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How You Can Reach All Students Not A Few With Ginger Dewey
Hello everyone! My name is Ladek and my guest for this episode is Ginger Dewey. Ginger taught for 38 years in K-12 and Higher Ed, with most of her experience in the latter. When she retired, she started working for ReadSpeaker doing what she loves: faculty training.
In this ‘leave-no-one-out’ conversation, Ginger and I discuss
00:00 › Start
3:51 › The Real Problem—What the real problem was that Ginger identified during her career and why modifying your teaching to reach all students is so important?
14:07 › Tactics—Ginger discusses whether or not she recommends using the same tactics for adult learners in a college classroom or a corporate setting as she would for younger learners?
21:30 › Scalable, Individualized Attention—Ginger describes how her process for giving each individual attention is scalable. And, how much extra administration does this process present for someone who is designing, learning, and then delivering learning?
33:15 › Ginger’s Challenge Lasagna—We end with Ginger laying out her top three challenges for reaching every learner and immediate next steps for that instructors and designers.
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This is the eLearn podcast. If you're passionate about the future of learning, you're in the right place. The expert guests on this show provide insights into the latest strategies, practices,
and technologies for creating killer online learning outcomes. My name's Ladek, and I'm your host from OpenLMS. The eLearn podcast is sponsored by eLearn Magazine,
your go -to resource for all things online learning. Click -by -click how -to articles, the latest in EdTech, spotlight on successful outcomes and trends in the marketplace. Subscribe today and never miss a post at eLearnMagazine .com and OpenLMS,
a company leveraging open -source software to deliver effective, customized, and engaging learning experiences for schools, universities, companies, and governments around the world since 2005.
Learn more at OpenLMS .net. Hello everyone, my name's Ladek, and my guest for this episode is Ginger Dewey. Ginger taught for 38 years in K -12 in higher ed,
with most of her experience in higher ed. When she retired, she started working for Readspeaker, doing what she loves, which is faculty training. In this leave -no -one -out conversation,
Ginger and I discuss what the real problem was that Ginger identified during her career and why modifying your teaching to reach all students is so important. Ginger discusses whether or not she recommends using the same tactics for adult learners in a college classroom or a corporate setting as she would for younger learners.
Ginger then describes how her process for giving each individual student attention, how that process is scalable, and how much extra administration this process presents for someone who's designing,
learning, and then delivering it in a classroom. We then end with Ginger laying out her top three challenges for reaching every learner and immediate next steps for those instructors and designers.
And remember, we record this podcast live so that we can interact with you, our listeners, in real time. So come over and join the fun every week on LinkedIn, on Facebook, or YouTube. And in order to do that, just come over to elernmagazine .com and subscribe.
Now, I give you Ginger Dewey. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Elern Podcast. My name's Ladak as you've heard now several times, and I'm with OpenLMS. But you know what?
This show is not about me. I'm very, very excited to have my guest here today, Miss Jinger Dewey. How are you today, Jinger? I'm doing fine, and you? I am well. Thank you very much. Where do we find you sitting in the world?
I am in South Carolina in a little town called Sharon, which does not even have a stoplight. I'm just going to let that hang there for a second.
I live in Mexico City, Mexico, that has just 22 million people. We have lots and lots and lots of stoplights. So that is a very different living experience than what I have right now.
That's fantastic. I'm sorry. That just kind of totally blows my mind. Even though I love that, right? And you're with a company called ReadSpeaker. Why don't you give us the 60,
90 seconds on who you are, what you do, where you come from, and in what your focus is. All right. I worked in the education industry for about 38 years.
I did four years in eighth grade general math, decided I could not handle the hormones at that age group. So I moved to college.
Still had hormones, but a whole different set. So I stayed there. There was no place else to run to. I taught math. And the last 10 years,
I was also our learning management system admin. I was over faculty training. I wore a whole lot of hats. And the last three or four years,
I was over college success classes. So that's my background in a snapshot. And then the last five years, I've been with ReadSpeaker once I retired from teaching.
And just give us what's for people who've never heard of ReadSpeaker, what is like, you know, what's the tagline there? What's the elevator pitch? We are a text to speech company that offers more than text to speech.
We also offer accessibility tools within our players. Fantastic. Well, that, that was a heck of an elevator speech right on. So today,
you know, we wanted to answer the question of how do you make sure that your teaching, your materials, your, whatever you're putting out there in the world is reaching all students and not just a few.
I mean, that's, that's your question that you created. And I found it, I find it really, really intriguing. Because I don't think there's anybody who's showing up to the podcast today, or you know, if you're listening in the future, who would say, Hey,
you know what, I'm going to design some learning that's only going to take care of part of the class. So paint the picture for me. What's, what's the real problem here that you've seen over your career?
And why is it important? Well, first off, I believe everyone should have an equal opportunity to learn. And I mean, everyone says that,
but they don't necessarily do that. I can remember when I would personally would go to a copier, scan something and put it in a course.
Guess what? People couldn't read it because it was an image. And you do it without thinking. So the part about making it available to everyone requires us to think before we do.
And you should always do that. But I don't know about you. I leap a lot of times before I think. So this is a way to reprogram yourself to think first and then leap.
And in doing that, there are so many easy ways to make things accessible. It's not hard, but it's important. And the other thing that I learned over 38 years of working with all kinds of students,
I worked with those that were in special education when they were in my eighth grade class. They were working on like a second grade level, some of them. We went over multiplication tables for a very long time and we did not succeed much,
but we recited them. That's what. As I taught, I learned that if I put a calculator in that kid's hand, instead of trying to get them to memorize something,
they could go further. Because they knew what to do, they just didn't have the ability to memorize concepts.
Sure. And when I got on the college level, one of the courses we taught was very similar to our eighth grade advanced math. And it was our math that we taught for our trades courses,
such as electrical, plumbing, HVAC, those types. They don't need algebra. They need basic proportions and things like that.
So it was very much a much lower level math that was very practical to their situations. And again, I had students who did no multiplication tables.
So put a calculator in their hand. That was giving them the access. And I worked with students that I believe the politically correct name is visually challenged,
but they had no site. I worked with students that were deaf and those with cochlear ear implants. I worked with students that were ADHD,
ADD. You name the disability. I had them in my class in the process of those 38 years. And I thoroughly enjoyed working with them because they made me think,
how can I reach that student in a way that I haven't been doing before? And what I found out is that as I reached them through whatever method they needed,
other students called on to it. They might not have voiced, I'm not getting this visually. I'm not getting this through audio.
I need to do this. So I started incorporating activities within all my classes, even my online asynchronous classes had activities they had to do.
In statistics, which I taught a lot of, we did an experiment at the beginning of each unit. We threw frisbees, we flew airplanes,
we tossed gummy bears, we did all kinds of things. And I know that's classic to do in a traditional class. But when you do it in an online class, I was amazed at how the students performed the activity.
I remember one gentleman, he challenged his kids to see who could throw the airplane further, him or one of them.
He ended up doing their chores for two weeks because that was the internal bet. Both of them out distanced his, but they had fly the plane four times and write down their scores and then enter it on a discussion board.
And then we took that data and used it for that unit. But that allowed them the tactile piece that some students needed.
And when you start working with students that learn differently from you, and I learned different from everyone in my family, I am blessed with an ADHD husband,
ADD daughter, and ADHD son. I'm the one who learns differently. And I had to learn how to help them. And some of the things that we did to help the kids when they were little was writing in grits on a cookie sheet.
I put grits on it and they could feel it as they were doing it. - Hi there. I'm sorry to break into the show right now, but if you're enjoying this show, if you are challenged, if you're inspired,
if you're learning something, if you think that you're gonna be able to get something out of this to put into your practice, do me a quick favor, pause right now and just hit subscribe on your podcast player right now. It doesn't matter which one, just hit subscribe,
because that way it'll make sure that you never miss an episode in the future. Thanks. Now, back to the show. For anybody who doesn't know, to explain it, I'm sure that many people know what have heard of grits,
but what are grits? - Grits is a southern thing. Think of it like sand, except it's edible. (both laughing) - That does,
I'm gonna leave that right there. I'm gonna go ahead and put it where it is. - They're very good, even though my husband, who is from the North, disagrees with that fact. I thoroughly enjoy them on a cold winter morning.
Put a little bacon in it, put a little butter in it, and you got a perfect meal. - Sounds delicious. - It's kinda like how oatmeal is, but it's ground up real fine. - Okay. - Okay,
but anyhow, you can feel as you are writing in the grits. That was one thing. Another thing was using something simple, like a page mask, cut a hole in a sheet of paper.
Another thing that I did with my kids was I took their book, 'cause we didn't have it electronically, and I laid it down inside a box.
You would wrap up a shirt in for Christmas. - Okay, sure. And when they would look down at the box, they were able to read it, and they didn't get distracted because their eyes were pointed down,
and they weren't having what we call the squirrel effect, because both kids would go off in different ways. My kids are now adults, my son's a marine sergeant,
and my daughter is a civil engineer, so they got where they needed to be, and they excel at their jobs, but they learned differently. And this happens in your classroom,
and you don't know it's happening. Until you ask the question, "How do you learn best?" And I always threw out the question,
first day of class, "Okay, it's Christmas Eve, or I should say Christmas morning, 1am, you have a bicycle to put together.
How are you going to do it? Which one of these three? Are you going to grab the parts and start putting it together?
Or are you going to have someone read you the instructions as you put it together?" And I had a show of hands. Then I knew which one was most likely an auditory learner,
a tactile learner, or a visual learner, just instantly. That's going to give you, it's not the full test by any means, but it gives you the primary way they learn.
Then as you're presenting your material, keep that in mind. You might have two classes, I taught math, so I'm going to say math 101, okay? You could have two classes,
one group's primarily visual, one group's primarily tactile. So you teach them differently, and you have to prepare for that.
And in preparing for it, you've got got to think outside the box. I used to say, "Okay, if I only have my eyes, how can I do this?" Right.
And then I would put a blindfold on and say, "I only have my ears. How do I do this?" And for the tactile, I'd leave the blindfold on.
I'd have someone saying it what I was going to do, but I had to do it by hand. That gave me the ability to think like that type of learner.
And I know that's not the ideal way to do it, but that's what worked for me. I am visual tactile. Those are my learning styles. Auditory is my worst learning style,
yet I work for a text -to -speech company. Just saying. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. But you have to think like your students then.
And if I couldn't get it across to the students, I'd ask one of their classmates, "Who else is a tactile learner if it was a student that I'd marked as tactile?" And I might say,
"How do you explain this?" Come up here and show me. How do you explain this? Or virtually, let's get on the discussion board. How do you explain this? And you know something?
That helps. Sure. So as you're working with adult learners, would you use the same tactics or are these the same tactics that you would use in like a college classroom or a corporate setting as well?
I use just about all the tactics with both groups. I didn't use the grits with the adults, you know,
that was at home. Sure. Shirt box was at home because by the time I started working with adults, there were electronic tools that did this. Mm -hmm. They're in their thirties now.
When my kids were young, you didn't have electronic tools. I mean, stop and think about it. They were in middle school before online learning became prevalent.
Sure. Mm -hmm. So they weren't there. In fact, my kids were born after CDs came to life, which was 1980. Wow. You know,
when you're working with a kid now, a student now that's young, you have more things you can use with them. As an adult,
you have those same things, but you've got to remember some of those adults go back to CDs and eight track tapes. So think about things they can relate to.
One of the things that I remember the most was I was teaching two students, one which was wheelchair bound, and she was also,
she wasn't a quadriplegic, but she was pretty close to it. She had some motion on one hand, but no motion on the other hand. And a student who was totally blind and had been blind since she was very young,
like one, two years old, and she was in her early 20s. And these two students taught me so much about teaching and learning because they paired up as a duo.
And when you've got a student who can't see and a student who can't write, working as a duo in a classroom,
you know, you're really challenged. Sure. Well, we set up private appointments in my office so that that they could, number one,
my blind student could use her braille typewriter and it wasn't disturbing the rest of the class. And my student who couldn't write,
I made the notes as I was dictating them to the other student so that she could have them. And they also worked together as a pair saying, "Wait a minute,
I don't understand so -and -so." Now they maybe didn't feel that comfortable in class saying it, but they felt comfortable enough with me. Sure. At the end of the first term I had with my blind student,
she had me reading braille. She turned in her homework in braille and I'd have to get someone to translate it so she said, "You're gonna learn. If I have to learn,
you're gonna learn." I said, "Okay, I'm gang. If you can teach me how to read braille, I can teach you how to do college algebra." Another part of college algebra was you had to do grass.
Now stop and think about this. A graph is purely visual. You're finding points, you're looking at reflections, everything is visual,
but we had to make it tactile. Well, there is a graph board you can purchase. It's about 125 bucks 20 years ago.
No telling what it is now. Probably $1 ,000 the way prices have gone up. Just look at your grocery bill. That had raised dots for all the points that would be on a graph and it had a raised grid for the X and Y axis.
Well, trouble was they were backordered for nine, ten months. So that one gonna help. So I went out to my local Wally World and I purchased a small whiteboard,
pushpins, and several different weights of yarn. And I made a graph board on that white board by putting in the pushpins at,
I think I used three -quarter inch grid or an inch grid, something like that. And I took one weight of yarn and made the X and Y axis. And I told her how to find points on the grid and wrap yarn around the pushpins.
She was able to do all of it. She was able to explain to me what a reflection was, explain to me how a graph is going to move with certain movements,
certain changes in the equation. She was able to have one graph there and give me a secondary graph and explain the difference between them by using that board.
So she was learning with tactile, even though that was not her primary sense, which was hearing. So things like that you have to think totally outside the box.
If you think inside the box, well, this student can't do it, that's not going to work. You've got to find a way to make it work. And talking to the student is the first step.
Ask them what they think. Sure. And they will give you an answer. I found that toward the tail end of my teaching,
I lived outside the box more than I lived inside the box. Because my students had taught me, don't think normal.
Think differently. But it sounds like that maybe became your normal, yes? It did. It did. And I would have other people ask me, what made you think of that?
Well, it was because that's the way my students taught me to teach. Sure. Because that's what they needed. And there is no one shoe fits all.
There is no perfect way to get there. the way I got there was purely by asking them questions I wanted to change me So the way to change me was to find out what I had to do to reach them But I wanted a high success rate in all my classes.
I Didn't want to be known as the person who flunk everybody Yeah, I don't I don't think any any teacher wants that what do you think like where does this fit in?
you know, I guess today's world of efficiencies and You know, I guess we're we have a world where we're kind of moving or there's a desire for hyper personalization as you're talking about At the same time we're looking for hyper productivity and you know ease of you know Easing you know,
you're getting rid of the friction to you know to get to the goal those kinds of things is this Something that you are, you know your process your accommodation for each individual Is that something where you are you would counsel like look we need sort of individual pass for everyone and they need to kind of Have their own timeframes or how does that fit in with a more regular curriculum for both adults or or or
kids? Design with difference in mind Universal design for learning if you design with that in mind quality matters rubric You're hitting all those milestones those check marks Then the students going to find the path that they need because you've opened those paths to them If you design the way you learn you've closed out two groups of learning If you design with universal design for learning methodology or quality matters
checklist or whatever checklist you want to use then then you've opened the door for the other types of learners. They are no longer hidden behind walls that you're not reaching.
And let's say you have a class that's 30 % of each learning type. Okay? Now, if you design like for me, I would design for visual if I designed for my web learning.
Well, I've already got a 60 % failure rate. But if I use universal design for learning, and I open up ways for them to employ tactile ways for them to employ audio,
then I am now starting off with a 0 % failure rate. I'm getting the ability, giving the ability for all those students to get there.
For instance, if you're doing an online class, if you use short videos, like one minute videos of how to work a particular type of problem or how to solve a particular scenario or whatever,
you use that and you use a written version of it also. You've got two groups right there.
Sure, tactile student can then try to emulate that by doing because then you ask a discussion question of what would you now do with this?
That's bringing in your tactile group, letting them try. Instead of saying, here's the scenario, figure it out. What's right? What's wrong?
Here's the math problem, figure it out. Here's the word problem, figure it out. Instead, you've presented a video which is visual and hearing.
You've presented the written, and then you've presented the question in a way that all groups can answer it. I used to accept videos as answers,
audio where they talked me through it, MP3s, and upload a file when they wrote it out. All of that was fine.
I didn't say you had to write on the worksheet. If I had, then someone who had difficulty writing was automatically at a disadvantage.
Think about the people that have-- and I'll mispronounce this, so I'm going to apologize before I say it. If I wrote my alga, I think it's-- Sure.
They have difficulty writing if it's flaring. Of course, of course, yeah. Well, why not let them do an MP3? How much extra administration does this present for someone who's designing learning and then delivering learning?
Does it-- I guess that's the question, right? How much am I changing my normal teaching practice or my normal design practice to accommodate? Or does this just become normal?
I don't think you're changing much. You're combining what you would do in the old -fashioned correspondence course with what you do in class. Yes. You're combining those two,
because the old -fashioned correspondence course was purely visual. And when you think about if you're in front of a group, you might be saying something, but you're writing at the same time.
So you've got your audio and your visual going together. The students are writing, feeling what they're writing. So they are participating in it with tactile,
if that's how they need it. If you are face -to -face, allow students to record you. I mean,
I'm one of these and I know there's going to be professors out there that say no, my intellect is my intellect and someone else shouldn't have the rights to it.
However, I didn't have a problem with the student tape recording me. Yes, it was back when it was cassette tapes. It wasn't until the end of my teaching career when they could do it with a voice recorder on their cell phone.
But they then can go back and review. They can go back and get what they needed to get.
And all you're doing is you're allowing them to move forward with their learning instead of hampering them. So some of it is looking at, are you really going to publish this material?
If you're going to publish it, that's one thing. But if you're not going to publish, what's wrong with recording? What's wrong with doing little short clips?
Have your class videotaped and then have someone break it up into clips and you add the clips in. You know, if you do that several times during a semester, after two or three semesters,
you've got the primary things. Sure, yeah. It sounds like an opportunity to have someone create content for you. I mean, at the end of the day, if I'm flipping the classroom,
it sounds like a real opportunity for the students to start building those clips for you. Especially if we're talking about some sort of intellectual property type of piece, then oftentimes the hardest part about that is actually creating the content around it to put your message on.
So that's interesting. And getting a student to sign off saying, yes, you can use this as an example. Easy peasy.
All right. You've got the MP4, the MP3. Use it. If it's one you really like. Have your teaching and learning center video your class,
then bust it up into short pieces of which pieces you want to put in a LMS for a learning topic,
because you're not going to want them to sit through a 60 -minute lecture. They aren't. Keep it simple. Keep it short. And they'll watch it.
If you go over five minutes, your students only watched three. If you go over four minutes, they probably watch two.
Magic time frame is in between two and three minutes. They'll stick with you that long, but after that they're not. So you've got to be very concise when you're doing it.
Otherwise you have lost them. I used to do videos that were 30 minutes, but I'd tell them you're going to watch two minutes pause and do something,
then watch the next two. I should have busted it into two minute videos. That was me being not as smart as I am now about things as I was then.
I grew from that point, but think about your student's attention span. Everyone is some form of ADD in this day and age because of video games.
If you play a video game, you've got movement all around you and your attention is going all over the place. Well, unfortunately, that follows follows you in everything else. Sure.
So your attention spans are a lot shorter than they used to be. Used to be that a 20 -minute video was no big deal. Now 20 -minute videos would be laughed out because no one's going to sit there and watch the whole thing.
I'm finding I can't even watch TV now without doing something else. Because all the work that I do on screen has gotten me to the point to where maybe I'm joining the rest of my family and becoming ADD.
Maybe that's it. But I am no longer able to only do one thing at a time. I have to multitask. And people say you can't multitask and I would disagree with you.
I can crochet, I can knit, I can embroider as well as listen and watch TV. Yes, I do pause and look up, but I'm mostly listening.
I might have to listen to the program four times to hear everything. That doesn't bother me. I'm getting my other stuff done while I'm doing it. Because that's something that you have to take into consideration when you think about your students.
You have to stop and think, what are they trying to do at the same time? Sure. So how can I make this concise to the point, not throw in a whole lot of red herrings everywhere,
or I used to call it fluff. Don't put in so much fluff that they can't find the important stuff. Let them find the important aspects and move forward.
And then if you need to use some fluff so that they start digging for those aspects, do so later, but don't start them like that because you're setting them up for failure.
You've got to set them up for success. So, so riddle me this. And incidentally, as as you've been talking just there for a few seconds there, one of our listeners,
her name is Ann Mustin came on and she said, she hasn't been able to attend the lecture for a long while challenge. So this is a good topic and one that's important particularly because there isn't enough training. We need to use all our skills to include everyone.
Well, thank you very much for that, Ann. I really appreciate it. I want I want to offer you the opportunity, Ginger, to talk about, you know, if most of the people that listen to this podcast are either in the design or the delivery,
you know, portion of of education. What are those, you know, maybe top three challenges that you find? Because obviously you've been doing this for so long.
It just it's a no brainer. It's obvious, you know, you you walk into a situation, education situation, and this is something you've been doing for a long time. Walk me through them. Maybe those top three challenges. Is it is it time? Is it complexity?
Is it I don't know which tool to use, you know, whatever. And how do you overcome those lack of technology knowledge? I'm afraid of technology.
Okay, that's the first thing I would hear from my instructors. I don't know how to do this. So I'm afraid. They don't necessarily use the word afraid, but you can feel it in the room when they're talking.
Because they are suddenly challenged. That was the number one thing. So as a designer, and I did instructional design, as a designer,
my first thing was, don't worry about that. I'll handle that piece, the technology piece. Here's what I need from you.
That took the wall down between the designer and the faculty member. Okay, because you gotta remember,
faculty, regardless of if they're in K 12, technical or community college, college or university, no matter where they are their expertise is teaching it is not technology and technology can be frightening to those that are not adept with it and they suddenly like why do I need to do this for one student well you're not doing it for one student it's one student who has identified but how many didn't identify so taking
that wall down and saying it's okay I'll handle the technology I just need you to be the subject matter expert and give me the pieces I need and then I can give you a prototype and you tell me if there's anything wrong in that prototype that was the biggest challenge okay like a biggest challenge was to get the instructor to realize when they're setting up their students for failure instead of success that's a that's
a that's a baited question or a baited statement there yes it is and I used to notoriously ask for which classes had the biggest failure rates and then I would befriend the instructor and I would start saying well how someone's I going today mm -hmm you said last week it was just a disaster what how was it today and get that conversation going once that conversation starts then you can make the inroads into making
helping them make changes that's going to help them and a lot of times they'll say well I never thought of that interesting so yeah. - So that is a big challenge because so many instructors will set their students up for failure,
not realizing they have done that because they're teaching the way they learn. Not the way all their students learn.
Just like I said before, if I taught the way I learn, I'm shutting out my audio and my tactile students. So I've got to incorporate them.
One of the things that we did at the college where I worked was we developed a check sheet of everything that had to be in an online course. And it had to meet the approvals of the department chair for the subject matter and the teaching and learning center for the design.
And if it didn't meet those, it didn't go live. And we'd have people saying, "But I've got students signed up for this "and the course starts in three weeks." Well,
what we're gonna do? We're gonna fix it. Here's how we're gonna fix it. Here are the steps you missed. So let's talk about those steps and you give me the information and we'll see if we can't come up with a way to get that incorporated so we can get it checked off.
Now, a lot of the accommodations that students need are tools that Reed Speaker and other text -to -speech companies have.
And by employing them, you're getting a lot of the check marks you need, such as you need the ability to have a page mask so the students can isolate things.
That is when you look at your universal design to learning and YKG 2 .0, 2 .1, 2 .2, when you look at your quality matters in it,
you'll see that there is what the instructor has to provide and what the student needs and they're not necessarily the same thing.
The instructor is providing the material but the student access has to be there also. Sure. So it's the meeting of those two minds and when you're working with an instructor to suddenly pull in something,
sometimes you have to find ways around it. For instance, if I was working with welding, just pull something that you stop and think that is a very tactile core.
100%. But you have students in there that are not tactile. Give them a video of a simulation so they can watch it and see what to do so that when they're tactile,
they can emulate what was in that video. They might have to watch that video 50 times before they try it once. But then they know what they need to do to lay that root well down right and not have a pocket in it.
That could cause a break. When you're working with a student who is doing blueprints, have a finished blueprint for them to look at but also have the stages of that blueprint,
like the initial drawing. Then when you add in the next stage of it, maybe electrical, then you add in the plumbing. Each stage so they can see,
I'm not trying to put it in all at once. I'm putting it in layers. That helps them as they're doing their CAD because if they go in there and they try to put all of it at once,
they're going to have a disaster on their hands. When you're teaching literature, stop and think about the student who's tactile.
Well, you just read a beautiful Wuthering Heights. Think about the students that's tactile and let them illustrate something from Wuthering Heights and explain why that was so striking to them instead of just writing an essay on it.
It's the opportunity for the student to present the material they learned in the way they best can describe it.
I had the fortune slash misfortune of taking a graduate course in math, complex variable analysis, the catalog nor the instructor mentioned that you needed to have taken real analysis before taking complex variable analysis.
I had not taken real analysis. We started a class with like 25 people in it. We finished the class with two people in it. I was just going to say that class sounds like it got whittled down pretty fast.
Very fast. Since I was taking it and my college was paying for me to take it, I had to stay in it. The other person who stayed in it was in the same position as me.
At the end of it, the president of the college had come to me and talked to me. He and I were friends and he said, "I know you're struggling. When you get done with your final exam,
turn the paper over and write down everything you learned in the way you need to write it." Well, I wrote it all out.
I ended up passing the class. I was passed with a 79, one point away from that B,
but I was not going to repeat the course. But the professor that taught the course told me afterwards he never would have thought of some of the theorems the way I presented them on the back of that paper.
Sure, of course. Because that one, the way he thought of it. I want to offer, again, Anne Mustin has once again chimed in here. She's listening to us and she says,
"One of the biggest challenges that she finds is convincing students that they can achieve but at their own pace." What she's found is that they have to stop comparing themselves with other students as long as they get there.
I want to use that as an opportunity for us to tie this in a bow. I have been spellbound, Ginger. We've been here for 45 minutes. I feel like I've only asked two questions. This has been delightful.
Tie this in a bow for me in that you're one or maybe two immediate next steps for the instructor or the designer that's listening to us right now.
Is it take a deep breath and step back from your usual grind and just say, "How can I do this different?" Or is there a particular tool you recommend?
What are your key takeaways here for those individuals? My key takeaway would be step back, tell the instructor to step back and think,
relax, don't be panicked. panicked Tell your students everybody learns differently and you might not learn at the same pace as someone else But we're starting here.
We're going to end up here and you're going to get there I think about a clip out of the blind side where Miss Sue is working with Michael or and he's having trouble learning some math and She made the comment of Michael.
How big is your head? He said big. What's inside your head brains? She said, yeah, and what are they like? He said, I don't know and she said it's like a file cabinet in that file cabinet there's lots of folders and in those folders are pieces of knowledge and Anyone can access those in the order they need to That's what you have to convey to your students and I would even go as far as saying Get permission to
show that one little clip and you can probably find it on YouTube To your students at the beginning of a class So they know that they can get there and If they can get there one student can get there they can get there But you can't get there by panicking you have to step back and relax Follow the UDL principles and you'll get there Fantastic Ginger Dewey this has been a delightful conversation I unfortunately have
to bring our our time here to an end but how what's the best way for people who are interested in reaching out to you to I mean either hear your sage advice or maybe work with you. What's the best way for them to get a hold of you?
You can find me on LinkedIn as Ginger Dewey or you can email me ginger .dewey @readspeaker .com. Super cool. Well, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to walk us through essentially,
you know, what I really love about this was it's just the metaphor of the southern, you know, just sort of the southern slow pace. You know, I love that you embody that because it's not necessarily slow.
It's how do we all get there together. And I really, really appreciate you taking the time out to speak with me today. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you again for listening to the E learn podcast here from open LMS.
I just wanted to ask one more time if you enjoyed this show, if you learned something, if you were inspired, if you were challenged, if you feel like, you know, this is something you can take into your practice, please do me a favor and right now on your podcast player,
hit subscribe. That way you're never going to miss a future episode. Also, come over to elearnmagazine .com and subscribe there as well because we have tons of great information about how to create killer online learning outcomes.
Thanks.
