Sheila Bresnahan, Aviva R. Hollander, & Laura E. Vanderberg presented at the CAST UDL Symposium a one-hour session entitled “Designing with Postsecondary Students: UDL in Metacognition for Mobile Learning.” Dr. Laura Vanderberg was the department chair at Curry College. Hollander was a student peer supporter. Vanderberg shared the session goals and a logic model. Watching myself on the recording was also interesting as I caught a little bit of this session live. Vanderberg worked with 300 students a year with accommodations. They explained how the metacognitive model is helpful here because the students needed to be independent learners. Vanderberg incorporated evidence-based practices, including design-based thinking, student-centered formatting choices, and reflection. Hollander was a peer mobile learning tutor and with Bresnahan role played a peer mobile learning tutoring session. The session followed guiding questions:
- What device are you using?
- What about note-taking is the hardest for you?
- How do you learn best?
- What is the classroom like?
- How are the lectures being delivered?
- Do you prefer handwriting or typing?
- Do you like to record your lectures?
- What do you use your notes for?
These questions could be useful for advising and reflection. They also created an iPAL Wheel with tools for organization, studying, writing, and reading that are mobile-friendly. The app icons are clickable, and a user can learn about tools that work for both writing and reading, for example. Hollander demonstrated the use of Notability to take notes on slides and record audio! There is also a text version of the wheel. Hollander spoke about their organizational skills and communication. Vanderberg drew a standard curve and graphed the percentiles for Hollander to read, for example. It was now visible that Hollander has different ways of functioning and skills. Hollander spoke about being homeschooled and learning to read at twelve and memorizing. Hollander has memorized words to read and now uses assistive technology too.
Bresnahan spoke about reading a lot and having ADHD. They visualize and draw to learn. The iPAL app wheel helped Bresnahan identify tools. Several great tools were shared from the student perspective.
