Over the past five years, the University of Minnesota has experienced a significant increase in students seeking disability accommodations in our courses. To address this increase, the Office of the Provost and Office for Equity and Diversity have partnered to implement a required online course for all faculty and instructors on disability accommodations and inclusive course design, with a particular focus on designing courses to support student mental health. The development and implementation of this course closely follows recommendations from the Task Force on Disability Accommodations in the Learning Environment and University governance.
The course, Fundamentals of Disability Accommodations and Inclusive Course Design, comprises three 20-minute modules:
- Module 1: Understanding Disability and Reasonable Accommodations
- Module 2: Providing Reasonable Accommodations for Disability
- Module 3: Inclusive Course Design
The resulting course is highly interactive, accessible, and allows faculty and instructors to proceed at their own pace. This professional development course is a systemwide initiative. Each faculty member and instructor is required to complete the course once while teaching at the University, but the course may be repeated as often as desired, and other University members may opt to take the course as well.
Review strategies from Fundamentals of Disability Accommodations and Inclusive Course Design
Review strategies from Fundamentals of Disability Accommodations and Inclusive Course Design
Strategies for creating inclusive assessments
- Consider offering a non-timed assessment. There are some challenges to timed exams that you may want to consider when choosing the assessment type you will use.
- Timed exams create heightened stress for some students, which can negatively impact their performance and your ability to assess what they have learned.
- Individuals taking timed exams online can be negatively impacted by bandwidth limitations that interfere with their ability to complete the online exam in the provided time period.
- Timed exams may place an additional burden on students with certain learning accommodations as well as second language learners. Using non-timed exams may proactively accommodate many students who require extended testing time, short breaks during testing, or semi-private testing.
- Consider providing an exam window (especially for online exams) in which a student can begin their exam at any point over a period of time, for example, over the period of 3 days, or a take-home exam over the period of several days. Here is an example of what a deadline window might look like:
- You are receiving this exam at [9:00] a.m., and it is due no later than [5:00] p.m. The exam is designed to take you [two] hours to complete. You may manage your time between [9:00] a.m. and [5:00] p.m. as you prefer. For example, you may take the exam in one continuous sitting, or you may choose to take breaks. The important thing is that the exam be turned in no later than the deadline
- Offer multiple ways for students to demonstrate knowledge. For example, permit students to choose whether to complete a research paper, literature review, creative project, or narrated slides.
- Build flexibility into the course structure, such as allowing students to drop one or more of their lowest quiz or assessment scores.
- Consider offering students a choice among exam options, such as multiple choice, short answer essay, applied exam questions.
- Review CEI’s General Guidelines for Creating Assessments.
Strategies for creating inclusive pedagogy
- Set clear learning goals and communicate them to students. For example, frame each class with an essential question and an outline of what is to be covered. Consider framing the outline with “by the end of the class you will be able to…”
- Teach course concepts through multiple modalities – such as through lecture, discussion, reading, and group work – to accommodate a range of learning needs.
- Consider posting PowerPoint slides, developing a note sharing system, allowing off-camera participation in Zoom lectures, etc.
- Offer multiple ways for students to participate and engage in the course and class discussion. For example, use group work, paired discussions, written reflections, chat/discussion boards, office hour meetings, virtual polls, or student-led classes. Incorporate project-based learning into your courses; one resource for this is the CEI Faculty Guide to Team Projects. Another resource is Classroom Assessment/Activities Techniques - CATs.
- Consider including short breaks throughout the class session to allow students to stretch or take a mental break.
- Anticipate barriers in goals, assessments, methods, and materials, and make changes where necessary.
Strategies for creating inclusive assignments
- Consider creative ways to approach a window of due dates (spanned due dates). For example: establish preferred and final deadlines; provide each student with a one time “late work” extension; offer deadline windows instead of one due date; or allow students to establish deadlines, as appropriate.
- Increase the number of assignments, while decreasing the point value of each assignment.
- Break up larger projects into smaller pieces and provide feedback throughout.
- Allow students to approach learning tasks and demonstrate what they know frequently and in different ways
- Consider allowing students to drop their lowest grade on assignments.
Strategies for creating inclusive course-related communications
- Include the Crookston, Morris, Rochester, Twin Cities Recommended Disability Accommodations Syllabus Statement or the Duluth Recommended Students with Disabilities Policy Statement in your syllabus.
Include the Crookston, Morris, Rochester, Twin Cities Recommended Mental Health and Stress Management Syllabus Statement or the Duluth Recommended Mental Health and Stress Management Syllabus Statement in your syllabus. - Communicate regularly and frequently with students about course structure, expectations, homework and assignment deadlines, exam content, and other topics that are important to your course.
- Set up message boards or group chats for students to connect with one another in informal ways. Open the classroom 10 minutes early to allow for casual conversation.
- Alert students when new materials are added, or changes are made to a window of due dates or assignments in the syllabus or course site.
- Provide regular feedback to students and create opportunities for students to make course corrections as needed.
- Solicit regular feedback from students about the course’s pacing, structure, and accessibility.
- Consider communicating in multiple ways such as in-class, on Canvas, and in email announcements.
- Consider making office hours broadly available in-person, by phone, and by video chat so that students can participate in a way that is comfortable for them.
Strategies for creating accessible physical spaces
- When possible, consider the layout of furniture and physical space to facilitate access. When feasible, consider ways to facilitate movement and the option not to move in these spaces.
- When possible, consider whether accessible and all gender restrooms and lactation rooms are nearby. Share information about these resources with your students.
- Crookston All-Gender Restroom Map.pdf
- Duluth Gender Inclusive Restroom Map.pdf
- Morris Campus Maps (including All Gender Restrooms
- Rochester Campus Maps - Rochester All-Gender Restrooms - USQ third floor and 318 commons second floor
- Twin Cities All-Gender Restroom Map
- Lactation spaces on all five campuses
- Crookston Campus Maps - Accessibility
- Duluth Campus Maps - Accessibility
- Morris Campus Maps
- Rochester Campus Map
- Twin Cities Campus Maps - Accessibility
- When possible, use classrooms, labs, workspaces, and fieldwork sites that are accessible to a broad range of individuals.
Strategies for sharing accessible course content
- Choose accessible. Start by learning one or more of the Seven Core Skills.
- Post presentation slides in advance and keep them available, as this can assist in notetaking and integration of course content. Consider seeking volunteer note-takers for each class session, so that notes can be posted to the course website. This is an inclusive practice because it teaches students how to take better notes and benefits students by reducing the amount of information that their working memories can hold at one time. By providing slides and notes, key concepts are written out with correct spelling and phrasing and the students can add additional information to these materials as the class progresses.
- Consider making auto-transcripts available when facilitating class through Zoom. This provides another way for students to engage and follow along with the class session. Note that transcripts may need to be edited for accuracy. Guidelines for editing for auto-generated captions may be a helpful resource.
- When feasible, record and post synchronous online and in person class sessions. Recording allows students to review the sessions, and then pause, repeat, slow down, adjust speeds, and learn at their own pace. Designated note-takers can be used in these courses as well. Note-takers can be designated as note-taker #1, note-taker #2 to preserve student anonymity.
- For multi-section courses, consider designating one as the asynchronous section that any student who missed a session of their own course for a legitimate absence could use in order to keep pace.
- Select media that is accurately captioned and/or use tools like Kaltura to add and edit captions. Kaltura: find and edit your captions may be a useful tool. Sound can be turned off and the captioning read for students who have difficulty listening and seeing information (processing multiple inputs) at the same time.
- Provide adequate color contrast on documents or use color sparingly. This can benefit students who are color blind and can also benefit students who only have access to a black and white printer.
- Use the Accessible U: Cultivate Inclusion website to learn about digital accessibility. Learn how to create accessible web content, slide decks, documents, PDFs and more through the Digital Accessibility Badging Program.