Podcast transcript: How can we make our learning more accessible?

Daniela Donohoe:
Welcome to the RCOT podcast! My name’s Daniela Donohoe

Dan Smith:
And I’m Dan Smith

Daniela Donohoe:
And today’s episode is all about accessible learning.

Dan Smith:
We’ll be hearing from Amie, a qualified occupational therapist who also has first-hand experience of learning with a neurodiverse profile:

Amie Mowlam-Tett:
“Ok, so, I still remember sitting and reading with my dad as a child and putting words in and seeing words that weren’t there, and I think that’s one of my first experiences of realising that I wasn’t reading quite as efficiently as everyone else in my class.”

Daniela Donohoe:
From Kerry Pace, founder of Diverse Learners, an organisation that offers specialist tuition and support to people with Specific Learning Differences or Difficulties:

Kerry Pace:
“Accessible learning for me needs to be inclusive, it needs to be flexible, it needs to talk about different ways of learning and respect those different ways of learning.”

Dan Smith:
And from Dr Stephanie Tempest, who’s worked extensively as an educator and is the lead for professional development here at the Royal College:

Stephanie Tempest:
“I think when you talk about accessible learning, the tips are based around the need to be creative; learning can happen anywhere, just recognise when it’s happening.”

Daniela Donohoe:
Let’s start by hearing from Amie about what it’s like to grow up with an awareness that you learn differently from some of your peers:

Amie Mowlam-Tett:
Ok, so I still remember sitting and reading with my dad as a child and putting words in and seeing words that weren't there and I think that's one of my first experiences of realising that I wasn't reading quite as efficiently as everyone else in my class and that I might be slightly different and have a learning difference.

It wasn't until I actually got into secondary school and higher education that I really noticed the difference in specific classes and it wasn't until college that I was finally diagnosed as having, or finally confirmed that I did have dyslexia, which meant that I was able to put a name to something and start thinking about how that had shaped the experiences that I had and affected me throughout school.

Dan Smith:
So it sounds like for Amie, the diagnosis of dyslexia was helpful, although it came quite late?

Daniela Donohoe:
Yes, and the support improved for Amie as she progressed through to higher education:

Amie Mowlam-Tett:
I had a variety of different experiences of teachers, I was often found that I was sat towards the back of the class or put in a lower set and just told that my English skills weren't good and that's obviously just an area that I wasn't very good at. Whereas when I went to university to do my masters I had specific lessons with a tutor that would sit there and go through: if you want to spell out the word necessary, think my shirt has one collar, two sleeves, and that's how many c's and s's and give me a few tips, but also tell me and encourage me that it's ok if you can't spell everything and there will always be words that anyone won't spell so don't worry. And I found my experience at university was a lot more positive around what I could do and focused on my strengths, rather than what I found in secondary school, which was focusing on my weaknesses. 

Dan Smith:
So it seems there’s definitely a need for accessible learning. But what do we actually mean by that?

Daniela Donohoe:
RCOT’s lead for professional development, Dr Stephanie Tempest, gives us her take:

Stephanie Tempest:
I see 'accessible learning' a little bit like the two playgrounds in my town that I take my children to, there's one playground which has a swing for children who use wheelchairs, but that swing is in the corner of the playground and it's fenced off and you can only access it if you've got a key. They've recently opened a new playground on the other side of town, that playground has a roundabout right in the middle that's accessible whether you're a wheelchair user or in a pram or can walk onto it, right in the centre. The floor is safe for everybody and everybody can use and play with all of the equipment. That's accessible learning. 

Dan Smith:
Yeah, that’s interesting. It’s about finding solutions that work for everyone?

Daniela Donohoe:
Exactly, and that theme of inclusivity is something Amie emphasised too:

Amie Mowlam-Tett:
I think the most important thing to know about accessible learning is that it can be used for everyone. It's not just for people that have specific learning differences. Everyone has preferred ways of learning, some people might like to sit and read because they find that enjoyable and that's how they learn the most and other people like visual stimulus or other people like to get up doing things and actually the more chances you have of varying that learning, the more likely you are to find people suit different areas and can excel in different areas and get a better all-round experience. 

Daniela Donohoe:
Let’s hear Kerry’s thoughts on this.

Kerry Pace:
So this is what's quite interesting about accessible learning, so if we take a different approach, a universal design for learning approach, which has its theory in America, which actually started out as an architectural theory. So making buildings accessible for people, so why have steps and a ramp? Why not have a ramp that everyone goes up? Accessible learning for me needs to be inclusive, it needs to be flexible, it needs to talk about different ways of learning and respect those different ways of learning and it needs to be multi-sensory.

We actually had a very interesting kind of Twitter mini-conversation yesterday and the theme that came out there the most was that people want to be outside. Why does a meeting have to be in a room? Accessible learning for me is about accepting different ways of learning and not having them as a hierarchy of learning.

Daniela Donohoe:
That’s a really interesting analogy; I think it really brings home the idea of making accessible learning central, not just seeing it as a bolt-on.

Dan Smith:
Yeah, exactly. But it also sounds quite challenging to implement. We wanted to hear more about what tools can help, so we asked Steph for some ideas:

Stephanie Tempest:
I was very fortunate to work in the higher education sector because we had access to the latest technology - we could record lectures, we had a learning management system. But what I have learned since moving out of the sector is you don't necessarily need the specialist technology, you just have to use what's already available, generically. So, since moving into a different sector I've been using tweet chats for learning a lot more, I've used Facebook Live, Google Hangouts, Zoom and all of these things are freely available to all of us so the opportunities exist inside and outside specialist sectors. 

I think if you bolt-on accessible learning, you miss the point. I think we should all be able to have the same opportunities to learn, in the way we want to learn regardless of our own experiences, our own abilities our own labels and ever where we live. So, when you think about accessible learning, there are people who live busy lives, there are people who want to learn on the go, there are people who live in remote and rural places and might want to download resources to access at a time that's convenient to them....... so accessibility needs to be at the core of all education and learning we do and not a bolt-on so it offers opportunities to everybody no matter where they live, no matter how busy their lives are, or no matter what their learning preferences are. 

Dan Smith:
OK great, so I guess what everyone wants to know is – how can these ideas be put into practice?

Daniela Donohoe:
We asked Kerry Pace, founder of Diverse Learners, and RCOT’s Dr Stephanie Tempest, for some tips:

Kerry Pace:
One of them is an A-Z address book. So not with your names and addresses in, but just plain pages and it has the letters down the side. Fantastic for any student or starting a project or going into a new area for vocabulary. So rather than having 'oh God, what was that abbreviation?' and bits of paper and worrying about how to remember things. Put it in an A-Z book, normally a nice A5 - it'll fit in a tunic pocket. You can have a quick practice outside saying it before you go in, or if anyone says anything in handover like get the blah blah blah and take it to the blah blah blah' you can go 'right excellent' and have a look at those things up. And that over-learning, which is another key pillar of the teaching of multi-sensory in a dyslexia-dyspraxia - friendly way is something little and often, over-learning all of these things, it might take a bit longer, but personalise it and you will get there. Another top tip, which is my favourite one - we get reports of wonderful progress on it - it templates. So if you go into handover, and somebody might be going, giving you all the information in lots of different orders, so might start with the name, and the age and then they'll talk about who's involved in the family and then they'll jump to the condition, and they'll jump to what happened yesterday, when they had their operation. If you've got a template set out, either grouped as name, condition, interventions, activities of daily living, MDT involvement that information can be put into a different box, if you like, or in a mind map, so the information that's coming in has a place to live rather than it all being in one box set of jumbled notes and then having to spend extra time going through your notes and organising your notes. A lot of our students have done that, a lot of people we job coach in various different organisations have done this and other templates been adopted by everybody else - back to our accessible inclusive learning. Good for everybody.

Dan Smith:
Here’s Steph again.

Stephanie Tempest:
I think when you talk about accessible learning in practice the tips are based around the need to be creative. I think learning can happen anywhere, in many formats and often we are learning and we don't recognise that we are learning, so I think my tips would be - be creative, appreciate learning opportunities exist everywhere just recognise when it's happening. 

I think when it comes to CPD, and what HCPC want as evidence, they want a mix of activities, so they don't want to see that you've just attended courses, it's not necessarily the vehicle of the learning that counts, it's the actual learning. So it could be a five-minute conversation, it could be a tweet chat, it might be just an experience where you've developed and learned new skills. Of primary importance is that any learning we do, we can reflect on it and show how it benefits those who use our services, and the services we deliver. So even listening to this podcast and reflecting on it and showing how it's improving the service you deliver is classed as CPD. 

Daniela Donohoe:
Kerry agrees that CPD should be broader than just training and courses:

Kerry Pace:
We can go to the CPD because it's compulsory and sit there bored and go well this is all I've heard before and go back and forget it and tick our box. Or we can come to an event where it's interactive. You have time to talk to other people you can make connections and plan projects and you can make a difference to patients and you can make a difference to the occupation. It's see it, say it, hear it, do it. Which occupational therapists are doing every single part of their day but if we all talked about multi-sensory learning for our patients. We need to be looking at that personalisation for our colleagues as well.

Dan Smith:
To finish this episode, we asked Amie what makes the biggest difference to her as a learner:

Amie Mowlam-Tett:
Personally, the elements that make the biggest difference to me are being able to get opportunities to talk, rather than to write things down on paper. So at university I used to carry around a small dictaphone, especially on placements and talk my reflections into that and then I could later write it up because when sat in front of a computer or sat down with a pen and paper, I become quite preoccupied by 'am I spelling things right?' or 'does this make sense?' that it takes away from what I'm trying to write down and trying to point out and learn. So I've adapted quite a few of my techniques now. 

I think my top tips for making learning accessible for everyone one would be to talk to people about preferred learning styles or what ways they learn so everyone is slightly different and it's acknowledging that within a team or within a group at university, everyone might have different ways, or some people might have a similar way so what can you work towards and what strengths can you play on within that group so that everyone can get a better experience from it? 

Daniela Donohoe:
So, a big thanks to Amie, Kerry and Stephanie for sharing their ideas and experiences with us today.

Dan Smith:
We hope you’ve picked up some useful tips on putting accessibility at the heart of learning, as well as a sense of the learning experience from the perspective of neurodiversity.

Daniela Donohoe:
We’d love to hear from you – what are your top tips for learning? As always, we want your feedback on today’s episode –let us know your thoughts, and what topics you’d like to see us cover in future episodes. You can contact us on Facebook or Twitter, or email sociamedia@rcot.co.uk.

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