it makes me feel quite anxious about going back and I know we've talked about this, but bringing this back into the classroom, but especially on a GTA level, where we really don't have that much control over what classrooms we're in or if we're going online or the talks we have to cover. So that's the kind of thing I think this is a conversation that's so important to be having, not just this year, but certainly next year as well, reminding GTAs that this is a really good primer for when we're kind of face-to-face teaching as well, this idea of being mindful, which is the one that's really, being transparent and being like, was it precise? I should know this. Specific, thank you. Being transparent and specific feel fairly easy to translate into face-to-face, but it's this mindful one that's really kind of making me, not worried, but making me think a lot more about how I'm gonna translate that one into face-to-face teaching. It's much harder and how we can kind of make this work for us and I also, I just wanna kind of like pick up on this idea of giving students agency and trusting them. This is a real pet peeve of mine. Whenever I see academics being like, oh, they just don't do the work because they're lazy or like they don't want to do anything. I'm just like, ah! You know, they're not children. None of them are children, they're all adults and we should be trusting them to want to learn and if they're not doing it, there's a reason for it. It's not because, I don't know, they're lazy or they don't want to do the work. I think it's, and that's so important to, and it's such a big change of mindset as well. That's what you, like all the small, small things, like having your cameras on, which is like this, the huge thing is like, just trust your students. If they want to have their cameras on, they will. If they don't have the cameras on, they will still be engaging. Just take a beat. I think it's such an important part of this as well. So I don't know, do I feel, I'm sorry, I'm just ranting, I don't really have a question. Do I feel positive about the future in this sense, a small amount? But I think there's a lot of work to be done. And I think particularly when we go back to residential faith-to-faith teaching, I'm really, really hopeful and I'm up for the good fight of like trying to translate this and make this as important and really key when life becomes, I think like more hectic, I don't know, in a different way, more running around between places. So yeah, not really a question, but thank you. If I may abuse my position of speaker to have three final comments. First is I actually do have a response to that buried question of how do we make mindfulness like a mindset? It's very simple. It's really hard to do, it's very simple to explain. Anything that you think is easy, anything that you think is hard, anything that you like and anything that you don't like, notice it and think about why that may or may not be true for other people. Just that. I like talking and giving presentations. Ooh, wait, I'm noticing that I have a preference. Why might that be challenging for other people? Okay, great, how can I make sure to address those ahead of time? Right, or, oh, I really hate reading long papers and taking notes on them. Let me think about why someone might like that and make sure that I don't imply that everyone hates it and that it's bad, right? And so literally using yourself as a barometer because we literally all have preferences. We all have likes and dislikes. There is nothing wrong with that. The problem comes when we assume that everyone has the same likes and dislikes as us and the same capabilities or challenges as us. And that's where being mindful comes in. So if you think, oh, this bit I find really hard when it takes me ages, think about where that may not be true. Or likewise, oh, I could do this in my sleep. Okay, where might that not be true for other people? And using yourself just as a way of figuring out where those potential things might be. And as with every other mental exercise, the more you do it, the easier it is. But that's a really straightforward way of being mindful. It doesn't rely on reading every document you come across or having lived experience of every possible thing. It's simply tapping into your own reactions to things and saying, what if? What could the opposite be? And by definition, if we're all here, we've got pretty good brains. So this is a great opportunity to actually utilize our existing analytical capabilities without saying, oh, the solution is everyone has to go to a six month training course on every possible microaggression, right? So that's point one. Point two, I have written up a bunch of other stuff about other methods of improving inclusivity, particularly in live sessions, in synchronous sessions. And those are gonna be up on JISC in the next few months as blog posts. So there's one about how to use Google Docs instead of slides. And the article addresses both why it's often better for students, but also why it makes your life as an educator easier. So that's gonna be one to look out for. And then the other is the use of chat and how you can use the chat function on a variety of different platforms to get the kind of information that you're used to getting in a face-to-face setting even when you don't have access to students' cameras. So that one's very much more geared towards how do we address this gap when we switch to online? How do we make use of our available tools so that we still have all the information and feedback that we want? So I would say keep an eye out on the JISC accessibility blog for those. And you know where to find me if you've got any questions. Yeah, I think just to finally say too is the mindfulness is to have more conversations like this too, right? Like, you know, with other educators within that's part of being self-reflective too on your own practice. You don't necessarily need to, if you have time and interest, read continual professional development, right? Or like reading the emerging literature that's coming out and even like the amazing bell hooks, right? You know, just like the literature of empowering students and the education space as a political space and that enables you to reflect. But yeah, teaching circles are just, you know, your amazing colleagues not only support you in being brilliant researchers, right? And developing your knowledge of research but also being brilliant educators too. So we're doing the right things. Thank you, Miranda. Thank you, Emily and Laura for coming. Miranda, brilliant presentation. You do rock at presentation. So thank you. Thank you for this. This will be circulated throughout social media and I will be encouraging our war studies and DSD staff in particular to listen, right? Over a cup of tea while they're washing dishes or petting their cat or doing whatever, right? That they can listen to this and this is a good access point of why, you know, why neurodiversity matters and what we can do and the simple breakdowns, it's awesome. So thank you so much for participating. Yeah, and we'll see each other soon, right?