THE TANGIBLE BENEFITS OF INCLUSIVE DESIGN ON DISABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY PERCEPTION IN COLLEGE PALEOBIOLOGY CLASSROOMS

Evolutionary biology, including paleontology, has a long and troubled history upholding ableist terms and frameworks to the detriment of disabled people. We crafted a pedagogical framework of lesson plans which allowed our students to share the science concepts they had learned in our courses, and to implement components of disabled accessibility in their final projects. Our goal was to see what benefits or drawbacks may come from this pedagogical approach. We grounded our student semester projects in inclusive design, more specifically, Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

Here we share the results of our Universal Design for Learning (UDL)-centered pedagogical approach in four evolutionary biology and paleontology courses at three separate U.S. universities, where students were taught methods of UDL as a vehicle for equitable science communication. Student groups created final course projects such as videos, podcasts, or social media infographics and infused their pieces of science communication with aspects of UDL. We tailored our lessons to help teach students about disabled equity and accessibility, and about practical techniques for implementing access needs such as closed captioning and alt text. Before and after the student projects, we asked the students to reflect on their understanding of accessibility – a concept that is central to disabled equity – and how strongly they may notice or consider accessibility when interacting specifically with science media products (documentary videos, podcasts, social media posts, etc.) as a form of science communication. Results include both quantitative and qualitative measures of student thinking around accessibility and disability. We find that over 90% of students (N=206 in Fall 2020, N=62 in Spring 2022) agreed they had increased their sense of disability awareness and sense of disability advocacy across all courses. In addition, text-based thematic analysis highlighted themes such as disability as a limitation, and the benefits of inclusive pedagogy. By emphasizing UDL and disabled equity in evolutionary biology and paleontology courses across multiple universities, this study not only addresses historical shortcomings in our field, but also paves the way for fostering a sense of community and social responsibility among future science, engineering, technology, and math (STEM) practitioners.