ITEps Conference: Workshop Evaluation from an Inclusive Perspective

 In celebration of 10 years of the ITEps program, a conference was held this past week consisting of a variety of speakers and organizations covering topics ranging from Dyslexia, misconceptions about Islam to data on bullying. Aside from the keynote speeches, I attended courses on Dyslexia, visual impairment, bullying, and sensory regulation. In this blog post, I'm going to be taking a closer look into my course on visual impairment through the lens of Inclusive Education.

Before analyzing the course, I'd like to give a summary of the course itself. Once everyone had entered the classroom, we were instructed to put on the blindfolds that were on the table in front of us; once everyone had them on, our two speakers entered the room and introduced themselves. They explained that with our blindfolds on, we were put in the same situation as they were: we couldn't see. The man explained that he had only about 5% of his sight, and that his sight was the equivalent of that moment when you look into the sun or turn on a light in a dark room; that sudden, bright light that feels like an instant headache. The woman explained that she had been born severely cross-eyed, and that her eyes were constantly rapidly moving side-to-side, making it difficult for her to focus on the image in front of her. After taking off our blindfolds, we were instructed to partner up with our seat mate and open the box in front of us, which contained two separate boxes of Legos. Our task would be to try and construct an identical building using our Lego blocks; sounds easy enough, right? Well, the catch is that we would both be blindfolded and have to rely on our communication and sense of touch to construct the same building. 

We then began building, with one partner acting as the architect and instructing their partner what pieces to use and where to put them. As the box was filled with Legos of different widths, lengths, and heights, it proved to be quite difficult to locate the Lego you wanted, let alone communicate the direction and placement you wanted it to be in.

After about twenty minutes of fumbling through the Legos and trying desperately to articulate your architectural "vision" (no pun intended) to your partner, we were able to look at our masterpieces (read as monstrosities). Once we had a minute to recover from all the laughing from our failed attempts at the task, we discussed the difficulties we faced with lacking our sight and trying to work together with our partner; this included misunderstandings in width of the blocks (some blocks were thin in height while others were thin in width) and difficulties with placement, as some people had placed blocks vertically instead of horizontally and vice versa, or had placed blocks atop of the incorrect block.

Then, we discussed some of the everyday difficulties that our two speakers face as people who are visually impaired. They shared stories of being grabbed in public without consent by "helpful" people who were determined to "help" them find their destination, despite not being asked to do so or even know where their destination was. They talked about people doubting their visual impairments, and the difficulties of navigating in a world that's designed for the non-visually impaired.

Finally, they told us about their work at the MuZIEum in Nijmegen, in which attendees are guided by a visually impaired worker through different setups designed to replicate the varying levels of visual impairment that people of different visual impairments experience. 

While the blindfolded building activity was a powerful way to replicate the difficulties that a person who is visually impaired may have, there were a few aspects that could've been adjusted to better allow for an inclusive outlook. 

For one, the activity was operated under the assumption that all participants were without any disabilities/disorders that may have hindered their success or even involvement in the activity, such as dyspraxia, which impacts one's movement and coordination, or even ADHD, which can impact one's fine motor skills, of which the activity focused heavily on. 

In addition, as ITEps is made up of a large international community, it is common to have many students of which English is not their first language. Even if a non-Native English speaker is more than proficient with their speaking abilities, the activity can still present difficulties as it relies solely on communicating with words without the aids that vision supplies, of which some students may find great struggle in. 

As much of the course revolved around interacting with the two speakers through discussion, it can be deduced that the teaching strategy they chose to use was Direct Instruction. This teaching strategy involves the teacher (in this case, our two speakers) interacting directly with students and is leading the discourse (feel free to check out this link for more information on this teaching strategy: https://www.apsu.edu/academic-course-and-program-development/course-credit-hour-review/direct-indirect-instruction.php). In the activity, the strategy of Learning Partnership was also utilized, as the two students had to work together in order to achieve their goals of designing and successfully building two identical structures.

However, the course lacked any visual aids, such as a PowerPoint Presentation, to help guide the course. While it is inappropriate to expect two visually impaired speakers to create any visual aids, there was a student helper present who could have facilitated some sort of visual models or graphics to support participants who may be hard-of-hearing/hearing loss. With this in mind, the building blocks activity could've also presented great difficulty for someone with hearing loss, as they had to rely on discussion with their partner to succeed. 

Also, it may have been beneficial to allow participants to try the building blocks activity after discussing the difficulties they faced the first time around and discussing how they could've communicated better; this would've allowed the connection between understanding the difficulties those who are visually impaired face, and how we, as teachers, can give better instruction and communication to facilitate success for students who are visually impaired. Or, perhaps adjusting the activity the second time by using larger blocks or allowing us to choose new spots to build that were further away from others so we can hear better in order to demonstrate how we may need to make changes in order for our students who are visually impaired to better succeed. 

Finally, it would've been conducive for the speakers to have shared some facts and further information about people who are visually impaired; this way, we can learn more about different conditions that may impact one's visual capabilities that we may come across as teachers, and about the different tools and techniques that we can provide to students who are visually impaired.

All in all, while the speakers were able to give valuable first-hand experience and the activity gave students a powerful example of the difficulties that people with visual impairment may face, there are some adjustments that could be made in order to better facilitate the course for students of varying abilities and backgrounds, as well as provide future teachers with information to aid them with future students who may be visually impaired.