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Hi, everyone.
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My name is Breana Bayraktar, and I'm your host for Keystone Concepts in Teaching, a higher education podcast from the Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning, where we share impactful and evidence-based teaching practices to support all students and faculty.
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For our conversation today, I'm excited to be joined by Naomi Martinez-Jones and Jamilah Anderson.
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Naomi and Jamilah, would you like to introduce yourselves?
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Yes.
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Hi, I am Naomi Martinez-Jones, and I'm the Director of Disability Services.
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I have been at Mason, oh gosh, it just passed 13 years.
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So I have been here for some time.
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My name is Jamilah Anderson.
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I'm Associate Director of Disability Services here at Mason.
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I have been at Mason for eight years now.
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Wonderful.
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Well, I'm delighted to have you both with us today.
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I know this is such an important and continues to be so relevant of a topic for our audience.
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I'd really love it if we could start kind of with the basics a little bit to talk through how accommodations actually work here at Mason.
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Sort of what are faculty required to do, and what can they do if they have questions or concerns?
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Yeah, great question, and a really great place to start for us.
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I think to get kind of the boring stuff out of the way is why are we here, right?
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So kind of spending some time in the legality of it all.
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And so really what shaped disability services in higher ed is really three laws.
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So just gonna spend just a second touching on those.
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So there's Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which really applies to institutions that receive federal funding, and this law does require reasonable accommodations to ensure students with disabilities have equal access to their education.
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And then the Americans with Disabilities Act, also known as the ADA, prohibits disability discrimination that requires colleges and universities to provide equal access to courses, programs, services, and activities on campus.
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And the third one Mason does have to follow because we have housing on campus, so that is the Fair Housing Act, and this makes sure that students have equal access to housing on campus.
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So really what these three laws do is that they establish a legal foundation for accessibility and accommodations in higher education.
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And so that's really why we're here.
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That's why our office was created.
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And so from there, though, what do we do, right?
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Kind of what's the process that goes into that?
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And so to start, students have to seek out services from Disability Services.
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Students have to come to us.
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We can't force the students register with us.
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So it is a student-driven process, and once students decide they want to connect with us, we then do ask for relevant healthcare documentation.
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So why do you want to connect with us?
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What is your disability-related reason?
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And then from there, once we get that documentation, we connect with the student and kind of determine the barriers they're facing, and then accommodations are really kind of shaped around the barriers that they are experiencing in the classroom, around campus and housing.
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Yeah, and so as Naomi was saying, you know, the purpose of accommodations, it's really to remove, hopefully remove, sometimes it might just be a reduction in the barrier, but ultimately our hope is to remove those barriers that students might be experiencing because...
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And those barriers exist, because our institutions weren't necessarily built with students with disabilities in mind, right?
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So the way in which curriculum is designed or the way in which the actual built-in environment is designed, it's not necessarily developed with differences in how people access that space, how people may think differently.
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And so students might encounter those barriers, and the purpose of accommodations is to then remove those barriers.
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And we always talk about when we do presentations, students with the same disability saying, you know, similar diagnoses, doesn't mean that their accommodations are gonna be the same,'cause the way that they experience it and their own strategies for how they manage, those are all gonna be different.
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And so ultimately, we're really looking at an individualized student process for what accommodations they are approved for.
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And so once a student is approved, those are put on what's called an academic accommodation letter.
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So it is only listing those approved accommodations.
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All of their diagnostic information are things that we keep confidential as a department.
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And then the academic accommodation letter is provided to faculty, and that's kind of the faculty notification process for faculty to know, all right, this student has these approved accommodations.
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And it is quite possible that on that accommodation letter, that there are accommodations that the faculty may have to actually implement on their own.
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There might be accommodations that the faculty doesn't necessarily need to do anything, other than have knowledge that the student may access this accommodation.
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So if a student has breaks as an accommodation in class, the faculty doesn't necessarily need to do anything.
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They just need to know, okay, if I see this student get up and leave for a couple of minutes, they're probably accessing their accommodation.
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But there very well can be instances on an accommodation letter such as extended time on exams where there is something that the faculty has to do in order to implement that accommodation
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There might also be times on an accommodation letter that a faculty has a question on the accommodation.
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And what's really important in this is the faculty has to reach out to Disability Services with that question.
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It's not appropriate to talk to the student about that question, a n d so if there's any concerns around an accommodation, faculty must contact Disability Services, and we need to have a conversation on what that accommodation looks like or might not look like in their course.
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And this is really for the protection of the faculty member.
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If it's on the accommodation letter, legally they're supposed to provide the accommodation.
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We really do wanna be partners.
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We all work at George Mason.
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We all wanna see students succeed, right?
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For sure.
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'Cause we really do rely on faculty because they're the subject matter experts of their course, right, of their content area.
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Like, that's not us.
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Like, don't ask me to be the subject matter expert for physics.
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Nope, can't do that.
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So we really do rely on faculty to come to the table.
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And so things that we might ask is,"Well, tell us about your essential course objectives.
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What are the learning outcomes?
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How is your class structured?" Help us understand that because our responsibility is to be the subject matter expert as it relates to accessibility.
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And so really it's that partnership and us coming to the table together with our knowledge base to really be able to say,"Well, let's work together to figure out options." And sometimes there are things that faculty come up with where they're just like,"Okay, I understand more about why the student might need an accommodation." We're not sharing any sort of disability-specific information, but we can talk a little bit about what barriers might be coming up, why the student may need that accommodation.
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But really, that sort of a collaborative approach when a problem comes up is really what is necessary, because that is our legal duty, to make sure that we're engaging, continuing to engage in what's called that interactive process.
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And again, it really is a protection for faculty to make sure that they aren't the ones making the accommodation determination decisions about whether or not it can be implemented in their course.
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It really does have to come from us.
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It's so helpful to hear about how this process is individualized to students and how it feels like it's a negotiation between your office and the student and their needs, and then the faculty coming to you to say,"Here are the questions I have, maybe here are the concerns," and continuing to keep sort of all of those lines of communication open
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Yeah, I think you said it.
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It's all about communication, right?
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And all working together.
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So that's a really important point.
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Beyond sort of the formal accommodations process that you've outlined, are there things that faculty can do more broadly, thinking of all of the students in their courses that would help to make them more accessible and more inclusive from the beginning so that even students who don't have formal accommodations are sort of trying to meet everyone's needs in that way?
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Yeah, I think no matter disability or not, I even think of religion and just other identities that students might bring with them, how can we make the class more inclusive, right?
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To really everyone.
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So one thing that does come to my mind, there's actually a few things that come to my mind that we'll spend some time on, is around attendance and absence, right?
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We all want students there.
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That's how they learn.
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And there are time that students can't be there, right?
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That could be because of a disability.
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That could be for a religious reason.
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That could be because they had a family emergency.
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So really, what is the faculty's plan should anyone need to miss class?
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Do you have an online module that maybe somebody can do instead?
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So really kind of thinking ahead of time of students are gonna miss.
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And when they miss, what can I do to help them make up something?
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Material or what could that look like?
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So spending some time pre-course and before the semester starts on thinking that through.
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Other things that kind of come to my mind are copies of class presentations and materials.
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So if you have a PowerPoint, why not provide it to the whole class?
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You're showing the whole class anyways.
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That just doesn't help the students with disabilities, but that really helps different types of learners.
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So visual learners that might help or students that are using different technology to study or to really focus in the class.
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I also think about digital accessibility.
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You know, that's a big one, especially when we think about, like, how much we use electronic documents and how much we're using technology to get the work done, textbooks being electronic, things of that nature.
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So really being able to program in a lot of that accessibility as it relates to our digital materials.
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Going ahead and getting those videos captioned in advance.
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Like, how many of us use captions who aren't disabled?
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I use captions all the time, all the time.
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I will not watch a program without captions at this point, right?
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Because it is a useful tool, disability or not.
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So really looking at, like, how to do some of that accessibility work for those materials in advance is super helpful.
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We are really fortunate at George Mason to have the Assistive Technology Initiative on campus.
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This is a completely free resource.
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We always love putting in a plug for our partners at ATI.
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Faculty can submit their course materials, documents, videos, and they will make them accessible for their courses, and then they have them in their toolkit for, like, whenever they're gonna use it semester to semester, already made accessible.
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And then you have them and it's gonna make the student experience that much more accessible and inclusive because even if you're not disabled, you might be somebody who really likes to use a text-to-speech technology, those sorts of things.
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And so if those materials are accessible, it doesn't matter whether or not they have an accommodation for it, they can access and utilize technology to be able to access those documents pretty seamlessly.
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When you build in some of that choice and flexibility, it gives students the opportunities to really tap into their own individual strengths, provides opportunities for flexibility.
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Maybe you have that student that has a really hard time with maybe for disability related reasons, you know, doing a group project.
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But I can do it independently, that's totally fine, and I can meet the objectives of what the assignment is.
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Suddenly that student has a much higher way of being able to demonstrate their knowledge rather than only having this one particular way of doing it which may create some additional barriers for them to really be able to effectively demonstrate their knowledge.
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So we are definitely folks that appreciate universal design for learning.
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We encourage universal design for learning.
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And we so love the fact that the Stearns Center has some really great resources out there for faculty to continue to learn about, like, how to infuse some of those principles into their courses.
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And I think it's important to note that universal design does not mean lowering expectations, right?
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It means thinking intentionally about how students can access the material and demonstrate their learning at the same time
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Exactly.
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And I will also say it also doesn't necessarily mean that accommodations will never be necessary, right?
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So even in the most thoughtful, intentional, inclusively designed course or experience, a student still might need accommodations, and that's okay.
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That's okay.
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Yeah, I love the emphasis on thinking about flexibility but pairing that with as much pre-planning as we can do as possible, I know that your office, because you work so directly with students, and you really hear about their experience in their courses from their perspective, and as faculty members, we observe the students, and we kind of see what's happening, but we don't often hear directly from the students, particularly when they're experiencing difficulties or challenges, right?
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Students don't always come to their faculty members to talk about that.
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It would be great if you can maybe talk a little bit about what you see from your side in that direct work with students about, what do they wish that their instructors knew or understood about their experiences?
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I think sometimes, especially just in the evolution of students with disabilities being able to come to college, right?
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Even 10 years ago, we didn't have as many disabled students coming to higher education, and now we're seeing a lot more students.
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And that's a wonderful thing.
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That is a very positive thing.
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But sometimes there can still be some of those biases or stigma or just that students have concerns that their faculty might think that they aren't as hardworking, they don't take it as seriously, that accommodations might be a way in which they're trying to find an easier way out, that they're trying to not have to engage in the rigor that the rest of their non-disabled peers are.
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And so I think one of the things that does come up is students really being concerned that maybe their instructors are thinking about them differently in that sort of capacity.
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And the truth of the matter is the vast majority of students, they are hardworking students.
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They are dedicated to this, their degree programs.
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They really wanna do things to the best of their abilities, just like any student would, right?
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I know in just conversations that I've had with students, they really want their faculty to know that they are very dedicated.
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They want to be successful.
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They want to do the work as outlined.
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And truly, their need for accommodations is because there are barriers that they're experiencing within their educational environment, that they do need accommodations for.
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But it's not in any sort of a capacity, from a perspective of,"I just don't wanna do the work," because they really do want to be successful and do well and and be able to graduate, knowing that they fully engaged in their degree program.
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So I definitely think that's something that comes up with students.
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Yeah, I agree, Jamilah.
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I think something you hit on a little bit, is we often get students who have invisible disabilities feeling like their disability is not being taken seriously because you can't see it, right?
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And I will say, that's the majority of students connected with disability services, and that's just not unique to George Mason, that's really across the nation of students connecting with disability services.
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At George Mason, at any given time, we have about 7 to 11% of the population connected with us.
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That just depends on the time of year.
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But they say there's 21% of undergraduate students and 11% of graduate students with disabilities in college nowadays, and majority have invisible disabilities.
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And so I think just being very mindful that you might not be able to see the disability, and you might not have an understanding of what's happening, but know that it has gone through disability services, and it has been vetted.
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So really try not to question, and just know that there is an office here that has already done all of that.
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I also wanna point out that we do have some really good faculty champions,
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Absolutely.
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that students truly are like,"Oh my gosh, I love this faculty.
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They're amazing, they're great," and they recommend this faculty to everyone and all their peers.
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And I will say the, the ones that we are having conversations with to maybe make their course more inclusive or it's just a lack of understanding and education.
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And honestly, once we have those conversations, the majority of the time, it's a really positive experience.
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I think the ones that I worry about are the ones that we don't find out about, right?
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That the student's just not getting their accommodation, then we find out a year later that the student's like,"I never received this." And we were never able to help or support or provide education to that.
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But I will say we are experiencing more and more academic departments reaching out to us to come to their staff meetings, and presenting and building those partnerships, which is also helpful and great.
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And we're also willing to do that.
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We love doing those types of opportunities.
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Yeah, that outreach piece is so important to helping to make all of us aware of what is available to us as Mason faculty members, and where we can go when we have questions or we have concerns, particularly for our large number of adjunct faculty who sometimes feel a little less well connected in terms of where to go for help.
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And so that's a big part of why we're so delighted to have the both of you on the podcast to be able to help foster some of those connections.
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I did wanna ask also about sort of changes that you've seen over time in what student expectations are, what types of accommodations are, you know, most helpful to students.
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I know we talk a lot about being post-COVID and how things have changed a lot over the last now six years, and I'm wondering if there's any sort of trends that you've seen that might be helpful for faculty members to know about.
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Yeah, so I think, even in the post-COVID environment, we know that there was education loss during that time period and students are still being impacted by that experience for sure.
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And so, even at that time, there was a lot of flexibility for those students that were still in the K through 12 environment.
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There was a lot of flexibility that was embedded into when assignments were due, maybe they didn't have to turn things in until the end of the quarter, until the end of the year.
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A lot more flexibility with how knowledge was demonstrated, those sorts of things.
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And so especially in those couple of years post-COVID, there was definitely students that were surprised coming into college that that level of flexibility wasn't also here.
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Yeah.
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And I think you brought up a great point that during COVID, K through 12 did the best they could.
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George Mason did the best they could, right?
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In switching modality and...
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But I will say George Mason came back a lot quicker to what the norm was, I'm putting my hands up in quotations, prior to what we were before COVID.
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In K through 12, they are still working on changing some of their policies and procedures that they created during COVID.
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I was just talking to a colleague who has a child in high school, and they could still redo as many exams as they want to get the best grade.
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And that's not something that majority of faculty do here, right?
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It's kind of a one chance thing.
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And so students don't understand that there's a difference coming from high school to college.
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I will say one thing that Disability Services does, and we've always done, for 15-plus years, is that because accommodations are so different between K through 12 and college, we often are out at our local schools presenting to juniors and seniors of the differences to hopefully set them up for success when they come here of, like, if you have a certain accommodation in high school and you're a sophomore right now, maybe you wanna talk about how can we adjust that to be more on track,'cause you're not gonna get that in college.
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And so we do go to high schools, and we do present to families.
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I also think that the laws are different.
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So in high school, in K through 12, it's about success.
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What accommodations can we give you to be successful?
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And in college, it's about access.
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So what do you need to have access to your education?
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So those are very different laws that we're working with, and we have to educate and provide that information to families,'cause it is a change.
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Absolutely.
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And the purpose for us as we're especially meeting with students, to determine accommodations, our role, like, we're not determining accommodations, to provide that degree of flexibility that they're used to, right?
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So not only are students not going to have that, as part of their course experience because no, there are due dates, there are deadlines.
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You're not gonna have just unlimited times to be able to take things.
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Accommodations aren't intended to do that for the student, so it's not like we would say,"Yes, the student can just take the test as many times until they get the grade that they want." Like, no.
00:20:46.836 --> 00:20:48.987
That's also not what we're gonna be doing.
00:20:49.237 --> 00:20:58.916
It's truly about equal access as compared to their disabled peers, not for them to have a completely different experience as compared to their non-disabled peers.
00:20:59.838 --> 00:21:19.362
That's incredibly helpful, I think, for us to remember and think about from the student's side the changes that they experience as they come to Mason, even if they're very experienced in managing their own accommodations and working within their disability, to know as a faculty member how much of a transition it really is for students.
00:21:20.624 --> 00:21:28.588
Is there anything that we haven't yet talked about that I have not asked about that you think would be really helpful for the Mason community to know?
00:21:29.236 --> 00:21:33.145
I think we talked through a lot of things which is great.
00:21:33.476 --> 00:21:38.596
I don't think I have anything additional, but just the importance of we are here to partner with you.
00:21:38.596 --> 00:21:40.506
We wanna partner with you.
00:21:40.925 --> 00:21:45.246
We do look at each other as colleagues and not that it's us against you.
00:21:45.246 --> 00:21:46.826
We are here as one.
00:21:47.276 --> 00:21:51.596
And so please reach out to us, whether that's individually on a certain situation.
00:21:51.895 --> 00:21:57.576
We consult all the time with faculty, like,"There's something happened in my classroom, some behavior.
00:21:57.996 --> 00:21:59.046
Help me," right?
00:21:59.046 --> 00:22:03.226
We'll give you tips and tricks of maybe you can try these types of things to work with the student.
00:22:03.645 --> 00:22:04.705
We're here for you.
00:22:04.756 --> 00:22:05.996
We're not just here for the student.
00:22:05.996 --> 00:22:08.965
We're really here to brainstorm with you and kinda work through things.
00:22:09.085 --> 00:22:09.826
Thank you so much.
00:22:09.827 --> 00:22:12.757
This has been absolutely very, very helpful.
00:22:12.790 --> 00:22:34.991
And I think there's just a really clear keystone concept for this episode that accessibility really is a partnership, and that while there are certainly required elements to accommodations, it's not something that the student or the faculty member are navigating alone, and that keeping those open lines of communication with disability services is just a really important part of that.
00:22:35.718 --> 00:22:38.834
I thank you both so much for sharing your input and your expertise.
00:22:38.836 --> 00:22:41.031
It's been really wonderful to talk with you.
00:22:41.432 --> 00:22:42.460
Thanks so much for having us.
00:22:42.556 --> 00:22:43.445
This was wonderful.
00:22:43.729 --> 00:22:48.469
Yeah, this was a great opportunity, and we hope folks will listen and reach out to us.
00:22:48.469 --> 00:22:49.719
We wanna build more partners.
00:22:49.989 --> 00:22:51.528
So this is great, so thank you for this.
00:22:52.067 --> 00:23:07.396
I'm happy to continue having these sorts of impactful conversations with our listeners, so I hope that everyone listening will check out our new episodes as we post every two weeks during the spring and fall semesters, and I encourage you to subscribe and listen on our website or anywhere you get your podcasts.
00:23:07.753 --> 00:23:14.259
You can visit our website at stearnscenter.gmu.edu for more resources and opportunities to engage with us.
00:23:14.324 --> 00:23:20.453
And I wanted to remind everyone that we do have show notes, and so we'll have some links and some information from Naomi and Jamilah in there.
00:23:20.713 --> 00:23:22.578
We also will have a listener survey.
00:23:22.633 --> 00:23:27.977
We're hoping to learn more about our listeners, and so if you can complete our listener survey, that would be really helpful.
00:23:28.213 --> 00:23:32.535
And I can't wait to share our next episode with you from Keystone Concepts in Teaching.
00:00:08.314 --> 00:00:08.951
Hi, everyone.
00:00:08.984 --> 00:00:23.274
My name is Breana Bayraktar, and I'm your host for Keystone Concepts in Teaching, a higher education podcast from the Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning, where we share impactful and evidence-based teaching practices to support all students and faculty.
00:00:23.524 --> 00:00:28.995
For our conversation today, I'm excited to be joined by Naomi Martinez-Jones and Jamilah Anderson.
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Naomi and Jamilah, would you like to introduce yourselves?
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Yes.
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Hi, I am Naomi Martinez-Jones, and I'm the Director of Disability Services.
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I have been at Mason, oh gosh, it just passed 13 years.
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So I have been here for some time.
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My name is Jamilah Anderson.
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I'm Associate Director of Disability Services here at Mason.
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I have been at Mason for eight years now.
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Wonderful.
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Well, I'm delighted to have you both with us today.
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I know this is such an important and continues to be so relevant of a topic for our audience.
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I'd really love it if we could start kind of with the basics a little bit to talk through how accommodations actually work here at Mason.
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Sort of what are faculty required to do, and what can they do if they have questions or concerns?
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Yeah, great question, and a really great place to start for us.
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I think to get kind of the boring stuff out of the way is why are we here, right?
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So kind of spending some time in the legality of it all.
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And so really what shaped disability services in higher ed is really three laws.
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So just gonna spend just a second touching on those.
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So there's Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which really applies to institutions that receive federal funding, and this law does require reasonable accommodations to ensure students with disabilities have equal access to their education.
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And then the Americans with Disabilities Act, also known as the ADA, prohibits disability discrimination that requires colleges and universities to provide equal access to courses, programs, services, and activities on campus.
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And the third one Mason does have to follow because we have housing on campus, so that is the Fair Housing Act, and this makes sure that students have equal access to housing on campus.
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So really what these three laws do is that they establish a legal foundation for accessibility and accommodations in higher education.
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And so that's really why we're here.
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That's why our office was created.
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And so from there, though, what do we do, right?
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Kind of what's the process that goes into that?
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And so to start, students have to seek out services from Disability Services.
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Students have to come to us.
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We can't force the students register with us.
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So it is a student-driven process, and once students decide they want to connect with us, we then do ask for relevant healthcare documentation.
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So why do you want to connect with us?
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What is your disability-related reason?
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And then from there, once we get that documentation, we connect with the student and kind of determine the barriers they're facing, and then accommodations are really kind of shaped around the barriers that they are experiencing in the classroom, around campus and housing.
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Yeah, and so as Naomi was saying, you know, the purpose of accommodations, it's really to remove, hopefully remove, sometimes it might just be a reduction in the barrier, but ultimately our hope is to remove those barriers that students might be experiencing because...
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And those barriers exist, because our institutions weren't necessarily built with students with disabilities in mind, right?
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So the way in which curriculum is designed or the way in which the actual built-in environment is designed, it's not necessarily developed with differences in how people access that space, how people may think differently.
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And so students might encounter those barriers, and the purpose of accommodations is to then remove those barriers.
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And we always talk about when we do presentations, students with the same disability saying, you know, similar diagnoses, doesn't mean that their accommodations are gonna be the same,'cause the way that they experience it and their own strategies for how they manage, those are all gonna be different.
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And so ultimately, we're really looking at an individualized student process for what accommodations they are approved for.
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And so once a student is approved, those are put on what's called an academic accommodation letter.
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So it is only listing those approved accommodations.
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All of their diagnostic information are things that we keep confidential as a department.
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And then the academic accommodation letter is provided to faculty, and that's kind of the faculty notification process for faculty to know, all right, this student has these approved accommodations.
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And it is quite possible that on that accommodation letter, that there are accommodations that the faculty may have to actually implement on their own.
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There might be accommodations that the faculty doesn't necessarily need to do anything, other than have knowledge that the student may access this accommodation.
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So if a student has breaks as an accommodation in class, the faculty doesn't necessarily need to do anything.
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They just need to know, okay, if I see this student get up and leave for a couple of minutes, they're probably accessing their accommodation.
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But there very well can be instances on an accommodation letter such as extended time on exams where there is something that the faculty has to do in order to implement that accommodation
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There might also be times on an accommodation letter that a faculty has a question on the accommodation.
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And what's really important in this is the faculty has to reach out to Disability Services with that question.
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It's not appropriate to talk to the student about that question, a n d so if there's any concerns around an accommodation, faculty must contact Disability Services, and we need to have a conversation on what that accommodation looks like or might not look like in their course.
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And this is really for the protection of the faculty member.
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If it's on the accommodation letter, legally they're supposed to provide the accommodation.
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We really do wanna be partners.
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We all work at George Mason.
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We all wanna see students succeed, right?
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For sure.
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'Cause we really do rely on faculty because they're the subject matter experts of their course, right, of their content area.
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Like, that's not us.
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Like, don't ask me to be the subject matter expert for physics.
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Nope, can't do that.
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So we really do rely on faculty to come to the table.
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And so things that we might ask is,"Well, tell us about your essential course objectives.
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What are the learning outcomes?
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How is your class structured?" Help us understand that because our responsibility is to be the subject matter expert as it relates to accessibility.
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And so really it's that partnership and us coming to the table together with our knowledge base to really be able to say,"Well, let's work together to figure out options." And sometimes there are things that faculty come up with where they're just like,"Okay, I understand more about why the student might need an accommodation." We're not sharing any sort of disability-specific information, but we can talk a little bit about what barriers might be coming up, why the student may need that accommodation.
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But really, that sort of a collaborative approach when a problem comes up is really what is necessary, because that is our legal duty, to make sure that we're engaging, continuing to engage in what's called that interactive process.
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And again, it really is a protection for faculty to make sure that they aren't the ones making the accommodation determination decisions about whether or not it can be implemented in their course.
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It really does have to come from us.
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It's so helpful to hear about how this process is individualized to students and how it feels like it's a negotiation between your office and the student and their needs, and then the faculty coming to you to say,"Here are the questions I have, maybe here are the concerns," and continuing to keep sort of all of those lines of communication open
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Yeah, I think you said it.
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It's all about communication, right?
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And all working together.
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So that's a really important point.
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Beyond sort of the formal accommodations process that you've outlined, are there things that faculty can do more broadly, thinking of all of the students in their courses that would help to make them more accessible and more inclusive from the beginning so that even students who don't have formal accommodations are sort of trying to meet everyone's needs in that way?
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Yeah, I think no matter disability or not, I even think of religion and just other identities that students might bring with them, how can we make the class more inclusive, right?
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To really everyone.
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So one thing that does come to my mind, there's actually a few things that come to my mind that we'll spend some time on, is around attendance and absence, right?
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We all want students there.
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That's how they learn.
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And there are time that students can't be there, right?
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That could be because of a disability.
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That could be for a religious reason.
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That could be because they had a family emergency.
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So really, what is the faculty's plan should anyone need to miss class?
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Do you have an online module that maybe somebody can do instead?
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So really kind of thinking ahead of time of students are gonna miss.
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And when they miss, what can I do to help them make up something?
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Material or what could that look like?
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So spending some time pre-course and before the semester starts on thinking that through.
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Other things that kind of come to my mind are copies of class presentations and materials.
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So if you have a PowerPoint, why not provide it to the whole class?
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You're showing the whole class anyways.
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That just doesn't help the students with disabilities, but that really helps different types of learners.
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So visual learners that might help or students that are using different technology to study or to really focus in the class.
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I also think about digital accessibility.
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You know, that's a big one, especially when we think about, like, how much we use electronic documents and how much we're using technology to get the work done, textbooks being electronic, things of that nature.
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So really being able to program in a lot of that accessibility as it relates to our digital materials.
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Going ahead and getting those videos captioned in advance.
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Like, how many of us use captions who aren't disabled?
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I use captions all the time, all the time.
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I will not watch a program without captions at this point, right?
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Because it is a useful tool, disability or not.
00:10:04.917 --> 00:10:11.037
So really looking at, like, how to do some of that accessibility work for those materials in advance is super helpful.
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We are really fortunate at George Mason to have the Assistive Technology Initiative on campus.
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This is a completely free resource.
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We always love putting in a plug for our partners at ATI.
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Faculty can submit their course materials, documents, videos, and they will make them accessible for their courses, and then they have them in their toolkit for, like, whenever they're gonna use it semester to semester, already made accessible.
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And then you have them and it's gonna make the student experience that much more accessible and inclusive because even if you're not disabled, you might be somebody who really likes to use a text-to-speech technology, those sorts of things.
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And so if those materials are accessible, it doesn't matter whether or not they have an accommodation for it, they can access and utilize technology to be able to access those documents pretty seamlessly.
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When you build in some of that choice and flexibility, it gives students the opportunities to really tap into their own individual strengths, provides opportunities for flexibility.
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Maybe you have that student that has a really hard time with maybe for disability related reasons, you know, doing a group project.
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But I can do it independently, that's totally fine, and I can meet the objectives of what the assignment is.
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Suddenly that student has a much higher way of being able to demonstrate their knowledge rather than only having this one particular way of doing it which may create some additional barriers for them to really be able to effectively demonstrate their knowledge.
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So we are definitely folks that appreciate universal design for learning.
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We encourage universal design for learning.
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And we so love the fact that the Stearns Center has some really great resources out there for faculty to continue to learn about, like, how to infuse some of those principles into their courses.
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And I think it's important to note that universal design does not mean lowering expectations, right?
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It means thinking intentionally about how students can access the material and demonstrate their learning at the same time
00:12:02.136 --> 00:12:02.636
Exactly.
00:12:02.667 --> 00:12:08.647
And I will also say it also doesn't necessarily mean that accommodations will never be necessary, right?
00:12:08.657 --> 00:12:18.735
So even in the most thoughtful, intentional, inclusively designed course or experience, a student still might need accommodations, and that's okay.
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That's okay.
00:12:20.326 --> 00:12:51.565
Yeah, I love the emphasis on thinking about flexibility but pairing that with as much pre-planning as we can do as possible, I know that your office, because you work so directly with students, and you really hear about their experience in their courses from their perspective, and as faculty members, we observe the students, and we kind of see what's happening, but we don't often hear directly from the students, particularly when they're experiencing difficulties or challenges, right?
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Students don't always come to their faculty members to talk about that.
00:12:55.380 --> 00:13:09.163
It would be great if you can maybe talk a little bit about what you see from your side in that direct work with students about, what do they wish that their instructors knew or understood about their experiences?
00:13:11.697 --> 00:13:18.284
I think sometimes, especially just in the evolution of students with disabilities being able to come to college, right?
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Even 10 years ago, we didn't have as many disabled students coming to higher education, and now we're seeing a lot more students.
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And that's a wonderful thing.
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That is a very positive thing.
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But sometimes there can still be some of those biases or stigma or just that students have concerns that their faculty might think that they aren't as hardworking, they don't take it as seriously, that accommodations might be a way in which they're trying to find an easier way out, that they're trying to not have to engage in the rigor that the rest of their non-disabled peers are.
00:13:49.865 --> 00:13:57.975
And so I think one of the things that does come up is students really being concerned that maybe their instructors are thinking about them differently in that sort of capacity.
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And the truth of the matter is the vast majority of students, they are hardworking students.
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They are dedicated to this, their degree programs.
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They really wanna do things to the best of their abilities, just like any student would, right?
00:14:10.625 --> 00:14:17.725
I know in just conversations that I've had with students, they really want their faculty to know that they are very dedicated.
00:14:17.735 --> 00:14:19.384
They want to be successful.
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They want to do the work as outlined.
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And truly, their need for accommodations is because there are barriers that they're experiencing within their educational environment, that they do need accommodations for.
00:14:31.585 --> 00:14:44.904
But it's not in any sort of a capacity, from a perspective of,"I just don't wanna do the work," because they really do want to be successful and do well and and be able to graduate, knowing that they fully engaged in their degree program.
00:14:44.904 --> 00:14:47.304
So I definitely think that's something that comes up with students.
00:14:48.173 --> 00:14:49.817
Yeah, I agree, Jamilah.
00:14:49.835 --> 00:15:01.293
I think something you hit on a little bit, is we often get students who have invisible disabilities feeling like their disability is not being taken seriously because you can't see it, right?
00:15:01.613 --> 00:15:10.513
And I will say, that's the majority of students connected with disability services, and that's just not unique to George Mason, that's really across the nation of students connecting with disability services.
00:15:10.993 --> 00:15:16.602
At George Mason, at any given time, we have about 7 to 11% of the population connected with us.
00:15:16.863 --> 00:15:18.332
That just depends on the time of year.
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But they say there's 21% of undergraduate students and 11% of graduate students with disabilities in college nowadays, and majority have invisible disabilities.
00:15:30.332 --> 00:15:41.712
And so I think just being very mindful that you might not be able to see the disability, and you might not have an understanding of what's happening, but know that it has gone through disability services, and it has been vetted.
00:15:41.743 --> 00:15:46.582
So really try not to question, and just know that there is an office here that has already done all of that.
00:15:47.342 --> 00:15:51.613
I also wanna point out that we do have some really good faculty champions,
00:15:51.686 --> 00:15:52.466
Absolutely.
00:15:52.631 --> 00:15:55.436
that students truly are like,"Oh my gosh, I love this faculty.
00:15:55.436 --> 00:15:59.596
They're amazing, they're great," and they recommend this faculty to everyone and all their peers.
00:15:59.644 --> 00:16:08.933
And I will say the, the ones that we are having conversations with to maybe make their course more inclusive or it's just a lack of understanding and education.
00:16:08.933 --> 00:16:14.624
And honestly, once we have those conversations, the majority of the time, it's a really positive experience.
00:16:15.004 --> 00:16:19.653
I think the ones that I worry about are the ones that we don't find out about, right?
00:16:19.683 --> 00:16:30.264
That the student's just not getting their accommodation, then we find out a year later that the student's like,"I never received this." And we were never able to help or support or provide education to that.
00:16:30.264 --> 00:16:41.073
But I will say we are experiencing more and more academic departments reaching out to us to come to their staff meetings, and presenting and building those partnerships, which is also helpful and great.
00:16:41.083 --> 00:16:42.907
And we're also willing to do that.
00:16:42.907 --> 00:16:44.886
We love doing those types of opportunities.
00:16:45.504 --> 00:17:07.915
Yeah, that outreach piece is so important to helping to make all of us aware of what is available to us as Mason faculty members, and where we can go when we have questions or we have concerns, particularly for our large number of adjunct faculty who sometimes feel a little less well connected in terms of where to go for help.
00:17:08.307 --> 00:17:15.730
And so that's a big part of why we're so delighted to have the both of you on the podcast to be able to help foster some of those connections.
00:17:16.220 --> 00:17:29.294
I did wanna ask also about sort of changes that you've seen over time in what student expectations are, what types of accommodations are, you know, most helpful to students.
00:17:29.536 --> 00:17:41.119
I know we talk a lot about being post-COVID and how things have changed a lot over the last now six years, and I'm wondering if there's any sort of trends that you've seen that might be helpful for faculty members to know about.
00:17:42.547 --> 00:17:52.196
Yeah, so I think, even in the post-COVID environment, we know that there was education loss during that time period and students are still being impacted by that experience for sure.
00:17:52.567 --> 00:17:58.336
And so, even at that time, there was a lot of flexibility for those students that were still in the K through 12 environment.
00:17:58.336 --> 00:18:08.136
There was a lot of flexibility that was embedded into when assignments were due, maybe they didn't have to turn things in until the end of the quarter, until the end of the year.
00:18:08.366 --> 00:18:12.017
A lot more flexibility with how knowledge was demonstrated, those sorts of things.
00:18:12.017 --> 00:18:23.007
And so especially in those couple of years post-COVID, there was definitely students that were surprised coming into college that that level of flexibility wasn't also here.
00:18:23.277 --> 00:18:23.696
Yeah.
00:18:24.146 --> 00:18:28.596
And I think you brought up a great point that during COVID, K through 12 did the best they could.
00:18:28.977 --> 00:18:30.656
George Mason did the best they could, right?
00:18:30.666 --> 00:18:32.186
In switching modality and...
00:18:32.186 --> 00:18:42.916
But I will say George Mason came back a lot quicker to what the norm was, I'm putting my hands up in quotations, prior to what we were before COVID.
00:18:42.916 --> 00:18:48.977
In K through 12, they are still working on changing some of their policies and procedures that they created during COVID.
00:18:49.114 --> 00:18:57.263
I was just talking to a colleague who has a child in high school, and they could still redo as many exams as they want to get the best grade.
00:18:57.683 --> 00:19:01.354
And that's not something that majority of faculty do here, right?
00:19:01.354 --> 00:19:03.163
It's kind of a one chance thing.
00:19:03.614 --> 00:19:10.513
And so students don't understand that there's a difference coming from high school to college.
00:19:10.844 --> 00:19:44.243
I will say one thing that Disability Services does, and we've always done, for 15-plus years, is that because accommodations are so different between K through 12 and college, we often are out at our local schools presenting to juniors and seniors of the differences to hopefully set them up for success when they come here of, like, if you have a certain accommodation in high school and you're a sophomore right now, maybe you wanna talk about how can we adjust that to be more on track,'cause you're not gonna get that in college.
00:19:44.693 --> 00:19:48.273
And so we do go to high schools, and we do present to families.
00:19:48.544 --> 00:19:50.804
I also think that the laws are different.
00:19:50.814 --> 00:19:55.371
So in high school, in K through 12, it's about success.
00:19:55.391 --> 00:19:58.421
What accommodations can we give you to be successful?
00:19:58.871 --> 00:20:01.490
And in college, it's about access.
00:20:01.790 --> 00:20:05.270
So what do you need to have access to your education?
00:20:05.401 --> 00:20:14.151
So those are very different laws that we're working with, and we have to educate and provide that information to families,'cause it is a change.
00:20:14.596 --> 00:20:15.247
Absolutely.
00:20:15.267 --> 00:20:27.557
And the purpose for us as we're especially meeting with students, to determine accommodations, our role, like, we're not determining accommodations, to provide that degree of flexibility that they're used to, right?
00:20:27.557 --> 00:20:34.616
So not only are students not going to have that, as part of their course experience because no, there are due dates, there are deadlines.
00:20:34.797 --> 00:20:37.757
You're not gonna have just unlimited times to be able to take things.
00:20:38.017 --> 00:20:46.826
Accommodations aren't intended to do that for the student, so it's not like we would say,"Yes, the student can just take the test as many times until they get the grade that they want." Like, no.
00:20:46.836 --> 00:20:48.987
That's also not what we're gonna be doing.
00:20:49.237 --> 00:20:58.916
It's truly about equal access as compared to their disabled peers, not for them to have a completely different experience as compared to their non-disabled peers.
00:20:59.838 --> 00:21:19.362
That's incredibly helpful, I think, for us to remember and think about from the student's side the changes that they experience as they come to Mason, even if they're very experienced in managing their own accommodations and working within their disability, to know as a faculty member how much of a transition it really is for students.
00:21:20.624 --> 00:21:28.588
Is there anything that we haven't yet talked about that I have not asked about that you think would be really helpful for the Mason community to know?
00:21:29.236 --> 00:21:33.145
I think we talked through a lot of things which is great.
00:21:33.476 --> 00:21:38.596
I don't think I have anything additional, but just the importance of we are here to partner with you.
00:21:38.596 --> 00:21:40.506
We wanna partner with you.
00:21:40.925 --> 00:21:45.246
We do look at each other as colleagues and not that it's us against you.
00:21:45.246 --> 00:21:46.826
We are here as one.
00:21:47.276 --> 00:21:51.596
And so please reach out to us, whether that's individually on a certain situation.
00:21:51.895 --> 00:21:57.576
We consult all the time with faculty, like,"There's something happened in my classroom, some behavior.
00:21:57.996 --> 00:21:59.046
Help me," right?
00:21:59.046 --> 00:22:03.226
We'll give you tips and tricks of maybe you can try these types of things to work with the student.
00:22:03.645 --> 00:22:04.705
We're here for you.
00:22:04.756 --> 00:22:05.996
We're not just here for the student.
00:22:05.996 --> 00:22:08.965
We're really here to brainstorm with you and kinda work through things.
00:22:09.085 --> 00:22:09.826
Thank you so much.
00:22:09.827 --> 00:22:12.757
This has been absolutely very, very helpful.
00:22:12.790 --> 00:22:34.991
And I think there's just a really clear keystone concept for this episode that accessibility really is a partnership, and that while there are certainly required elements to accommodations, it's not something that the student or the faculty member are navigating alone, and that keeping those open lines of communication with disability services is just a really important part of that.
00:22:35.718 --> 00:22:38.834
I thank you both so much for sharing your input and your expertise.
00:22:38.836 --> 00:22:41.031
It's been really wonderful to talk with you.
00:22:41.432 --> 00:22:42.460
Thanks so much for having us.
00:22:42.556 --> 00:22:43.445
This was wonderful.
00:22:43.729 --> 00:22:48.469
Yeah, this was a great opportunity, and we hope folks will listen and reach out to us.
00:22:48.469 --> 00:22:49.719
We wanna build more partners.
00:22:49.989 --> 00:22:51.528
So this is great, so thank you for this.
00:22:52.067 --> 00:23:07.396
I'm happy to continue having these sorts of impactful conversations with our listeners, so I hope that everyone listening will check out our new episodes as we post every two weeks during the spring and fall semesters, and I encourage you to subscribe and listen on our website or anywhere you get your podcasts.
00:23:07.753 --> 00:23:14.259
You can visit our website at stearnscenter.gmu.edu for more resources and opportunities to engage with us.
00:23:14.324 --> 00:23:20.453
And I wanted to remind everyone that we do have show notes, and so we'll have some links and some information from Naomi and Jamilah in there.
00:23:20.713 --> 00:23:22.578
We also will have a listener survey.
00:23:22.633 --> 00:23:27.977
We're hoping to learn more about our listeners, and so if you can complete our listener survey, that would be really helpful.
00:23:28.213 --> 00:23:32.535
And I can't wait to share our next episode with you from Keystone Concepts in Teaching.
