2/13 Blog "Universal Design"

I am (a little bit) in love with Ryan and Zimmerelli's encouragement of "universal design" in tutoring session. I've found that charting a specific course with the same basic standards (respect and patience being in the lead) will almost always lead to a productive session. Before I came to Iowa, I tutored mostly "nontraditional" (i.e. adult) learners and first generation college students. Though the needs to each population - not to mention each student - are unique, coming into the session the same way is often a good thing, despite what instinct might indicate.

I also found their discussion of learning styles helpful. I often do things that are advantageous for visual and auditory learners (writing things down, reading aloud, etc.), but I still struggle to incorporate strategies they call out as effective for kinesthetic learners. I think the kinesthetic learner is the most difficult to accommodate and some of the strategies seem not kinesthetic enough to truly be helpful (pointing to sentences is the one I'm thinking of here).

Another thing I noted in this chapter was suggestions for working with writers with learning disabilities. I agree with all of their suggestions, but what is to be done if there is no quieter place available? How do we accommodate writers in a distraction-filled environment? Can we go somewhere else? Is there somewhere else? Do we keep pulling their attention back? I fear sounding condescending or rude, even if it is in the writer's best interest.

I forgot to talk about the TAW conclusion! While it gives suggestions for strategies that work in their study (and I think are certainly effective somewhat universally), I think the big takeaway is that there simply aren't enough of these studies to draw larger conclusions. The universal conclusions they do draw tend to be somewhat vague (like getting students to generate explanations for themselves or responding to writers as readers)  more empirical data must be gathered before these suggestions become more specific. I know we already discussed some of the potential flaws of the study, I think the limited scale of such studies is the most limiting.

Comments

  1. UnknownFebruary 11, 2018 at 5:22 PM

    I also thought the kinesthetic strategies seemed odd for a tutoring session, though I know them to work in a classroom. I feel that that would come across as defeating for a student and would perhaps take longer than 30 minutes or even 60 for them to see the purpose and/or benefit.

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