Discover how open-weight AI models and the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) are democratizing education and technology by dismantling barriers for all learners. This episode dives into the intersection of emerging artificial intelligence and UDL, focusing on how these frameworks are no longer just for addressing specific disabilities, but for optimizing the user experience for everyone. As AI open-weight models become as powerful as leading frontier models and UDL shifts from a reactive accommodation model to a proactive design strategy, understanding these concepts is critical for anyone building the future of digital and educational environments.
Paul and Dave explore the geopolitical and security implications of powerful open-weight AI models catching up to proprietary systems, highlighting a recent cyberattack involving Hugging Face as a stark reminder of the vulnerabilities in open repositories. Meanwhile, special guest Amy White joins the hosts to demystify UDL, emphasizing that accessible design doesn't require an overwhelming course overhaul, but rather a sustainable "plus one" approach. Ultimately, the episode delivers a powerful verdict: whether coding a new app or designing a college syllabus, proactively building flexibility and choice into your foundation is the most effective way to empower every user.
Key Topics
The Rise of Open-Weight AI Models: Open-weight AI models from international developers are rapidly closing the performance gap with proprietary frontier systems. This democratization of AI technology shifts the balance of power, allowing developers to fine-tune highly capable models by adjusting their weights without relying entirely on a few massive tech organizations.
Security Risks in Open Repositories: A recent cybersecurity test utilizing an advanced AI agent demonstrated how these systems can autonomously exploit vulnerabilities and pull sensitive information from open repositories like Hugging Face. As open platforms become central to AI development, the industry must pivot toward stronger security partnerships and voluntary regulations to protect crucial codebases from malicious exploits.
Proactive Accessibility Over Reactive Accommodations: Universal Design for Learning is fundamentally about designing environments that are inherently accessible from day one, rather than slapping on reactive accommodations after the fact. By recognizing that traditional one-size-fits-all instructional models are flawed, creators can build flexible systems that offer choice and agency to every user right from the start.
The Power of the "Plus One" Strategy: Implementing universal design doesn't require an exhausting, from-scratch overhaul of your entire project or curriculum. By simply identifying key pain points and adding just one alternative modality - such as offering an oral presentation instead of a written paper - creators can drastically improve accessibility in a highly achievable and sustainable way.
Mentioned in the Episode
- Duck Hunt
- GLM-5.2: Built for Long-Horizon Tasks
- OpenAI and Hugging Face partner to address security incident during model evaluation
- Universal Design for Learning
- Universal Design for Learning Guidelines
- Thomas Tobin Plus One
- The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protects people with disabilities from discrimination.
- Americans with Disabilities Act Title II Regulations
- Unsolved Mysteries Theme
Transcript
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Dave Ghidiu F L C C building. Oh, wait, it's all iconography. Those are emojis. Paul Engin Oh yeah, it looks like I've caught. I've caught that dragon at school. Dave Ghidiu Welcome to the Immersive Lens, the podcast exploring the technologies, reshaping how we live, work and learn. From AI and virtual reality to creative media and design, we're diving into the tools and ideas shaping our connected world. My name is Paul Engin. Join us as we uncover the people and ideas driving the next wave of interactive experiences. And I'm Dave Godue. This is The Immersive Lens. And today we are joined by the Woman of the Hour, Too Sweet to Be Sour, The Tower of Power. Oh, my gosh. Amy White, universal design for learning specialists. You got it. All right. Thanks for having me. And you're going to have to explain what that means in a little bit. If you've listened to the podcast, we usually start with like some hot takes. Yeah. And then we'll get into some questions for you. Is that sounds great? Yeah. OK. All right. Dave, do you want to start us off or? Yes, I'd like to issue an errata with we. Jeff and I both yelled at you for claiming that Duck Hunt was not a standalone cartridge on the NES. And you were right. Our fact checkers were scurrying through the records. And you are indeed right. It was sold as an individual game. And for the record, it might have not been Duck Hunt. That's why I told you, I appreciate you bringing that up. But it was more of a metaphor for a cartridge taking over to a friends of playing than it was the actual game. Because I'm not sure if it was Duck Hunt. So we talked about how PlayStation is removing disks. And so now we're talking, how can you share it with friends? And I mentioned, I went and I used to take cartridges. And they put me on, they're like, which cartridge? And I'm like, I said, I don't remember. I think it was like Duck Hunt. Just a Duck Hunt, yeah. And then they were both like. Paul Engin No! No! Dave Ghidiu Here. Amy Wight I don't care, it was a cartridge. Dave Ghidiu On behalf of Jeff and I, we sincerely apologize. Yes, but I don't think Jeff ever really apologized. Well, that's between you and him, though. So my apology has come through. Now I feel better. OK, good. You just looked so sad for the last week. Yes. My real hot take is about these open weight models for AI. So we understand the frontier models like Claude, Chad GPT, Gemini. But a lot of companies, and Metas started doing this, where they would release what's known as open models that you could use them. And then a lot of Chinese companies started releasing what's known as open weight models. So an open model is just kind of like the information. The weighting of the model is all the levers that you can pull to make the connections tighter or looser and all that. So that's kind of like the secret sauce. So a lot of these Chinese companies have been releasing open weight models. And so then they become a lot cheaper. And they're almost as good as these frontier models. So there's been one or two very recently that have been astoundingly good. And probably GLM 5.2 is the most recent one from a company called Z.AI. And so those are on the market. And now we're starting to look at the geopolitics and look at like, well, listen, if I'm a company and I'm relying on, say, mythos, and then all of a sudden the American government shuts it down, and maybe I'm a company in, say, Europe, well, maybe we should be using other models that we actually have control over. So that's unfolding underneath our feet right now. Interesting. My only issue with that is just security because I don't know. That would be my only. And I haven't used any of the foreign LLMs yet. And I assume that if you do use it in an infrastructure, you would run tests against it. Yeah, and your instinct is right because there have been studies that show, for instance, earlier on, and I'm not linking this to GLM, but there were some models that would produce biased results if you were, say, an adversary of the country that was releasing these models. Yeah, OK. Well, in the AI news today or yesterday, OpenAI revealed an advanced AI model went rogue during an internal cybersecurity test. So tell us more. This is like Terminator 2. That's right. So I guess they had a sandbox which isolates their latest AI. And I guess they used 5.6 Sol. And then they have, obviously, internally a newer model. So it's unreleased, more advanced model. And they asked it in the sandbox to try to do an exploit. It's called a zero-day flaw. And it found a way to exit the sandbox. Which is always scary. And then after looking at the internet and finding some credentials, it realized that Hugging Face, which is a repository for a bunch of code bases, had the information it needed so then it could run what it wanted to run in the sandbox. So Hugging Face got attacked to try to get all of the information. But it's crazy to think this AI knew. Go online. Go to a repository that's open. And then pull the information it needs or learn the information it needs to run an attack. Dave Ghidiu Yeah, you know, so the back half of that story is that OpenAI was using, I'm sorry, not OpenAI. Hugging Face has AI defenders. And because of the regulations, the voluntary regulations, those defenders were not able to defend. So they had to revert to GLM 5.2 as their internal defender. So, yeah, because the U.S. had blocks or something on what they could do, right? It's like voluntary regulations, but it's like if you want to put it in the hand of companies, it's not voluntary, it's volatile. So I guess now they're working together with Hugging Face as a security partner to mitigate this in the future. But it just goes to show you, like, it's like you think you can control these things, but I don't think there's situations like this where you can't. And that's why when Anthropic said it's not going to allow certain things for the U.S. government to use. In my head, I'm like, this is why. This is the alignment point, right? So AI's goals were, in this case, were on exploiting something, reaching that benchmark, it wasn't on preserving, say, the integrity of anything. Right. And I think that it's one of those things where it's interesting because you need to test this stuff in a sandbox, but it's really scary to think these can find ways out of that sandbox and out of your control. It's, I don't know. Yeah. We'll see what happens. Interesting. Hopefully we don't hear things going really bad with something like that, but I think it's just a warning or a heads up that we have to be aware of it. So all right, Amy, are you ready for some questions from us? I'm ready. Yeah. We have so many questions. All right. I'm ready for them. It's going to be two or three hours. Oh, man. I had four reserves. I need more coffee. I know. I know. Do you want to start off with the first question? Yeah. As I hit your mic. If you weren't watching the video, then go to go to the website. The ImmersiveLens.com. So how did you find your way into universal? Actually, yeah. How do you find your way into universal design for learning? Was it a passion from a start? Or like, did it evolve? Did you fall into it? Tell us your story. Amy Wight My story, yeah. Tell us your journey. It was a little of both, honestly. I came from the education world. I started off in K-12 special ed. And back in the day, 20 some years ago, when I was in grad school, the big thing they were preaching was differentiation. So universal design wasn't even talked about. Dave Ghidiu And for our fans, what's differentiation? Amy Wight So differentiation is basically looking at students on an individual level and figuring out, okay, this student learns best in this way, these are the student's interests, and then tailoring your curriculum to the needs of those individual students. Which when you're a special ed teacher with like five students, it's totally doable. You get to know them, you can figure out, oh, this student is a really good visual learner, they do well with this kind of structure, and you can design that way. But when I moved from K-12 to higher ed, I soon learned when you have a class of 300 that it's not so feasible to figure out the individual wants and needs and learning styles of every student in the class. Interesting. So I worked for years in disability services, and I worked with students on getting accommodations in place, and our population, I worked at the University of Rochester, and our population went from 150 students when I started there to 1500 by the time I left. Across how many years? 11 years, I was there. Dave Ghidiu diagnosis increased, or because there were just other issues that were- A lot. Amy Wight there's a lot of things. I think that awareness increased, so people learned about, you know, they could get accommodations or support. There was less stigma around it. We also had, I think, just kind of an explosion in mental health issues around that time too, like pre- during COVID, a lot went awry. Yeah. And so we had a lot of students seeking help, who wouldn't have previously. But we soon learned that, like, you just can't keep doing this reactive model of slapping a Band-Aid on things. So sometime during that time frame, I learned about universal design, and it just, like, clicked to me. As soon as I learned about it, I was like, this just makes sense. This is just- instead of trying to figure out each student's need or trying to slap a Band-Aid on every single little problem or issue that comes up in your course, let's think about designing intentionally from the beginning to remove as many of those barriers and challenges as possible, so that all students can just walk in from day one and have equal access to the curriculum. And I was just like, wow, this just makes sense. Like, why are we not designing in this way? Yeah, that makes Paul Engin That makes sense. And I think that piggybacks into this next one. For listeners who've never heard of this term, can you explain UDL in a very simple manner? Amy Wight Yeah, I mean, essentially what UDL is, it's a research-based framework to approach teaching, but it's basically about providing students with choice and agency over their learning and removing as many barriers as possible. So I like to think of it, I saw somebody once refer to, or like compare it to a GPS roadmap. So if you plug in on Google Maps, how to get from here to home, it'll give you like the fastest route to get there, but it'll also give you like the route without tolls, and it'll give you the route with the scenic route if you want some views on the way. And UDL is kind of like that. So we're all working towards the same learning objective. Students are still going to be learning and demonstrating their learning of the same skills or knowledge, but the way they get there can be a little different. So for some student, that might mean that they don't take a sit-down, standardized test. They have a different way that they show their learning. For another student, it might mean that instead of reading chapters in a book, they can listen to podcasts or watch videos to get there. So we're still meeting that same learning goal, that same objective, but taking different routes to get there. And we're providing students with the choice of how they do that. So they can pick. Do I take the test? Do I write the paper? Dave Ghidiu I like that analogy of the GPS. That's really cool, I like it. Yeah, and I'd never heard that analogy, and I'm going to steal it if that's okay. Yeah, absolutely. So you would say kind of building from the ground up, but it's certainly possible to take an existing course and intentionally build it into it, right? Absolutely. Amy Wight Yeah, it's not something you have to start over from scratch. It's definitely something that you can chip away at and add to an existing course or rebuild from scratch either way. Dave Ghidiu All right, and I have one more follow-up. So I've heard the expression, the curb cut story for universal design, how curb cuts were where the curbs in cities kind of like dipped down. So for instance, for wheelchairs. And so that was an accommodation for a population. But then it turned out that they're like, oh, well, if you're on a bike, it's really good. Or if you have a stroller, or if you have a walker, or if you have the snow plows that kind of go up and down the sidewalk. So is it fair to say, do you agree with that assessment that universal design is something that can help lift all tides? Oh, 100%. OK. Amy Wight Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, even just as an adult learner, I love when I'm provided choice in a class. Like, if you gave me a choice of writing a paper or anything else, oral presentation, whatever it may be, I'm always going to pick something else. I find writing so unbearably frustrating and time consuming. And this is not from a disability lens, but just as a personal preference, I don't demonstrate my learning best that way. So yeah. And we do know there's lots of situations, whether they're environmental or, you know, you would think about students who are English language learners who benefit from a lot of those disability type accommodations, but don't actually have a disability. So 100%, it benefits every learner. Dave Ghidiu Awesome. And how do you approach working with faculty who are skeptical or resistant or scared to changing how they teach or build their course? Amy Wight Yeah, there's a lot of that out there. You know, I think, first and foremost, just acknowledging what they're experiencing and having some empathy for it, I think one of the big concerns people have around universal design or any new thing is just how much work is this going to be, how much effort is this, and is it really worth it? And I think acknowledging that workload, I know everybody's overworked right now. There's a lot of burnout, and I get that. So one of the things that I like to do, well, I guess two approaches. Number one, I like to talk with faculty about, what are your pain points? Are there certain lessons or assessments or things where students are just not getting it? Your results aren't good, or are there certain topics where students are just checking out and they're not engaged anymore? So let's take a look at those and see if there is a place where we can insert just one component of universal design. So if it's a class activity and students are just zoning out, not paying attention, can we add one additional way of approaching it? Could we make an interactive game out of it, or could we add in a video that demonstrates the concept, something like that, and just doing that plus one strategy? Is that the Tom Tobin plus one? Yeah. I love Tom Tobin's plus one because I think it's just so achievable. When you talk about retrofitting an entire course, it's overwhelming, but if you're talking about, all right, let's pick one activity or one assessment and add one different way of approaching it, it seems so much more tangible and doable than this overhaul. And then slowly. Dave Ghidiu just keep adding. Exactly. Yeah. Amy Wight Yeah, even if it's like a whole semester and that's the one thing you do like that's awesome and then next semester You can try something else. Yeah, and just chip away Dave Ghidiu I like that too, because it will give me confidence. The first time I'd be like, I don't know. Like, is this gonna be hard? And then I do it and I'm like, oh, okay. Well, I guess I could do it for the next assignment in the next chapter or something like that. Amy Wight Yeah, absolutely. Dave Ghidiu Can you share a moment where you saw UDL generally transform the experience of a learner? Yeah. Do you have a hardcore, cool example, very specific? For me, I think it's cool. Okay. Amy Wight Um, yeah, I back when I was at the U of R and I worked with, um, students with disabilities, I actually had a student who due to, um, her learning disability had requested to no longer do, it was an organic chemistry class. She was struggling to, so hard, she was struggling to finish the exams, even being given double time on the exams. It just wasn't working. Um, so she came and talked to me and said, you know, I just don't do well with these timed assessments. Like this format is just not working for me. So I was like, let's go talk with your professor and see if there's something we could do. So we did, we went and spoke with him awesome guy and he was like, yeah, he's like, you know what, what do you think would work for you? And she said, I'd rather do an oral presentation. I just, if we can do like a Q and a back and forth, I feel like I can demonstrate my learning better that way than sitting down and writing an exam. And he's like, okay, no problem. Let's do it. Um, so they did, and it worked fabulously for her, but the best part was he came back to me afterwards and said, you know, can I open up this option for the other students in my class? And I was like, absolutely. And he did, and he didn't have a ton of takers. He told me, I don't think most students prefer the oral presentation route, but he said he had a handful of about five or six of them that did it. And it like their grades shot up and it was just from being given that choice. You know, like that's just, that's the way they demonstrate their learning best and it was five or six students out of a class of like 150. So it wasn't a huge, but a huge amount, but like to those five or six students, it was massively impactful. Fantastic story. Yeah. That is awesome. Dave Ghidiu And where do you see the biggest gaps in how institutions currently support diverse learners? Amy Wight Yeah. I think, you know, across higher ed in general, many, most institutions are still taking this kind of reactive, like what we call the medical model in the disability world, where we do a one size fits all approach and then work with disability services or individual faculty to make things work for those individual students. So it really is just shifting the way that we're thinking about it into a more proactive approach and thinking about how can we remove those barriers from the get-go. I think one of the big challenges is most faculty don't have training in either universal design or basic even, you know, pedagogy. Like a lot of faculty just come straight from their disciplines and they're experts in those areas, but maybe not experts in learning how to teach to a diverse audience. So, you know, I think the more that we talk about it and the more that we can provide training, especially onboarding training for new faculty to get them kind of up and running and here's some things you can try. I think that will be really helpful moving forward, but I know it's a slow process. I think that's a great. Dave Ghidiu Great idea, and you know, I know someone who's gonna be heading up CTL next year, so. Oh, who's that? Dave? You're home! You're together! Come on in! So, we'll work together in creating some stuff for the faculty, for sure. I love the example that you gave about the Orgol class, because that's something, like if I read that in an email from the CTL, I'd be like, oh, I could probably do that. Yeah. Or I'd try something like that. Yeah. I'd be inspired. Yeah, I think it's those little tangible things that I think will, because I think it's like AI, right? We always say, like, you gotta just go in. Don't overthink it. Once you're into playing. Just try it. Just try it. And then you'll start getting a hang of it. Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of AI, has that changed the landscape at all? There are conversations about UDL? Amy Wight Oh, 100 percent. Tell us everything. And good or bad? I think mostly for good. I admit that I play in AI probably more than a lot of folks, but I think that from a UDL perspective in particular, I love it because it has made it really easy to create those multiple modalities. That's one of those things that back when I was teaching, you know, if you had like say you had an article that you just really loved that it gave a really good overview of a concept. It's perfect. It's what you need exactly what students to know. But then if you want to add that plus one and have another modality for students to access as well, you could spend hours like going through YouTube, watching videos, trying to find something that compares and you're always like, this is okay, but it's not great. But now with AI, I could plop that article into like notebook LM and be like spit out a video or a podcast for me and it can take that content and give me exactly what I wanted from that article into another artifact that I can share with students. So it's been huge for that. I think one of the other great uses for UDL too is the ability to like kind of test out activities or assessments or whatever you have with the personas. Like I love the persona thing and with AI like plopping in here's a case study of a potential student I have in my class. What kind of barriers might this student encounter in this assessment or this activity? What are some things I'm not thinking about? Just to pick up on some of those blind spots that we miss as educators because we approach it from this is how I learned or this is how I've done it. So I love just getting that other lens and thinking about what diverse students might be experiencing in the class. You know, that's interesting. Dave Ghidiu thing you said that we were at an AI retreat and I was at a table with Deb and Dave and we came up with this concept and I had Claude run through it and it started creating six or seven agents running with all the different person running through this to see it ate up all my credits so I even finish it but it was interesting to see it run I was like oh my we're at six eight I was like Dave we're at six agents now I didn't even tell it to run six agents but it was like doing exactly what you said yeah it was running through all these different criteria to see if this will meet all those standards that's amazing but I gotta rerun that now that you made me think about that I had to stop it because I ran out of credits well the credits have reset that's right that's right so could you give an example of a bad udl or how you would change it or how you did change it to make it a stronger udl approach Paul Engin Mmm. Amy Wight I think- Dave Ghidiu If they're a bad dude, I don't know. Amy Wight I think there can be. I think too much choice can be an issue. We don't want to, like every single learning, analysis, paralysis. Yeah, like that's too much for students. And you also at the same point don't want to be like, here's the final project, do it whatever way you want. Like we want to create some structure and parameters around things. So choice is good, but choice within limits is better. So I have seen that before where I've seen instructors sometimes just kind of like load resources as like, here's 50 optional choices to pick from, do what you want. And it gets to be a little bit too much. I think thinking carefully about where we put choice into our courses and thinking about what resources we're providing intentionally is really important with it. I don't want to call anybody out with it. No, you're good. What's Paul doing specifically then? Dave Ghidiu that we can improve. Dang it. I see her in my course that I'm developing all the time and she's like, why are you doing this? So many, no. Not us. Not again. So we offer a transcript for the podcast. We offer the audio version. We offer the video version. Is that UDL? Amy Wight That is UDL. High five, Paul. High five. You're doing it. We've done good. Hey, Jeff. Dave Ghidiu We've done good. What's something FLCC is doing? Obviously, the immersive lens is doing this, but what's something FLCC is doing in the UDL space that you are especially proud of? Amy Wight Oh, a lot. I think, first and foremost, I was so excited when I saw this job posted here. I don't know of any other college in the country, especially any community college that has a UDL specialist, somebody specifically working on this. And the fact that it's written into FLCC's strategic plan, I think, is huge. I think this is one of those pie in the sky ideas that a lot of colleges talk about, and they're like, yeah, we're all about UDL. But actually putting in the strategic plan, having folks dedicated to working on it is huge. And I know our online learning folks are working really hard to incorporate UDL into all of the course reviews that they're doing as well. So it's something that's really becoming ingrained at a higher level at FLCC. Nice. You're leaving a legacy. Yeah, I don't know about that. You're leaving an empire. But at the ground level, I see so many faculty implementing it. Jen Carney is a great example of the work she's doing with AI prompts and trying to- Yeah, front of the pod. There's so many faculty who are implementing it, putting it into place, and trying to learn more about it too, which is huge. It's not just talk and it's not just policy at the top. Like it's actually happening, which is awesome. So yeah, there's a lot to be proud of here. Oh, that's great. Dave Ghidiu Oh, that's awesome. That's really good. And what would you want students at FLCC to know about resources available to them? And how do institutions message that effectively? And we'll say FLCC, but maybe other institutions as well, maybe if you're aware of it. Amy Wight Yeah, you know, I think access to resources is one of those tricky things. I think that just making sure that students know that it's not about I'm struggling and need extra help, that it's really resources are there to help them optimize their experience, optimize their learning. So whether it's disability services or tutoring services or health and wellness services, they're all there to help them be as successful as they can be at school. So I think the more that we can talk about that and normalize going to it, it's going to be really helpful. I love when faculty bring it up in the first couple classes and talk about it, not like it's a here's where you go if you want help. But like, here are some of the awesome things that you can make use of as a student that are free to you. And maybe giving them examples of like, here's when you might want to do that. And checking in with students throughout the semester to like, if you notice they're struggling, like reminding them of resources and helping to make sure that they know that they can connect with them. So I think the more we normalize, the more we talk about seeking help, the more we're going to get students to buy into it. Dave Ghidiu interesting is I, I always push tutoring, especially for programming, because I think sometimes people overthink it. And it's, and I say to I'm like, Okay, guys, there's tutoring available online in person. And, and you know, what I have to do is my first class, I literally walk them, and I introduce them to our our tutor. And I say this, this is so and so and, you know, yeah, they can help you. That's awesome. And I after I did that, I found that more students were open to contacting them for support. So it's an interesting, you know, you do have to make them feel like welcome to it. This is good. This is why it's here. I'm glad you're and when any anyone says that they've, oh, I spoke with the tutor did it. I'm like, oh, that's fantastic. Like, like, this is good thing. Yeah, it's not like, I can't believe you did that. You should be doing it on your own. It's like, right? That's awesome. That's what they're there for. We need that more. Tell tell other people. And I also tell them to work in groups. Because I find that if two people went down to the lab to work together next to each other on the on a computer, and they're going through like the tutorials, they help each other out. And then I feel like it's a motivator. They get through it easier, because they're both they're trying to troubleshoot. Yeah, that's huge. So I don't know, that was just interesting to me when I was doing that. Amy Wight Yeah, that's a great strategy. And I love that you brought the tutor into like getting that personal connection and seeing a person's face. Cause sometimes that can be anxiety provoking, you know, if you're going someplace brand new and like, I don't know who this person is and if they're approachable or anything. Dave Ghidiu He used to come to class, but that's still, it was a weird, like I had to physically. Well, their room is kind of hard to find too, isn't it? Yeah, it's like, but it's funny because even coming to class didn't do it. It was the actual like, look, and there's food here on occasion. Wait, there's food there? Yeah. Excuse me. They always bring it up. I'm like, hey, guys, I'm not joking. Just go in, see if he's there and there's a donut, grab a donut or a coffee or, you know, like just any incentive to like, it's a good thing. Yeah, it's a good thing to be there. And I don't know. No, that's a good idea. It's awesome. Food is a good idea. Food is a good idea. It's like all of that. My first year teaching here, I would be like, and then we'll go, you should check out the library because they have cool study rooms. And then I was like, I don't know the thing that's going. So the next semester I did that, I walked them up to the library and this is like tangible and they know the route to get there and they can see it's like not super scary. That's awesome. Yeah. So if you could change one thing about in general how institutions approach accessibility tomorrow, what would it be? Amy Wight building it in from the start, just that proactive design. In the accessibility world, a lot of times we say it's a shift left, so it's basically in your workflow, go back, go back a step or go back to the beginning and start there with accessibility because you're always too far ahead. Yeah, so thinking about accessibility and policy at the top down level, thinking about it in our day-to-day practices, again training I think is huge, embedding that into any kind of training that we're offering or onboarding. Whatever we can do to bring about awareness I think is great and I'm probably the only person on campus or one of the only people on campus who's super excited about Title II of the ADA going into effect. Can you just explain what Title II is? Title II is part of the ADA that is- Can you just explain what the ADA is? The Americans with Disabilities Act, thank you. Let me start back. Let's shift left please. Yes, shift left. It's a federal law, went into effect in 1990. Now Title II is the part that applies to public entities including public colleges and municipalities and whatnot. And what happened is a couple years ago they said now all digital content that falls under Title II of the ADA needs to be made proactively accessible. So it has to meet these set of international accessibility standards. So for our institution and all other organizations that serve over 50,000 people, our deadline is April of 2027. So we're gonna need to make sure that all of our digital content is fully accessible by that time. And I know- Everything. Everything. And I know it's a huge lift but it's a good thing because that's gonna allow all of our community members, our students, faculty and staff to come in day one into their environment and be able to access that content and not have to ask for a different modality or ask for an accommodation. So to me that's exciting. I know it's a big lift and everybody else is like, oh wow, this is a lot to figure out but I'm super excited about it. Dave Ghidiu And I assume that this doesn't mitigate timing or anything like that. Like that's still, like if there's a timed exam or a proctored exam, that doesn't mean, nope, we got to get rid of that. So everyone is able to take it, right? Amy Wight No, absolutely not. Disability services isn't going anywhere. There are always going to be accommodations for students that can't be met by proactive accessibility or UDL for that matter. So yeah, there still will be accommodations for students. OK. Dave Ghidiu And then what does success look like for UDL and how do you know when it's working? Oh, yeah, that's a great question. Amy Wight You know, I think on the student side, you're going to see a reduction in the number of those accommodations being requested because their needs are being met in the classroom already. I think hopefully you're going to see students who are more engaged and more interested in their coursework because you've built in that choice and they're able to learn in the ways they want and demonstrate their knowledge in the ways they want. For faculty, I think in the long run, it's going to be less work too. I know there is some lift at the beginning when you start changing things up, but in the long run, you're going to have fewer students who are coming in and requesting, you know, reassessments or, you know, makeup exams because you will have already had policies put in place to address that stuff. You're also going to have kind of the fewer one-off accommodation requests, especially from students who don't work with disability services because, again, a lot of those things will be built into the flexibility that UDL provides. So that's kind of the be all, end all goal is a happier, more engaged college campus. Dave Ghidiu So, hearing you say that, and maybe this question is too reductive, but could I in my course syllabus and on the first day of class and sporadically throughout the semester be like, look folks, at the end of this chapter or the end of the unit, there's a paper, whatever it is. But listen, if you have an idea, just pitch it to me and if you want to do an oral exam or you want to do an oral presentation or something like that, I'm game. Is that just a weak attempt or is that a genuine attempt at UDL? Amy Wight I think it's a genuine attempt. And I think, you know, it's one of those things, too, when you're just giving this a try and starting off in it. Like, yeah, see what works, see what issues you run into. Like, if a student says, yeah, I'm going to do a video recording instead of writing a paper, and you can see what were the issues that came up with that, what sorts of things was I not thinking about in terms of, you know, fairness with other students, that sort of thing. So yeah, I think you can absolutely give that a try. And then if you find it works, you could, in the future, structure it in, and be like, yeah, here are the four options that I have available. And I'm horrible about pumping this. It's OK. I talk with my hands too much. She's hitting the mic. She's not happy with it. Dave Ghidiu Can we get security in here? We need better design. Universal designs for mics. I like that. So we thought we'd have fun at the end here. We have three different activities we'd like to try with you. OK. A UDL makeover, a speed round, this or that. OK. And then a UDL myth buster. Myth buster. Does that work for you, Dave? Yeah, that works for me. Amy, good. I'm ready. All right. So the first one is you're going to UDLify it. OK. Put me on the spot. Can we coin that term? I'm going to UDLify. UDLify. UDLify. Yeah, UDLify. So in 30 seconds or less, I'll give you a one size fits all teaching scenario. And then you can fix it in 30 seconds or less. Or your thoughts on it. No pressure. No pressure. No pressure. I'll do my best. All right. Pop quiz, closed book, one hour, no accommodations. Amy Wight Oh, well, that's illegal, first of all. Wait, that's illegal? You can't deny accommodations. Dave Ghidiu but you can do a pop quiz. You can do a pop quiz, yeah. Okay. Amy Wight I'd rather you didn't. UDLFI, I would remove the pop quiz portion, instead put in place maybe some low stakes or no stakes formative assessments to give students the feedback that they need. And then if you're going to provide a formalized assessment, let's give students a little bit of notice and ensure that there are accommodations in place. And remove those time limits. Make it a one question, one hour exam that should take people five minutes, but they can take the whole hour if they want. Dave Ghidiu What about Close Book? Is that okay? Amy Wight Yeah, I mean, I think it depends on the intent, yeah. If you need students to recall information, if that's what you're testing, so let's say it's an anatomy exam and you want students to be able to identify body parts, it makes sense to be closed book. If it's more about applying concepts and not straight memorization, then maybe you don't need it to be closed book. I think that's a judgment call, depending on the assessment. Most of the time, I think in higher ed though, there's not a lot of recall being tested, unless it is like a- Yeah, it was a good example of A&P. Straight parts, yeah. Yeah. Dave Ghidiu All right, next up, read chapters one through five, there will be a test. Amy Wight Oh, so UDL, we can provide them with some options for that if they can have an audio version of the text or again, if there's choice, if you have a video or a podcast that they can watch instead and get that same information. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with tests, but again, choice is always a good thing. A lot of students don't do well with testing, so if we can provide an option of an exam or reflection paper or, I don't know, a creative art project to demonstrate learning, whatever it may be, choice is always a good thing. Dave Ghidiu Cool. I like it. So this is the last one for this. If you miss class, you miss the notes. Amy Wight I don't like that. No. You don't like any of these, oh my god. I know, traditional teaching styles, right? Dave Ghidiu directly from Paul syllabus by the way. Hey. Oh man. I'm gonna be devil's advocate in a minute but go ahead. Amy Wight So students miss class for a bunch of reasons. One of the things that I love when I see faculty do it is have a collaborative note taking, have a Google Doc or a shared online slide deck where students can all work together to add notes to it. And that way, if a student has to miss class for whatever reason, they can get access to the information. And they're not putting the burden on the faculty member or one student in the class to share those notes. So you're getting collaborative understanding, which is generally a good thing. I mean, ideally, if the faculty member had time to go through and clear up any misunderstandings that were written in those notes, that would probably be good. Sure. Oh, yes. But it does give other students the opportunity, too, to chime in and be like, no, that's not what he said, or that's not what this meant, and correct that. So yeah. Dave Ghidiu Okay. So I'm going to, I'm going to tell you what I do first with this. Okay. I Webex everything. So I record all my lectures and it has closed captioning. And then once it's done, I put it in bright space. So you always can go back. And even if you were in class, sometimes people say go a little fast for them, but I'm trying to keep a pace with the average user in class. Otherwise we fall way behind sometimes. So they'll go back and they'll use that. I love it. That Webex. Hey, I didn't, I didn't know you did that for every class. That's cool. Be you might have to explain what Webex a class means for. Yeah. So so we use Webex. And so instead of like Zoom, instead of Zoom, it's a it's just a conference. And in this, our platform allows us to record our lectures and our video. And I'm fortunate enough that I'm in rooms that have our faculty or facilities and I.T. hooked us up. So we have Webex in most every room here set up. So cameras are automatic. They follow you. And I have a little switcher. And so I'll just record my lectures so they can see my PowerPoints. They can see me talking if we're demonstrating something. I switch it so the camera is looking at whatever I'm demonstrating. And then I'll post that so then they can go and literally watch the class again if they needed to or skip or it's a summary of it. So you can jump to different sections. You should put those all. Yeah, you should put those in the old gem notebook, the new Gemini notebook and for the whole semester, and then you have like a study guide, make study guides and stuff. Oh, that's good. Yeah. All right. All right. So now I'm going to be devil's advocate. OK, all right. So, Amy, in the workforce, if you miss a meeting, are you expecting me to cater toward your different needs or are you? Because this is one thing I always hear is and I know that we're creating a safe environment, but are we setting up the students to say to expect us in the workforce that, you know, Paul Engin It. Dave Ghidiu there's a deadline at 12 o'clock. We're going live on air. Yeah, this is I don't care if your accommodation says that you get five hours additional to meet this deadline. We have a deadline at 12 o'clock because it's live. Yeah. Amy Wight Yeah, it's a valid question. Dave Ghidiu we even hear there are deadlines and sometimes they're deadlines for a reason. Like there are, we have, if, if we have a basketball game and we're shooting it, the basketball game is at one o'clock, regardless of any accommodation you might have, right? So you need to be there. You need to shoot. There's no, what is your take on that aspect when you hear, and I'm, I understand that even in workforces there's accommodations, but that is what I hear a lot is that, you know, are we setting our students up for failure if we're making all of these accommodations? Amy Wight Yeah, I know it's a fair question. It is something that I've heard a lot too. And I, you know, I don't think that there's one right answer to it. I, you are correct that there are accommodations in the workplace. And so even when our students leave and get into a job, if they have accommodations that are reasonable, whether that's flexibility with deadlines or flexible work schedule, like those do happen in the workplace. I think too, that we need to sometimes separate out the way that higher ed is structured and the way that we have kind of these, you know, I don't want to say artificial deadlines, but they're essentially made up somebody makes the deadline for whatever reason in their course. And students have to meet them from what a work environment might be like and the diverse kind of work environments that our students might enter, right? Like not many work environments look exactly like higher ed where you have a syllabus and here's your set of deadlines. And there are some that are very much like we have a project and here's our dates that we have to meet things. So I think sometimes what we look at in higher ed doesn't always translate completely to what the workforce experience might be for students. We also have students who can kind of self-select into where they're going, right? So while they may have this kind of structured environment in higher ed, maybe their future career is something that's more, you know, hands on and physical and is not so much sitting at a desk deadline base or something that is more creative and free flowing and they kind of work at their own pace. So, you know, yes, some students may struggle in the more traditional environment, but that's, I mean, that's part of the, you know, I don't want to say the life lessons, but like growing up and figuring out what works best for you, what modalities work best for you. And I think that's one of the strengths of UDL in particular versus the accommodation model is we're not teaching, but we're giving students the opportunity to kind of figure out what does work for me, what is the kind of environment that I need versus prescribing for them. This is what it's going to be and here's how we modify for it. Dave Ghidiu armed and ready if they go into workforce they say you know what I'm gonna approach it this way because I know that this works for me based on what I right okay right all right so Amy Wight I'm sorry, I think it's it's tricky too because our end goal in higher ed is we want them to learn the content right like we're not teaching them to be expert workers we're not teaching them to be expert anything necessarily we want them to be good learners we want them maybe expert learners is the one thing that we're aiming for we want them to know the content so that they can go and take that content that information that understanding then apply it in the workforce but we're not necessarily training them how to be a productive member of the workforce and at least not intentionally right that's maybe part of like the inadvertent outcomes of just higher ed and education in general but like our ultimate goal should just be to teach them what they need to know and the rest is going to be you know for them to figure out and navigate okay so yeah it's a tough question I don't have a solid like no no I put you on the spot too I know it's okay Dave Ghidiu They just came to me when you were saying that. I was like, I know there's some people that have that strict policy. I would like to express my gratitude for you extending UDL to me, because I was 10 minutes late to the podcast recording this morning. So speaking of deadlines. All right. Are you ready for a speed round? I'm ready. I'm ready. Let's do it. That's the sound effect for that. This or that? Now I don't have to put that audio away. Yeah, you won't have to fix that in person. All right. So this or that? Lecture or discussion? Amy Wight Oh, discussions. Dave Ghidiu Rubric or no rubric. Amy Wight Definitely a rubric. Dave Ghidiu syllabus as a contract or a roadmap. Amy Wight Road map. Dave Ghidiu office hours, or open door. Amy Wight Oh, open door. Dave Ghidiu textbook or no textbook. Amy Wight Oh, we are Dave Ghidiu Before the Wind, open educational resource. That's like a free textbook that could be online, could be print. Exactly, yeah. Grading on a curve or standards-based? Amy Wight standards. Dave Ghidiu Oh, that's interesting. I think you picked all the right answers actually, there was a right and wrong answer and you picked all the right ones. Oh, good. So, you're telling me you're going to talk to administration and say that the syllabus is no longer a contract and we don't need office hours that we will just be available as students need us. Totally. Just as a reminder, this podcast does not necessarily reflect the views of FL6 here. Amy Wight I have no power here either. Dave Ghidiu Administration, yeah, that's right. We'll have to make sure we emphasize that tagline All right, here we go udl mythbusters wait, we need a theme song for this doo doo doo Amy Wight Something a little creepy, a little mythic. Dave Ghidiu We need the unsolved mysteries theme you can stitch that in after. What's the unsolved? It's super spooky. All right. I thought I wasn't gonna do the work. Now you are. Do you want to start this one off? Yeah you just have to say myth or truth. Okay. UDL just means more work for the professor. Oh myth. UDL is only for students with disabilities. Amy Wight a mess. Dave Ghidiu If you give students options, they will always pick the easiest one. Amy Wight Meth. Dave Ghidiu UDL lowers academic standards. Amy Wight Meth. Dave Ghidiu Wow these are all This thing I don't know did you want to expand on any of those things or Amy Wight Yeah, I think the standards when I have heard quite a bit, people are worried, and you hear that with accommodations too, that they're lowering standards, they don't have to meet the same criteria. And that's not true at all. Because the whole thing with UDL, it goes back to kind of that GPS analogy, right? Like we're all working towards that same learning objective. And if you have very well thought out learning objectives and set skills or standards that the students have to meet, it shouldn't matter how they get there. If they can demonstrate their understanding in different ways, as long as they're getting there, they're meeting that same rigorous criteria. So that's where those talking about rubrics, I love rubrics, especially when it comes to UDL. Because if you're giving choices for assessment, like, if somebody's doing a paper and somebody else is doing a presentation, and somebody else is doing like a multimedia portfolio, you really need a rubric to bring that all together and say, here are the things that you have to demonstrate, regardless of the modality in which you do it. So having a good, well thought out rubric that gives students set standards and keeps that rigor in those standards is a great thing. So Dave Ghidiu Yeah, that's, that's interesting. Cause I always, and I, this is always tough for me too. If, um, if there is a standard, like you have to show how you do this. Like, and I'm just going to use this as an example. You have to show me that you can integrate sound into an animation. Paul Engin Mm-hmm. Dave Ghidiu But if you're deaf, you can't hear it. So I had a student one time to say, you know, well, do I need to do this? And I said, so listen, I'm, I'm less interested in, cause I'm, I'm sure this wouldn't necessarily be your job, but I'm less interested in what you're putting in there more that you know how to do it. So I said, this is what you can do. Go look at, and I gave them a link to a sound library, just read the names, download it and insert it into your file and then look for sound waves. And when you see the peaks, just kind of base it off of, of those sound waves. And I said, then moving forward, now that I know that you've done that, I want you to do descriptive text in the animation. So this way that would be your audio is using the descriptive text. Very cool. That's great. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. It was just an interesting, but I've never had that happen until I want to say recently, but, um, but it, it was a rubric and to your point about rubric, that's where I'm coming to. The rubric item was, you know, integrating sound into your animation. And okay. Regardless of your ability, that is the, so how do we achieve it? Right? Um, yeah. So I don't know. I don't know if that's UDL or not, or I don't know what it is, but I, creatively about how to get access. So yeah, absolutely. and I, until you were talking, I didn't realize it, but like audio files are multimodal because you can see the waveforms, right? Yes. Now you don't necessarily make out. And it's funny cause I, that's what I was using, but I was using it for something in the class, um, in the class, in our podcast, I was doing an edit or something and I was using, I was looking at the waveforms to determine what we're doing and you know, when we slate, we have a spike and that spike indicates a sinking, and so we use that sound wave to, to align now it automatically aligned. So you don't, you can just select everything and it's synchronized and it perfect hits that mark for you. So you don't need to do it, but anyway, that's, that was what I got me thinking about how they could approach it. That's a great example. So is there anything else? Yeah. What didn't we ask that you just, yeah. Amy Wight Um, I think since you guys talk about AI, I think, um, with the accessibility side of things, there's a lot of excitement with what AI can do to help with digital accessibility, but I want to caution people too about it. Um, because the AI agents are trained on what's out there and what exists. And so when we look at like websites, for example, HTML that's being built, like 90% of websites around the world have at least one accessibility error on the page. And so this is what these models have been trained on. So while I will, you know, sit there and pump in all of my criteria and instructions into clot or into Gemini and say, create this perfectly accessible webpage or whatnot, and then it tells me it's perfectly accessible, um, that's not always the case. So I think that, um, you know, one of the things that I wanted to mention was just how AI is really going to be an exciting agent. And I want people to play with it and explore it, especially with accessibility and UDL. Um, but we have to be very cautious about what it's actually producing when we're asking it to give us content. That's good. Dave Ghidiu But in my courses, could I use AI and be like, hey, here's the assignment I have for this chapter. Like, you DLFI it. And then it can give me like, instead of plus one, like plus four. Amy Wight Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Dave Ghidiu Well, kind of like the technical, like, the more technical. Amy Wight side of things. I've seen people like crank out some, you know, even PowerPoint presentations and things like that. And yeah. So Claude will be like, yeah, it's perfect. And then you go and look at it and it's not quite there yet. So I, I'm excited for AI has a lot of potential for power, but, um, I hope that we can keep training on good models. Yeah. You know, what's. Dave Ghidiu interesting is I, uh, I was using AI and I'm helping or developing a course right now. And one of the things that mentioned is, you know, have them create the video, but then have them put a sentence underneath that explains what the video was about. And I was like, Oh, that's interesting. And I mean, most of these things have auto captioning anyway, but it was an interesting approach. And I think it specifically said, so this way it accommodates both the, if a person can't hear it, they can read what the summary is. So I would actually use AI to do that summary too. Well, it's there. So, all right, I'm gonna, so Laura, uh, for her marketing friend of the pod, uh, she does a video icebreaker and I was like, and she said, it builds a better connection. I go, I'm going to do that. So I'm going to add a video icebreaker for everybody to do a little video and introduce themselves. But that's when I, when I was writing that out, that's when it said, make sure that they write a little one sentence summary of what, what they're, you know, it's simple questions like coffee or ice tea, you know, that's great. It's nothing that's a ground break breaking as far as helpful though. Yeah. You're plus oneing all the time. Well, I love seeing what other people do. Cause when I see that and I, cause I usually just have a regular icebreaker and it's just taxed. And then I saw what she did and I was like, Oh my gosh, it's a better connection for me to see them, let alone the class itself. Yeah. You know, is this for in person or online? Online. Okay. Yeah. Just strictly online. Cause when you're in person, you, I mean, yeah, but it would be nice if you did that because then you like, I used to take pictures of my learners the first day in high school for the seating chart, but like I'd study them at night so then I could learn their names faster. Oh, that's good. Yeah. We have icebreakers in, in class too, but they do it. Obviously, you know, you can see each other while you're doing the icebreaker, but all right. Very good. Um, well, I think that's all the time we have for today. Thank you so much for coming in. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It's fun. Yeah. Uh, hopefully maybe we'll bring you back on later on and you can tell us maybe how the semester has gone. If there's been advancements, we will title that class UDL plus two. Amy Wight for the next generation. That's right. Dave Ghidiu My name is Paul Lengen. I'm Dave Godew. If you enjoyed today's conversation, be sure to smash that like and subscribe button so you never miss an episode. Let's be careful out there, folks. And share it with a friend or colleague or enemy. Or enemy. Until next time. Stay curious, stay connected, and thanks for looking through the immersive lens with us. This episode was engineered by Jeff Kidd. Recorded at Finger Lakes Community College podcast studios located in beautiful Canada, Gwen, New York, in the heart of the Finger Lakes region, offering more than 55 degrees, certificates, micro-credentials, and workforce training programs. Thank you to Public Relations and Communications, Marketing, and the FLX AI Hub. Eager to delve into passion, discover exciting and immersive opportunities at the World FLCC Building. Wait, it's all iconography. Those are emojis. Paul Engin Oh yeah, it looks like Epcot. It's Epcot, I'm trying to get back to school. Dave Ghidiu www.flcc.edu. As part of our mission at FLCC, we are committed to making education accessible, innovative, and align with the needs of both learners and employers. All right, here we go. This is the big one. The big one. Listen up, legal team. The views expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests. Mostly Amy. Mostly Amy. And do not necessarily reflect the official position in the Finger Lakes Community College. Music by Den from Pixabay. This is the Immersive Lines. All right, thank you, Amy. Thank you. That's a wrap. So that was our dry run, and now we're going to do it and record it. Yay. All right, are we ready to roll, though? OK, thank you. All right, here we go. Amy Wight Alright, bathroom's tough. Paul Engin Thank you so much. Yeah. Thanks for coming. Amy Wight Thank you for having me.
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