Purposeful and Motivated Learners

Two young girls deeply engaged in their learning.
Sustaining focus on the learning goal. Source: Klimkin from Pixabay

To develop purposeful and motivated learners, educators provide multiple ways to engage their learners. One of these ways is to provide options to help learners sustain their effort and persist with their learning. Checkpoint 8 in the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework covers this point.

The framework explains that learners require support to remain focused on the goal they are striving towards, and its value. This is the learner to sustain effort and concentration in the face of many distracters. General suggestions, relevant to both school and higher education settings, include:

    • Prompting or requiring learners to explicitly formulate or restate the goal
    • Displaying the goal in multiple ways
    • Encouraging chunking of long-term goals into shorter-term objectives
    • Incorporating the use of prompts or scaffolds for visualising desired outcomes
    • Engaging learners in discussions of what excellence looks like
    • Generating relevant examples that connect to their background and interests

Some specific strategies include Discrete Trial Training (DTT) and rubrics.

Discrete Trial Training

First, Discrete Trial Training. DTT takes a skill and pulls it apart into its basic components. Starting at the most fundamental component, the student learns or acquires that skill (acquisition), practices the skill to mastery (fluency), maintains the skill across time (maintenance) and transfers the skill to a new situation (generalisation).

A technique used in Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA), DTT has been used for decades in supporting learners with autism. However, DTT is possible to incorporate into any learning setting.

As DTT is concise and provides step-by-step support tailored to develop a skill efficiently, it is useful in supporting students to succeed with small components of a larger goal. Positivity and brevity are key features, making learning, and ultimately goal achievement, more attainable through its step-by-step format, thus supporting the development of purposeful and motivated learners.

Rubrics

Next, rubrics. Most educators will be familiar with rubrics. A rubric is an assessment tool that can also be used to track development through a task. Rubrics are primarily used to collect data on students’ progress related to a specific skill or assessment task. Rubrics support students to understand the requirements of a task, how it will be marked, and most importantly in terms of making learning goals salient, how well the student is progressing toward achievement of the task or skill.

In summary, because rubrics can be used as formative and summative assessment tools, they can be used across the who learning activity/assessment duration to support learners to track their progress, sustain their effort and persist with their learning.

Well-considered rubrics are powerful tools for focusing on goals or outcomes. They can even be co-created with the learner to make the student goals even more salient.

Other strategies to heighten engagement in learning

In previous posts, we have explored tools and strategies to enable educators to recruit students’ interest in their learning. Click the link to read more about these strategies:

There are more practical suggestions on reducing barriers to learning on the CUDA website.

Guide for Public Interest Design

Cover of publication showing various people in design situations. Public Interest Design Guide.The Public Interest Design Education Guidebook is for anyone involved in educating and training upcoming designers. This academic guide has three parts: design curricula; educating the designer; and SEED Academic Case Studies.

Drawings alone are inadequate for communicating design intent – other means are required as well. Direct communication using everyday language in a participatory process is essential. In essence, a co-design approach. 

The book challenges educational practitioners to educate students who might become alternative practitioners and design for public interest. “These practitioners enter into a potentially more fulfilling relationship with the site, its history, the community of users whose needs they address, and the members of the workforce who are their collaborators”. 

Public Interest Design Education Guidebook: Curricula, Strategies, and SEED Academic Case Studies, presents a framework necessary to teach public interest designers. There are contributions from a range of authors covering all aspects of design education. They bring diverse approaches for inclusive community-based practices from across design disciplines. 

The teaching strategies in the guide will empower educators “to excel in your pursuit of public interest design”.

SEED is the acronym for “Social Economic Environmental Design”. This is an update on the earlier 2016 edition of the Guidebook. 

Off to work we go. Or do we?

A man holding a boarding pass in his hand along with a bag. You can see the airport in the background.Travelling to work is one thing. Travelling for work is another.  A recent study of Australian university staff who travel for work revealed common difficulties. All participants reported that their disability, whether declared or not, affected their ability to undertake work-based travel. Some of their necessary compromises involved extra cost at their own expense.  There are four things that make travelling for work difficult for people with disability. They are: the way the current system is designed, stigma and victimisation, self reliance and asking for help. And of course, double the effort that anyone else takes for an event-free journey. These factors also apply to the tourism sector. That’s because academics who frequently travel for work might extend their stay for a short vacation. They might take their family too. The university travel booking service on campus often asked participants to seek additional information themselves. That’s because it was not seen as part of the service. One participant found it easier to bypass the system and do their own bookings even though they had to foot the bill. Potentially, the system isn’t smooth sailing for others either. A supervisor told another participant that they couldn’t be an academic if it meant travelling overseas. Booking travel also meant revealing a previously hidden disability. This is a tricky area. Other articles have revealed the reticence to declare a disability for fear of discrimination and disbelief.  The article, Negotiating work-based travel for people with disabilities, has some recommendations. They are applicable for workplaces and tourism operators alike.  You will need institutional access for a free read or contact the authors at The University of Queensland.

Abstract

In an ideal world, inclusive travel services would value each person, support full participation and seek to embrace the similarities, as well as the differences, to be found in society. Anecdotally at least, it seems the unspoken truth for many individuals with a disability is that efforts to engage in any form of travel are often thwarted by poor service provision, systemic bias and discrimination. Using an inductive line of inquiry, this Australian study sought to detail how staff with a disability in the higher education sector negotiated their work-related travel responsibilities. Findings revealed that many felt compromised by current systems and practices with many required to go ‘above and beyond’ that expected of their work colleagues. The results of the research project serve to inform employers about the often unvoiced challenges employees with disabilities face when meeting work-based travel expectations. The findings also contribute directly to the transformative service research agenda by offering clear insight into how the travel and hospitality industry might be more inclusive of employees travelling for work-based purposes to the benefit of all parties.

Autism friendly home environment

Picture of a large family looking jubilant outside their houseFamilies living with autism have lots of stories to tell. So researchers set out to capture some of these. The aim of the study was to find supportive home features to make homes more autism-friendly. 

A study by Wasan Nagib and Allison Williams uses family stories to explore the challenges they face. The title of the article is,  Toward an autism friendly home environment.  It covers detached and attached houses, and apartments. Access a free read of the article via ResearchGate originally published by Taylor and Francis in Housing Studies.

From the abstract

This study explores the challenges faced by autistic children and their families in the home environment. It looks at the design or modification of physical elements that can alleviate challenges and create an autism-friendly home.

The research employs qualitative methods to learn from the experiences of architects and occupational therapists involved in creating or modifying the home environment of people with autism. An online survey was carried out across Canada and the United States was conducted to investigate family stories.

The study provides insight into the physical, social, and psychological challenges affecting the quality of life of autistic children in their home environment. The study provides insights into the contribution of home modifications for alleviating the challenges.

 

Who thought of kerb cuts?

A concrete kerb ramp with yellow tactile markers on the slope.Who thought of kerb cuts in the footpath? 30 years ago policy makers couldn’t understand why anyone needed kerb cuts in footpaths. “Why would anyone need kerb cuts – we never see people with disability on the streets”. This is part of the history of disability rights that we rarely think about these days. But kerb cuts (curb cuts) didn’t happen because of policy – they happened because people took matters into their own hands. And accessibility eventually shaped the streets.

Stories of activists pouring concrete on kerbs have made their way into urban legends. It is sometimes referred to as the “Curb Cut Revolution”. (Note the American spelling. In Australia we call them kerb ramps.) It was the beginning of a turning point for accessibility.

Of course, the injustice is not evident to those who are perhaps inconvenienced but not excluded. And it’s not just about wheelchair users. Anyone using a wheeled device: delivery trolley, pram, bicycle or luggage knows the value of the kerb cut. They’ve also benefited from the other accessibility features in the built environment. That’s how the term “universal design” was coined – good for wheelchair users, good for everyone. 

The Forgotten History of How Accessible Design Reshaped the Streets is a nicely written blog article. It provides an interesting context to what we know now as access standards. But compliance to legislation does not guarantee inclusion. It only provides access. That’s why we still need universal design thinking.

We still need universal design

The Universal Design Movement goes back to the 1970s and it’s still going. That’s because every improvement for inclusion is hard won. The article has a great quote:

“When injustice is tied up with the physical spaces of cities and the policies that create them, it becomes difficult to assign responsibility for it – and hence difficult to change.”

The article is from Bloomberg CityLab. 

It’s a veritable feast! Feedback sandwiches, retell burgers and auditory sandwiches.

An illustration of a burger on a pale blue background.
Burgers and sandwiches – foody frameworks to reduce threats in learning.

It’s a veritable feast! Foody frameworks to reduce threats in learning.

Feedback sandwiches, retell burgers and auditory sandwiches – so many options to nourish our learners. Reducing threats and minimising distractions is the goal of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) guidelines checkpoint 7.3.  Sandwiches and burgers are some examples that work toward this goal.

The optimal instructional environment offers options that reduce threats and negative distractions for everyone. The aim is to create a safe space in which learning can occur. The CAST UDL guidelines on minimising threats and distractions explains in more detail. Many of their recommendations are suited to school and higher education settings.

Foody Frameworks

First, the feedback sandwich. A feedback sandwich is where specific commentary on an area of improvement is ‘sandwiched’ between two examples of positive feedback. Of course, each piece in the sandwich needs to be genuine and matched to the goals of the exercise. Googling ‘feedback sandwich’ proves the concept to be quite contentious with both strong proponents and opponents. Some opponents suggest the positive feedback is merely praise. To make the feedback meaningful, whether noting positives or focusing on areas of development, it must be specific and communicated clearly.

Next, with a similar ‘sandwiching’ concept is the auditory sandwich. This strategy reduces perceived threat by supporting a learner’s comprehension. Where learners are required to process information using auditory channels, the facilitator provides the verbal information (instruction, direction, new vocabulary), which serves as the bread in the sandwich. The filling represents a visual which is produced after the verbal instruction. After sufficient time to process the visual, the auditory information is provided again. Specific keywords should be stressed or noted through intonation or volume change, for example. Providing multiple means for the student to take in the information reduces cognitive load and supports understanding, thereby reducing ‘threat’.

The final example is ‘retell burger’. This scaffold takes a similar visual approach to support understanding noted in the previous examples. The retell burger is a framework to support students to note key information. There are many variations of this idea, both in terms of the framework and its application to different activities. In one example, the top burger bun is the main idea or key concept, the tasty fillings (onion, tomato, lettuce) are a number of key facts and details or story complication, a hearty cheese slice reminds the student to note the resolution or conclusion, and the bun base rounds out the burger by supporting the learner to make connections or draw conclusions.

Scaffolds and strategies such as these foody frameworks to reduce threats in learning are easily implemented in many learning scenarios. The CAST webpage on mininising threats and distractions lists the following:

Frameworks

    • Create an accepting and supportive classroom climate
    • Vary the level of novelty or risk
      • Charts, calendars, schedules, visible timers, cues, etc. that can increase the predictability of daily activities and transitions
      • Creation of class routines
      • Alerts and previews that can help learners anticipate and prepare for changes in activities, schedules, and novel events
      • Options that can, in contrast to the above, maximise the unexpected, surprising, or novel in highly routinised activities
    • Vary the level of sensory stimulation
      • Variation in the presence of background noise or visual stimulation, noise buffers, number of features or items presented at a time
      • Variation in the pace of work, length of work sessions, availability of breaks or time-outs, or timing or sequence of activities
    • Vary the social demands required for learning or performance, the perceived level of support and protection and the requirements for public display and evaluation
    • Involve all participants in whole-class discussions

Gastronomic delights are specific strategies educators implement to reduce threats in a given learning situation.

To read of other specific strategies to work towards the UDL checkpoint goal of recruiting interest, see our other posts:

IKEA hack to promote student interest and choice: Strategies to optimize individual choice and autonomy.

From Realia to Social Stories: Strategies to optimise relevance, value and authenticity.

There are more practical suggestions on reducing barriers to learning on the CUDA website.

Design and responsible behaviour

An international group of adults stand with a big board in front of them. It says, Make Things Happen. There are lots of coloured post it notes on the board.Ever started off with a project that didn’t end up where you expected? That was the experience of a group of Canadian researchers working on placemaking and community building. They found that designers often left design school without the tools to do the job. That is, they weren’t equipped with the skills to involve communities. Consequently, stakeholders were being left out of the design process and outcomes. The research project has raised more questions than answers. This isn’t a bad thing. It means that it has started conversations about how designers are educated. Changes to curriculum design are needed. Time to bring educational research and practice together. That is one of the findings from the article about working with people, not for people from an educational perspective. The research group suggest that the design community build their own “ethics protocols that define responsible behaviour for design”. Building “Working with, not for” into Design Studio Curriculum is a participatory action research project. It challenges assumptions and underpinning values of educators. Working with participants and collaborators they found that the community was treated as a group of outsiders. Past experiences with community consultations left them distrustful of processes. In some cases participants thought researchers exploited them for their own purposes. It’s a long paper, but tells the research story well.  A related post looks at the issue of designers not always having the two skill sets required these days. Not only do designers need technical know-how, they need to relate well to those they are designing for. The same could be said for their tutors and lecturers. Abstract: Design ManifesT.O. 2020 is a Participatory Action Research project currently underway in Toronto, Canada and is working with communities to uncover stories of grassroots placemaking and community building done through creative practice. An unexpected discovery during data collection highlighted how communities are still being left out of decision-making processes that directly affect their collective values and living conditions and are being disrespected by designers and researchers — exposing very large gaps in the education of designers in terms of values-based learning, design ethics, and informed methods for working with communities. This paper interrogates design pedagogy and practice in order to stimulate further discourse and investigation into how to successfully integrate ethical and responsible protocols into design curriculum to support co-design practices where social justice and equity becomes normalized in practice. In other words: giving students the tools to “work with, not for” communities. Demonstrating social conscience is ethically desirable in design education but if students are not given the tools required to work with communities through respectful and collaborative processes then we are training the next generation of designers to continue a form of hegemony in design practice that is undesirable.  

Mind the gap in rail travel

A large crowded entrance hall of a railway station showing shops as well as lots of people.We all want the same things from rail travel. Value for money, getting a seat, and arriving on time. But some of us need a bit more than this: Step-free access, accessible information, accessible toilets, and easy ticket purchase.  

The Australasian Centre for Rail Innovation report is based on an international study of public transport systems in five countries. The aim was to identify good practise and issues yet to have solutions. The executive summary reports:

    • Many people with disability experienced abuse and discrimination from both passengers and staff.
    • Easy access to reliable information was critical for planning a journey.
    • There is a considerable difference between urban and rural areas when it comes to accessibility.

The title of the report is, Rail travel and disability: an international perspective on accessibility. 

Rail carriages and universal design

In the train carriage, a woman is seated in a manual wheelchair and is sitting next to a man in a standard seat. They are looking at an in-seat screen, probably for movies.A new design guide for accessible inter-city train carriages covers just about everything you need to know. Oregon State University comprehensively researched design options for making passenger trains universally designed. Their findings are reported in Inclusive Universal Accessible Design Guidelines for Next Gen Passenger Rail. With the age of passengers increasing, they recognise the need for improved access for everyone.

The guide has a lot of technical data to support the design options. Wheeled mobility devices and assistance animals are the focus, along with other groups. The trade-off between a larger restroom and the number of wheeled devices in a carriage doesn’t always mean a loss of seating for others. Folding seats are an option and they recognise that some wheelchair users will transfer to a regular seat. The lounge or buffet cars can be universally designed, but sleeper cars, however, were not included in this research.  

A good article for anyone involved in the design of rail infrastructure. Lots of detailed technical information including restroom fittings, public address systems and emergency procedures. Diagrams of layouts help with design explanations. While this document is based on USA requirements, it has relevance elsewhere.

Some newer Australian long distance trains have embraced inclusive design for all passengers. The image is from Queensland Rail.

Mind the Mind Gap in Transportation

an aerial view of a complex roadway intersection at night where it is lit up with many colours.Among the list of invisible disabilities are mental health conditions, as well as compulsory and phobia conditions. While basic physical access is being addressed, different mental health conditions are rarely considered. Using the underpinning principles of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, researchers from Austria looked at the issues with participants from the target groups. They found that strategies to support self-distraction as well as relaxing environments  helped. The paper concludes,

“In general, measures should concentrate on strategies to support self-distraction and self-manipulation (e.g. personal entertainment, breathing exercises), as well as on infrastructural and organizational improvements (e.g. relaxing environment, improvement of layouts and signage, trained service personnel, raising of public awareness). The target group may get confronted with additional challenges or barriers due to the social and technological developments (e.g. automated driving) in the near future. 

The full title of the paper is, Access to Transport Services and Participation in Traffic for People with Mental Health Diseases – Challenges to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to provide an overall inclusive Transportation System.

Train station platform edge with the words in yellow, "Mind the gap".

From Realia to Social Stories

Realia: Woodtype blocks are piled on a table. The word 'love' , created from the typographic blocks stands on top. Realia to social stories.
Optimise authenticity with realia. Credit: Image by Foundry.

Realia is about using familiar objects and social stories as teaching aids. It applies to all ages and situations: toddlers, school students, higher education and adult learning. Incorporating everyday situations and artefacts into learning experiences increases engagement, value and relevance for learners.

CAST, the home of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) explains:

‘Individuals are engaged by information and activities that are relevant and valuable to their interests and goals. This does not necessarily mean that the situation has to be equivalent to real life, as fiction can be just as engaging to learners as non-fiction. However, it does have to be relevant and authentic to learners’ individual goals and the instructional goals. In an educational setting, one of the most important ways that teachers recruit interest is to highlight the utility and relevance, of learning and to demonstrate that relevance through authentic, meaningful activities.’

Strategies used should be inclusive, personalised, relevant and contextualised. So what are some easy to access tools and strategies that enable this goal?

Making use of realia

“Realia” is the term for describing objects from real-life which are incorporated into learning experiences. Keep a ‘cabinet of curiosities’ containing realia related to the concepts being explored in the class’ inquiry unit. The realia serves both as a provocation, a tool for engagement and to prompt curiosity and deep questioning. It’s suitable for any age or stage of learning. 

Social Stories

Often used for young students but equally relevant for older students and adults with social skill development needs. Social stories are used to teach everyday situations and expectations through narrative. Used in schools and at home, social stories help develop routines or teach social and behaviour expectations, for example.

Using a story format, the individual student’s name or image makes it more relevant. It also fosters a deeper connection with the topic. Social narratives are successful in teaching skills to students with autism and attention deficits.

Personalised problems

Making the subject matter relevant to learners’ lives engages learners across all age groups. It helps give meaning to the learning.  Remote online learning during the coronavirus pandemic sparked a wave of creative maths problems based around issues of the pandemic. From word problems related to panic buying to modelling the exponential growth of virus spread, educators were adapting learning to heighten relevance.

These simple strategies are easy to adopt and easy to adapt and can help optimise relevance and authenticity in learning.

Is your inclusive my exclusive?

View of a kerb cut with yellow tactile markers on the kerb ramp. Is your inclusive, my inclusive?Tactile markers and kerb cuts are commonplace on our footpaths and in other outdoor places. But what suits a person with a mobility restriction can pose problems for someone with low vision and vice versa. This issue of access features as a minimum standard is nicely presented in, Is your inclusive my exclusive? 

The article is one of several conference papers in Open Space : People Space 3. It begins with a really good way of explaining the terminology each of which has inclusion as the underlying goal. Accessible design is about accommodating specific individuals and is usually applied at the end of the design process or a retrofit. But accessible design does not suit all. 

Universal design is explained as a strategy to make designs usable for any many people as possible. This is less stigmatising for all users. If an outdoor space is designed inclusively, the need for tactile markers is reduced. Architectural features provide guidance instead.

The article includes a case study of tactile paving. Observations of pedestrians and lab tests on different designs are discussed briefly. The way that tactile pavers and kerb cuts are maintained is an ongoing issue for users and should not be ignored. The article ends with a reminder that good design, inclusive design, benefits everyone. Through a process of continuous improvement we can do better than minimum standards. 

There are several good papers in this conference which was focused on research into inclusive outdoor environments.

See also a previous post, Tactile ground markers vs wheelchairs: a solution?