Students’ ability to learn depends not only on what they know, but also on their ability to navigate frustration, uncertainty, feedback, and other emotional aspects of the learning process. In this two-session workshop, participants will explore how the design of course assignments can either encourage learning or create unnecessary emotional barriers to it, and develop concrete strategies for assignment design that help students direct their emotional resources toward successful learning rather than avoidable frustration.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) calls a student’s ability to navigate the emotional aspects of learning their emotional capacity. We will use three UDL Emotional Capacity considerations as a framework for understanding how assignment design can support or hinder student emotional capacity (by removing emotional barriers or introducing unnecessary ones, respectively), and as a guide for intentionally designing assignments that reduce common sources of frustration.
This workshop utilizes an object-based teaching and learning approach, allowing participants to engage with and learn directly from assignments from a wide range of disciplines. In the first session, participants will use authentic assignments as shared objects for observation, analysis, and discussion to uncover assumptions they may hold about students’ emotional capacity before connecting those observations and assumptions to the UDL framework and UDL informed assignment design strategies. At the end of this session participants will begin to redesign an assignment relevant to their discipline by using at least one of the assignment design strategies discussed in the session. In the second session, participants will explore action-oriented feedback as a tool for maintaining motivation and promoting growth, then participate in a structured peer-review process to refine their assignment revisions. Participants will leave with a deeper understanding of how assignment design influences students’ emotional experiences and concrete strategies for designing assignments that better support the emotional needs of learners. By the end of this workshop, participants will be prepared to:
Discuss concrete strategies for promoting student emotional capacity through incorporating UDL considerations 8.5, and 9.1-3 in assignment design.
Design or revise an assignment to promote student emotional capacity through the incorporation of one or more of the UDL emotional capacity considerations.
Instructors
Lyla Hestand, The Ohio State University
Erin Mercurio, The Ohio State University
Workshop Schedule
This two-part online workshop meets in Zoom on Monday, October 19th and 26th at 8-10pm Gulf / 12-2pm Eastern / 11am-1pm Central / 9-11am Pacific/Arizona.
Audience
While every discipline has their own norms and conventions, the CAST UDL Guidelines – including the Emotional Capacity considerations we will focus on – are designed to be applicable regardless of domain. Emotional barriers to learning and strategies for circumventing them do not depend upon content. All graduate students are invited to attend, regardless of discipline or teaching experience.
This workshop is available to the Northwestern community through the University's affiliation with the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning.
Cost: free
Kate Flom Derrick
(847) 491-3106
Email