On October 4th, our team (sans our wonderful students, whose selection will be publicly announced soon!) met on campus to explore the resources already available at LaGuardia and connect the dots between our various, inter-departmental goals, needs, and skills.

Having faculty and staff in the room from as diverse a spread as Health Science, Theatre, the library, IT, and the Office for Students with Disabilities helped us gather an abundance of information, all by using the principles of inclusive design to get us there.

Creating and representing information verbally, visually, kinesthetically, and in written form allowed us to model, in our own meeting, some classroom practices that allow as students to latch onto the way they learn best while also practicing other kinds of skills.

We split into groups and discussed six questions; as groups, we wrote the ideas down and taped them to different sections of the room walls. Each section corresponded to a different question. Examining the gallery after our group discussions allowed time for social decompression/alone time, individual processing, and reading what other groups had come up with. We then synthesized the information in a very generative group discussion.

Below, I have compiled the questions and the notes we all took to start answering them. Please feel free to hop into the comments to add ideas and questions!

What resources can you offer to support and expand inclusive design at the college?

• Increase education about already-available tech access
• Increase education about accessibility features of Windows 10
• Increase education about using built-in accessible features of smart classrooms
• Distribute PDFs on how to make documents accessible (with reminder that you only need to learn how to do this once)
• Design a library website that all students can use equally
• Constructing a UDL-design syllabus template

How can you help with the student survey this fall?

• Promotion through the library website and social media
• Online via Blackboard
• FYS
• Can send to any group/sample of any group of students
• Can make it available in study halls and library open area (on the desktops)
• Offer freebies (“a chance of winning…” for filling out survey)
• Department meeting announcements

How do we build the CUNY network for inclusive design?

• CUNY CTL Council
• Present at CUNY IT Conference
• CUNY Accessibility Conference
• Teach@CUNY Day
• CUNY-wide library listservs
• CUNY dis/ability listserv
• Populate CUNY Commons site (here!) and form public group on Commons (forthcoming!)
• Invite Queensborough, Lehman, to show us some UDL practices
• Cross-CUNY workshops
• UDL toolkit with syllabi template
• UDL certification for educators (professional development, certified in UDL practices after 4 seminars, for example)

How can we promote/implement Accessibility 101 — UDL for educators?

• Framing it as Decolonizing the Classroom rather than Accessibility 101
• Enlist faculty to run educational/enrichment opportunities, partnered with experts from outside the college
• Present information as a talk/sharing research rather than a workshop per se
• Citing work toward these goals already underway at other campuses
• Tying our work to retention and graduation rates
• Host student-led panels about barriers to learning
• Branding — make UDL something people have heard of and are curious about
• Connect our goals with LGCC competencies, thinking through how to expand concepts with other class activities
• Open up pedagogical practices
• Create a culture of continual learning
• Remind people that many faculty already are using these techniques
• Demonstrate possibilities for faculty
• Reframing and translating what this is (e.g. decolonizing practices)
• Creating concept maps that transcend and include all elements within/across different professional development opportunities

What do YOU really need to be effective in cultivating inclusive design at the college? 

• Student feedback and input
• Interdisciplinary partners
• Student usability study of website
• Activity sharepoints/space for faculty exchange [of pedagogical ideas, struggles, practices]
• Supportive systems for encouragement of faculty around skills and knowledge already within each of us
• Solid theoretical frameworks
• Internal systems to assist in design/activities (eg. closed captioning creation)
• Finding ways of sharing the burden/raising people’s consciousness