EPIC Newsletter:
January 2020
Welcome to this month’s EPIC Newsletter! This edition features writings on accessibility—courtesy of guest contributor, PhD student and RITC Terrah Jones—note-taking, information on first-generation students and more!
We are excited to partner with First To Go and Spanish and Portuguese PhD student and Graduate Student Resource Center (GSRC) Programming Consultant, Letty Treviño on this quarter’s Ready, Set, Teach! event. We hope you can join us on Thursday, January 30, 11:30-2:00 pm in Royce 306 for lunch and roundtable discussions focused on supporting first-generation students. This RST! will feature discussions on the following topics:
- First-Generation Student Resources led by staff from First To Go and GSRC
- Getting To Know First-Gen Students led by first generation undergrad and grad students
- Supporting First-Gen Transfers led by community college faculty from SMC and Glendale College
Space is limited so we encourage early RSVPs!
Thanks to the work of individuals and campus groups like First To Go, visibility of first-generation students, faculty, and staff and the awareness of their triumphs and challenges have exponentially increased on campus. For example, did you know about First To Go’s First-Generation Faculty Initiative? The initiative is meant to boost visibility of first-gen faculty and to foster a sense of belonging and community for students who are the first in their families to go to college. Check out the videos featuring some of our faculty members and their stories, self-identify as a first-gen faculty member, or find out about resources for first-gen students, visit the First To Go website.
As always, you can let us know what you think about the newsletter or send us suggestions for future features at epic@humnet.ucla.edu.
On behalf of the EPIC team, thank you for joining us again this month!
Lisa Felipe
EPIC Program Director
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Accessible Higher Education
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There has been a lot of talk recently about Accessible Education within the sphere of higher education. However, what do people actually mean when they say accessible education, and what are the ways in which UCLA is specifically shifting it’s views on inclusivity and accessibility in the classroom (and within the broader learning experience)?
Linda Nilson defines accessibility specifically in terms of how teachers can adapt changes to their courses through design and content in order to positively impact the learning of the largest number of students.
[Accessible Education is] "the process of designing courses and developing a teaching style to meet the needs of people from a variety of backgrounds, abilities and learning styles. Just as there is no single way to teach, people learn in a variety of ways; using different instructional methods will help meet the needs of the greatest number of learners.” (Nilson, 2010)
While this provides a broad definition of accessible education, some specific characteristics that are worth mentioning include how accessible educational works in practice:
- Takes into account a variety of student characteristics, including ethnicity, race, abilities, disabilities, age, gender, language abilities and preferred learning style.
- Does not compromise academic rigor.
- Is a proactive and inclusive way of teaching and designing courses and curricula.
- Removes barriers to learning before they can affect anyone.
- Reduces the need for specialized accommodations.
- Identifies and clearly expresses the essential course content, while recognizing that students can express understanding of essential course content in multiple ways.
- Is consistent with universally recognized principles of good teaching.
Implementing accessible education also holds advantages for faculty who adopt these methods, including improved student learning, reducing work associated with arranging specialized accommodations for individuals, and improving student engagement (the latter which can directly impact course evaluations).
Students likewise benefit from spending less time navigating individual accommodations, having more time to focus on course content, having a more inclusive classroom experiences, and an increase in student retention. They also benefit from a reduction in being singled out for being “different” from their classmates.
Medical vs. Social
Two main reasons that we see these advantages, specifically those involving inclusive environments is due in large part to the lense through which accessibility is viewed.
Historically, in higher education, disability was based on the medical model, one which comes with a large amount of stigma.
Accessible education however, approaches this from a social model of disability. This model works to negate stigmas. Table 1 below shows the differences in how disability is viewed through the two models.
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Figure 1: The medical model vs. the social model of diability.
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The distinction between how disability is viewed is important because of the impact on how we view accessibility within our communities. One of the cornerstones of accessible education is a shift in where responsibility is placed to ensure all members of a society have the same ability to access resources within in a learning environment.
This is shown below in Figure 2, where the terms “Accommodation” and “Accessible Education” are compared side by side.
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Figure 2: Accommodation vs. the Accessible Education approach.
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In many ways accessible education, unlike accommodation, strives to ensure that students are not only treated equally, but also that all students have equity as well. It is a push to diminish the stigma associated with being classified as “other” and instead works to create and foster a unified community environment both within the classroom and the larger university setting.
UCLA's Embrace
Now that we’ve briefly covered what Accessible Education is and how it differs compared to more traditional medical and social models, let’s look at some of the ways UCLA has made changes to embrace it. There are several resources available to undergraduate, graduate students, faculty, and staff that are aimed at helping to create a more accessible environment within the UCLA university setting.
The main list of offices and staff available can be found through the UCLA Accessibility website resource page.
Other related initiatives at UCLA include providing greater access to learning materials and tools, through methods such as increasing the number of online courses offered. These allow students to attend class, and access course materials without having to come to campus at all (extending the ideas of Accessible Education outside of a traditional classroom setting).
Through online tools such as Zoom for example, students can video conference into lectures and discussion groups from almost any location.
Having more online resources however, can highlight an additional concern (access to computers), because part of accessible and inclusive education is to not assume that everyone has a working laptop or for that matter sufficient access to the internet.
These problems of access is addressed by several resources available at UCLA’s North Campus. Below is a list of resources and links where students can gain access to computers or other technological tools frequently used by UCLA faculty as part of their teaching methodology.
North Campus Resources:
- The Scholarly Innovation Lab (SIL). Located in the Charles E. Young Graduate Research Library (YRL), students and faculty have access to classroom space and a variety of experts to consult on coursework or research projects involving the digital humanities.
- Clicc Laptop Lending: A UCLA Library resource for students where they have access to working laptops free of charge.
- Rolfe Learning Lab. This lab located in Rolfe Hall, is a large space that faculty can reserve for classroom with on demand technical support, or where students can go to study. The lab has movable furniture so the class can be organized in a variety of ways, and also comes with access to laptops.
- Studio H. Located in the Public Affairs Building, this space is available for faculty or students to reserve where they can make video and audio recordings for course work or for research. Instructors have also used this space to create lecture videos for online courses.
- Mobile Laptop Cart. This mobile laptop cart is made available through UCLA Humanities Technology and contains 30 laptops which can be moved to any classroom on North Campus. This is a great resource for classes where not all students have a working laptop to complete online course work.
- Experiential Learning Facility (ELF) and the Online Research Classroom (ORC). Both these rooms, located in the Public Affairs Building, can fit small to medium sized classes and have the ability to live tele-conference from the classroom. This is a popular choice for language classes to talk in real time with lecturers or pen pals from different countries. These classrooms can also be reserved by study groups, for interviews, practise presentations, or by students undertaking their qualifying exams.
- Teaching Resource Center (TRC). Located in the Public Affairs Building, this space is the central office for online assistance for Humanities Division faculty and students who are seeking assistance with their online (CCLE) courses. UCLA students, TAs, and faculty can receive assistance remotely via email, telephone, video call (by request) or in person throughout the calendar year.
Sources:
Nilson, Linda B. (2010). Teaching at its Best: A Research-Based Resource for College Instructors.
Chickering and Gamson (1987). Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education.
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Guest Contributor: Terrah Jones
PhD Candidate, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology
HumTech RITC
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Supporting First-Gen Students at UCLA
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Did you know that nearly one-third of UCLA undergraduates idenitfy as first-generation college students? UCLA's First To Go Office, housed under the First Year Experience, aims to increase the visibility and campus involvement of the first-gen community, as well as offer a support network and resource hub to help students successfully navigate the university. Through First To Go, students can participate in initiatives such as the First To Go Living Learning Community, connect with each other via student groups, and discover campus resources on scholarships, mentorships, and more. The First-Generation Faculty Inititative, which profiles UCLA faculty and academic leaders who were themselves first-generation college students, does the important work of making first-gen academic and career success visible to students who may struggle to feel as though they belong on campus. In EPIC's June 2019 Newsletter, we covered First To Go's "1st Gen Conference: Everyday Superheroes," which created a space for the entire first-gen campus community to come together and featured a panel of first-gen UCLA professors. For more information on the benefits of community, visibility, modeling success, and mentorship to first-gen success and retention rates, please take a look at the research compiled by the First To Go Office.
Although the student population they support is broader in scope, the Academic Advancement Program (AAP) also offers many resources and opportunities for first-gen students. AAP offers a collection of programs and initiatives that serve historically underrepresented, low-income, and/or first-generation college students. Their programming includes academic counseling, peer learning (tutoring), research opportunities, graduate and professional school mentoring, and career counseling. Programs of particular interest to first-gen students are the McNair Research Scholars Program and the UndocuBruins Research Program. I encourage instructors to mention these programs to their students early in their college careers so as to plant the seed of possibility with enough time to see it through to maturity. I myself (a graduate student of Comparative Literature) have the McNair Scholars Program at my alma mater to thank for my presence at UCLA, and if it were not for the casual remarks of a professor in class one day, I would never have heard of the opportunity.
Today marks the first day of First-Generation Awareness Week. This campus-wide initiative is comprised of a series of events and social media campaigns that will celebrate the contributions of the first-gen community at UCLA and also raise awareness of resources and support available to first-gen students. EPIC is excited to partner with the First To Go Office for Ready, Set, Teach! Supporting First-Gen Students this Thursday, January 30. We hope to see you there!
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This Month in Innovation: Note Taking Methods
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Note taking is one of several critical, fundamental skills that all learners need to process and synthesize knowledge; unfortunately, few learners receive thoughtful training in analog and digital note taking methods, and this training usually disappears beyond the first year of college. To improve learner retention and engagement in your courses, it may be helpful to spend 5-10 minutes reviewing effective note taking methods.
A learner’s choice of Note Taking method should be contingent upon six characteristics:
- Ease of addition (can I add or modify my notes at a later date?)
- Ease of retrieval (how accessible are my notes when I’m offline or in a different environment?)
- Searchability (how easily can I locate information in my notes?)
- Reusability (Can I refer back to and reuse my notes at a later date?)
- Findability (how easily can others find my ideas?)
- Scalability (does my preferred method allow me to organize large numbers of entries over an extended period of time?)
Researchers have discovered that there is a greater impact on our memory and overall learning of concepts, terms, and relationships if we make drawings that accompany our writing during the note taking process. Two note taking methods are particularly helpful for combining visual and textual information to promote long term retention and application of knowledge: Sketch Notes and Cornell Notes.
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Michael Rhode created sketchnoting in 2006 to better capture details and improve his retention. The method combines handwritten text, use of visual emphases (i.e., bolding, underline, font changes), shapes (i.e., bullet points, clouds), containers and connectors (i.e., boxes, bubbles, arrows, dotted lines), icons, illustrations, shading, and color to capture ideas. The method also empowers learners to create a personal semantic dictionary to make knowledge personally meaningful, which aids in memory processing.
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Walter Pauk developed the Cornell Notes System during the 1940s as part of his series on How to Study in College. This is a visual method for taking notes on a broad topic and synthesizing and condensing them to make ideas easier to memorize.
Ready to get started? See these Resources for more inspiration and templates:
- Cornell Digital Notes Template Shareable as Google Doc here.
- Notion Cornell Digital Notes (students can create a FREE account here. Once created, go to TEMPLATES in the left column, and then click EDUCATION on the right-hand drop-down menu. Select Cornell Notes.)
- Sketchnote for non-Artists (12 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNQJReku9Gw
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On Teaching and Learning: Resources Round Up
There are a TON of resources, scholarship, and advice for instructors out there! Here’s just some of what we have been reading and exploring this month.
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What’s in a name? How do we define "first-generation student"? It’s not as easy as you think. While UCLA’s First To Go defines “first-generation college student” as “a student whose parent/guardian have not received a four-year U.S. bachelor's degree” this is not the case for all universities, colleges, and first-gen student serving institutions. Here are some resources to guide us through the varying ways the term has been defined:
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Check it out: One of The Chronicle of Higher Education’s most read teaching newsletter of 2019 focused on first-generation students.
A teaching tip from Alecea Standlee, assistant professor, first-generation college student and editor of On the Borders of the Academy: Challenges and Strategies for First-Generation Graduate Students and Faculty (2018): “Be transparent in the classroom. Encourage students to develop and practice understanding written and verbal instructions. Don’t assume your students know that all assignments must be typed, for example. Be clear and explicit. Express classroom norms. Model classroom discussions and provide specific -- and obvious -- details on assignments and other activities.” For more, see her article, “Supporting First-Generation Students” on Inside Higher Ed.
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This newsletter is edited by Alejandra Campoy.
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