Module 5

Welcome to Module 5 for Camp Design Online — my name is Amy Collier and in this module we’re doing a little stretching to talk about flexible course content.

Now, there are two notions we’ll address related to flexible course content. One is the accessibility of course content—and we’ll think about accessibility broadly by looking at principles of universal design for learning and narrowly, by looking at specific strategies for creating accessible digital materials. The second notion related to flexibility is the format of the course content. Let’s actually start there.

Now, we understand that you might prefer to hold live Zoom sessions to provide class interaction time, and to do lectures or other forms of content delivery. For some students, live Zoom classes may present a challenge because the live sessions might be held at inconvenient times like, say, the middle of the night for students who are living in other parts of the world. In addition, many students (and faculty) have experienced Zoom fatigue after sitting in front of Zoom for multiple classes.

Now, we’re not saying Zoom is bad—however, as we think about what students need to be successful learners in our classes, we should consider flexible options for course content. For example, rather than hosting a 2-hour Zoom class session, you might consider creating a 30-minute lecture video using Panopto that students can watch beforehand, and then host a shorter discussion opportunity for students in Zoom. Providing flexibility in the ways students engage with you and the content of your course can help students for whom live Zoom sessions present a hardship and can give you an opportunity to rethink how you use your “live” time with students.

Now, doing recorded videos can be fun, and as you’ll see from Mike Wesch’s video below. You can learn a lot about making engaging videos from other instructors, like Mike, and even people who “teach” via YouTube. I know that some folks feel intimidated by the thought of making a recorded video of any sort, I understand that, but it can actually be a lot of fun and help you to really hone in on the information you want to share with students.

As Sarah said in her intro to Module 4, the driving factor really should be your learning goals—and building flexibility into the ways students engage with course content can help students who are facing different kinds of barriers (such as time zones, poor internet connectivity, housing insecurity, cognitive and psychological overload) and to be able to help those students achieve learning goals.

All of this, of course, ties to accessibility and inclusion in your course. Our learners are diverse—they have a wide range of backgrounds, experiences, personal and interpersonal challenges, abilities, and so forth. As you’ll read in this Module, accessibility is a key component of designing inclusive and equitable learning environments, and flexibility is a key part of accessibility.

So, in this module, you’ll learn about how to create accessible digital materials by engaging with Universal Design for Learning’s principle of Multiple Modes of Representation. What that means is, whenever you provide content to students, provide multiple forms of it. For example, if you provide a recorded video, also provide an audio-only track from the video, and provide a transcript. That gives students at least three ways to engage with the content, and the flexibility to choose what format works best for their learning. You may notice that we are modeling this principle with our module introduction videos: Just below this video, you can find a link to an audio-only version and a transcript/text-readable version.

For a live class session, be sure to record the video and make it and the transcript available to students who cannot attend the live sessions.

Now, I know that it can be overwhelming to think about offering multiple modes of representation. One strategy that I’ve found to help with that feeling of being overwhelmed is called the Plus-One strategy. This also comes out of Universal Design for Learning. Plus-One is as simple as it sounds. Offer students, say, a recorded lecture, Plus One—perhaps an audio-only file of the lecture. Offer students a recording of a live class, Plus One—perhaps a transcript (which, Zoom will automatically generate for your recordings, if you set that up in your Zoom settings).

If you are looking for more resources related to flexibility and accessibility, I encourage you to check out the workshop video and resources from our DLINQ workshop on Creating Accessible Digital Materials—it’s linked below. There are some useful built-in accessibility tools in Canvas, Panopto, Zoom, and other tools we often use when we teach online or hybrid. So don’t miss those resources!

Ok, I think I’m done stretching—let’s start!