Universal Design for Learning at Virginia Tech
As part of its Brown Bag Lunch Series, the Institute for Distance and Distributed Learning invited Susan Asselin, professor and department chair for the School of Education, to speak on the topic of "Creating Accessible Instruction in Online Environments."
These distance education-themed brown bag lunch discussions are open to the entire university community and continue to play an active role for sharing experiences and best practices for distance learning faculty. Register today for the next lunch series, "Supporting Students with Special Needs in Your Online Course: A Roundtable Discussion", scheduled for March 27th, 2013 from 12-1:15 pm.
Susan Asselin shares how to make PowerPoint presentations more accessible to students with disabilities.
Asselin, along with Larry Cox, graduate student in the STEM Education Collaboratory, shared best practices for making classes more accessible within a universal design for learning framework. In working within this framework, Asselin and Cox discussed that not everyone does or sees things the same way, especially when posting documents, thus offering some good rules of practice with regards to PowerPoint presentations.
Some of the take-aways included:
Always bring a print-out of slides
Choose background themes and style sheets judiciously
Overall, be judicious in color
Use header style guide (such as built-in numbers and bullets)
Title hyperlinks with relevant names (with a move to not titling links such as 'Click here')
Enable the closed caption video component
Include slide content in the 'Notes' section
Members of Virginia Tech's eLearning faculty community, taking in the universal design for learning presentation.
Asselin also shared that blogs used effectively can foster greater accessibility, in particular the feature of having a record of themes and topics as an archive. By nature of their appearance, blogs look inviting and easier to navigate. Discussions can be facilitated through the feedback tool, including a variety of ways to contact the instructor.
Efforts to create greater course accessibility come with concerns, from both students and faculty, as outlined below:
Expectations about coursework and learning
Variety of faculty teaching styles
Knowledge of diverse learners
Rigor and content standards
Contacts:
Susan B. Asselin, Ph.D., Chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning
Aaron Bond, Assistant Director, Faculty Development and Support Services
Article by: Jenise Jacques, Photos by: Peter Means
Resources:
Learn more about IDDL
Learn more about Virginia Tech Online
Wikipedia: Universal Design for Learning