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Accessible Remote Teaching

This guide is intended to help faculty to teach in accessible ways during remote teaching situations. The same principles that would help to make an accessible course in this situation will also help to make sure your course meets other various needs your students would have in the event that they’re connecting to your course from a remote location. Please familiarize yourself with our previous guides on the topics of Universal Design in Education and Inclusive Teaching. 

General principles

Present in multiple ways from the start and ensure that you utilize accessibility features. Ensuring that you present, format, and structure in accessible ways when authoring will help a great deal later on. Rely on multiple means of representing information during your sessions. Presenting in multiple ways translates well as you design for Zoom sessions, Canvas sites, or any other setting. If using a video or audio materials, make sure to include text transcripts or closed captioning. Although captions benefit all learners and you are therefore asked to employ built-in captioning/transcription tools, real-time/live captions and edited captions/transcripts are only required for students approved for this service by Student Accessibility Services (SAS). SAS will notify faculty of any captioning/transcript needs and provide technical assistance and funding for required services.

The following are specific resources to help you with this. We've bolded the resources we've created and we're appending others as colleagues share out:

Be flexible and accommodating overall. Understand that under the circumstances students will have a variety of both anticipated and unanticipated needs. This can vary to include everything from needing to seek medical care for chronic conditions at home to sibling and family responsibilities. Be prepared to alter plans and accommodate individual students accordingly. 

Structure things to help students organize, manage time, and self-regulate. The remote learning environment requires additional skills that will pose a challenge in executive functioning for some students. The Academic Skills Center offers a variety of online resources and individualized Zoom coaching meetings to support students with these concerns. 

Curate and communicate information to your students. Utilize the communication tools at your disposal to help emphasize key information and synthesize information from discussion/conversation. When in doubt, over-communicate and create dialogue.

Create spaces for building community throughout your course. It’s important to know that we have support systems in any learning environment, let alone during difficult and trying times. Focus on building community throughout the various approaches and decisions you make everywhere.

Where possible, give choice in assessments and assignments. Give opportunities for students to establish their own goals and environments related to class topics and assignments. Design or alter assignments to include remote resources. Have students engage experientially with their own environments and experiences. For example: one faculty member has students engage in participant observations as a part of an ethnography assignment. They intend to connect students with virtual municipal meetings where students could apply these skills in a context that relates to their communities.

Engage students in multiple ways. Use more than just the synchronous meetings to facilitate your class. Consider doing things like offering asynchronous discussions and other activities in Canvas.

If you use links, check them with tools like Wave from WebAim. This allows you to make sure that page is accessible and structured correctly.

Utilize low-stakes assessments to create learning moments. Use Canvas Quizzes less as a reading accountability measure and more to reinforce key concepts you think are important. Find similar methods to use low-stakes assessments as a way to create learning opportunities and provide frequent feedback for instructors and students alike. Be prepared to adjust your online assessments to incorporate extra time and other required testing accommodations for students served by Student Accessibility Services, and guidance on this procedure is available here: * [include link to tutorial]

Ask for feedback and iterate based on it. We’re all learning through the process of remote teaching. Ask your students for feedback and incorporate feedback as you go.

Design activities with an awareness that not all students are able-bodied, healthy, and available. Students with chronic health issues, mental health needs, and other profiles will require flexibility in their expectations to engage. Be caring about this. Design options for communicating with flexibility in timing (e.g. text-based discussions, assignments, etc.) compared with real-time sessions that create  higher stakes for absences.

Work with Student Accessibility Services wherever you have questions about students registered with their office. Student accommodations and Services and Consent Forms are assigned with an expectation that they are being implemented in both residential and online teaching formats. Teaching remotely will require adjustment, which SAS will try to anticipate and proactively communicate to you, but there will likely be some trial and error around these needs.

Syllabus Statement from SAS

Students requesting disability-related accommodations and services for this course are encouraged to schedule a phone/video meeting with me as early in the term as possible. This conversation will help to establish what supports are built into my online course. In order for accommodations to be authorized, students are required to consult with Student Accessibility Services (SAS; student.accessibility.services@dartmouth.edu; SAS website; 603-646-9900) and to email me their SAS accommodation form. We will then work together with SAS if accommodations need to be modified based on the online learning environment. If students have questions about whether they are eligible for accommodations, they should contact the SAS office. All inquiries and discussions will remain confidential.

Student Accessibility Services updated their recommended syllabus statement to reflect needs specific to the remote teaching environment.

Additional COVID19 Resources and Updates for Accessibility

Updated Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Acknowledgements: There are numerous guides and resources being shared out with the higher education community. This guide built heavily off of the efforts of several colleagues on Twitter including @AimiHamraie’s Accessible Teaching in the Time of COVID-19, and Matt Crosslin’s (@grandeped) An Emergency Guide (of sorts) to Getting This Week’s Class Online in About an Hour (or so).

Accessible Remote Teaching