Universal Design for Learning and digital accessibility are powerful tools to help teach all students more effectively. These tools can be implemented at any time.
A new online training through the Center for Transformative Teaching is available to learn more about making digital materials and general course design more accessible. The skills introduced in the training are practical and easy to implement across courses.
Tamy Burnett and Jacob Schlange in the Honors Program were early adopters of accessibility in their courses and student reactions have been positive, particularly in multi-section large-scale courses. They found training and support through the CTT to be valuable.
“Most of the digital accessibility techniques are simple adjustments and easy to incorporate into my standard practice,” said Tamy Burnett, associate director in the Honors Program.
Learners have diverse needs and abilities. UDL keeps the variability of learners in focus during course design to remove barriers to learning and by providing flexibility for how learners interact with course materials and activities. Simple design changes can reduce extraneous cognitive load for students and create a more empowering learning environment.
Learning places load on the brain. Course materials that are too advanced for students or assignment tasks that are unclear cause our students to devote more of their brain power to work out what is being asked of them. This is known as extraneous cognitive load and can be a significant barrier to student success. Burnett described the results of her efforts to reduce cognitive load by restructuring her Canvas pages.
“Some of the students immediately responded with positive affirmation that the universal design choice benefited their learning in my class. They shared examples of how easy they found my class’s Canvas site to navigate, and to know what was happening and due each day.”
Digital accessibility is a supporting pillar of UDL. Not only can digital accessibility reduce the cognitive load, such as proper heading structure for students using screen readers, but digital accessibility also helps everyone engage, for example video captions in a noisy environment. Jacob Schlange, assistant director in the Honors Program, describes his experience implementing digital accessibility.
“One of the places where implementing digital accessibility has been most beneficial is in our UHON 101H and 102H seminars. Because these are large-scale classes with multiple sections taught by a variety of instructors, it’s reassuring to know that by implementing the universal design and accessibility as a default, each of hundreds of students who take these classes will be able to engage with course content.”
When asked to share advice to his peers looking to implement digital accessibility, Jacob Schlange responded, “The Center for Transformative Teaching is such a great resource for instructors concerned with accessibility. Working with Grace Troupe opened my eyes to multiple accessibility issues in my class that I would not have identified on my own.”
For further assistance with UDL, digital accessibility, and other instructional design needs, contact the Center for Transformative Teaching.
More details at: http://go.unl.edu/udl