6 The Importance of Inclusion and Accessibility
There are many possible arrival activities that can foster active learning. The activities you select will depend very much on the actual students in the class. Most activities can be modified once you know who your students are and where your class will take place. Asking ‘what’s one thing you would like me to know about you as a learner’ as an initial arrival activity can be helpful. You may also want to think about scaffolding activities, building up to them throughout the course, and conducting these activities in small groups rather than in front of a lecture hall. The point is to find out what your students need and who they are.
The following are important notes to keep in mind regarding inclusion and accessibility:
- All videos should have closed captions that have been checked for accuracy.
- If the activities take place before the officially timetabled start of class, do not count them as regular course work.
- Be aware of the physical space of your class ahead of time and how students with disabilities might be best supported and accommodated with various activities – moving chairs and desks around can be a navigation or anxiety-inducing barrier for students. If a class is set up as an ‘active learning classroom’ with multiple tables/stations, considering making sure each table has an open spot for students in a wheelchairs or those with service animals. You may also consider posting activities on a learning management system to avoid asking students to move around the room.
- Different identities along the axis of disability, race, gender, etc., may be visible, while others may be less visible. It is important that students are not asked to disclose diagnoses, etc. As the instructor, you should be clear that individuals do not have to share personal and private information, and you should know what to do when someone makes an error and asks an inappropriate question. To ensure that you are meeting everyone’s accessibility and inclusion needs, solicit information regarding student needs anonymously – this helps to avoid a person with a visible disability having to tell everyone their own personal needs or speak for ‘all disabled’ people. If gathering this information online, it is important to remember that contributions are not necessarily anonymous unless you adjust your settings. Finally, it is important to let students know whether they will be identified as the authors of contributions or not.
- Taking time at the start of class to have your arrival activity double as a “feedback session” can go a long way in establishing a sense of mutual trust and respect in your course. If students feel you are listening, and you are co-creating an experience together that’s authentic, they will likely flag issues of accessibility and inclusion as a result of the openness fostered during these moments.
- Note that many of the sample activities included in the package rely on sight (e.g. Boggle, word searches, map, colouring pages, etc.). If you are sharing your screen, the activity will not be accessible to students who use screen readers. Some activities can also be shared via an attachment dropped in the chat so that students who use screen readers can access the activity. Note that other activities (i.e., colouring pages) are only accessible to sighted students. It is important to be aware of this and use a variety of different arrival activities. Sharing your slides at the very start of class and ensuring images include alt text can also increase the accessibility of the activities. If your arrival activity relies on a single question prompt, you could share the prompt on a slide, add it to the chat, and read it out. Note that the attached sample arrival activities include slide descriptions that can be posted into the chat as well as alt text descriptions of all images.
- It is important to consider that for many students (including those that are neurodivergent) interacting with peers and engaging with them (and the professor) is not a natural or simple task. For many of these students this means anxiety or frustration. Allow students to have the option to refrain from participation or better yet, offer personal support/guidance or separate activities that can be done individually.
- It is also important to consider that for many neurodivergent students, the implementation of new things like arrival activities can make these students anxious due to a change in routine. If these activities are implemented suddenly, it would be beneficial to let these students know beforehand and offer them a “run-down” of what this new change will entail.
- It is very important in online learning to have instructions on how to annotate the screen or perform other features in Zoom. Although many of us aren’t new to online learning, we can’t make the assumption that every professor has exposed their students to these features beforehand.
- As many of us offer hybrid learning opportunities, consider how the activities will be received in both in-person and virtual environments. It can be challenging to do both well in one session, so consider alternating between activities that might be better suited in person versus online.
Some notes about participation:
- Make sure students know they don’t have to participate or engage in the activity.
- Provide instructions in multiple formats (text on slide, verbally, chat, etc.) for more equitable understanding.
- Provide multiple ways of contributing. If you can, let the student choose how they share their contribution (be it through Zoom annotation tools, chat, audio, video, etc.). It may mean that your slide doesn’t get the pretty stamps you were hoping for, but you will get way more shares from students if they can choose. Allow students to engage in ways that are meaningful to them. For example, a neurodiverse student may not appear to be engaged even though they are, or a student with a speech impairment may not want to speak aloud.
- Consider physical space. Many students struggle with forward-facing activities if they need to be able to see or hear something behind them (for instance, any student that needs to see faces or read lips for comprehension). Students with mobility barriers (visible or not) can also find it difficult to turn around to engage with something occuring behind them.
- For those teaching in-person, it is also important to encourage students to move seats in-between lectures. True class engagement and peer-interaction cannot occur if students stick to one spot for the entire semester and only interact with their close-by peers or friends. Moving seats also gives students the ability to interact equally with the professor who is usually situated at the front of the lecture hall. Fluidity in seating also gives some students who usually refrain from participation (because they are seated very far back or isolated in corners) the opportunity to become more engaged and interactive.
Some notes about music:
If you are including music as an aspect of your arrival activities, it may be a good idea to keep a few things in mind:
- Provide a link if you are streaming videos or using materials from other sources. Sometimes it is preferable to go to the link to experience it, rather than through your shared screen.
- If you are playing music, share the song information on a slide (including artist, title, and a link to the video with close captioning).
- Do a quick check to make sure that the artist hasn’t engaged in racist/sexist/transphobic/homophobic/etc. behaviour.
- Make sure that you are sharing music or art from a diversity of artists.
- If you curate a playlist for the class, share it with the students and ask them to recommend new music. Perhaps set a theme (e.g. all Canadian artists).
- If students send you recommendations, be sure to use them.
- If you have musicians in the classroom, ask if they’d like to provide the music during arrival activities (or during breaks in the class).
“I feel arrival activities may be a good way for students to bond over, talk about, and generally just share their ethnic backgrounds with each other. The academic setting does not usually invite students to talk openly or out-of-context-ly about their backgrounds. I had went nearly an entire semester unaware that my seat-neighbour was also an ethnic Albanian; it was a great feeling as this was the only other individual that I met at the university who shared the same background as me. I think it is important to share our backgrounds with each other (if comfortable in doing so) as it helps us each learn new things about each other and appreciate our differences. In courses like History, Politics, Geography, and even a few of my English courses, this can be extremely interestingly relevant in terms of gaining different perspectives and is often necessary to know in order to be sensitive to and aware of diverse cultural/ethnic relations with lecture content. To exemplify, speaking of the Israel-Palestine conflict in History or English classes warrants some cultural caution when contributing to class. As a personal example, I did not appreciate being accused of being an ultra-capitalist for critiquing historical communist events and so, I had to make it evident that I come from a communist dictatorship country.” -Former student