Mm-hmm. Alicia Rivera. ¿Estás? Are you here? ¡Aquí estoy! ¡Va, pues, amor, amiga, gran amiga! So, my dear friend, I'm going to find her. She, Alicia Rivera, I will introduce my dear friend, L.A. Alicia Rivera fled repression in El Salvador in 1980 and has been living in Los Angeles ever since. She has been active in issues of refugee rights, economic and social justice, and currently focuses on environmental defense of frontline communities as lead organizer for communities for a better environment. And I want to say, somehow you came out a while ago in the LA Times, one of the top 10 most important women in Los Angeles. Go get them. Well, thank you very much. I am, it's been, I really, I didn't think I was going to be sitting all day listening here, but I wind up doing that. And I have learned so much from people that I have here, you know, and learn from, such as Daniel Elspher and from FAIR, that program, I learned so much from El Salvador and as Jose Miguel, I had to flee El Salvador in 1980 for my life with my two younger siblings. After I saw people being killed, young people that I have gone to school with, that I have grown up with, teachers, including priests, because I went to a Catholic church school. So some of the priests that I knew from my early education were killed. And this happened so suddenly in 1979, starting, you know, I really didn't know that being involved in the Christian communities, on the, the offices of I think of Romero, was going to get us to be labeled communists. And that's about all the politics I knew just within the church. But there were many people who were disappeared, who's had to go into hiding. And when Bishop Romero was assassinated, I knew that they would not spare anyone, because everyone that I saw being killed were simple, you know, were simply students, teachers, nurses. I didn't think they were involved in even with the guerrillas that at the time, you know, we just starting to be, to organize openly. So I fled with pretty much everything I had. And we tried to cross the border. And we were stopped more than twice. And they would just throw us back to the Mexican border. But on the third time, we were arrested in San Diego. And we again said that we were Mexicans, but we were hoping to be deported there. So we could quickly try to cross the border again. But this time the US immigration beat us up. They beat up my younger brother. And so I couldn't take his being beat up in the open, in the call, in December with the clothes off. They had taken off his clothes. And so I told them that we were from El Salvador. And so they put us in a plane full of other people and we were deported. I had a younger brother here. And so he hired a coyote to try to get us through the border. But it took me a while to convince my younger brother who was really traumatized by how he had been treated physically. So anyway, so when I got here is when I learned more about what was happening in El Salvador with the Civil War. And we were hiding. It's almost like you see that you have a sign here in your forehead that says mojado, illegal, and that everyone is really checking you out. So when I see eyes now on the Trump, I remember, you know, being exactly with that fear of being, you know, arrested and deported. So and when I see, you know, all this migration waiting at the sad border, you know, I can't help to see myself there.  And I got help from the Lutheran Church. And I was helping translate some of the stories of the refugees that were coming to get aid. And it was unbelievable, the stories, you know, those disappearances and why had they they have left. But I realized that, you know, we had to put all these testimonies together to put this asylum application and they were all being denied. And then people were afraid to apply because they were afraid that immigration having the information would come and arrest them. So I realized that, you know, it was going to be a contradiction that the United States was spending one billion a day, one million a day to help the government in El Salvador that was killing us. So why would they give us asylum? That would be accepting that that government is not, is creating refugees that are coming and crossing the border. And, you know, the Cold War, what I am one of those people who because of this Cold War, I remember Reagan saying that they had to stop communism in El Salvador. And everyone was being called subversive. Now they're called terrorists. And so, and so we I am a product of this Cold War trying to stop the communism from growing in Latin America. And that, you know, created untold and terrible suffering in El Salvador that's been according to the data, 75,000 people killed. Something like 8,000 people disappeared. And the rest of the people, over one million, I am one of those that got this place, you know, wherever you could go, you left. And so they approve us. But then when you come here, they don't want you. So you realize that the United States, this is what this intervention and this stopping communism creates is displacing people.  You know, the ones that are making the weapons, of course. So, you know, it's a business every time they intervene and every time they're going to a war, as you all know. But I am lucky in Jose Miguel as well, have been able to live and be a witness to how the U.S. intervention in our countries forces us to live and to flee. And now, what's happening is these hundreds and thousands of refugees that are fleeing from Guatemala, from Honduras, from El Salvador, and are right there on the other side of the border. It's because there's different things. There's climate change, people are in all these transnational corporations that are mostly Americans coming to set up projects like dams, and they need to mind the minerals and they displace the communities. You know, the people in El Salvador, I was there seven years ago to bury my mom. And this man, there were a lot of people at my door asking me to give them jobs. And I found out that if they were paid well, it was $12 for eight hours of work. Sometimes they ask you to work for you for the food. And that's when they can find something. So people are really starving. And you know, there is all this money that Jose Manuel mentioned that the U.S. invests. But where do that money go? No, they're privatizing the water, they're privatizing the electricity, they're privatizing medicine and public health. And so what happens is that when you make it so difficult, you know, when I was in El Salvador, people made 25 cents an hour. And my father even made that wage. And so, but people manage even in the poverty to grow their own food. But when there is war, and when you're being killed, and you don't know why, you know, when they're going to come and massacre your whole hamlet, which happened in El Salvador, you have to live. You can no longer make a living, a meager living, what I saw in El Salvador and grew up with. And so I really appreciate having heard from everyone for the years that people in this group have been involved in all these injustices happening globally. And that's, you know, I really appreciate it. I, and it is the solidarity that I was involved with, with Americans here that stopped the war in El Salvador together with the rebels fighting the military. And so that's what stopped the war, finally. But, you know, the countries end up in such poverty, everything is destroyed. I remember Nepal being dropped by airplanes. We have never seen that in our lifetime. So every time, you know, the planes fly so close to my house where I live now, where I hear them, I can't help to think what it's like when all these planes are flying so close to you dropping bombs. It marks you forever.  So I am fortunate to have been able to remain in the struggle all these years alongside with people like you all heroes and heroes. And we're going to continue to do it because injustice, economic injustice, it's to learn of how poor people are objectivized. And, you know, in the labor struggle and capitalism, it's the worst system that has ever happened. And it will continue, and it is continuing to deplete the natural resources in El Salvador and Guatemala and El Salvador and everywhere because the GDP has to continue to grow and grow no matter what. And so I am involved helping and empowering and working with communities in the frontline where oil is the one that is getting our climate warmer. And so I invite everyone to, in addition to what you're doing, you know, help us out. We're doing a lot to fight oil. And of course, we all are doing that. And I'm going to put my contact information here in the chat. And in fact, we have, we're trying to get rid of oil drilling at the moment in all of Los Angeles. And that campaign has taken a big leap. We are expecting the city council to approve an ordinance that would ban all fossil fuel extraction in Los Angeles. They already did it in Culver City, you know, Culver City City Council decided that they're going to ban oil drilling and they put a moratorium right away. So let's get rid of oil. Let's get rid of all this work.  And it goes for oil, whatever it is, and for everything else. And so, you know, to know about the struggles, what's being done and what can be done is so important. And that's what got me all these years, you know, because information is power, you know, and so, as we know, and so it is very important, as Jose Miguel said, to send people to witness what's happening in this coming election. So thank you very much for inviting me. And it's been amazing. Thank you, Rachel and Frank. Thank you, Alicia, for your testimony. It will be put into the record. And yes, oil everywhere. The US military burns 100 million barrels of oil a year and pollutes more than 140 countries all combined. It's the largest single polluter on planet earth and we have it in our backyards, don't we? Also, Alicia.  And so it's my compromiso for you. And Alicia has been with us when we visited our congresswoman here, Annette Barragan, who was a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. So that's another angle, you know, making sure that that people, you know, represent if they're going to use the CHC label, they better start doing this internationally or, you know, more window dressing, more hypocrisy. But Alicia had all of us pretty much in tears at that meeting. So it's very, very powerful if you can go into a congressional office with someone from the frontline community and make them listen. Thank you.


Hi, good afternoon everyone and welcome to our teaching and learning accessible practices and support panel. And this is of course, another initiative within the celebrate learning week. Today we will be discussing accessibility and inclusivity and in teaching and learning. And I'm, I just want to say that as a differently able professor this is a panel that's very close to my heart. My name is Peter or Piotr Ahmad, I'm a teaching professor in the Department of History and Sociology at UBC Okanagan. And it's a pleasure to be here and host this panel. I'm looking forward to the discussion and the sharing of practices and experiences and inclusive teaching and learning. So, again, a warm welcome to everyone. Great to be here. Before we start, I just wanted to acknowledge that I'm hosting this session as an uninvited by settler on the traditional unceded ancestral territories of the silk Okanagan nation here on the campus of UBC Okanagan in Kelowna. And I would also like to respectfully acknowledge traditional ancestral rights of indigenous peoples, wherever you are joining us from today. Before we continue, I also wanted to share a few housekeeping notes and a little community agreement, just to make sure that our session is a welcoming and respectful space. So the first thing to notice, as Rachel said earlier, this meeting is being recorded, although we will not be recording the chat comments, just so you know. So this is something to keep in mind. We will also be sharing this video on the celebrate learning we key resources page. So again, something to note. This event will also have closed captions and you can see them by clicking on the CC button in your meeting controls. Finally, we will also have CT LT members Rachel and Suki who are available to help with any technical difficulties. If if there is anything please contact Suki or Rachel via our chat. So that's it for housekeeping. In terms of our community agreement I just wanted to share a few points that I have just so that we can make sure that our meeting today goes smoothly. So just a few points that I've prepared for that purpose. The first one is that we acknowledge that we are all here to learn and we recognize that our words and actions can have an impact on others. The second that we are all committed to making this session a respectful and welcoming environment for all. The third one is that we acknowledge that discussions around accessibility and inclusion can be uncomfortable at times, and we are open to embracing that discomfort and learning from it. So, all that, of course, with the goal of making sure that we can learn in a respectful and welcoming atmosphere today. It gives me great pleasure to briefly introduce our panelists for today. Just so you know, I will be introducing our panelists in more detail before each presentation, but now I just wanted to very briefly mentioned who we have presenting. So, today we have presenting the following panelists, we have first Laura bulk accessibility advisor UBC Vancouver Center for accessibility. And we have strong Burton associate professor of teaching in UBC linguistics, followed by Ayaka Yoshimitsu assistant professor of teaching in the Department of Asian studies, and tomorrow evil lecture in the faculty of management. So our first presenter, Laura bulk, if you'll allow me to introduce our first panelist. And I just wanted to say that I am introducing the panelists as they themselves wanted to be introduced. This is something that is really important for me, particularly in the context of our panel. I'm centering our presenters as they themselves want to be presented. So, Dr bulk is a blind scholar friend learner woman teacher mentor daughter mentee disabled person occupational therapist artist and activist. She works at the Center for accessibility with students and health programs and teaches modules in the master of occupation occupational therapy program. She was also a board member of the coalition for disability access in health science education. Laura, welcome. The floor is yours. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm going to start screen sharing once you have had a chance to stop screen sharing. That would be great. So thank you all for joining us today. I'm going to set a timer so that I say within the time because I'm really eager to have a conversation with you all. So on your screen. You might see in the image of myself. I'm a white woman. I'm standing in a room there's some light behind me so you might see my hand kind of moving in front of the light over there. And I have short ish brown hair and wearing an orange sweater. And yes, the screen is blurred intentionally. This in some way resembles the way that I moved through the world. And speaks a little bit to my perspective on disability as being a different way of being in the world as part of our human diversity. So as we start. I'd like to raise my hands to you all and say hi to in the language of most green people say thank you for being here and also honor the people who have contributed to me being here, including my parents and my ancestors, as well as the mentors and mentors who've been part of my journey and and who still are. As we start, I'm going to invite you to participate because that's what I do. I really enjoy the participation. I'm putting in the chat a link so that you can participate in the Google. You can also participate just by posting the chat. I wonder if you could complete the sentence. I know I belong when take a moment to think about how does that sentence finish for you. So this question is one that I've asked in a lot of spaces and places with a lot of folks. Folks are participating. You know you belong when you can participate when you find others who share the values that you share when you feel calm when you're with your dog. And that more and more coming in. So thank you for sharing that. I'm going to share some audio right now. Some more folks who shared about when they know that they belong. I know I belong when I have something to contribute and people recognize that. I know I belong when I can just be part of the rest of the group without feeling that sense of isolation. When people are happy to see me, and they actually want to see all of me, not just the part that they are comfortable with. I know I belong in a classroom where we practice inclusive design. So it's not singling me out. When people do little inclusive things around me, like telling me that there's a wet paint sign, those little things that let me know they're thinking about me and including me. When I don't feel that I'm a burden. When I feel like my needs and my boundaries are respected. When I'm invited to similar tasks as my colleague, but with the focus ability that maybe my copy of registration list is printed off of art print, for example, when they don't skirt around whether or not I can contribute. I know I belong when I feel connected to the other people around me, and I get the sense that they're connected to me. I know I belong, and people are curious about my life, and they allow me to be myself without judgment. I know I belong when I get invited to join in. All right. So this question, I, in my framing of access and accessibility, this question of when do you know that you belong is very foundational. Throughout this week, Celebrate Learning Week, you are getting all kinds of tips and tricks and ideas about how to make classrooms and spaces at UBC more welcoming, how to make them more accessible. And those are really important strategies. And for me, belonging underlies this idea of do we really have access, are we really included. And so I just wanted to foreground this conversation with that foundation. Upon a foundation of belonging, we can then build, and we can build those learning spaces, and you're going to hear from other panelists about some very creative and beautiful strategies for belonging. Something I also want to emphasize is that accessibility and belonging, it's not just about disability. Throughout this week, you will hear that again, and today you'll hear that again, that access is not just about disabled folks, folks with disabilities, people who are neurodiverse, or who live with chronic physical or mental health conditions. Belonging and access is about all of us. When I think about access and access needs. I often, when I'm in person will use a strategy whereby I invite folks to introduce themselves and as part of that they introduce their their names and pronouns and where what their relations with the land are, and if their access needs are being met. Often someone will say, I'll say the other intro pieces and then say I don't have any access needs, which is great opportunity for all of us to learn when I then hand out pieces of paper and turn out all the lights, and then ask people to read, or to navigate the room, or to pour a glass of water. And this really highlights that their access needs are no longer being met. And some folks access needs are more a part of the default, such as having lights on in a room. So I encourage you to keep that in mind as well as you move through the rest of learning week and the rest of this panel to think about how can, how can you think of access more broadly. One of the things that I've learned in my work is also that this idea of cross movement solidarity is really key is really important to creating a UBC and a culture, where we can find a sense of belonging and build a sense of belonging together. We've really noticed throughout time and especially perhaps throughout the pandemic years that having movements in solid or in silos is not helpful. We really need to acknowledge that we are actually interdependent as as communities. And my liberation depends on your liberation and my belonging, perhaps also depends on your belonging. So this idea that we are interconnected. Those is all very theoretical, don't worry. There are some tips and strategies coming from our panelists. And I think in the conversation that we have. And also, talk about some more of those. You heard one of them in in one of the participants who shared in that recording around a wet paint sign. Another great example is just saying your name when you pass someone in the hallway, or perhaps when you're around a table, not assuming that everyone sees you in the same way or perhaps not assuming that everyone hears you, or can read at the same time. So thinking about some of those assumptions, these can be small but very significant gestures of belonging when we reach out in that way. When we share our pronouns when we invite others to do the same, when we talk about our relations with the land, and so on and so forth. These are gestures of belonging and of hospitality that we can enact in our classroom spaces. So with that said, I am going to pass it on back to Peter and the next panelist, and I look forward to having a conversation with all of you, as we as we finish up with the panelists. Next up we have Strang Burton, as of today, as I've heard associate professor of teaching in the linguistics department. Strang teaches a large introductory course languages of the world that looks at a widely diverse group of languages, as well as an introductory level course on how to learn a language. He is not First Nations, but he's also a long term employee of the Stullo Nation, where he has worked for many years as part of community run projects to revitalize the how come a language and I hope I got that right there. Thank you so much. Strang, the floor is yours. Hi everybody. So I'm going to talk about a few practical things for trying to make people feel welcome and included in my classes. The first one I'm going to talk about is inclusiveness in naming, using names in the in problem sets and exam questions and examples and so on. And it relates to the idea that you want your students to feel that the material is relevant to their lives. So, some examples until I started thinking about this, it would be common for me if I was making up an exam question a multiple choice question. So, I found some resources where I could get names from other languages and cultures. And so for example, now I would say Juma is learning Mandarin, and he learns four word families each week, or suppose there's two children called the Mary and Sue and they're of equal intelligence. What I wanted to do I realized at a certain point that I'm missing the cultures of probably more than half of my classes. So I found some resources where I could get names from other languages and cultures. And he learns four word families each week. Juma is an Arabic name. I hope I'm saying it right. It's also used in Swahili and Pashto, where I say suppose two children called the Mary and Che Yong using a Korean name. In order to find names from different languages and different cultures.  It's a, it's a site about the history of names and from a lot of different cultures and it has a function where you can look up names from different cultures and you can know if it's used traditionally for males or for females. So that's one aspect of how I try and just avoid using just all Anglo-Saxon names so that I'm missing the cultures of many of my students. A similar related tip I have something that I started doing in my classes. So in the in the examples of sentences is this classic example when we teach linguistics we do these tree diagrams and we'd say John loves Mary and that's always use this example. At a certain point one day I just started saying well sometimes John loves Bill. So we would have same sex couples represented in the examples rather than just heterosexual couples and one of my students actually wrote to me and he said he really appreciated that it made him really feel much more welcome in the classroom. Another thing, I'm just, I'm just going through a series of practical things where I try and make the materials more welcoming and accessible. A practical thing I'd like to talk about is colorblind students. So a couple of years somebody asked me, is your materials accessible to colorblind students and I hadn't really thought about it. So I'm not an expert on colorblindness at all but I looked stuff up and tried to figure out what does slides look like to colorblind students and I found you can get these simulators that show you what it looks like and what kind of problems can it create if you're relying on certain color contrasts and then just some quick tips on those to share with you what I found. So, if I understand correctly and again I'm not an expert on colorblindness, there's three main kinds the most common one is called green color blindness, sometimes also called red green color blindness because it affects the both red and green. It's actually quite a lot of people have it, 6% of males, 1% have it a lot and 5% have it to a certain degree, and then less than 1% of females but still quite a lot of people so that means I'm getting myself I have a lot of students so then getting like quite a lot of students who have this issue. And I ran it through the simulator you can see what it looks like so on the first box, this is a slide I had about the languages of India, and there's two different groups of languages in India one is Indo European related to the languages of Europe and some other regions, and then another unrelated group and different language and I had color coded them with the Indo European ones in red, and the other family and green to separate them. And then when I ran it through the simulator I could see if you see in the middle column here. 1% of males who have severe red green color blindness is that's like 100 people for me in a year have. So it's really almost exactly the same and 5% who have it less extremely it's not as it's, they can probably see the contrast but it's not a very strong contrast. So, the second type, the other two types are much rarer, but they still going to hit some of my students so blue yellow color blindness, it's a less than 1% of people, and it's usually not genetic I think it's usually acquired through injury or other problems. But these people are blind to the color blue or and again there's different levels of it. So when I run this through the simulator. Again, if I do the same thing with the languages of India but I had coded blue versus green, then I run it through the simulator. You see the people who have it very strongly in the middle column. It's kind of a contrast but it's not as strong as you would like. So the third type of color blindness to be completely colorblind. It's actually very that's actually very rare, but some people do have it. And if you run it through the simulator. Everything looks sort of a shade of gray for the people who have it strongly. So, all of that, putting that all together. I resolved after realizing and seeing what it looked like to actually for the for the for the red green one quite a number of people. I resolved to never just rely on color coding in my in my information so just is always got to be if you're going to use color coding it's always got to be something else. So you can add symbols different textures different fonts, and so on. And if you're thinking about color combinations. One of the things to be concerned about is trying to contrast anything with green and also blue versus purple gray. And I have some links to some resources on these tips here this is where I found most of this information designers and a lot of these are designer sites of course designers are very aware of these issues. The last really practical little thing I'd like to talk about it over the last few years. I don't sign ASL. But I started working with some members of the ASL community we're developing courses here at UBC and ASL credit courses in ASL. And I just, I can't talk about the accessibility issues from the point of view of somebody from the deaf community, but I'll talk about a little bit from the perspective of connecting with people from that community as a non signing person. And really just quite just a couple of little things I'm going to say, one is, if you want to invite somebody from the deaf community to one of your meetings or one of your classes, you'll need to book a professional interpreter the interpreter has to come into the class. And the person from the deaf community will be signing and they'll go back and forth for you. UBC will support this. We don't have to pay as individual faculty for it if they're coming to a class or a professional event. It's a little bit hard to find the booking information so I put the link here and then you can just book it and then you'll get the interpreter will come into the class. It's quite a bit of lead time like once I tried to do it like on a Monday for a Friday and they were like no way you need like a few weeks because these people are busy. I have just one intercultural tip for communication with members from the deaf community. When I first started working with you from the deaf community I asked people who had worked with the community for a tip and the tip that always comes up is so you'll be sitting in a room with the person from the deaf community who you're actually having a conversation with, and with the interpreter who is speaking the language out loud in the modality that you can understand, and then signing with the other person. And it's easy for your eye gaze to go over to the person to the interpreter, because that's the person whose voice you're hearing. But remember that your conversation is with with the with the person from the deaf community and you have to, even though I can't understand what the signs, I have to, I have to direct my attention towards them the interpreter. It's actually better to have the interpreter behind you. So you don't even see them and you just hear their voice. And for the other perspective, Nigel Howard is the is the instructor that I've been working with from the deaf community, and he had a recent UBC news article about this so if you're interested in the topic I have a link to it there. So those are my little practical tips about some ways I'm trying to make my classes more accessible. Thank you. Thank you very much trying. Thanks a lot. Looking forward to the Q&A. And next up, we have Ayaka Yoshimitsu, an assistant professor of teaching Asian Studies Department UBC Vancouver. So this is how Ayaka introduces herself. Ayaka coordinates and teaches arts courses for the UBC Ritz to make an academic exchange programs. She also teaches Japanese literature, films, media and audio visual translation in Asian Studies, and Canadian and trans Pacific studies in the UBC Ritz programs. Her pedagogical projects are centered around decolonizing teaching and learning, promoting anti-racist approaches and social justice broadly in and beyond the classroom. Ayaka, the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you so much for the introduction, Peter. I'd like to acknowledge that I'm speaking today from the stolen lands of the month. Thank you, Peter, for the introduction. I'd like to acknowledge that I'm speaking today from the stolen lands of the Masquim, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, and I live on their land as an uninvited guest, and I am a non-disabled person. I'm middle-aged cis woman from Japan, and I speak English as my additional language. I have medium short hair and I'm wearing mustard-colored long-sleeved shirt today. I have been working on developing a decolonial and anti-racist approach to research and teaching throughout my academic career. I recently started to learn about accessible teaching and learning through the project I'm doing with my colleague, Shali Noba, and graduate students, including Koring De Freitas and Shota Iwasaki, to develop these sources for disabled instructors at UBC, including faculty and also graduate students, and from this project I learned that there are a number of disabled members of UBC who are doing excellent jobs developing their teaching accessible, while also struggling with universities in accessibility and complicated accommodation processes, and also developing ways to make their work more accessible to themselves, and so I'm learning so much from them, and in this learning process I'm also finding a lot of resonance between accessible teaching and decolonial and anti-racist teaching. So to me, advancing accessibility in my own practice of teaching learning go hand in hand with advancing decolonial and anti-racist approach. So I have a few key words here, embodiment, multimodality and multi-spatial temporality. At the time, as the time is limited, I'll describe these as I go over my approach to teaching in more concrete terms. So generally speaking, I begin with the premise that university and academia have historically been and still are colonial and racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and ablest. So in order to make teaching and learning actually inclusive, we have to make these various forms of oppressions visible. All my courses address various oppressions that exist in society, and whenever possible I also try to address oppressions that exist around us in our everyday lives and in university and within the classroom, and reflect on how each of us is implicated in those oppressive structures. And other things I have done over the years include diversify readings and audiovisual materials. So make sure various identities are reflected in the authors and creators of the course materials. So in my course, Japanese documentary media, for example, I consciously include documentaries directed by women and disabled filmmakers. And I have to be extra conscious about this choice because Japanese film industries and documentary scene has been extremely ablest and male dominant. But this simple practice makes a lot of difference because it increases possibilities for students with different identities and experiences to find something more relatable and identifiable in the course. And that enhances their learning. Diversify assessment techniques. And initially I began doing this having international students who speak English as their additional language in mind. So give an option to work as a small group or implement peer interactions in some graded assignments as some students depending on their cultural backgrounds may excel in collaborative work setting. So I have various modalities in course assessments. So this is what I mean by multi modality students who are not very strong in writing may do better in oral presentation or an audio visual output and other alternative ways to share knowledge. Diversify style presentation. So what is considered as good quote unquote academic writing has various problems. And in fact, that third person objective and systematic style has been critiqued by a number of feminist racialized and indigenous scholars as males and third year centric and colonial. I address this problem by creating assignments where students can explore different modes of sharing knowledge including personal and family or community narrative and creative expressions. And this is where I implement environment in assignments. So I ask students to link course materials ideas and concepts to their personal family and community experienced and share their stories with peers. And they find this viable and powerful way to enhance students understanding of the course content and abilities to critique course materials. It produced similar effects as diversifying course materials but even more powerful as they are actually directly linking the course to their own identity and experiences. We move in class close book and timed assessments. So all my final exams or takes home take homes, and students are given at least one week to submit your answers. I find timed in class exams, maybe list some students can be sick or going through some healthy data issues on or around exam dates and university campus is not necessarily accessible in the first place. Some students live far from point grade campus in places that are a little bit more affordable, and some students need more time to read think and write in English. So, for many reasons, I find a timed in class exams, not very accessible. And my courses do not have any learning objectives needed to speed reading or writing or memorization so it doesn't really make sense for me at least to assess their performance based on these skills. Provide the remote and asynchronous options and that we all have done this. So this is what I mean by multi spatial temporality. Learning does not have to always take. Sorry, learning does not always have to happen right here and right now. It could happen in some other places and some other times within a set time frame though as institutionally it's currently impossible to make it completely flexible. So, just quickly, I'm going to share one example of assignment. And this is from my actually proposed course called indigeneity in Asia and Asia diaspora. And this is a new course that just passed the department voting. And so I know I'm kind of cheating by sharing an assignment and get to actually try out in my course. But this is a good example to share because it incorporates many of the elements I just discussed in my previous slide, including embodied narrative multimodality and multi spatial temporality. The department asks students to reflect on their journey, individual or intergenerational to the lands in which they study work and or live and how they identify themselves in the relationship to the lands, the people, Indigenous peoples on the lands and what it means to to recognize the way they learn and share knowledge. I provide individual or group options. And in terms of the output format students can choose between writing in the form of personal letter to somebody who is important to them. Or if they choose group option talking circle format, and this could be written or spoken for. And they still need to apply what they learn in the course. So in this case, indigenous methodology and additional accountability. But instead of demonstrating their understanding of this methodology, the abstract terms they need to just show it in practice. I'm going to end my part here but if you're interested, I'm facilitating another workshop during CTLT spring Institute, together with other members of my project team. And we'll have three panelists who have disabilities and they will talk about their experience and perspectives of so called return to campus which happened this spring and what it means in terms of accessibility so my apologies for self promotion but I will share with you the legislation link in the chat. Thank you so much. Looking forward to the Q&A of course. And next up we have Tamara Ebel, a lecturer in the faculty of management with over 20 years of experience teaching in higher education over a decade of which has been with UBC. She is currently a lecturer in the faculty of management UBC Okanagan campus. Tamara has engaged with thousands of students and shared teaching philosophies and pedagogical approaches with many colleagues, both at UBC and beyond. A self proclaimed non expert in universal design for learning. Tamara looks forward to sharing key things. She has taught her in her aspiration to embrace UDL. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. Thank you all for joining today and thank you for CT to CTL and CTLT for having this really impactful panel. I hope to do justice to my section here. For myself, I speak I'm sure not only on my behalf but on others who have participated thus far in the session that the panelists before me have brought some wonderful ideas, many of which are great refreshers for me some of which are new things for me to consider. And I look forward to taking these forward so I'm hopeful to be able to share with you some new ideas as well. So what I'd like to do and I will also try to put this in the chat for us and hopefully this link will open for you. When you click on the link it should hopefully take you to a Jamboard site. This is something that I became familiar with during COVID. I was at a session where somebody was using it and I thought this is interesting and I've used it for a handful of things since what you'll be able to do when you see this you should I hope see on your screen. There's a white space with a blue big blue post it sticky in the middle that says what sparked your interest to attend today. And you'll note in the top top part of the screen, you'll see some animals coming through the people are coming through as anonymous, which there are reasons for that I'll speak to in a minute. On the far left of your screen, you'll see a variety of options and one of those options which I feel like is sort of one of the safer ones or easier ones is the fourth one down it looks like that the piece of paper are posted if you click on that. It'll bring up a new sticky note that you can type on. And in that sticky note you'll have the opportunity also to change colors it will come up. It comes up as a default of yellow but feel free to click green or blue or pink or thank you so I see somebody has added a yellow post it that says success. Yes, and you can also move your post it's around. Yup. And my esteemed colleague is presenting. And I will also take the liberty of moving some of these as well to try and improving the learning experience for all students accessibility is important.  I did not write that but I would think that was me right there. I wanted to talk with people who are thinking about evaluating these things, caring about every student to be a better instructor. I became a disabled instructor and made me reflect on others needs, looking to improve my courses and anticipate what help my colleagues may need enhancing my teaching practice. I am always looking for more ways to improve the inclusivity and accessibility of what I do. I want to learn various ways to improve students experience from an inclusive and accessibility to meet people who are also interested in accessibility. Understanding actionable tips to employ to create more accessible materials and practices. I hope I have captured all but I certainly may have missed a few if it was the case my apologies it was unintentional. But what I want to share with you. The question was what sparked your interest to attend the session today. And by having you access this and be able to provide your perspective, whether you participated or just observed. These are applications this is an application of universal design for learning principles I know that is not what this session is specifically, but I see great value in attributing the two inaccessible inaccessibility with universal design for learning. There are effective networks the why of learning to create using creative means of engagement, and I just, I won't go into detail on this I again I'm a non expert for sure, but in my learnings of what I've taken away from some sessions I've been at the effective networks that the why of learning. We need to consider how learners get engaged and how they stay motivated, how they're challenged and excited or interested. And these are effective dimensions. So, again, it's well beyond my, my base skill to be able to describe any of this, the neuroscience behind it, but this is a summary and a slide that I have borrowed another component of engagement. The purpose for for the effective networks is engagements, the purposeful motivated learners. For them we need to stimulate interest and we need to motivate for learning. So, this is context for my thoughts that I'll share with you today. That is not lessons in this because, again, I'm learning and thank you so much to the person who's posted I resonate with many of these but particularly the posted that says I'm woefully ignorant and trying to change that. That is so me, I even questioned whether I was the appropriate person to have on a panel for something like this because I'm learning to, but I'll share with you what experience has taught me six key takeaways. One relates to safe space. And this comes from UDL theories and principles as well. But some of the things that I focus on or try to focus on are a mutual respect and understanding environment so in the welcome I try to create intentionally create a safe space. I include in my course syllabus wording such as listening to each other, supporting each other and treating each other with respect is a non negotiable must. So, I prefaced it up front and I also am very clear about that in my first welcoming with students to remind them that this is an opportunity for everybody to learn. I also include and I'll just share with you a little bit more from my syllabus. Some of the wording students are encouraged to interact openly with others to support each other's learning experience with excellent listening skills to question ideas in a respectful manner. And to respond rather than rather than react queries and feedback, your commitment to providing interdependence of your colleagues and classmates to help create a supportive and constructive learning community will be appreciated. I really try to set the tone up front. I'm sure that I could do a better job at it but I do notice that when you bring home the importance of this right up front setting context. It does tend to break the ice a little bit. I also am very clear when I am involved in any sort of synchronous sessions or online pieces or even potentially live pieces that I might record going forward. I've included in the syllabus but I also remind students that so this is my syllabus wording please note that the instructor will record and post synchronous sessions out of respect for copyright and the privacy of participants. Students are strictly prohibited from editing sharing or selling such recording so I really want to make that safe space and ask students to appreciate and respect that they're the images and or voices and opinions and perspectives that maybe shared in the session are intended to be within our learning community, not turned into means or something else so I really highlight that up front. I try as much as possible with large classes it's certainly more difficult and definitely when we are in a virtual world it's even more difficult, but I really do try to learn the names of my students to learn the names of participants. This activity that I had to do for instance, had I set it up where people's names would show up or had it been a screen sharing, or had people been participating in the chat. I would have been very diligent about acknowledging those things by name so and so said, or I see the comment from whoever it may be. I really try, and I acknowledge up front that I'm probably going to need help with pronouncing the names we have a lot of international students in our programs which is wonderful, but it is a challenge for some of us to get those names right so I asked students and or colleagues, please correct me if I've not done a good job of this with your name, and they tend to be very welcoming with that. And I really try on most occasions, trying to use positive framing. So thank you in advance instead of you shall not do this that are the other. So, trying to create that safe space. Another, sorry, and I just want to share with you. If you may be interested in the safe space pieces for you DL. I'll share this in the chat. One of the things that is important in my view is appreciating the value of perspective, and reinforcing to participants that their opinion their perspective is important we want to hear it everybody has a story different perspectives brain learning for all of us and I try to promote empathy throughout my classes. I try and remind people often of the two years one mouth. Adage.  And think about what you may want to ask them and leave space for that to have those conversations. But I do want everybody to feel heard reinforcing and reframing ideas that we hear if I've heard you correctly, or help me understand, or that's an interesting perspective. Please elaborate on whatever it may be tends to open up that safe space for students and give them a little bit more confidence to share their perspective. And again embracing the imperfect so I didn't have the setting quite right and folks weren't able to actually access and see the edit mode in Jamboard. But I'm, I'm, as anybody else prone to air and I thank people for bringing that forward. And in my courses, I actually I max it out, not depending on the course but it's typically 5% for the duration of the course maximum. But to acknowledge my, you know, so whoever may have been and I would like to say soupy but I would go back and double check if it was the actual case and say, soupy's just earned a 1% bonus toward overall final grade, 5% max. But publishers make mistakes.  It allows me to correct that, and to bring that forward and to bring forward clarity if it was a type or a misspeak for the benefit of the whole learning community so I embrace the imperfect for myself as well it allows me to be comfortable, but it allows the students the opportunity to feel comfortable, I hope, or more comfortable that it's a safe space that we can make errors, and that's okay. A third lesson for me is optimizing relevance value and authenticity. The start of the term, I asked students to share a discussion board post where they introduce themselves and I have a set list of questions and ask them, you know, what are your picture of your pet if you'd like whatever it might be so that they can connect with the learning community. I asked them to apply real life opportunities and scenarios so from my course of this, participants are strongly encouraged to share real life experiences and considerations as they come to mind during discussion and analysis of relevant concepts. It's really important because they've got stories to tell, and it helps in the learning, and then I try my best to encourage participation and imagination so hands on activities in my courses but also I have something called creative delivery. I've moved away, particularly for my fourth year courses for presentations for students, I've moved away from PowerPoint and I have asked students to do something more creative a more creative learning experience to share with their peers where they present a message, not a topic. What's the message what's the so what and do it in a way that's creative that doesn't involve PowerPoint. So back to the learning community. I try throughout the term to get interaction between the students and in discussion board for those who are more comfortable there, perhaps in breakout sessions if they're comfortable or in a classroom environment. And I also have them do a team charter, if it's teamwork, and I asked them to identify within their group, each person needs to identify at least one strength that they plan to bring to the team, and at least one area of learning development that they'd like to work on and then within that team, I asked them to find a coach and they have to sign a charter that actually indicates each student who's going to coach who on on what piece. And I find that students are actually really appreciative of that approach and I'd like to just share with you another link. Many of us have been trying for some time and some more successfully than others to flip our classroom, obviously COVID required that for us for many of us. But I also try to instill a growth mindset in students so that it's not about the result that result is important. Yes, it's about the aha moments and the learning and I call them the light bulb moments. And I have students who have found in zoom they found the little icon the little light bulb icon and students will actually put the little light bulb up so that I can then acknowledge and say, you know, whoever it is they they found a light bulb moment would you please share with us what was your light bulb moment in this learning, and it really gets the conversation going. I also have gone away from participation, and I try to have students do self assessments of their learning. I then also contribute a piece as part of their overall grade. But one of the biggest takeaways one of the biggest things I'm learning about inclusivity is this, and I've put for the benefit of those who may not be able to see this as clearly. I've, I've got a slide here that has one of the little minions from the movie. And it has the wording that says this surround yourself with positive people be a positive energy spread your light and love. And to the extent we're able when we are in sessions when we are with students when we are with colleagues, yawns are contagious, but so are smiles and so is positive energy and bringing that positive energy and those smiles and vulnerability to the classroom. I believe in from what I've been experiencing brings a wealth of accessibility for students because they feel connected. They feel that they can connect their why, and that they can walk away, feeling good that they've learned something from our I leave you with this I'm happy to share any additional links that I may have that I may not have have put into the chat so far, but I welcome any questions you may have during the Q&A. And please if you find value in any of these I'm happy if you reach out as well by email. Thank you so much. Thank you very much Tamara for a great presentation looking forward to the Q&A of course. So, now we've heard from all of our presenters for today and I believe that it's time for our Q&A sessions I would like to invite all of you to further discussion of the presentations that we have seen in her today. And our Q&A session will be led by our moderator, Rishma Chunidas. Thank you so much Rishma and over to you. Thanks. Thanks Peter. Good afternoon everyone my name is Rishma Chunidas. I'm an assistant professor in the School of Nursing. I use gender pronouns she her. I'm learning from the ancestral and seated territory of the silk, silk and agate people. I have long black hair and wearing green long sleeve blouse. Thank you panelists. For the great presentations, it is wonderful to hear about all of the accessible strategies that are being used. I love all the resources that have been shared in the chat. Now I'd like to give the participants time to ask our panelists questions. But before I begin I want to remind everyone of the community agreement that Peter mentioned earlier. We are all here to learn from and with with each other. We're responsible for equitable and respectful dialogue in the shared space. I hope that you listen to understand each other's perspectives and be mindful that you are accountable for the impact of your words. Feel free to raise your hand and turn on your microphone. If you choose to turn on your camera or leave having the courage to share your experiences and your perspectives on inclusive and accessible teaching. Thank you for all the questions. It was an absolutely wonderful discussion in the chat and also on the audio. So, being mindful of the time I just wanted to close with a one or two remarks. One of two relevant remarks for the end of our session. So the first one is that there will be a feedback survey which will be emailed to all attendees at the end of the week. And as I mentioned at the beginning the session will be recorded or the session recording sorry will be added to our celebrate learning week resource we keep page. And I also would like to encourage everyone to stay tuned for upcoming events upcoming celebrate learning events that we still are having on this week I believe one of them is tomorrow yes we have that on the chat thank you so much Rachel. I appreciate that. So, definitely there is lots more learning to happen this week. And with that I just wanted to thank you all, everyone, my co host, our moderator, the CTL team who made the event possible and supported us throughout the event. And all of you here today who joined us. So, thank you for appreciating diversity inclusivity in education through your presence. I hope it was a fruitful meeting for everyone I hope that we have all learned, or I'm sure we have all learned something today. And, once again, a big thank you. I was very happy to be able to join you today and post a wonderful meeting today. Thanks a lot.