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The Transform your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Join Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles as they seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices.
Just online learning in general has opened so many doors to people like me, but now we need to go to the next step. It's not enough to just open the door. You have to be able to actively participate. You have to be able to thrive, not just survive. And I think that's the future of inclusive ed tech.
Jared:This is the Transform Your Teaching Podcast. The Transform Your Teaching Podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning University in Cedarville, Ohio.
Ryan:Hello, and welcome to the Transform Your Teaching Podcast. Today, Doctor. Jared Piles and Doctor. Rob McDowell chat with Amy Lomolini, the director of accessibility at Anthology. She also serves as the AECT Accessibility Committee Chair and as an adjunct instructor at Boise State University, where she received her Ed.
Ryan:D. In Educational Technology. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Ryan,
Jared:and thank you, Amy, for joining us. It's good to see you again, my friend. Although I have this giant mic stand in front of me. I trust that you're there. I can look around it.
Amy Lomellini:I see you. It's all good. Good to be here.
Jared:How have you been since we talked in October?
Amy Lomellini:Good. The AECT Convention is always a fun time, so I was glad to see you there. Glad to hear that you've graduated since and, all is good in the world.
Jared:I have. You're right. I did. I'm done now.
Amy Lomellini:Congratulations.
Jared:I think I defended the week before the conference. So I was already on a I was still on that done high at that point. So it was great.
Amy Lomellini:Very nice.
Jared:It was great. Amy also put me into a focus group on there in AACT. She encouraged me greatly to be part of a
Rob:focus What was this focus group?
Jared:I don't know if I should talk about it. Amy, can I talk about it?
Amy Lomellini:You could talk about it for sure.
Jared:Okay. Well, here's the other thing. I don't quite remember all the details of it. So let me see if I remember. So Anthology is putting together something that's competency based and it deals with artificial intelligence and generative AI in developing materials and assessments based on individual It's very personalized learning.
Rob:Personalized learning.
Jared:For a competency based kind of Did I get that right? Is that accurate? Just in time.
Amy Lomellini:Yeah. There you go. Exactly. At the convention, we were, talking with constituents, you know, people like yourself who are out here doing the thing and, trying to get feedback and see, you know, how we can inform the future of ed tech.
Jared:It was cool. I had some feedback and it was it was it was a good time. It's a good time.
Rob:Yeah. But that's that's like right in line with our conversation. Oh, I know. But it like jumps the curve.
Jared:It does. Like, seriously jumps the curve. So This isn't on topic. Well, let's talk about it anyway.
Rob:Well, it kinda is. Oh, it does. It kinda is on the topic. Alright. I mean, because we're talking about students serving the new college student.
Rob:And goodness gracious, like, when is this supposed to come out? Amy?
Amy Lomellini:You know, we have lots of different things that are in all sorts of phases of development, so you'll just have to stay tuned to find out more.
Jared:See, that's that's that's that's what she does. See, she's like, we have this great idea, but no, you can't know about it.
Amy Lomellini:You can certainly know about it. You just gotta follow the right people and channels, and we'll keep you informed. But lots of exciting things happening in this whole space in general. But to your point of welcoming the new college student, what does that look like? What is ed tech and how is it going to change?
Amy Lomellini:I think these are all the topics we're here to talk about, and especially when it comes to students with disabilities.
Rob:Well, and I think that leads into that question is that's always been something I know that before Anthology, it was Blackboard, which that goes way back for me as I I was a senior certified Blackboard trainer back in the day. You know, I've I've been aware of the accessibility options that that Anthology, which is now Anthology, you know, they brought about quite a few years back and was very impressed with them then. So where do you see it headed? Can you give us a ballpark of maybe time span? Like, where do you think things will be in the next couple of years?
Amy Lomellini:In terms of just accessibility and error?
Rob:Accessibility, the use of tech, AI specifically, probably.
Amy Lomellini:Yeah. I mean, I think we all agree that the use of tech is ubiquitous at this point, right? It is so far embedded that it's not going anywhere. And we need to make sure that our technology works for everybody. And to me, that's essential.
Amy Lomellini:And that includes people with disabilities. And by centering the perspectives of people with disabilities, you can come up with some really innovative, interesting things that'll benefit everybody. But I think the key there is that, you know, disabled people need accessible tech. And that's, you know, an ethical right. We have to be able to do that to include people.
Amy Lomellini:Like, so for example, I was taking my, or I had registered for my master's at Boise fresh out of the ICU. I was just diagnosed with a neuromuscular disease. As Jared knows, I use a wheelchair now. But at the time that that was happening, in addition to many other complex medical issues that I had, I had no idea what was happening to my body. There was no way I could call, you know, Disability Support Services or even my instructors to tell them what was going on.
Amy Lomellini:I didn't know. But the way the program was designed, the fact that it was all online, and the flexibility that was built in allowed me to go through what I was going through personally while still pursuing my degree. And if I had to show up in person to go to a class on Wednesday at 03:00, never would have happened. I would never have been able to be where I am today. So just online learning in general has opened so many doors to people like me.
Amy Lomellini:But now we need to go to the next step. It's not enough to just open the door. You have to be able to actively participate. You have to be able to thrive, not just survive. And I think that's the future of inclusive ed tech is really making it an inclusive space for everybody.
Rob:What's one of the things that you're most excited about as you as you're looking at the up and coming?
Amy Lomellini:You know, I think you mentioned AI, hot topic. Right? You gotta talk about AI.
Jared:Yep.
Amy Lomellini:For me, as a person with disabilities, AI has been game changing. Blackboard, for example, they have an AI design assistant. So what you can do is create modules based on whatever you're inputting, right? It could be your syllabus. It could be whatever content you have.
Amy Lomellini:You can, make modules from that. You have this nice organization. But the big key piece of that is that the human is always in charge. So you have to choose which modules you want, and then you go in and edit them as you see fit. But for someone like me, I don't use a mouse because my hand shakes too much.
Amy Lomellini:I have tremors. So reducing the amount of clicks, reducing the navigation. I can create rubrics. It's all like this jump off point for me, but it's still my ideas. And at Anthology, we're really big on keeping the human in control.
Amy Lomellini:We have this trustworthy AI framework, And we've kind of done the same thing with accessibility. So yes, we have Ally, which is a tool to help people with the accessibility of their content. When faculty are designing content, Ally will flag issues, and it'll tell you how to fix them. But you still have to fix them. There's no easy button.
Amy Lomellini:There's no other competitors out there are like, Hey, just push this button, everything's done for you. That can cause more problems than it fixes. So we actually had an example come to AECT next year. Hopefully this gets accepted. But we had a discussion at AECT last year where a blind colleague and I were on a panel, and we were talking about a course that had a bunch of decorative flamingos, as, you know, courses need decorative flamingos.
Jared:Oh, yeah.
Rob:Sounds like a must. You know, I will
Jared:say as an instructional designer, that is one of the things I make sure in each each of my courses is flamingos or some sort of aviary feature in some capacity. Yeah.
Rob:I think so. Yeah. Best practices for sure. Go ahead.
Amy Lomellini:Right? Best practice flamingo. No. So my blind colleague asked a very pertinent question and he said, do the flamingos matter? And so if you're using an AI tool that's going to automatically generate the alt text for you, you're going to have Flamingo, Flamingo, Flamingo, Flamingo.
Amy Lomellini:Do the flamingos matter? Maybe in this case they do. Maybe it's an aviary course. But maybe in another course they don't, right? And maybe they're decorative.
Amy Lomellini:It also can make you rethink, Do I need to put a Flamingo here? If I'm going to mark it as decorative in alt text, then what's it doing there in the first place? So I think a tool like Ally can help support faculty and bring awareness where there was not as much awareness before, and on their time schedule, which I think is really important too. So, you know, you're a wonderful instructional designer, Jared, but you can't be with a faculty member 20 fourseven.
Jared:That's correct.
Amy Lomellini:Right? So if there's any way to support them and then get them asking questions, then they come seek out the experts in the instructional designers or the librarian or whoever the support system is on campus. Get them aware, get them asking those questions and then taking action. And I think tools and the right people and resources in place is what can move that needle forward.
Jared:So you hit on it. I want to go back to it and maybe drill down a little bit more on it. You talked about using a mouse, you talked about visual. What are the common barriers that students with disabilities face when going into higher education that you've seen maybe from your own experience as a student or maybe now in your role now? What are those common barriers and how do you think faculty can address them?
Amy Lomellini:Yeah, that's a really good question. And I'm going to go slightly non techy here.
Jared:Oh my gosh.
Amy Lomellini:Bear with me. When students enter college from a high school setting or from another setting, they don't have the same support. So in high school, lot of students have IEPs, five zero four plans, professionals, parents, guardians, all of that support system helping them out. But in college, actually research has shown it surprises many students. They have to advocate for themselves.
Amy Lomellini:And that's challenging. And it's scary and it's intimidating. So just like I mentioned with my own experience, I didn't know my faculty. It was my first semester and I was in inpatient rehab learning how to walk again while taking my online course. And there was no way I could reach out to somebody.
Amy Lomellini:I didn't know what was happening, right? And to tell that kind of a story was traumatic. It was, you know, I didn't want to be treated any differently. And anybody who's disabled, they've probably had some experiences in the past where, you know, you've been treated differently, maybe pitied or sympathy that you didn't ask for. And so oftentimes when students start college, they want to leave all that behind.
Amy Lomellini:So they're not necessarily disclosing disability. I didn't disclose my disability. I'm one of the sixty to eighty percent that
Rob:don't. And
Amy Lomellini:so I think the accommodations process can be really scary. And to help, so to your point about like, yeah, we know this is a problem, but so what do we do about it? I think faculty needs to, and instructional designers, right, design courses proactively with accessibility in mind. We shouldn't have to rely on students to disclose private medical information, right? So I mean, when was the last time you called up somebody and told them about your last doctor's appointment?
Amy Lomellini:We don't do that. So why do we expect students to do that? Instead, I think the flip side of that is just assume that there are people in your courses with disabilities, because there are. At the end of the day, we know that they're there, whether they're disclosing or not, so let's build with that accessible mindset from the start. And I think that's what faculty can do to help support students.
Jared:To be proactive. Yeah. That's tough.
Rob:I mean, genuinely, I mean, most higher ed faculty, again, this is not a denigration. Mhmm. You know, if they hold PhDs or EdDs in their field, they they're usually not in education. Yeah. So designing a course, like with universal principles of design or UDL, is not something that they're familiar with.
Jared:It's one of those things where it's not like they're ignoring it. They just aren't aware of
Rob:it. It's not an issue of I know what it is, and I'm just going to do it my way. So I I would hope that most of it, the lack of support, is out of ignorance, not knowingly refusing.
Amy Lomellini:Right. I think there's a lot of factors. Right? There's there's a lot of misconceptions as well that it's so time consuming and it's impossibly technical. But I think that's where a team like in Anthology, we say accessibility is team sport.
Amy Lomellini:So what we mean by that is that it's everybody's responsibility, but we still have like we have my team, we're the experts. You come to us with questions and things, but we empower everybody else to be doing accessibility at their level as well. So I think that's where you have to build a robust program. You can't say it's just the faculty's responsibility. It also can't be just the instructional designer's responsibility.
Amy Lomellini:It's everybody has to play a part. The librarian's got to find, you know, articles that are, you know, more accessible or talk to your vendors too, right? If you're working with third parties, what are they doing for accessibility? And it really has to be the right people and tools and resources in place to support everybody. And I think once you start sharing the responsibility and bringing that kind of awareness, to your point, if it's a matter of they don't know what they don't know, you have to have that program in place that can actually support faculty to help them get to where they need to be, whatever that might look like for your institution.
Rob:Well, there's definitely more to ask. This is a huge conversation. You know, my mind, I see potentially, like, models and, you know, if if we get a model that's trained, an AI model that's visual, which you've got different ones. And then and then I know there are others that are coming, agents that are coming, even AI that's not gonna be as difficult to accomplish in the next couple of years.
Amy Lomellini:I think with the AI, you have to be careful. You have to right now, we can only talk you know, what we have in front of us isn't gonna replace a human. It's a tool, just like any other tool, but you have to have, again, those parameters in place. So just like the Flamingo example, if, you know, you have an AI that claims that it can do, you know, push a magic button and it can do all the accessibility for you, you're actually creating more barriers. So you still need to have knowledgeable people that can make those kinds of decisions.
Amy Lomellini:Is this decorative? Am I discussing the color of the flamingo or am I discussing the water around it? Right? So AI currently is not able to kind of put in that kind of context, and it's very risky business to allow AI that kind of control because you may be setting yourself up for causing more barriers for students.
Jared:Well, it's just like when we talk about generative AI usage and we talk about if giving the students in your class, if you're giving them access to it, it's not enough to just blindly use it. You have to then evaluate. It requires critical thinking and critical reading. The same is true with this. I, for some reason, have this I cannot do image descriptions for accessibility.
Jared:I just have this I don't know what it is. I have to have someone else do it for me because I either spend way too much time developing this description or I don't do enough. So I've played around with the idea of having a generative AI agent help me with that. But even then I have to go back and go, it's not entirely
Amy Lomellini:But that's okay. I think being okay with that level of integration with humanity is exactly where we need to be. So playing around with the tools, finding what works for you, whether it's Ally, Microsoft has one, Arizona State University has one. Like there's different tools out there and it's okay to use them and see what they can do, but keeping the human in control at the end of the day is the important part.
Jared:Yeah.
Amy Lomellini:And come to my talk at ACT next year or this year.
Jared:Is the title going to be something about like where are the why do you have flamingos or something like that? Is that a title?
Amy Lomellini:Why do flamingos matter?
Rob:Oh, just just wait.
Jared:Oh, no.
Amy Lomellini:Or do the flamingos matter?
Jared:Just do flamingos matter. That's great. Alright. So I do wanna ask you about UDL because Universal Design for Learning came up when we did the previous half of this series, which was bringing these ideas to the forefront. And UDL seems to come up a lot as being like the new not new, but the well accepted, fully embraced what do you call it?
Jared:A model? You call it a model? Would it be a model? It's a framework. Okay.
Amy Lomellini:That is the big question, what is it?
Jared:Okay. So question though is along like, do you think that colleges down the road are going to be fully embracing it or do you see something else happening? You said yourself you're not sure if it's a framework or
Rob:model.
Jared:And neither, I'm not sure either. Anyway, what do you think of UDL and do you think it's going to be fully embraced?
Amy Lomellini:Read my upcoming book. No, I'm
Rob:just kidding. Stop, stop. I feel like we just get pushed to upcoming
Amy Lomellini:Just kidding. But I think UDL is is often misunderstood, and I think that's one of the biggest challenges with it right now and getting people to embrace it. Some people think about UDL as just adding more and more content. And there's this misconception that it's time consuming and it doesn't yield the results. You know, it's also, it's not about learning styles.
Amy Lomellini:That's completely different. We know that's a debunked myth.
Rob:But
Amy Lomellini:I think when we keep in mind that universal design as an architectural concept came from centering people with disabilities. So if you think of the commonly used example as a curb cut, that wasn't designed to make it more convenient for a stroller or more convenient for a bicycle. That was designed for wheelchair users. But designing with wheelchair users who are, you know, a marginalized community, myself included, right, designing with them in mind ended up helping other people. And so I think that's the important piece.
Amy Lomellini:And we can't treat UDL like a checklist. So UDL is not something that you just check off, oh, I did this, I added this, I did this. It has to be intentional and I think that's part of it. But at the end of the day, there's guidelines. They guide you.
Amy Lomellini:They're not, you know, do it all or nothing. So I think once we can combat some of these misconceptions and bring it back down to a level that, again, centers disabled people in a way that makes sense. So if you're thinking about, like for me, it's challenging to, say, type out a paper, right? Because that's a lot of mobility that I lack sometimes. So having all other alternatives.
Amy Lomellini:Maybe I can give a presentation, right? At the end of the day, does it matter? And it sometimes does matter. But for, in many cases, if I can show you that I have this knowledge in a different way, is that okay? And I think they're individual basis, right?
Amy Lomellini:So that's what having a skilled instructional designer can help you figure out. And it goes back to this idea of a team sport, right? So figuring out where are the parts of a course that need some love? What does that look like? How can you include some more inclusive strategies?
Amy Lomellini:And building it out kind of slowly. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. And I think that's how we get the acceptance, is by demonstrating the actual need, showing the benefit to others, and then from there being able to support people. Right? If you have those tools, the resources, and the people, I'm going to keep going back to that, that program in place, then that's what's going to support faculty to be able to actually do this.
Amy Lomellini:It has to be, you know, something you do together.
Rob:So it sounds like you're saying overall good instructional design is universal at its core, and it brings everyone into the picture in terms of designing.
Amy Lomellini:Yeah. I mean, a lot of things that are just good design, having, you know, consistent navigation or having, you know, chunked content, like all of those things that that we just think of as good design are also good for people with disabilities. And at the core, like you said, that's the goal, right, is to empower all of our learners, to educate all of our learners and not provide barriers or put barriers in people's way, right? So making sure that everybody can show that they know this, that they can interact with the content, that they can, you know, learn from it. That's the key.
Amy Lomellini:And building that community, I think, is one of the biggest parts of of higher ed in general.
Rob:We have a disability services here called The Cove, and they do excellent work. And they make things happen for people. Otherwise, it wouldn't happen. I think that's fair to say. Mhmm.
Rob:I have been blessed to experience interactions with many of those individuals, and I've been thankful to see it work for even folks that I know personally. So I think these things are going on across the nation. Boise you know, not to say Boise State doesn't have a corner on it. So there are those who are doing it. We're just not hearing about it.
Rob:Yeah. But I think the anthem is still the same. Right? Pay attention. Mhmm.
Rob:Design with everyone in mind. Yep. Seems to me to be the resounding frame.
Amy Lomellini:Yeah. I think what's what we need to do more of is train instructional designers on accessibility. So there's not a lot that happens in that right now. So the big question mark in the research is who's responsible? Like we've talked about, it's really a team sport.
Amy Lomellini:It has to be everybody. But that means that our training programs for instructional designers specifically need to include accessibility. And Boise did a good job of that. That's how I knew that this was even a career path. And now they have a certificate in designing accessible and inclusive online learning.
Amy Lomellini:That's one of the courses that I'm teaching right now is part of that graduate certificate program. But I think more needs to be done. More instructional design programs need to be teaching about accessibility so that your first introduction to the idea is within the training program, not when you're on a job and now you're being expected to do this work. So I think we have to support instructional designers as well to learn more about it.
Jared:I mean, talk a lot about on this podcast about the idea of servant teaching, which is really a part of servant leadership. Servant teaching is putting the needs of your students first. And I think, I mean, this brings it completely home for me is that you have to be willing to put others first and put your students first in this aspect and say, What are the needs that they have? Even if I don't know what their needs are, like you said, what was it, sixty to eighty percent don't disclose?
Amy Lomellini:So there's in any given society, give or take, one in four people have a disability. You may know somebody personally, you know me, right? It may be your brother's uncle's sister's mother, right? Somebody has a disability. Now of those who have disabilities, the majority of people with disabilities don't disclose.
Amy Lomellini:That includes the workforce. Those numbers are specifically higher ed, but it also includes the workforce. The point is that there's more people out there than we know that are experiencing disability in one form or another, and they may not be outwardly telling you about it. Just like you probably didn't call anybody and tell them about your last doctor's appointment. I mean, is very different, but still, you know, there's a lot of stigma involved.
Amy Lomellini:I think the more, what I try to do is share my story. And the more that I share my story, more people come to me and share their stories. And I know I'm not alone in this. I know that there's others out there who are trying their hardest to get an education right now, but maybe there's some barriers in place. And so whatever we can do to help support faculty or instructional designers in breaking down those barriers and not erecting them in the first place, That's my goal.
Amy Lomellini:That's with our technology being accessible. That's with the future, thinking in terms of AI, how can it support people with disabilities. But we also have to make sure that the tools itself are accessible. And so working on that has been very rewarding for me and being able to constantly improve the accessibility of our products and getting the word out with tools like Ally as well to make sure that faculty are aware of what they're doing and how to address some of the issues that they may be creating with content.
Jared:Well, me ask you this to wrap up. One question, practically speaking. Our listeners are a higher ed instructor for the most part. We have some K-twelve, but mostly it's higher ed. What is one thing that an instructor can do as soon as they As soon as this episode ends, after they hear Ryan say goodbye, what is something they can go into their courses and immediately help improve accessibility?
Amy Lomellini:So I think we have a couple of different options here. Not to make this wrap up longer, but sure. We've been wrapping up for like ten minutes.
Jared:Yeah, know. It's great.
Amy Lomellini:No, I think what we can do, what people can do today is reach out to your support system. So you may not be the best at accessibility. You may not know what you're looking for. So going into the course and picking something random, even, you know, changing contrast on a PowerPoint. Helpful?
Amy Lomellini:Maybe. Impactful? Maybe not. Right? So working with your team, working with an instructional designer who's knowledgeable in this area, and figuring out what your course would benefit from and finding ways to measure that.
Amy Lomellini:Demonstrate that impact. That's going to be what is going to really change a mindset, as opposed to just adding to a laundry list of things to do. If you do have don't know if your institution does, but if you do have Ally, they do set up like an easy to fix versus a most critical to fix, and that can kinda help guide some of that. But I think that, you know, reaching out to your support system is a great place to start so that your work is not extra. Right?
Amy Lomellini:Your work is really integrated into your habits, integrated into your course design, and meaningful and impactful.
Ryan:Thanks for listening to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. Remember to like and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Please also, if you have a comment or a question, feel free to reach out to us on LinkedIn. And don't forget to check out our blog, cedarville.edu/focusblog. Thanks for listening.