Each week, the Faculty Collaborative for Teaching brings you an easy-to-implement tool that you can use immediately in your classroom teaching. The goals of these tips will be to add to your teaching toolbox, share resources on teaching, and alert you to upcoming teaching and learning opportunities from the Faculty Collaborative.

TUESDAY TEACHING TIP: Small shifts support the needs of all students

Now that you’ve had a few weeks to get to know your students, this is an opportune time to take an accessibility inventory of your courses. Small shifts to your assessment design, delivery of course content, and open communication with students about how they access your course can make your courses easier to navigate and more functional for all students.

Each and every student is unique in body and mind and has unique learning needs that must be met. While you may have students who are registered with the Office of Accessible Education (OAE) and have specific accommodations communicated to you at the beginning of the quarter, it is good to keep in mind that all of our students have different ways of learning and accessing the knowledge we communicate in our teaching. Additionally, many of your students may not be registered with OAE with respect to their unique needs.

So, how can we make our courses more accessible so that all of our students thrive?

Today’s tip focuses on applying principles of universal design for learning in your courses.

Universal Design for Learning or UDL comes from the architectural concept of universal design and has been adopted by the United Nations (UN) Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). It is a framework designed “to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn” (Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST), “About Universal Design”) and provide educators with concrete tools to reduce barriers and maximize learning in support of their defined learning goals. 

UDL encourages us to ask three questions of our courses and student engagements: 

1. How can we sustain students’ curiosities for learning and support their self-awareness about their learning processes? (Engagement)
2. How can we offer students alternatives for accessing our course content in ways that decode and provide them the necessary context or bigger picture of the lesson? (Representation)
3. How can we create learning interactions for students that diversify how they can respond, navigate, and build their fluency with the course material in empowering ways? (Action & Expression)

In the context of SCU’s social justice mission and in line with principles of Disability Justice, UDL also reinforces your practice of cura personalis or “having concern and care for the personal development of the whole person” (Regis University, “Key Values in Jesuit Higher Education”). Acknowledging students’ life experiences and wholeness allows us as educators to honor our classrooms as spaces of community learning and places to cultivate our collective responsibility to social justice. 

As we approach the mid-quarter mark, we challenge you to adopt one universal design for learning or UDL technique to make your course more accessible and to address all your students’ unique learning needs. 

Here’s one way to do it 

• Engage: Invite students to reflect on their own engagement with the content and activities you offer. Ask students to share the connection they have to the content they learn. Simply asking this question can reinforce their knowledge and enhance their motivation to demonstrate that learning to you and their peers.
• Representation: Provide students scaffolding (visual and/or textual) to demonstrate how new content relates to prior knowledge introduced in the course. Consider developing a concept or skill map or word/skill web for your course that you collectively add to week by week throughout the quarter. Such visuals can show students what they are learning and have learned so far and why it all matters or supports the course’s bigger picture.
• Action & Expression: Vary how students can demonstrate their knowledge and learning. Take advantage of Camino’s interactive web tools such as the discussion boards and chat functions and encourage students to compose and communicate their learning in multiple forms of media such as video/film, illustration/visualizations, speech/auditory/presentation formats, physical manipulatives (models, physical objects or outputs such as photographs or art), or web design.  

Some things to keep in mind as you incorporate UDL techniques in your course: 

• Check in with your students about their learning needs. Ask your students to share mid-quarter feedback on your course. Have one question that focuses on their access needs. What challenges are they facing in your course? What content deliveries and activities have they most connected to or appreciated and why? 
• Remember who is in the room. As with any activity, remember who your students are as whole persons. Honor their lived experiences including their strengths, challenges, and the world outside your class. These can include chronic illness, mental health challenges, crises (on campus and globally), caretaking, and systemic forms of oppression and discrimination based on race, gender, class, sexuality, ability, food security, and citizenship that may impact their learning needs. 
• Reinforce collaboration and community. Remind students that they are not alone and have support in one another when accessing your course. Create concrete student-led resources for your class such as having a rotating/daily notetaker for each meeting, peer-based accountability partners or groups for them to check in with, and individual assignment schedules with intermediary goals/dates that keep them feeling prepared and on track week to week. 

DID YOU DO IT?

Let us know how it went. We would love to hear your feedback about how you implemented today’s Tuesday Teaching Tip in your classroom. Click here to fill out our 3-question survey.

WANT TO READ A LITTLE MORE?

• Faculty Collaborative DRT page on Accessibility
• CAST (2018). Universal design for learning guidelines version 2.2 [graphic organizer]. Wakefield, MA: Author.
• “What is Disability Justice?” 2019. In Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The Basis of Movement is Our People, A Disability Justice Primer, Second Edition. Sins Invalid: Berkeley. 

This week’s Tuesday Teaching Tip was prepared by Mythri Jegathesan on behalf of the Faculty Collaborative.

Missed a teaching tip? Read them all here:

• Teaching Tip #1 - Reflection (January 30, 2024)
• Teaching Tip #2 - Mid-Course Evaluation (February 6, 2024)
• Teaching Tip #3 - Beyond Think-Pair-Share (February 13, 2024)
• Teaching Tip #4 Grading–Good for them and good for you? (February 20, 2024)
• Teaching Tip #5 - Inclusive Teaching (February 27, 2024)
• Teaching Tip #6 - Mindfulness and Self Care (March 5, 2024)
• Teaching Tip #7 - Syllabus Design (March 12, 2024)
• Teaching Tip #8 - Assignment Design (March 19, 2024)
• Teaching Tip #9 - Orienting Students (April 2, 2024)
• Teaching Tip #10 - Office Hours (April 9, 2024)

And check out our full calendar of CAFEs and other Faculty Development and Faculty Collaborative events.