by Augusta Palmer
Increasingly, Offices of Accessibility and Accommodations and Centers for Academic Enhancement have much to offer teachers and students in media production. Moreover, new models of teaching and learning that come from the field of accommodations have the capability to transform our classrooms.
Many of my students require accommodation whether they self-identify as disabled or not. Compared to the students of 15 years ago, today’s students are more likely to:
- need remediation
- have poor study and time management skills
- lack time outside the classroom for studying or practicing learned skills (Tobin & Behling, 6)
Learning more about accommodation, therefore is a necessity. Students who identify as requiring accommodations make up 10-12% of the college population in the United States
In the interest of knowing my resources, (number 9 of the EDIT 10: Best Practices for Inclusive Teaching), I recently sat down with my college’s Assistant Director of Accessibility and Accommodations, Katharine Krieger, to discuss the field of Accommodation and Accessibility in Higher Education.
Krieger, who has a Masters in Psychology and Education as well as a certificate in Post-Secondary Disability Services, stressed the need to view our students as the experts. Students who identify as requiring accommodations make up 10-12% of the college population in the United States, and they know more about their needs and abilities than anyone else does.
Krieger and many of her colleagues across the country have a wide range of resources to offer their college communities. While working with a student with cognitive disabilities who struggled to learn editing software, I was delighted to find that The St. Francis College Academic Enhancement Center offered tutoring in software, which was invaluable for the student in question. Such centers are very willing to share their expertise.
According to Krieger, “You should review your institution’s specific articulations of FERPA Policy, but most Accomodations directors are even able to share information about individual student needs if there is a legitimate need to know.”
Image from cast.org
The biggest take-away from my talk with Krieger was learning about UDL, or Universal Design Learning, which has been at use for some time in K-12 classroom, but is only recently making the jump to college campuses. UDL focuses on improving learning through better representation of information, more ways to demonstrate skills, and keeping students engaged.
Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone: Universal Design For Learning in Higher Education is a great primer which provides chapters on how UDL helps mobile learners and how to expand or change one specific assignment using UDL. A specific example cited in the book is designer Lance Hidy’s revision of a handout for a Photoshop assignment.
A version of this appears in Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone, but this is extracted from Hidy’s great PDF on making better lecture slides
Many of my assignments look like the “Before” image, and looking at the illustration provided a light-bulb moment for me. UDL can help all students grasp concepts and learn software more easily, and I plan to create a template for assignments that mimics Hidy’s revised assignment. As a teacher of moving image media, it seems especially important to engage with students’ visual curiosity when asking them to create visually and narratively engaging assignments.
Katharine Krieger notes that most professors see accommodations as creating more work for the benefit of only a few students. It’s undeniable that reworking my assignments will take time, but teaching always is and should be work. Teaching is an iterative process, a job that changes and expands as we rework old concepts and learn new modes of expression or master new equipment. Teaching media is a responsive art. We respond to changes in the world around us while helping students make media that can, in fact, change the world for the better.
References:
NCCSD Statistics on College Students with Disabilities: https://www.nccsdclearinghouse.org/stats-college-stds-with-disabilities.html
CAST, online resource for UDL
Thomas J. Tobin and Kirsten T. Behling. Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone: Universal design for Learning in Higher Education. Morgantown: West Virginia UP, 2018.
Lance Hidy’s PDF on slide making
Augusta Palmer is a filmmaker, media scholar, and Associate Professor of Communication Arts at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, NY.
