Siva Krishnan’s OER Story: Communication and Teamwork Skills to Support Neurodiversity

(upbeat music)

LAUREN: Hello and welcome listeners.

You are listening to Stories of Openness,

a limited series podcast created by the Open Education team

at Deakin University Library.

My name is Lauren Halcomb-Smith and I'm your host.

I'm a lecturer of Open Education at Deakin

and I'm on a mission to explore the impact

that Open Educational Resources or OER

are having on learning and teaching at Deakin.

OER are free textbooks and other learning materials

that anyone can use, adapt and share,

unlike traditional textbooks that can be locked

behind high costs and copyright restrictions.

In this series, I'm talking with Deakin academics

about their experiences of creating

and using Open Resources.

This podcast is part of a research project

that uses podcasting as a research methodology.

So this conversation is both a podcast

and open research data.

I'm coming to you today from the beautiful

traditional and unceded lands of the Boonwurrung people.

I gratefully acknowledge them as the traditional custodians

of these lands, seas and skies and recognize

that this has been a place of learning, teaching

and rich conversation for millennia.

My guest today is Siva Krishnan,

Associate Head of School and Associate Professor

of Engineering at Deakin University's School of Engineering.

Siva is an engineer by training,

but over the last 15 years,

he is focused on curriculum leadership

and support for course design.

Siva has mentored academic and professional staff

in curriculum and assessment design

with a particular focus on design for learner engagement

and agency.

Siva is also a co-author of a brand new OER called

Communication and Teamwork Skills to Support Neurodiversity.

The book is designed for staff and students

to support the neurodiverse student body

in developing two key professional practice skills,

Communication and Teamwork Skills.

Welcome, Siva.

I'm so excited about this conversation

'cause your OER is amazing.

Thank you so much for being here today.

SIVA: - Thank you, Lauren.

Thank you for having me

and thank you for that lovely introduction.

LAUREN: - Oh, you're so welcome.

I am really curious, Siva, how an engineer

and associate head of school came to create an OER.

SIVA – That’s a very interesting question,

one that goes back a long way.

So before academia I used to work as a hardware design engineer,

and I worked in the field for over 10 years

across different industries.

Part of my role was to mentor junior engineers

and acclimatise them for practice

and through that experience,

I developed a flair for teaching and learning

and made the decision to move to academia

after the initial 10 years of working as an engineer.

Deakin was a second university for me,

so I started working at Newcastle University

and then I moved to Deakin in 2013.

And at that time, the School of Engineering

was going through a transition,

a major transition from the traditional lecture-based

tutorial focused education system

to more hands-on project-based.

More relevant to what employees are looking for

in graduate engineers.

And so the school was thinking about transitioning

to a project-oriented design-based learning pedagogy.

So what that means is about 50% of our units

within our undergraduate engineer in curriculum

requires students to participate

in project-oriented activities,

so working in small teams,

working with each other,

Learning with, learning about, and learning from each other

while they're working on those projects.

So half of the time,

they're actually being training engineers.

Now this is a fantastic opportunity for students

to learn to develop the skills

and be ready for practice.

But equally, it's also challenging

for students who are neurodivergent.

And so we had a lot of students,

which we didn't really think about at that time.

So it's a problem that we have been

as for facing over the last 10 years

in understanding why do students struggle

working in small team environments?

How do we support them better?

How do we support our academic staff

to work with our students better?

So they were the kinds of things

that motivated us to work in this project as well.

LAUREN: - And what sort of things were you observing

before the OER in those student groups?

SIVA: - There was a lot of challenges that students face

around how to communicate with their teachers,

how to communicate with their peers,

how to request information,

how to request an extension if they need additional time.

'Cause when you think about neurodivergent students,

their brains are wired slightly differently.

Now I am very happy to disclose I'm dyslexic.

And my brain works slightly differently.

And I know that because of the first-hand experience

that I had to learn to overcome dyslexia

and to be able to read, to be able to write,

and to be able to speak clearly.

So they are the aspects of work that you would expect

someone, especially as an engineer,

to be able to be good at.

And so we were noticing that students were challenged

by communication skills,

by being able to work in team environments.

That was one, but equally we were seeing that our academic staff

didn't know how to work with our students who were struggling,

how to support them.

To even identify the students that were struggling was hard,

'cause it's easy to actually label somebody as lazy

and not engaging without knowing fully why they're not engaging.

There were the challenges that mainly motivated us

to think about how do we do this differently?

How do we do this better?

How can we support our students and our staff?

LAUREN - And what did you initially envisage

when you set out on this journey to address those challenges?

SIVA - It involved us first searching.

Before we jumped into this OER project,

there was a lot of searching, researching that myself,

my colleagues and my co-authors, one of the co-authors,

there's two co-authors to this OER,

one of the co-authors did.

To identify what resources may be useful,

ADCET resources are fantastic, to be honest.

There's lots of information, supporting material,

material for designing, learning for students

with disability, learning difficulties,

neurodivergent students, how to work with them,

how to help them receive information,

how to support them when they have particular needs,

how to help them identify and explain what those needs are.

So there are heaps of information out there,

but there wasn't one specific to students,

particularly in staff specific to a STEM-based discipline,

so engineering required a lot of project interaction,

and we couldn't find anything that was very specific

to how do we actually communicate,

how do we get them to work in teams.

So that was what sort of helped us to understand.

The need a little bit better, I suppose,

having said that we've worked on this resource,

I should say, we have drawn from many of the existing resources,

we didn't create something new.

LAUREN - And what was the motivation behind an OER?

Like, why did you choose an openly available textbook?

SIVA - I guess it is in line with our thinking

about the fact that education should be accessible

and available for anyone,

and there should be no barriers for people,

including financial barriers for people to benefit

from such a resource,

which was the motivation for an open education resource.

LAUREN - Yes, you're speaking my language, Siva.

I love this. I love the idea of changing the world

by reducing barriers for participation in education.

And so tell us a little bit about the OER that you created.

SIVA - OK, so as you said, the OER is an open education resource,

and it is an online resource.

It is freely available to anyone and everyone.

Our particular resource, which is Communication

and Teamwork Skills for Neurodivergent Students,

is a resource that steps students through communication

differences, strategies for effective communication,

as well as how to approach group work or teamwork

in an easy to digest manner.

So the chapters are written in such a way

that it's easy and interactive for neurodivergent students.

It's developed with them in mind,

as opposed to actually developing a resource

that is more academically robust, or like a journal article,

you're not arguing a point.

You're actually making it easy for students to digest,

for staff to digest how to work with each other,

how to support students with disability

learning difficulties.

There are a lot of things that we have covered within that book,

the open education resource,

but it is done in such a way that it's much easy to digest.

LAUREN - And you've been really careful to make sure

that the resource meets a really high standard

for accessibility throughout the text, right?

SIVA - We have, absolutely.

And a lot of the help was actually from Dr. Bec Muir

and I should really acknowledge her contributions.

It's very appropriate to say that she has been

a guiding light from the beginning.

So the work that she did in developing some early resources

helped us understand beyond neurodivergent students,

understanding learning difficulties,

understanding disability better.

And this resource was drawing from her initial work,

as well as other work from ADCET and so on.

LAUREN - One thing that I noticed, even just from the very beginning

of the book, when you open up the first pages,

it makes it really clear to the reader how to use this book.

And I really appreciate that because sometimes

you can open textbooks and immediately there's a barrier

put up perhaps by the way that the book is organized

or the density of the language.

And I think that it's really evident when you look at the book,

how hard you've worked to reduce those barriers.

SIVA - Indeed.

It was something that we had kept in the back of our minds

throughout.

I think what was even more helpful

was to have a student partner work with us.

So we could actually see it from the lens of a student

and understand how a student would want

to use such a resource.

And so, as I said before, how we actually

used and moved from other resources.

We also wanted to draw from the student partner

to actually learn and understand how a student, particularly

with learning difficulty or a neurodivergent student

might use this resource.

And that was the whole idea.

We wanted to be accessible.

We wanted to be useful for somebody.

LAUREN - If I understand correctly, the resource

is now being used across the entire bachelor

of engineering.

Is that right?

SIVA - And postgraduate, too.

So we do have a lot of international students

who come to us into our postgraduate programs

that we offer or degrees that we offer

in the School of Engineering.

STEM disciplines, and particularly engineering,

attracts a lot of students that are neurodivergent.

The rate of disclosure is quite low.

But we know that through interactions with students.

And so, it was about how do we actually

make this resource accessible for all students

and staff, irrespective.

So it's not for one cohort alone.

So it's used both within the undergraduate and postgraduate

programs.

We give it to the students.

It was also used to develop a training module

for peer mentors to build their understanding

of how to support students who are neurodivergent.

And the neurodivergent piece.

And so it's being translated into staff resource,

staff training module, as well as a student resource

that's available and accessible for everyone

within the School of Engineering.

I should also say that it's actually

being referred to students outside of the School of Engineering

within Deakin and even beyond Deakin.

LAUREN - And what you're describing about how you've

made sure that it's accessible, not just

for neurodivergent students who you had in mind when you wrote it,

but for everyone, reminds me a lot of a key

principle from universal design for learning, which

is an important concept in teaching and learning design,

where we say that what's good for the students

who need accommodations actually

ends up being good for everyone.

SIVA - Indeed.

And integration never stops, right?

So when you think about how long undergraduate and postgraduate

program, we are continuing to integrate that in the unit

level, as well, and so an undergraduate engineering

degrees for years long.

If you introduce it just at the beginning,

and if you forget not to integrate it afterwards,

students may also forget that, and our staff may also

forget that.

So it's important to actually continue

to integrate that across purposefully selected units.

So that students have that resource handy,

and they can use it as and when they need it.

So that that approach is important.

And it is something that we have been carefully

doing to generate discussions within and amongst our staff.

So they understand fully how to support students

for different tasks, not the same task,

because teamwork skills may be different at different e-levels.

And so how do you actually take someone

through the complexities of working in a team environment,

taking instructions from the unit chairs one thing

in the beginning, but having their own initiative,

and being able to also influence other members of the team,

towards the final year of your learning,

means that you push yourself above and beyond just

the participation requirement in a team environment.

And how do you do that, especially

when you are a neurodivergent student?

You identify yourself as a neurodivergent student.

So that's something that we've been thinking about carefully

to integrate it across the whole program.

LAUREN - And what sort of stories are you hearing

from your bachelor of engineering and your postgraduate

students about this OER in practice?

What impact is it having?

SIVA - Look, that's a slightly tricky question,

because we don't directly go and ask students,

do you find this useful?

And it's not meant to be that way, right?

So it's not meant to be an inclusive resource.

It's there for students to use it.

Sometimes students use it without telling anybody

they're using it.

And it is supposed to be that way, because a lot of the times,

people don't want to disclose their learning difficulty

or disability, and it is understood

because of the stigma that comes along with it.

So we don't intrusively ask students how they use it,

but anecdotally, we've received feedback from students

who have used it, that found it really useful.

Our staff also have seen a positive change

within their classroom, particularly

when students want time out, and they don't want to be

part of learning activity, because it is too much for them.

They know that they can use fidget tools.

They can find a calm space to go and sit down.

And it shows that they have used source resources,

and they have started to understand the information

presented within that resource to learn

how to manage the situation themselves.

It is also very possible that they are getting support

externally, not just within this resource, right?

So I think it's about how do we actually--

what's the word I'm looking for here?

How do we work hand in hand with other resources

that are available?

It's not supposed to be a single source of information,

but it is in addition to other support mechanisms

that are available for students.

LAUREN - Which is a very inclusive approach in and of itself,

because what you're saying is there's no one size fits all.

A resource that might be really useful for one student

may not meet the needs of another, and that's really OK.

SIVA - Absolutely.

Absolutely.

LAUREN - So you hear anecdotally from students

who are happy to share, and from your instructors,

your teachers, that it's helpful.

But I understand-- and you mentioned before--

that you actually had a student work with you

to create the resource.

Can you tell us more about that?

SIVA - When we initially set out to work on this resource,

we were looking for a student who is neurodivergent,

or identifies themselves as neurodivergent,

so that we can learn from them.

And they will also have a ball working with us in this project.

That was the whole idea.

And we did get a student partner who was doing an undergraduate

degree at Deakin, who has been fantastic throughout the project.

She came in, started giving us insights

into the student world, but also insights

into different types of neurodivergence,

so understanding that it's not, as you said,

it's not one size fits all.

And you can't develop a resource that addresses every problem.

But how do you actually take an approach

that can sort of build the confidence of students,

can build the confidence of staff dealing with students?

And so that was really helpful.

So the impact she had on us was profound.

And the impact I suppose the project

had on her, building her confidence

to be able to go out into the real world

and talk about the work that she's been doing,

and promote the projects, and sort of draw a sense

of satisfaction from it.

We could see how that student partner had blossomed

over the time of her engagement in the project

from being an introvert to being somewhat of an extrovert,

being happy to go out there and be the cheerleader

for the resource itself.

It's fantastic.

It's a fantastic, huge transformation experience.

LAUREN - For your teachers in the program,

have you observed any impact that the resource has had on them?

SIVA - Absolutely.

So it's been a really positive experience

that we've heard from a few of our academic staff,

initially, who didn't know how to deal with some of the challenges

that students faced when they worked in team environments.

We don't particularly provide specific training

on how to work in a team, how to communicate

with their peers, how to communicate with clients,

how to communicate with different stakeholders in a project

given that our curriculum is so heavily project-focused.

I think with this resource, the students that we're struggling

definitely have been able to use the resource

to help themselves, but also help other people.

And that's something that our academic staff

have started to notice.

And so all they needed to do is to point to students

that this resource is available as in when they need them.

We do that, as I said, in different intervals.

It's a selected, specifically selected units

at the beginning of the program, sometimes in the middle

of the program, and so on.

And so that's been helpful from their perspective,

because at least they now have confidence

in saying to students, look, if you're struggling,

we know that you are.

You can go and have a look at this resource.

Come and ask questions if you have questions.

If you don't want to, that's also fine.

LAUREN - I can imagine, from the perspective of a teacher,

and I've done a bit of teaching myself, just how much peace

of mind it would give me to know that it wasn't just me

having to answer all the questions and support

the students through all the challenges

that they might face in their group work.

Like, obviously, they're going to be there for that anyway.

And there's going to be challenges

that this resource won't address, but just to know

that there's something that's been tried and tested

would be a huge relief for me and give me

a lot of confidence as a teacher.

SIVA - Absolutely.

And you don't sometimes have answers for everything, right?

So that's-- and you're not expected to have answers for everything.

And so some of us, if you don't have engineers like me,

and we're trained to be very--

to be very much technically oriented.

Soft skills are often the hard skills for most engineers.

Even though that's something that they have to develop

to be able to practice in the real world.

And those hard skills-- I'm not going to refer

to them as soft skills-- those hard skills.

It's hard for everyone, including academic staff.

And so you might find this interesting to know,

but it is not easy for us to actually work with students

to identify how to support them.

And so the responses I've had from some of the staff

that have used these resources is that they

don't have to find the answers themselves.

They can now have a resource to point to students to.

And do you find it's raising the awareness

of your academic staff about neurodivergence in general?

Oh, it assumes so, because if you ask me,

did I actually know everything about neurodivergence,

learning difficulties or learning disabilities?

I didn't.

Most of us have tunnel vision, and we only

know as much as we are exposed to, right?

So the information we have access to and we

have tried to access is what limits our knowledge

and experience is limited by that information.

Having exposure to more is only

I'm assuming going to positively impact them.

LAUREN - And if we look beyond Deakin, is this

or we are having any impact, as far as you know?

SIVA - I suppose so.

So we've had significant visits since the OER has been released.

There's been more than 7,000 visits

on the OER resource and about 150 downloads.

So that's significant for a resource that's only

being out there for a very short time period.

What I would really like to know is if people are using it,

and if they're listening to this podcast, please email me.

Tell me that they found this useful,

or they found this not so useful in particular ways

to really be happy to take their feedback and improve

response.

The resource itself has been picked up by ADCET,

by UNSW, UTAS, you know, University of Tasmania.

So there've been referring students and staff

to this resource, which I know of.

So through library partners, through conversations

that I’ve had with people in different places.

Engineers Australia picked up on the resource

and asked if I would come and do a presentation.

at a diversity conference last year, which we did.

And so it's also come to the attention of industry

practitioners, employer groups, not just the academic

and student cohort.

But industry is also starting to look at what we're doing

and how they may actually change their practice

to support graduates that are entering the field.

How do we support neurodivergent graduates

in something that they started talking about in that conference

which was interesting.

LAUREN - And what's amazing is because it is an openly licensed resource,

someone could take your OER and they could remix it

for a different application.

Right now it's for neurodivergent students

in team and group work settings for undergraduate

and graduate students.

It could be for graduates in the industry.

Absolutely, yeah.

I think it's an open resource.

So it's there for people to adapt it

as in how they would like to use it.

That's the whole idea, right?

So what's the point in limiting people's access to the resource?

If they can use it and if they can adapt it to their context,

they're more than welcome to do that.

And as I said before, they've got valuable feedback for us.

Absolutely.

Happy to take it as well.

LAUREN - Have you heard any specific stories from any of those colleagues

that I think you said it's Headspace,

UNSW, Southern Cross, UTAS, University of Canberra?

I know that you're getting referrals from all of them.

Any specific stories coming from any of those places?

Not particularly, but the interactions

I’ve had with the equivalent of disability resource

center at Deakin, at UNSW and UTAS

has been really positive.

So they're like, you know, why didn't we do this ourselves?

Why didn't we create a resource such as this?

So that was appreciative.

Like, you know, I felt, oh, good.

It is, in fact, for this useful to hear that feedback,

to be able to say, look, thank you for doing this.

We would really like to use these resource

within a peer mentoring group within our disability resource

center to train us to be able to work with our students.

That's a positive sign that this is a useful resource.

LAUREN - All right.

We're going to go a little bit, a little meta now.

SIVA - Mm-hmm.

OK.

LAUREN - So as you know, this is both a podcast episode

and its research data.

And this is research data that we're

going to have to analyse and come to some conclusions.

You've been there.

You are sort of the witness to all of this.

What do you think it all means?

What can we learn from your stories about the impact

that OER have on teaching and learning?

SIVA - Look, I would encourage anyone

and everyone to actually do it.

If I think there is something that they should do

to make a difference, use the OER channel

as an opportunity to do that.

At the start, I didn't know that such an opportunity existed,

because why would I have waited 10 years to do that?

I suppose, understanding the problem, understanding what

can be done, what resources they just need to support.

It took us a while to get there.

But when we got there, the information

and the support that we got from the library team

was fantastic.

The Open Education Resource Team.

They were really clear with the expectations they set for us.

They were really clear with the approach

they suggested that they could take.

They didn't actually make us do one thing or the other,

but here are the different options.

And there are the pros and cons associated with it.

We got a lot of support in terms of having training sessions,

as well as working with people who

have participated in OER products prior

came together in communities of practice sessions,

which we participated in, and shared their experience.

And so here I am, sharing my experience.

It's absolutely a platform to actually

have an alternative publication.

So I know a lot of the academic staff think

about general publications, conference publications,

as it means to have an impact.

It will have an impact, certainly,

but this is another way of having impact.

This is another way of impacting student learning,

another way of impacting staff experience and student experience.

And I think one that I'm absolutely proud of.

So there is nothing that I would have done differently

to producing in OER resource, particularly in this area.

The other thing I would like to add

is the support that we received in terms of checking

the intellectual property, compliance, and issues,

which I had absolutely no idea of.

And we don't think about these kinds of things

when you write a general article.

Because often it's done by a publishing company

and they ensure that it is original work and whatnot.

But when you're drawing from so many other people's work

and creating an open resource, what can you do?

And what are the limits and boundaries

of how much you can share?

Who knows? I didn't.

And it was really important to sort of take that support

and go through the learning process.

And I think we're only better off for doing that.

And I've talked with my other academic partner

in this resource.

And we both know how long we have come through this experience,

the long way that we have travelled,

both in our learning, both of us, this is.

I think my suggestion is do it.

If you think you can have an impact on student learning,

by all means extend this, because this is only the beginning.

It's not the end.

If there are other areas that we can support neurodivergence

in students with, I would encourage you to do that.

LAUREN - What a wonderful answer.

Thank you, Siva.

Now, my last question.

Do you have a favorite part of the OER?

SIVA - My favorite part is the team work part,

because I enjoy working in a team environment.

And I do a lot of satisfaction

from being part of a team, learning with,

learning from, learning about each other.

That is what motivates me to come to work,

to do things that I do.

I suppose that's my favorite part in the book.

If we can support our students to work in a team environment,

easily to navigate the dynamics of a team environment

and to be able to understand and support each other

and learn from their peers and learn with their peers,

learn about their peers, fantastic.

I think that's my best part.

LAUREN - Wonderful.

Well, Siva, thank you so much for spending this time

with me today and for sharing your stories.

I appreciate it so much.

I love this.

It really fills my cup.

I think in the same way that working as a team fills yours.

SIVA - Thank you, Lauren.

Thanks indeed for having me.

LAUREN - Stories of Openness is a limited series

from the Open Education team at Deakin University Library.

It's part of a research by podcast project,

led by me, Lauren Halcomb-Smith,

with Angie Williamson, Danni Johnson, and Eddie Pavuna.

We choose Open wherever possible,

including Audacity for Editing, Castopod for hosting,

and Music by Scott Holmes Music.

This podcast by Deakin University

is licensed under a CC-BY-NC License.

For more information and full acknowledgments,

please see our show notes.

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