This post was written by 起点传媒member Micah Savaglio.
In a recent opinion piece published in Inside Higher Ed (鈥溾��), psychologist and psychometrician Robert J. Sternberg says that 鈥淐OVID-19 has taught us something important about intelligence,鈥� which he goes on to define as 鈥渢he ability to adapt to the environment.鈥�
I admire Sternberg鈥檚 call for a broader concept of intelligence than most methods of assessment are designed to address. Yet if is any indication, his opinion may ignore a wide array of challenges facing college and university students in the age of COVID-19.
础蝉听 have shown,聽learning environments within higher education are often designed with only some, not all, bodies in mind. As a result, many students with physical, mental, and other disabilities confront barriers that prevent them from full and equal聽access to the spaces and activities of their classes.
In other words, when we fail to center disability in our course designs, we actively decrease access to equitable education for entire classes of people. At this critical moment in the fight for both disability rights and academic equity, it is time to radically rethink not only what higher education can look like but who gets to design it.
For instance, what if instead of focusing on rigid notions of ability, we started paying closer attention to the environments we expect our students to adapt to? What if, as , we 鈥渕ore consciously and systematically ask for and utilize feedback from students, especially students with disabilities?鈥� It鈥檚 not enough to retrofit inaccessible learning environments for students who experience barriers to access; addressing students鈥� diverse access needs means taking a much more proactive and inclusive approach to course design.
In my research at Temple University on how undergraduate students experience course policies and practices in the first-year writing classroom, COVID-19 has taught me something important about access. I have consistently found what disability scholar Margaret Price calls 鈥渃onflicts of access,鈥� wherein conditions that enhance access for some students can decrease access for others (鈥淎ccess鈥� n.p.).
For example, several of the students with whom I spoke reported significant benefits to their participation as a result of the university鈥檚 shift to online instruction. Take Becca, who highlighted the conflicting relationship between her 鈥渞eally bad chronic insomnia鈥� and her writing course鈥檚 pre-COVID, in-person attendance policy. Despite receiving disability service accommodations authorizing her to miss double the number of allowed absences without penalty, Becca reported that in-person attendance was 鈥渁 struggle鈥� that 鈥渞eally stressed me out,鈥� adding that she 鈥渃an鈥檛 wake up at eleven twenty鈥� when 鈥淚鈥檓 up till six, seven in the morning.鈥� Later in our interview, Becca reported that the course鈥檚 transition to primarily asynchronous online learning has 鈥渂een good for me,鈥� allowing her to engage course content in her own time.
But the same university-wide shift that made participation more accessible for Becca was experienced as limiting for Madison, at least in her non-English courses. Linking her disability and ADHD to 鈥渉ow I learn,鈥� Madison described a clash between her preferred modes of communication and her asynchronous online courses. When I asked Madison to elaborate, she explained,
“It was kind of like I got lost [in those courses], and then . . . it would be the week before the final exam, and I鈥檓 like, 鈥淲ait, I missed the past week鈥澛燽ecause it鈥檚 online . . . And I wasn鈥檛 meeting with the teacher.”
Conversely, Madison reported that the synchronous component of her online writing course (meeting with her instructor over Zoom to discuss paper drafts), 鈥渆specially for me, with learning disabilities, really helps so that you can . . . connect and . . . get on the same page with the teacher.鈥�
The varying levels of access these students reported suggests that one person鈥檚 virtual access needs may exist in tension with the needs of others. Yet while such conflicts may appear irreconcilable, they also point to the need for a more flexible model for delivering education. Students鈥� access needs may vary, but addressing the needs of one student need not come at the expense of others. If we design with in mind, we can work to build learning environments flexible enough to address a wide range of access needs at once.
Sternberg says intelligence is really 鈥測our ability to adapt to the environment.鈥� Rather than construing the challenges of virtual learning as questions of adaptive intelligence, why not center students and faculty with disabilities by inviting them (and paying them) to help envision and design flexible courses that will survive the pandemics and unforeseen challenges to come? Then we can measure how adaptive and flexible a learning environment is, rather than how 鈥渋ntelligent鈥� students are when they succeed, or fail, to adapt to a new normal as rigid as what it replaced.
Micah Savaglio is an English doctoral candidate at Temple University. His research interests include composition and rhetoric, disability studies, multimodality, and creative writing. He can be reached at micah.savaglio@temple.edu.聽 This research was supported in part by Temple University鈥檚 Disability Resources and Services and First-Year Writing Program.聽
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