Access frictions with background noise in the classroom
Or, the (not so) dull roar of active learning
When you think of an “active learning” class session, what comes to mind? It is possible that you picture some type of active learning classroom space, with flexible seating, small group stations, and electronic monitors. Perhaps you also picture small group activities in which students use white boards, physical models, or other technology to explore a topic or conduct an inquiry. Perhaps you think about a rich student learning experience, enhanced by collaboration with peers and applications of course knowledge to real word problems with the instructor acting as a supportive guide. While I have previously written about some of the ways in which we can be attentive to equity in an active learning context, I focused more on the student experiences than on that of the instructor. As a continuation of my series on instructor-student access friction, I’d like to think about the following question: How do instructors experience teaching methods that involve a lot of in-person small-group discussion among students? To the extent that these activities might pose challenges and even access barriers for instructors, how should they respond? This post will start with what I imagine is a fairly specific personal experience, and then expand.
When I myself think of an active learning class session, I do indeed picture the groups of students working together or the seating and technology that may be present, but the thing that most immediately comes to mind for me is the sound of many voices engaged in different conversations. I know some people experience this sound as exciting and motivating, evidence of a room “buzzing with energy.” For me, it feels a little bit like trying to tune into a radio station but never quite being able to find the right frequency and just having to deal with the broadcasts of several stations at once. When I enter a situation with a lot of background noise and conversation, I know I’ll burn out quickly. A plain language summary of a small study of Autistic people’s listening experiences further details this experience.
This sort of background noise is a common (and even often assumed) feature of active learning. For a little taste of what I am talking about, you can check out this video I found of an in-class “jigsaw” activity in a mineralogy class. The video was filmed at the University of British Columbia, and seems to have been created as part of a demonstration of active learning techniques. In small groups, students examine a mystery mineral and use knowledge from the class to identify and classify it. The narration on the video mentions that this is an end-of-course activity, so it might not be the sort of thing that happens in most class sessions. It is noted that for this activity, the lead instructor is supported by teaching assistants for the preparation of the activity and the facilitation (the instructor and assistants “circulate” to provide help to individual groups). You may be able to hear the din of the background noise while the groups are working together, though it may not be as distracting or draining for you.
Watching the video, you might also be able to identify other elements of such an active learning class session that could create access issues for instructors. Some of the skills associated with executive functioning would be taxed in this classroom, such as prioritizing tasks, monitoring progress and time, and switching between different activities. It is also interesting to note the role of posture and mobility in the instructor’s role - the ability to easily stand and circulate around the room is not a given for all instructors.
At a different point in my teaching career I might have watched this video and either felt it was an obligation to conduct my class in a very similar manner to this instructor (“this is good teaching and I want to do good teaching”) and burnt myself out quickly trying to mimic it or rejected this video as a useful model altogether (“this teaching method involves more background noise than I can tolerate, and thus it doesn’t work for me”). Today I might try to take a more moderate perspective.
Potential paths
Let’s start from the premise that this is a worthwhile activity. I might design it slightly differently than this instructor did, but I could easily see myself implementing an activity designed to have students apply knowledge to identify an unknown substance. I think the good news in this situation is that the benefits of active learning probably don’t depend on any one activity design (and might not always depend on group work at all - think “muddiest point” and “minute paper” activities). Perhaps the video I reference here is part of a certain mental model of active learning that is common in higher education, one that might benefit from revision. Here are a few ways I could see this particular class session unfolding in a way that might fit better with some of the instructor needs I’ve mentioned so far:
Some of the small groups could retreat to a different space in order to reduce the total amount of noise in the room. Two groups per room with instructors dispersed between the rooms might result in a very different sound experience than 6 or 7 groups all in the same room.
There may be a way to design the activity in which fewer students attempt it at a time. Perhaps the class period could be split in half so that half the students do the activity for the first 30 minutes and the other half do it in the next 30 minutes.
An instructor may share responsibilities and roles with their teaching team (in this case TAs) in a way that works well for the people involved. If some of the members of the teaching team can more easily tolerate the main loud space, other members can circulate in other more calm spaces.
This activity might be rethought to involve only a short period of active in class observation of the mystery mineral in groups followed by additional individual or homework activities. The video notes that this activity happens at the end of the course, and restricting these high-volume activities to a few times per semester could also make them more manageable.
Synchronous online small-group discussions that take place in breakout rooms don’t involve the same noise issues - while this might not work well for this specific class with the physical samples, it might work well for a different class session in which students analyze e.g. an image.
You can probably think of more options than I have offered here, and I encourage you to add them in the comments to this post. I’ll add that even though I have been interested in the instructor perspective in this situation, there could easily be students for whom the background noise poses access barriers, including neurodivergent students, hearing-impaired or Deaf students, or students with less comfort in the language spoken in the classroom.
There may also be situations in which, because of a disability, an instructor or student might not see a path to a specific activity being feasible for them. Just because a teaching and learning practice is broadly “evidence-based,” does not mean it benefits or works for every single person, with or without accommodations. I think of an anecdote from Margaret Price1, who writes about a colleague who had a hearing impairment and was wondering whether she should enroll in a discussion-based course in her master’s program.
“[She] uses speech reading but not sign language for communication. Her ideal class would be lecture-based, preferably led by a speaker who uses a microphone and detailed slides. In groups of three or four, she can generally follow about half to three-quarters of the conversation; in larger groups, her comprehension drops to about one-tenth of what is said. If she sits near the back of a classroom (set up in rows), she will miss nearly everything the instructor says; if she sits near the front, she has a better chance of comprehending the instructor but will miss everything said by persons sitting behind her. I encouraged her to take the course anyway: it was her last requirement, it was a topic that excited her, and the university was required by law to provide adequate accommodations. ‘If you can’t get CART [computer-aided real-time translation],’ I said, ‘at least you can get a note-taker. You could sit next to the note-taker and follow the gist of the conversation through what they write. Or you could get a small [microphone] that people pass from hand to hand—it hooks up to a receiver that you wear. One of my friends in grad school used that.’ I was full of suggestions. However, this was not what my friend wanted. She didn’t want an accommodation; she wanted a class whose ordinary workings accommodated [her].” (p. 101)
No matter the benefits we can name of seminar-style classes, Price’s friend may have a defensible preference for a class session that she can mostly hear/understand over one that she can’t. Even though this anecdote was technically about a student, I think it is a good goal for instructors to design courses whose “ordinary workings” accommodate them. I’m far from the first person to suggest that teaching decisions must take instructors’ identities, capacities, and values into account - Sarah Cavanagh, Lindsay Masland, and Chavella Pittman and Tom Tobin have made compelling arguments on this point. But I hope through this post to offer two things: One, a personal anecdote of neurodivergent instructor experiences - some readers of this newsletter have mentioned that such anecdotes are valuable to them. Two, I hope to offer a slight reframing of the concept of access friction. So far, I have mostly used this phrase to describe situations in which two or more sets of access needs come into conflict. A noisy active learning classroom which poses a barrier for a neurodivergent instructor is not necessarily a conflict of two access needs in as literal a sense, but a conflict of an access need and a practice that is thought to engage students and benefit their learning. As I have written before, there is perhaps one view of inclusive teaching in which we simply select the teaching methods that are most beneficial for the greatest number of individuals. An alternative, which I associate with the idea of “non-utopian” teaching and learning, is that the most inclusive classroom might be one where many people are making a trade-off of some kind, resulting in “broad access” if not perfection for each individual.
Additional events and resources
I’m excited to be visiting Wabash College and returning to St. Mary’s College of Maryland for workshops and other work with faculty this August. If you would like to learn more about the work I do with different campuses please visit my website or contact me!
As part of my Beyond the Scope Circle I am hosting open office hours today July 17th from 12pm to 2pm Eastern US time. During these office hours If you would like to attend please let me know.
Photo by Declan Sun on Unsplash
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Such an excellent reflection on access friction. Thank you!