We asked our faculty and staff at the University of Limerick to give us examples of how they have implemented Universal Design for Learning (UDL). In this example, Dr Lilian Genaro Motti Ader, Lecturer in Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Limerick, discusses how she used a tool called the Positionality Wheel (Noel, 2018) to explore the diversity of her students.
Noel, L.A. (2018). Home: Lesley-Ann Noel. The Positionality Wheel. Retrieved December 12, 2022, from https://lesleyannnoel.wixsite.com/website
Transcript
I am a lecturer in Human Computer Interaction at the department of Computer Sciences and information systems in University of Limerick and I wanted to talk about a tool that I use with my students.
So when I'm when I'm teaching human computer interaction this is a joint module so I have students from master's degrees but also undergraduate and second years and lots of students that are in Erasmus programs so they come from different countries.
This tool is called the Positionality Wheel it has been developed by Leslie Ann Noel and it's a survey like tool but I present this in a virtual whiteboard which students can join online and be anonymous while they're responding.
The goal of this tool is to help the students to position themselves against or inside a broad range of diverse skills and backgrounds and cultures that might have so in my course. There is different categories so we have age, gender, as well as country, how many languages do you speak, as well as your economic and social background now or when you were a child, and and also all the different field of work and study that are in the group.
So from my module this is relevant because it helps the students to position themselves comparing themselves to the users they will be designing technologies interactive systems in the future so they they know they can compare themselves to the people who will they will be designing for and so they can see where they situate in this broad range of diversity.
The impact that was that I was looking for was positioning themselves outside the class but actually, I realised it has it's a powerful tool to be used inside the class as well because it helps to create this class community and I was helping them to acknowledge all the diversity in the group.
It also it helps them to kind of accept different points of view especially when they are working in group and also to kind of celebrate your diversity because at the end when I show the results of their responses we can see how many languages they speak together as a group, how many countries and different cultures they are representing and as well as narrow it can be. Like most of them will be college students but they might be able to understand that they would have different perspectives from older people or with their design things for kids or people who have different needs from themselves.
In the module of human computer interaction this is a joint module so I have the students from applying for a master's degree but I also have undergraduate students in first and second years and Erasmus students coming from abroad so the goal of this too was for me to help them to position themselves against or inside this range spectrum of skills and background comparing themselves to the users they will be designing for in the future.
I wanted them to realize that they have a different perspectives from different users for example in different age groups or users who might have different needs when they would be using Technologies and the interesting impact that I noticed inside the class is that helps students to acknowledge and hopefully to accept and celebrate the diversity in the group because they look at the results of the two the what are the inputs inside the class and they can then realize all the valuable information they have around them all the representing nation of different cultures different languages.
So in one year I have for example 17 different languages spoken inside the class so it works really well as an online tool because the students when they are not physically present don't know each other so it also helps them to create all this image after their own group.