Episode 43- Season Four Intro The ElAiphant in the Room
0-0:12 Orthotonics Accessible as Gravity plays and fades out
0:13 Hello and welcome to Accessagogy a podcast about accessibility and pedagogy. I’m your host Ann Gagné and this podcast is recorded on land covered by the Upper Canada Treaties and within land protected by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Agreement, which is the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples.
0:33 Welcome to episode forty-three, and the first episode of season four. It has felt like both a longish break and an incredibly short break from the podcast. And in fact, I’ve had a real difficult time actually getting back into the swing of recording episodes. It could be because I tried to record last night and my neighbour decided to cut their lawn at 9pm. It could be because my neighbour’s dog will not stop barking so that I can actually record without the neighbour’s dog in the background. But mostly it’s because of the feeling of disappointment and discouragement that I’m seeing about fall 2025.
1:16 I really wanted to start of this season on a positive note, but for all the folk who do accessibility and inclusion work, this summer has been a really difficult one that saw many places clawing back any support for accessibility work and the continued erasure of any small gains in accessibility supports that may have been put in place since the start of the COVID pandemic. There are so many things happening at once when it comes to accessible pedagogy needs and it’s really hard to figure out what needs the most attention at the moment.
1:48 However, what all these changes at moment seem to have in common is the elephant in the room which is artificial intelligence and the simultaneous move away or towards in different institutions and different disciplinary spaces to the use of Ai tools and supports. And this is why I called this first episode what I did because for the most part institutions that are embedding AI in their work, in their course design, and in their ed tech are hoping that folk are not going to notice, or at the very least not say anything if they do notice.
2:24 And so part of the difficult work for me and folk who do similar type work, is that you know, if you know me in real life, and through this podcast or through the blogging that I do or the advocacy work that I do in community, they know that I’m probably the very last person to not say a thing. And it’s becoming very difficult to be the only person who is saying the things when it comes to Ai especially with assessment strategies in relation to accessibility. And it just seems easier sometimes to not say the thing or to design in a way that ignores disabled folk and that disabilities exist.
3:05 Therefore, what I wanted to do in today’s episode is kind of talk about what has been happening in higher ed and other newspaper dailies which is this movement towards doing more in-class assessment, in particular seeing more in-class writing as a way to “ensure”, and I know this is a podcast, but I’m doing scare quotes around that word, that learning is happening and that skills are being acquired.
3:31 So, I want to give you in this episode three reasons why the return to the blue books as they call them in US-based conversations, or basically to writing exams, test, or any other kind of assessment by hand with no computers or devices in booklets is something with deep accessibility implications and to give some guidance in terms of what you should be looking for in your course and assessment design if this is something you are choosing to do, or that your department or institution is now forcing you to do. And it’s that forcing bit that also gives me and others who do this kind of work, and the students as well of course, that icky feeling because fun fact, no one likes to be forced to do a thing, and actually having choice models and autonomy in curricular and educational spaces is a great way to support learning. And sadly the opposite, is a great way to support more disengagement from everyone. So let’s see what we can do about that.
4:30 Consideration one, asking students to write out everything by hand and not use any devices, assumes that everyone knows how to write by hand and can write by hand. And it’s kind of an innately ableist and also in some ways a classist assumption in terms of the learners. It also has real implications not just for the learners, but also for the teaching team and here’s why. Most folk at universities and colleges have spent the majority or all of their education typing things out or using devices to support handing in their assessments. In many school districts they have stopped mandating teaching cursive, and you don’t have to search far to find videos online that show folk asking graduating high schoolers or even first year folk in college and university to write something by hand and then demonstrating the results which are often not great.
5:20 It’s something where it would mean that learners would actually be putting more effort if you think about it and energy into the writing part of what is being asked of them as opposed to the demonstrating the knowledge of content or discipline specific knowledge. So the question becomes what is being tested in this scenario? Is it the knowledge, or is it the ability to write without a device? So again this is very context and discipline specific, but so I just want to put those questions out there.
5:53 Because the secondary connected piece has to do with the teaching team that then has to try to decipher that writing for knowledge or answers that are being shown. And again different kinds of handwriting will mean that somethings could be very difficult to decipher and students will be penalized for not for not knowing the thing that you’re asking them to write about, but actually not being able to present that thing in a way that teaching team can read and then in turn assess.
6:21 Consideration two, there are folk who because of disability cannot use a pen or a pencil and need to use a computer or device to complete their assessments. And I’ve seen over social media in the last couple of weeks you know teachers that say, instructors that say, fine of course these folk can write in the exam centre, I’m not trying to take away anyone’s accommodations with these design choices. But in fact, any kind of in-class writing or on-campus assessments that have now ramped up assumes that there’s going to be some sort of infinite space in the campus exam centres, if you’re even lucky to have a space like that. And I assure that there’s always not going to be enough space for the needs for the learners in relation to different assessment design that’s happening on campus. And that is because Accessibility spaces and Exam Centres as spaces that support accessibility and accommodations are chronically underfunded. So if anything this turn to the need to use of Exam Centre spaces, may in fact raise awareness for faculty and teaching teams, about just how much these spaces need to be funded more to meet that demand.
7:28 Consideration three, and finally, if a learner can write in a way that the teaching team could decipher, do you think that the learners will be able to write for 2 to 3 hours straight if this is how you have designed the assessment? And in designing the assessment have you thought about, you know, the outcome, what do you anticipate as an outcome? Do you have a certain number of pages, paragraphs, or answers envisioned for your assessment? Having more on-campus, and in-class assessment, even activities, requires more awareness of breaks and what can be realistically achieved in a certain amount of time, and how that will vary with each student. My favourite line, remember, is that people are not robots, at least not yet, and so we can’t assume that folk will be able to write or be in spaces for 2 to 3 hours straight at a time without any kind of break, and that includes bio-breaks. And so this brings up the idea of have you planned out what happens when a break is needed? Right? Because teaching teams are also part of the budget cuts, so many of you probably have less Teaching Assistants and larger classes than you did before, so the need for breaks needs to be factored into the design. And also is the space that you’re teaching in large enough for folk to be comfortably in that space to write without being elbow-to-elbow with their peer? So again in some cases probably not, but these are all the things that need to be taken into account when designing more on-campus synchronous assessments.
9:00 So I mention all of these things because there’s a lot of assumptions that in-class writing and assessment is the panacea for no AI ever appearing in assessment and the inclusive design angle is being lost in these conversations. In particular in conversations about phone bans and laptop bans in classroom environments. Because these kinds of assessments do require a lot of physical and human resources that simply don’t exist at many institutions and for many departments, and therefore these assessment strategies that are more in-class, no device, tend to prioritize or privilege resource rich or human resource rich departments those are often STEM type departments over humanities and social sciences.
9:46 So, do you see why me and so many others who do inclusion work are tired? We’re tired because none of this has been really been thought about holistically. And in turn ed tech companies readily come to campus and say, hey we can help with that, let us scan all the handwriting to decipher things for you, and pinky swear we’re not going to store the handwriting on you know a server that’s not in your country for any other reason. Right?
10:14 My guidance is that if you’re asked or if you read a thing that supports more on-campus writing and assessment, is to stop and not rush to make a decision and make sure that there’s resources in place to support the students and your teaching team to do this kind of assessment, even if it’s an activity. Not even formative you know, not even summative activities, but even just formative activities, think about, you know, what resources you need for that. And also reflect on what the learning outcomes are actually being achieved in these assessment design choices. Think of what your new assessment design does in terms of impact on marginalized or multi-marginalized learners. And I’m not saying like never do on-campus or in-class assessment or activities. What I’m saying is that all on-campus assessments all the time, does a kind of exhaustion work that will be the same vibes as the many discussion board posts for all the classes that happened when the pandemic started for emergency remote teaching.
11:17 I know that in the AI world that we’re in, there’s a lot of hurry up please it’s time type mentality to all the decisions that are being made. But I’m here to say, that if you have the opportunity to speak up about the issues that this kind of assessment could have to your course design, or to who you are pedagogically, to your morals and your values, and you have the positionality or are adjacent to folk with the positionality to say the thing, then say the thing. Say it! Because come January we are going reach a crisis of burnout for teaching teams more than already exists, and possible wave of unenrollment from the most marginalized of learners when they discover that the lesson plans simply cannot work with their care-giving schedule for an elderly parent, or their medical support needs.
12:03 So that’s it, that’s episode 43 of Accessagogy, with a discussion of the elephant in the room, and how folk want to quickly return to all on-campus writing all the time to avoid the AI hiding in everything and how that will impact accessibility of design.
12:21 Remember as well that I want this to be a space where you can ask questions and share concepts that you’d like me to discuss. So if there’s anything that I mentioned here, or anything else that you feel I should discuss in these episodes coming up around accessible assessment design please do let me know.
12:37 As always if you have any ideas or aspects of your pedagogy that you would like me to address in this podcast, please feel free to send me an email at Accessagogy so that’s acc e ss a gogy at gmail dot com. I will try to include as many of these suggestions as possible in the podcast because ultimately, this podcast is for you. So that’s it, that’s episode 43 of Accessagogy, thanks so much for following along and asking how can I make my space more accessible today? Try to have a great week! I know it’s hard out there; I’m with you- In solidarity.