Michigan State University
As a society, we tend to design for the “average” person, including thinking about curriculum design as for the “average” student. In this talk, I discuss this as the “myth of average” (drawing on Todd Rose’s work) and instead highlight how we can leverage education research to design flexible learning environments in STEM. Flexible curriculum design works to improve access within our classrooms, for all students and in particular students with disabilities. I will provide examples of flexible design features from an active learning physics course at Michigan State University called Electricity and Magnetism Projects and Practices in Physics (EMP-Cubed) as well as highlight challenges to access in the same course and my ongoing research to better understand those challenges. With this talk, I hope to encourage a critical examination of the underlying assumptions about how we design curricula and how we can become more flexible in that design.
Dr. Daryl McPadden is a physics education researcher who focuses on developing, sustaining, and understanding collaborative, accessible environments in physics. She has worked extensively in many active learning formats, including Project-Based Learning, University Modeling Instruction, and Studio Physics. Currently, Daryl’s work focuses on understanding disabled students’ experiences in physics, designing accessible curricula, and building student-instructor partnerships to address ableism in physics through the Courses to Careers Workshop (NSF Grants #2336367 & #2336368). She draws on learning theories such as Communities of Practice, Backwards Design, Students as Partners, and Universal Design for Learning to inform this work. More recently, Daryl has extended these frameworks to examine scientific research collaborations as well. Dr. McPadden received her B.S. from Colorado School of Mines in Engineering Physics, and her Ph.D. in Physics from Florida International University.