Email pre-workshop:
Draft a syllabus, and write 3-5 measureable learning objectives, using Bloom’s Taxonomy if helpful. If you are at the level of “students will learn or understand” then refine further so you know what you want students to DO. Also consider these questions
· Do my assessments and activities align with my newly stated objectives?
· What’s working well in my class currently?
· What needs improvement?
· What could or should shift to an online learning environment?
Review/Preview
- Why are we following this timeline? Because of the course approval process.
- Review Martyn and the research they found (15 minutes). It’s not a perfect example. Given what you learned in your own article, what confirms or challenges either the practices or the principles in the Martyn article?
Guided Practice
· Explain mix map *(see the second and third bullet points under Task ?1). (5 minutes) This is a tool developed by the University of Central Florida, one of the leaders in online and hybrid classes, and I’ve posted the entire resource on the SmartSite under the title BlendKit 2011. (Draw it on the board) A very important aspect is to consider, what sustains student learning from one medium to the other? I used it for the first time last summer, and at first it felt foreign to me. This is what I wrote in my teaching log about it:*
"It’s awkward for me to think about how to make my FRS a hybrid course--it’s even making me feel irritated because I was so looking forward to being with students, having a face to face course. However, if I change my perspective (which I noticed when I tried to fill out the Venn Diagram) to “what sustains the learning from session to session?” then I have a much easier time. The thing that currently sustains their learning is supposed to be their journaling every day, their revision of their writing, and their learning. But that is probably just solitary learning, or at most them communicating with me, the instructor, and I don’t want to conduct 19 independent studies. So how to keep them connected with each other between sessions? That’s what a discussion board is for. But they are journaling, which is private. Keep writing. How can I help them continue the discussion? Rather than have them write a reflective paper only at the end, they could write reflective posts of 200 words for each of the kinds of journaling. But I don’t want to be grading that--I want them to share with each other, so having them report on the same thing they’ve all heard will be boring and redundant. Keep writing. The prompt could be something like, Compare and contrast this kind of journaling with what you’ve learned about before. How is it different? How is it the same? Do you think it will be harder or easier for you, and why? And then require them to respond to another person, describing either a similar or a contrasting response to the current kind of journaling. I still need a tool that…"
Went on to discuss
· tools, both in and out of SmartSite,
· how much time in and out of class,
· what I’ve seen or done in other classes,
· considerations of workload for them and for me,
· and eventually a new way to use the tool that I’m actually using in the freshman class I’m teaching right now.
· Went right back into my syllabus.
· Work in course-pairs, preferably with someone from another discipline, to create a mix map. (30 minutes)
o Need lots of whiteboard pens. Have four boards in 1360 and two (including mine) in 1350D. Put Mikaela, Fernando, and Dan each in a different group.
o Tie it to your objectives that you wrote.
o Make sure you articulate connections between what students do in each learning environment.
o Make sure you spend adequate time on each course.
o Make sure you take pictures of what you drew on the board
· Debrief: Tell us about the process. What did you have to consider? Did you get any surprises when you talked to the other faculty? Anyone identify gaps or course-and-a-half? What did you learn about what you need to know next? (10 minutes)
Direct Instruction
· Transition into talking about ADA and universal design. Before we start, I want to just lay some ground rules: This is a topic that can be charged with tension, some aspects of it are still under development, and it involves a lot of people figuring out how to do things they are not familiar with. But it can also be very good for learning and teaching, at the individual and institutional level. So everybody take a deep breath, share openly, and know that we are just going to touch the surface, not get into deep understanding in today’s presentation. (20 minutes)
o What have you heard? Both positive and negative
o What are your questions or concerns?
o What have you tried already?
o Most people are most concerned with the negative side: policy compliance, avoiding lawsuits, etc. Today I’ll explain that side, but I mostly want to focus on principles. When we do our workshop on content creation, we’ll spend more time on specific tools and processes.
o Background in architecture: Universal design
o UDL: Universal design is an approach to designing course instruction, materials, and content to benefit people of all learning styles without adaptation or retrofitting. Universal design provides equal access to learning, not simply equal access to information. Universal Design allows the student to control the method of accessing information while the teacher monitors the learning process and initiates any beneficial methods.
o Although this design enables the student to be self-sufficient, the teacher is responsible for imparting knowledge and facilitating the learning process. It should be noted that Universal Design does not remove academic challenges; it removes barriers to access. Simply stated, Universal Design is just good teaching.
The basic principles of universal design for learning are multiple modes of representation (how you give students the information), multiple modes of engagement (how students and instructors work together) and multiple modes of expression (how students can show what they’ve learned or ask their questions).
Look at your mix map. I’d like to hear a few examples of where you already have these multiple modes set up. (5 minutes)
Now look again at your mix map. Is there anywhere you can take it one step further with multiple modes of representation, engagement, and expression? (5 min)
These principles of universal design apply in any learning environment, really--they are just good teaching. An important part of universal design in online learning settings (and that includes hybrids) is to consider your tool choice: choose tools that meet your learning goals AND that the widest possible range of students can use. Part of this is because what was once ephemeral (say, your lecture) in your classroom is becoming permanent, reusable, and students in lots of settings with not just disabilities are going to need to use your online learning materials. With that in mind, we’re going to walk you through four tools that faculty use that are very common in hybrid courses. If you have specific questions about specific tools, write them down or talk to us after, and we’ll make sure to cover them in the workshop on content creation. If you choose the right tool, then the basic accessibility can be both free and easy.
YouTube (and by extension, other video players): Create captions and choose a player that allows for keyboard control. This serves students with hearing disabilities (along with students who just want to use the captions) and students with motor impairment and students with vision disabilities (who could hear the audio lecture but need to be able to start the video). For those of you using video lectures: write scripts for your lectures--it makes captioning low-cost and easy. Otherwise you have to pay to have humans transcribe it, which is still not too bad (about $100 per hour of lecture) but is not free. (Turn it over to Dan)
Google tools (and by extension other collaborative writing tools): Get familiar with whether your tool’s creators have made efforts toward accessibility. Google got slammed, and several schools got sued, because they were using google tools which were not accessible by screenreader. So they made a great effort and they are improving. You need to know about the accessibility features in the help section--not that you need to know everything, but you need to know that they are there so that you can include that in your syllabus or send students to SDC to practice the details. drive.google.com => Learn more=> Help => Accessibility Features. See also the accessibility page.
Piazza: a common Q&A tool which will be especially important for large classes: Again, it works for screenreaders by tabbing, so you need to know how to change the settings. Easy to do and free--but it is up to you to know it is there and to announce to students that they have the option if they need it. Say you have a class of 700--well, if 10% of the student population has some kind of disability, you are likely to have at least some who will benefit from this setting. Know about it. (Walk them through the process of changing the settings. See also https://piazza.com/lite
Questions? Comments? Ideas?
- PDFs: Also very common tool, as faculty have their students read articles. If you save in tagged form, then screenreaders can read it and students can also search it. This will be especially important if you are having students read PDFs that you saved previously or historical primary source documents that are online as images but not as searchable text. Sensusaccess.com is free and easy and fast (demo, showing example of an image scan PDF and the same document in tagged PDF form.)
Share Spiegel UDL article
Share the Checklist for Faculty
Guided Practice
o Multiple modes of representation, engagement, and expression: Some examples
o ELIXR Case studies:http://ctfd.sfsu.edu/best-practices-in-teaching.htm
§ Paul Beckman (Watch the intro and conclusion)
§ David Bao
§ Hsaio-Yun Chu
§ Niel Lindeman
Application and Extension
o In your same groups, discuss how to apply in your own mix map. How do you provide multiple means of R/E/E in your class? How might online tools or resources improve your universal design for learning? (30 minutes)
· Debrief: 10 minutes
Closing
If there’s leftover time [turned out there wasn't], have them start on course architecture.
o For next week: webinar (try out the tools)
o Think about how you want students to interact with you, with the content, and with each other. Ultimately, your learning objectives and your desired interactions should drive your tool use. However, knowing that sometimes the process runs the other way in the beginning, this matrix should help: http://telt.unsw.wikispaces.net/Selecting+technologies
o How much time and in which modes will they interact?