The book: quintessential symbol of learning. But what if you can't see a book's small print on its pages? Getting to what's between its covers may be a steep challenge.
Printed books and conventional teaching methods create obstacles for students with varying abilities to see, move, speak, hear, read, write, focus or understand English. As part of the California State University's Accessible Technology Initiative, which aims to eliminate barriers to learning for students with disabilities, San José State is promoting a different teaching strategy: Universal Design for Learning.
"Universal" does not mean a one-size-fits-all solution, says Hilary Nixon, assistant professor of urban and regional planning, and coordinator of the faculty-in-residence for accessible instructional materials program. Rather, UDL is a way of creating a flexible classroom experience.
"The way I learn best is not the way everyone in the class learns best," says Nixon. "By implementing these strategies, we're providing learning opportunities that will enhance the educational experience of all students, not just those with disabilities."
An ideal class offers students a variety of ways to access course materials and to demonstrate understanding. Through the university's Center for Faculty Development, faculty members are getting UDL training and discovering why their old course materials cause frustration and hinder progress for students like Melissa Boldrey.
A tough, outspoken first-year graduate student in social work, Boldrey is left in the dark when she doesn't get audio or digital equivalents of textbooks and classroom materials in advance. She simply cannot participate without using the screen reader on her "talking" laptop. In addition to adapting to progressive vision loss, which now means reluctantly using a cane, Boldrey says that she and other students with disabilities have to regularly "jump through hoops" to make it through school.
"You have to push so hard and be an advocate for yourself," she says. "A lot of the problem is communication. If we could get departments on campus talking and they could work as a team, that would be awesome."
DisABLED Students Association co-presidents Soledad Rosas, journalism major, and Daniel Pinto, history major, collaborate with the Disability Resource Center, the Center for Faculty Development and other groups on campus to open up communication and create awareness about disabled students' needs.
"People with disabilities have a responsibility to make themselves be understood, because it's hard for someone without a disability to relate to them," says Rosas, who has cerebral palsy and is looking forward to a career in broadcast journalism. "However, building understanding takes a lot of work from everyone in the community."
Increased awareness has contributed to a change in campus culture, says Cynthia Rostankowski, associate professor of humanities and faculty-in-residence for the College of Humanities and the Arts. She says, "People are talking to each other peer to peer, one on one, faculty to student -- and really connecting to make this happen."
Although much of the Accessible Technology Initiative focuses on remediating inadequacies in existing course materials, such as digitizing documents and making them screen-reader ready, UDL involves thinking ahead. Once a professor determines what the learning objective or goal is, everything leading to it can be varied.
In Hilary Nixon's urban planning graduate courses, for example, students who learn best by lecture get lecture, those who prefer interacting with colleagues in class get that experience, and students who need course materials in digital format get everything posted online in advance. Versatility is built in to allow multiple ways to learn.
Behind all the communicating and collaborating are the dedicated instructional designers and administrators at the Center for Faculty Development who provide the seminars, workshops and resources the university faculty needs to move forward. According to Rostankowski, having this support is making all the difference.
"San José State is about supporting its faculty -- and thereby supporting its students to make pathways to learning multiple and rich," she says. "We're maximizing the ways in which all students will be able to thrive as learners."
-- Jody Ulate, '05
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