Sending the slides ahead of class

Student-instructor access friction related to the distribution of materials

A week after my daughter was born, I gave a short speech to explain the meaning of her name and its significance to me and my spouse. Afterward, a member of the community who I had only recently met came up to me and said, “I liked your speech. It was very detailed, kind of like a college lecture… in a good way!” (He didn’t know that I am a teacher). Then he said, “How did you manage to prepare that in just a week?” I laughed to myself and said, “Exactly how far in advance do you think college teachers are prepared for their classes?”

After that conversation, I thought about how teaching is very often a week-to-week and day-to-day endeavor, a fact that may be less obvious to students and people who aren’t themselves teachers. I have found that this dynamic nature, combined with the busy schedules and general overwork that instructors experience can sometimes create some conflict with students who want or need a lot of advance information about class sessions. Whether and when to provide class materials ahead of a class meeting is a somewhat controversial subject among higher ed faculty. The arguments for providing materials such as slides ahead of time include that students can print them out or use them electronically to take notes, follow the flow of the lecture or class session, and customize them so that they are maximally usable and accessible to them. Consider a student with a visual impairment who receives an electronic link to slides before class and can adjust the size and contrast of the information to be able to see and use it during class. Some instructors and researchers also raise concerns with the distribution of materials (like slides) in advance of class, especially that this practice disincentivizes class attendance¹. A summary of some of this debate is available in a well-referenced post by Lydia Arnold.

I’ll put my own cards on the table and say that I place greater weight on the benefits of advance distribution than concerns about attendance, and try to provide materials in advance wherever possible. But the road to providing materials in advance is often bumpier than just a few clicks here and there. How might an instructor who has executive functioning difficulties or unpredictable work capacity relate to the practice of providing class materials like slides or notes ahead of class? Furthermore, students are commonly granted early access to class slides as an accommodation. How would such an instructor approach a student’s need for these materials as part of an official disability accommodations process? The instructor herself might have difficulty with these tasks as part of the same set of needs as the student! This situation is an example of access friction, or a conflict between access needs. Feel free to check out my original post on access friction if you would like some more background.

I hope to make this post the first in a series of posts about access friction between instructor needs and student needs. I think that student-instructor access friction demonstrates the inherently relational and often compromise-driven aspect of disability in higher education. While not all access issues are in this category, they can be among the most challenging to navigate, which is why I am so interested in them.

Artifact analysis: FAQ about providing access to slides in advance from UNM

I decided to take a look to see if any college/university offices (whether of disability services or of more general faculty support) offer any guidance to faculty who experience difficulty providing slides ahead of class. One resource of interest is a page from the University of New Mexico that offers Q+A on “providing lecture slides ahead of class as an accommodation.”

The first thing that this page does very well is explain why access to slides ahead of class can eliminate barriers for students with disabilities that affect language and information processing. Many classes assume, “that the student can continuously and efficiently shift their attention and focus between listening to the professor, looking at slides, and writing notes, while simultaneously sorting and digesting the material and assimilating the new information into their existing fund of knowledge.” This is quite difficult for students with disabilities that affect the processing of verbal and or written information, especially switching between two different modes. Processing disorders are an example of a disability that might make having slides ahead of time necessary for participation. The Q+A document explains, “many of our students are not able to quickly shift their attention from one learning modality to another, such as from listening to reading and back to listening. Many of our students find it extremely difficult to perform certain tasks simultaneously, such as listening and writing, or harder yet, listening, writing, and digesting information.” I think this is a clear and convincing explanation for why getting access to materials ahead of class is a very legitimate need for some students.

This document also hints at our main topic - student-instructor access friction. Question 5 raises the point that instructors who prepare and or revise their slides right before class would have to significantly change their work patterns in order to meet this accommodation need. What if the flow and demands of an instructor’s week do not allow for significant advance preparation for class sessions? Furthermore, instructors themselves can have disabilities that affect their ability to provide slides ahead of class. Multiple forms of neurodivergence are associated with executive functioning differences and challenges, including ADHD, autism, learning disabilities, and dyspraxia. I have always appreciated higher ed staff member Kerry Pace’s description of some of her experiences with dyspraxia, a condition that affects motor coordination and planning (and also affects executive functioning). She writes about attending an academic conference and all the steps involved, including dressing, transportation to the site and more.

“Traveling to [the conference] used up a great deal of mental energy, simply climbing the stairs in an unfamiliar train station, maintaining an internal monologue and (literally) a step-by-step risk assessment – how I positioned my foot on each step, making sure I kept hold of the handrail and my bag without losing balance, trying not to rush and bump into someone, or move too slowly and hold people up. In essence I have used this example to explain the challenges executive functioning - the combination of mental and physical processes that enable people to perform a task - presents to many people who have dyspraxia…As a person who has dyspraxia there is far more energy and time that needs to go into simple logistics in order to avoid calamity, things that a nondyspraxic / neurotypical person would do without thinking.”

Pace notes that activities viewed by many as “simple logistics” are not simple for her, perhaps things like preparing class materials days in advance of class meetings and sending them to specific students by a certain deadline that is different from the class meeting time.

Another group of instructors who might encounter significant difficulties in consistently preparing and distributing class materials days ahead of class is instructors with chronic and unpredictable conditions. Even an instructor who has sophisticated systems in place to prepare materials with significant lead time could get hit with a pain flare-up or unforeseen fatigue. If you have ever planned to spend the day working on an important task and been hit with a migraine (as I have many times) you might have experienced a version of this problem.

Before we discuss how to navigate this access friction, I want to reiterate the legitimacy of both of the sets of needs in this example. For both of the people in this instance of access friction, tasks are often assumed to be logistically and or cognitively easy by the other side. Instructors often believe that presence, focus, and participation in a given class session are prerequisites for learning. I think that for a lot of students, these are actually skills that are developing throughout the learning process, and are sometimes even heavier lifts than the content itself. On the student side, there is rarely recognition of the complexity of teaching, especially the cognitive demands of teaching in an accessible manner. It is an understandable impulse to label one set of concerns as less legitimate, as this makes the response more obvious. However, access friction is primarily a useful description of conflicts that occur in the classroom or elsewhere if we start from the assumption that there are multiple access needs, they sometimes conflict, and that there is not necessarily a hierarchy of these needs. For this reason I often counsel people that if they are observing access friction in their classrooms, the positive thing is that they are considering multiple needs as legitimate and important, which is a good step even as access friction is challenging to navigate.

I also should clarify that “documented disability” is certainly not the sole or most legitimate context in which a student could need or benefit from advance access to materials or in which an instructor could experience challenges in meeting this need. The documentation of disability itself tends to be an expensive and barrier-filled process, and some classroom or workplace needs do not align well with available diagnoses. Though this post, I simply hope to address one situation instructors, students, and campus staff may find themselves in: navigating a student accomodation need and instructor disability as part of an official process.

Navigating student-instructor access friction in the timing of material distribution

How could a situation such as the one we are discussing be handled in practice? First, I think it is important to flag that if there is a documented disability on both sides of this interaction (student and instructor) the disability resources office might need support from a different office or individual, depending on local campus context. Human resources, the ADA/Section 504 officer, and the teaching and learning support staff are likely candidates. However, the suggestions offered by the UNM Accessibility Resource Center are useful as general directions. Again, not addressing an instructor with a disability per se, it says,

“[We understand] that some professors are revising their slides until just before the lecture starts. What we would ask is that the professor collaborate with the student to identify a workable solution for this scenario. For example, the professor could email the slides in their final form to the student during the five minutes before class starts, and the student could bring their tablet or laptop with them to class so they have ready access to the slides during the lecture [...] Alternatively, if the student prefers to have the slides further in advance to help them prepare, even if the slides are not in their final form, the professor could email the slides to the student earlier in draft form and then email the final version as soon as it is ready.”

I will unpack these ideas in a little more detail to show how an instructor’s potential disability could be taken seriously.

Collaborate with the student. Navigating this type of access friction will probably require the student offering the instructor some more information about how they plan to use materials that are sent before the class session. This needs to be handled sensitively, so that the student doesn’t feel like the instructor or the supporting people are demanding more personal information about their disability than is warranted. It might be a good idea to begin the conversation about this access friction with the idea that the dialogue is about finding a mutually workable plan for the distribution of materials, not about asking the student to disclose personal details that are not relevant to that objective.

Maybe a very small amount of lead time can support the student’s needs. If the student is just looking to use the slides or other materials as a note-taking support or to adjust contrast or size for in-the-moment use, the instructor might distribute the materials right before class. This may not add more than a few minutes of extra work or steps for the instructor, and doesn’t require them to finish materials on a different schedule than the class meetings.

Maybe a draft version can support the student’s needs. If the student is mostly looking to be made aware of the overall flow of the class, get acquainted with key terms, and set up their own learning supports, the instructor might be able to send an approximation of the class materials several days before, such as a draft, outline, or a version of the materials used in a previous semester.

External support may be needed for the instructor in order to meet the student’s accommodation needs. Though not mentioned in this FAQ document, it may be the case that the student has a need for materials in advance of class in a manner that the instructor cannot meet on her own. In this case, the best move may be to find support for the instructor, as part of an official accommodation process or through other means. Some instructors work as part of teaching teams with other instructors or assistants, who might be able to help the instructor meet the accommodation need. Perhaps there are executive functioning supports or coaches available on campus that might be useful to the instructor. Options will of course vary based on local campus context.

I know that I haven’t covered every facet of this case study. In line with my concept of non-utopian teaching and learning, I assume that there are a host of situational factors that would require further re-balancing and negotiation of student and instructor needs, but I still fundamentally believe that access friction presents opportunities as well as challenges. Some of the best advice I’ve seen about navigating access friction is to acknowledge and address the friction, but avoid viewing this process as a competition. Framed slightly differently, I view situations of student-instructor access friction as potential opportunities for greater understanding between students and instructors, and greater partnership between students and instructors with disabilities.

The plan for the next installment in this series is a post about how instructors that experience sensory sensitivities and overload approach teaching methods that involve lots of in-class conversation in small groups (flipped classroom, some types of “active lecture,” some types of project-based learning), which can get loud and require a lot of active management. If you have additional suggestions for topics, please let me know!

Thanks for reading, and please feel free to contact me or comment with any feedback!

News and updates

-Tomorrow I will be posting a pilot “ask-me-anything” discussion thread on Substack. If you enjoy conversations about teaching in an online forum format, this might be a cool opportunity to discuss issues that are coming up for you that relate to the topics I right about here: neurodiversity, accessibility, and the professional of faculty development.

-I’ve started collecting a few testimonials for my independent faculty development work on my website, including a recent one from my participation in the Notre Dame Inclusive Teaching Academy this month. Check this out for an idea of what it is like to work with me!

Photo by Philip Oroni on Unsplash

1. There is at least one study I am aware of that shows that slide availability before class does not negatively affect attendance, and may have a positive impact on class “participation.” I acknowledge that the relationship between electronically provided materials and recordings and attendance probably varies a lot from teaching context to teaching context.