Accessibility, Part IV – Wilson Rojas & Maryam Rod Szabo

Accessibility, Part IV – Wilson Rojas & Maryam Rod Szabo [read the transcript]

The concepts of Universal Design may have roots in architecture, but the implications of these concepts extend nicely to teaching and learning. Wilson and Maryam are instructional designers in Kirkwood’s Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (KCELT), and share their perspectives on universal design as well as their experiences as Iowan transplants.  Follow them on Twitter @wilsonmrojas and @maryamrodszabo.


 TRANSCRIPT for ACCESSIBILITY, PART IV – WILSON ROJAS & MARYAM ROD SZABO

ALAN PETERKA
Hello, my name is Alan Peterka, and this is the Education Is Podcast. A show about people engaged in learning and teaching. My guests today are transplants to Iowa, as am I. Listeners, you might hear my thick Northern Ohio accent, and I’m sorry if that causes any confusion, if it causes you any anguish, I do apologize. The other voices you hear today have much more interesting idiosyncrasies I think. Wilson Rojas, welcome to the show.

WILSON ROJAS
Thank you.

ALAN PETERKA
Instructional designer from the Kirkwood Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching. As an inhabitant of the planet earth, you are originally from Chile, correct?

WILSON ROJAS
Yeah, that’s correct.

ALAN PETERKA
Awesome place to live and be from. What brought you to Iowa?

WILSON ROJAS
I met people who went to Chile 2008 as exchange students doing intensive Spanish courses, and I met a little people and then tried to come to the states to study first, and things in life person, talked to another person, got a scholarship, the University of Northern Iowa, and in less than two weeks, made the decision, went to the bank, asked for some money, get into a plane, and I came to Iowa in less than two weeks.

ALAN PETERKA
Less than two weeks. A decision was made, formulated and made in two weeks and you found yourself in Iowa.

WILSON ROJAS
Yup. I quit my job, get my things. I been back, but yeah I can tell you my dad wasn’t happy about it, but yeah, here I am now.

ALAN PETERKA
Welcome. Glad to have you here. Also joining us today in the studio is Maryam Rod Szabo who also happens to be an instructional designer in the Kirkwood Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching. Welcome to the show.

MARYAM ROD SZABO
Thank you.

ALAN PETERKA
You also happen to be an inhabitant of this planet we call earth, but originally from Iran.

MARYAM ROD SZABO
That’s true.

ALAN PETERKA
Yeah, tell us about your Iowa experience.

MARYAM ROD SZABO
I came to Iowa five years ago to start studying my masters program in educational technology and designing at University of Northern Iowa. After two years I graduated and I decided that I would like to study my doctoral program, and in my first year or I should say in my graduation from my master program, I met my husband, so I became an Iowa resident because I got married and I fell in love, and I stayed here, and now I’m working here in Kirkwood.

ALAN PETERKA
Love, it brings us all to Iowa I think eventually right?

MARYAM ROD SZABO
Yup.

ALAN PETERKA
That’s what I’m learning today.

WILSON ROJAS
Yup.

ALAN PETERKA
The big theme for this show this term is accessibility, as I think you know. One of the first things that comes up when we talk about accessibility is this phrase universal design. I want to talk to you guys about universal design, and before the show, before recording today, I actually went online, went to a little website called Wikipedia, you may have heard of it.

WILSON ROJAS
Maybe.

MARYAM ROD SZABO
It sounds familiar to me.

ALAN PETERKA
Sounds familiar? This is the definition. Let me read you the definition of universal design they had there. And I think they probably, somebody cut and paste this from somewhere else, but this is what they have: Universal design refers to a broad spectrum of ideas meant to produce buildings, products and environments that are inherently accessible to older people, people without disabilities, and people with disabilities. Help me understand how this definition then gets applied to the realm of education.

WILSON ROJAS
First of all, we have to understand that there are two pieces when we talk about education. It’s the teaching part, but also the learning part, and we should be more interesting in learning. Learning is personal and because it’s personal, everybody learns differently. When you make that connection with universal design, the idea is to try to accommodate the way people learn so everybody has access to that. That will be my basic definition on all the relationship between universal design and learning.

ALAN PETERKA
It’s often called universal design for learning, right? UDL maybe an acronym that some people have heard before. We think of it in terms of, if we had to split this educational experience into teaching and learning, we think of this as more of that side of, more falling to that side of learning.

WILSON ROJAS
It doesn’t matter if you have a disability or not, we need to start thinking about how we can accommodate everybody so we can create an experience for everybody.

ALAN PETERKA
What are some of the ways we do that?

MARYAM ROD SZABO
When I came to US, I came as someone who had taught English for three years in Iran, but when I came here, there were a lot of things that’s very different. There was a lot of cultural difference, there was a lot of terminology difference, and it took me a while to get used to what I was hearing and be able to understand people. When I was thinking about that, now that I’m thinking about that, I feel so fortunate that I was able to adapt and learn, but I see the same things happening to other students who are coming with different abilities. I would say because it’s good to think about, what are all the different abilities that people have that makes the design different? What if I couldn’t listen to this recording, is there another option for me to be included in what’s happening? And think about the other options, and we come with a lot of different options of I’m sure, the more we think about it, the more there are other options there, but one option for this might be providing transcript or braille.

ALAN PETERKA
What kind of options were given to you then, to bridge the cultural divide?

MARYAM ROD SZABO
English is my second language, so those first years I wouldn’t hear things if I didn’t listen to them. I had to be intentional in listening to be able to hear something or understand something. If I was doing something else I couldn’t multi-task. If I was working on a task that the teacher gave us, and she was talking about something else I wouldn’t get that. I brought that to the teacher’s attention and it was so interesting for her to know that because she had no idea that this was a possibility. I guess becoming more aware of our abilities and disabilities at the time, and finding ways to overcome them and practice. I guess that was one way.

ALAN PETERKA
Learning about yourself where your strengths are, where you may need some accommodations.

MARYAM ROD SZABO
You use your other strengths to overcome your weaknesses.

WILSON ROJAS
That’s where we should be focusing on. If we see the students having certain strengths, how we can leverage those to accommodate them instead of as teachers, trying to come up with the answer. Basically yes, the thought is nice, try to think about every single student, but if you don’t have the time to really learn about every single individual, how can I do that, or how can I create environment for them to tell me how they prefer to learn.

MARYAM ROD SZABO
I think one other thing that I would like to add is sometimes you’re being underestimated. They would think because you, English is your second language it’s okay that you’re not doing well, or you’re not understanding something, but that’s not the right way to look at it. Let’s talk about a simple example. I was playing a card game with my friends here. And all of them were American of course, and I was the only one who was not. I have fluency, I understand the board game or card game, and I can do as well as they can, or I can beat them in the game.

But they didn’t think that, and they were at the beginning when I was winning, they were encouraging me, they were like oh good job, I didn’t expect that. And then toward the end when they realized that no, I’m really beating them because I’m better than them in that game, then they started to believe that oh, it’s possible that someone with a different language might be better in something else than I am. I guess if someone have some limitation it doesn’t mean that they’re limited in everything. Or if they have some disabilities, it doesn’t mean that they’re disabled in everything. It’s always good to have that in back of the mind.

ALAN PETERKA
Now I just want to be careful when I’m playing cards against Maryam is what I learned from that story. These personal stories are really great, I think they get at the heart of both the exciting part of universal design, but also the challenges, like getting to know all of your students so that you could better understand what their needs are, what their strengths are. How do we do that as educators when we’re tasked with maybe five classes a semester with 30 students in each class. You may have hundreds of students, and getting to know them and where they are is always gonna be a challenge.

WILSON ROJAS
Yeah, I think the most important part is, again, leverage those strengths, because you can demonstrate … We talk about learning outcomes and assessment and all that stuff. You can demonstrate that you learned the material different ways, and doesn’t really mean that you’re better than other or you give them-

ALAN PETERKA
Wasn’t learned any less.

WILSON ROJAS
Yeah, or you’re giving them advantage. It’s just they express differently, and that’s okay because in the real world not everybody is gonna demonstrate their knowledge and skills and behaviors in the same way.

ALAN PETERKA
Maryam, you said that at least one of your instructors, maybe more, had been open to hearing your questions, or had been open to this idea that there is a cultural divide whereas other instructors were kind of pushing you along to say, I had to overcome these difficulties myself and they made me who I am, so I’m gonna expect you to overcome those pieces too. Two pretty valid takes I think on helping students achieve goals. What was it that those instructors did specifically to encourage you to come forward and share with them?

MARYAM ROD SZABO
The one that was open, the best thing that she did was telling me her own story and the difficulties that she went through. She was explaining to me that she had to translate everything. She had to find every word in the readings that she had. And then I felt like, okay, I’m way more fortunate than she is. By realizing that there are some people that go through some more difficulties to learn something. Just … I guess what she was sharing with me was keeping me motivated. That was the biggest part. After all I was able to overcome that barrier. It didn’t last forever. But the fact that I stayed motivated enough to overcome it, that was very important. Those few people who would keep you encouraged and motivated are very important. I think that’s one thing.

One other thing is, the students who are coming to education system now, sometimes they are doing better than us. I’m talking from my own experience. Some of my students are more motivated than I am. Some of them are able to curate or find better resources than I am. Being able to realize that, and encourage that, and even keep them going. It’s okay if my students know something better than I do. Why not? That’s gonna happen. Our students are gonna come in way more prepared and we have to be ready for that, we have to be open to be able to encourage them, to coach them, to find the right resources to find information to reach out their goals.

ALAN PETERKA
That brings up a good point with universal design that I always … A lot of people may misconstrue it as simply catering to the lowest common denominator in your class, but it’s really exactly the opposite, we’re widening out the scope of who we’re making this course available to. Not only are we bring up the people who are struggling, but we’re also raising everybody else in the class and those who are coming with a ton of experience and a ton of abilities, curating their own resources, sharing with others, we’re able to push them along as well, and make them even better.

One of the ways that some people might push back against this concept of universal design is to say that learning styles, it sounds a lot like emphasizing learning styles and different ways that we have to learn. Maybe you’re an auditory learner, maybe you’re a visual learner, a kinesthetic learner, and I think there’s been a few studies that have shown recently that it’s not a big deal, these different learning styles don’t really matter that much in the grand scheme of things. What’s your take on how universal design for learning is different than just taking advantage of learning styles?

WILSON ROJAS
First of all, as you said, there is a lot of studies right now that say the learning styles don’t even really exist because even if you match a faculty member that uses a lot of visuals to teach, and you match that is a visual learner, doesn’t really mean anything.

ALAN PETERKA
No extra gains?

WILSON ROJAS
Yeah, there’s no gain on that. I feel that universal design differs because allows … It’s more about access and demonstrating knowledge rather than receiving knowledge.

MARYAM ROD SZABO
I also see it as more broad than just the ways that we learn. That can be part of design consideration, but I think the best way to think about it is what if I don’t have the abilities that I have today? What if I don’t have them next week, or a year from now? What if I lose some of these abilities. What do I want to be available to me?

ALAN PETERKA
But I may not be thinking of the same disabilities that ten of my students may come into the classroom with. What are some ways that we can elicit or start a conversation with our students to try to get to know them better?

WILSON ROJAS
I think it’s, as Maryam was saying early, is important that as a faculty member, you open up, and be vulnerable and say, you know, this is one thing that I need to work on.

MARYAM ROD SZABO
I guess I start with dedicated time in my class at beginning of semester to get to know each other. I guess it changes the environment of the class. I learned that, because the first semester that I was teaching in the US I was so stressed that I forgot about that interaction that I have to build with my students. And then in the second semester, after I got my students’ feedback, I kind of realized that and second semester I took the whole first week to get to know them better, and gosh it was great. I loved that experience of being able to connect to my students and be able to understand their limitations.

One of my students that have short memory because of some surgeries that she had, and I was so happy that I knew that, because I was able to provide more reminders in the course. Hey you have a due date coming in three days, or something like that. I had a schedule, but I could … it was not a big deal to add one more hey, there is this email this is a reminder. That helped not only that student, that helped a lot of students. The next semester they were all like, oh I loved those reminders. Sometimes what you do for one student also help the others.

ALAN PETERKA
Another key element I think of universal design is that what we do for one applies to many. Maybe not in the same way, but certainly can be of assistance. I think I just have one other question for you guys. I like to wrap up this show with getting recommendations from guests here, who come on the show. I guess I’m looking for a recommendation in any part of life. It doesn’t have to be specific to universal design, but it could be. Usually the first thing that comes to mind, pops into your head is the one to go with.

MARYAM ROD SZABO
Start with small projects that doesn’t make you so busy or stressed, and then slowly you will make big changes happen. Starting from small projects I guess.

ALAN PETERKA
Take little steps, do something just a little bit different this first time through. Yeah. Wilson how about you? What kind of recommendation do you have for us?

WILSON ROJAS
One thing that’s been helping me my entire life, it’s being humble, just listen to people, just be humble. Good things will come from that. And the other thing is, you have to watch the Stanford Experiment movie. They in the 60s is my believe, or the 50s, they created a jail, and they put a bunch of students, and one of the students were prisoners, there were students who were guards, and it went out of control. That’s why now all research has a IRB type of thing, so if you’re into how not to do things, I would recommend to watch the Stanford Experiment Prison, I think that’s the name. It’s a good movie, and it’s based on something real. Just watch that.

ALAN PETERKA
Awesome.

MARYAM ROD SZABO
Should watch that.

ALAN PETERKA
I’ll look for that on Netflix. That’ll be good. Our instructors here can certainly find you both in the KCELT offices over in Cedar Hall. And could certainly reach out to you email, and I think you’re both on twitter as well, is that right?

WILSON ROJAS
Yup.

ALAN PETERKA
@wilsonrojas, is that right?

WILSON ROJAS
Yes. @wilsonmrojas now.

ALAN PETERKA
@wilsonmrojas. And your twitter handle?

MARYAM ROD SZABO
@maryamrodszabo and Szabo is S-Z-A-B-O.

ALAN PETERKA
We’ll put those links in the show notes for today up on the blog, and you can find this episode along with all the others at educationis.us. We’ll be seeing you next time.