Tcchns Student Access to Instruction Edit 01avc Med

that we're hosting today and it's focused on student accessibility and this is a very touchy subject it's broad subject it's gray a labyrinth of sort and it's something that's really been brought to the forefront recently because of legal issues there have been some students that have actually have lawsuits against their institution for not meeting their needs the laws are really hard to look through and digest they're very gray so these legal battles and settlements have put a little bit of parameter on subjects but its still very broad it just depends on the student in their particular needs so we can look to those for example but really it it doesn't said the the parameters is still very broad in grey so my hope today was just to bring this to are table of discussion to talk about this issue and to think about these things as we progressing and grow as a college being a College of Nursing has and naturally eliminated a lot of disabilities from our college but as we expand to online learning and to other programs we're going to have more diverse students come to the college so when we talk about student access to instruction we are going to talk very briefly about 3 of the laws American Disabilities Act section 504 and 508 and then how we can use Universal Design for Learning to kind of bridge and help us I provide access to instruction using their principles so my learning outcomes for today is to identify issues of access and equity facing online learners we're focusing on online because we have a learning management system blackboard rather even if you're a fully face to face course you still use that so you could be a hybrid course you could be fully on you could be fully face to face but we still utilize online resources ebook we have our students go on the web to research so a lot of this focuses specifically on online we're gonna talk about strategies to overcome the issues and then evaluate principles of universal design for learning which helps to ensure that the course content complies with the disability discrimination laws in addition I want to ask you to dig a little deeper and be self-reflective and access your own understanding of this this information what biases or perspectives do you bring to your classroom and do your preconceived notions limits student access to your instruction and content and we don't have to bring this information out but as I talk about these things in general terms some of these are going to come close to home I'm not talking about anyone in particular of even the college specifically but you'll see that that these do come to our front door step and when we talk about preconceived notions there's two examples that I want talk about it to open up the discussion I recently started reading this book that was provided by the college rhetorical accessibility and in this book it talked about preconceived notions and it gives a really drastic example one that we would never have here at the college because it deals with a student who had severe disabilities physical disabilities and he couldn't speak so they assumed that he could not learn or did not have the cognitive ability to learn either and so he was not given any type of schooling in as he grew grew older they provide him with an assistive technology and they found out that he does have the capability to learn and communicate so he missed his whole younger years that opportunity to learn because or the preconceived notion he can't speak he has severe physical disabilities so he can't learn they limited his ability and his living another example of a preconceived notion isI know a man who is a mechanic excellent mechanic he can take apart and engine and put it back together again but he can't read he remembers when he was young that he could read he was involved in an automobile accident and he left school early to provide for his family and he doesn't know where he lost it and he has it it's very hard for him to read really can't so he's an excellent mechanic but does not have his certification to be a mechanic because he's intimidated to go into the schools now I'm from education I know that they would meet his needs in a technical school they would provide reading for him but he is scared to be put in that situation fearful for others to know that he's a illiterate and his own preconceived notions of the fear and his inability to complete the program has limited him from having his certification to be a mechanic and has limited his career options because now you have to have that even to work in a shop unless you know someone and will let you let you do that so our preconceived notions come from our experiences and and we absolutely all have a biased in a perspective on things because that's just where we come from and what we know so accessibility is the interplay between the content and your ability to actually access that content that's very broad what does that mean what does that mean to your classroom and to your students so when we look very briefly at these laws the Americans with disabilities act it was made to ensure that people with disabilities have equal opportunity to participate in programs services and activities now this isn't specifically address online learning but of course it covers that it covers that base they strive to promote effective communication with all individuals including people's with disabilities 504 comes from the Rehabilitation Act and it prohibits discrimination based on disability in programs and activities public or private that receive federal financial assistance we receive financial assistance so you'll see that we have a disclaimer that we do not discriminate however our program is a little bit discriminatory because in order to be a nurse you have to have certain abilities to do that but again as we go to other programs we will see a more diverse population of students because those disabilities won't limit them from completing their job tasks and 508 is one that's really been highlighted in the recent lawsuits because it's specifically addresses the access to information and data that is provided to somebody with a disability to somebody who does not they want they want to make it equal so it really focuses on technology and if you have ever tried to access the website by not using your mouse you understand how difficult that is and how important it is that these laws are in place it's very hard to maneuver and sometimes impossible to maneuver and some technology is is not accessible to different people with disabilities and so we need to take those things into consideration as we build them so that we can and make our content accessible you will notice that there is a disclaimer unless an undue burden would be imposed upon the agency and and that sounds great like a scapegoat however we are not just the little Christ College of Nursing and Health Sciences we are Department of the Christ College network I mean the Christ Hospital network which is huge so what would be a situation where we could actually use this I don't know when we ever would have the ability to do that so we need to think about that so who are these people that or referring to approximately 18 points 7 percent the population has some level and disability 27 percent live with disabilities that actually interfere with their daily living 11 percent are undergraduates an eight percent our graduate I don't know how they come up with these numbers I'm always skeptical there's a lot of people I think that are not identified in these numbers but up that 18 points 7 percent of disabled people only twenty to forty percent of them self identify that leaves us with sixty to eighty percent of students who have a disability choose not to disclose that for any reason for for my friend who is a mechanic it's pride fear just want to forge a different identity there's is a lot of stigma attached to having a disability and they want to overcome it they they want to be normal I think one of the biggest things I want everyone to walk away from from this presentation is you may not have students that have identified themselves as having a disability but you have disabled students in a classroom and maybe they don't have a known disability but they still struggle with content with learning expressly dealing with adult learners this book also has a chapter about reading disability or people who struggle with reading and there are different reasons why that happens one of them is they have a learning disability and they struggle with reading the other is age the other is just that practice that they have with higher content higher learning or or experience that they have surfing the web or with e-books they don't have experience with that so they struggle reading an ebook stress makes people have lower efficiency in reading time is an issue some people work and don't have time to read or maybe it they're slow readers I'm a slow reader and or maybe they'd they don't have a place where they can go to where it's quiet so they don't have a physical space that enables them to read you never know what the situation is it's not just a learning disability that that limit students access to content but the numbers are there and they definitely are in your class so what are the disability types lets take a closer look at that sensory disabilities our blindness and am hearing disability but when you talk about blindness it's not just that they maybe can see it may be that their site is limited its scope tunnel vision for people who have difficulty reading when they read content they tunnel in so you might have blackboard for example has the navigation bar on the side that tell students what to do but they don't even see it because they're so focused on word-for-word that they limit the big picture that's a sensory issue color blind faith I have read web sites that are incredibly difficult to read because of the color schemes that they use so always have high contrast in your colors that you choose on your website or on your page or your content motor disabilities affect the person's ability to move when we were talking about learning that's using a keyboard or mouse and cognitive disabilities this is definitely the ones that we see the most and and they are the hardest to address because they are, the spectrum is wide and you never know what someone needs really so the the best practice is to and ensure that e-learning is usable and accessible that is good but what does that look like in your classroom so when we think about these different disability types they come with different barriers four barriers that a person with disabilities can have when they come into a college or institution there are institutional barriers there are programmatic barriers instructor barriers and student barriers looking at the institutional barriers classic example are lack of resource a lack of trained people to assist people with disabilities and disability service office that is just not equipped to help people beyond maybe expanding testing time the program the programmatic and barriers are programs that don't really consider what what it takes to make a program accessible online its really labor-intensive and it takes a lot of thoughtful consideration things that they just don't even realize or know when they built the program maybe in their own bubble they they don't understand all of the issues that could take place and especially for us we are kind of in our own bubble because we don't have students with disabilities so we don't really know what that is going to look like when they come outside of the learning disabilities that we have instructor barriers many educators are not trained as instructional designers and they just don't have experience online either they don't perhaps have the technology learning to manage the learning management system which we have blackboard in its new for everyone to everyone understands that how hard it is to just function in and teach online and the fact though is that instructors play a vital role in this issue it's not just a disability service problem and that's really been highlighted in one of the recent law suites the story is that teacher had found in excellent resource online I can't remember what the content was but pretty much all of the content was through this vender the content was there there was learning activities there were tasks online it was great they got immediate feedback they can get help and supports kind of tutoring however when when the class started come on in when the class began a student was in his class that could not see and he tried to access that that content and it was not accessible to him so he contacted the instructor and said I am blind I cannot access this content and the instructor doesn't he didn't know what to do he couldn't fix it for him so he refers him to the vendor well the vendor can't change it that's what the program is you cannot retrofit that program if it's not already built that way and so weeks into the semester there's this student gets further and further and further behind and he dropped the course and he files a lawsuit that he did not have access to the information in its been settled now it's one of the cases I have no idea how much it was but that is a case where you cannot retrofit disability you have to think ahead you have to think about what you're what you're going to have in your classroom vendors publishers they do not abide by the Laws of disability they can build whatever they want however we're the ones buying their products so we have to push them in that direction because it's what we're going to purchase our needs they need to meet our needs and students Iare barriers to their own learning they don't disclose to the institution or to the instructor their needs just like in a face to face class if there a student doesn't initiate and be an advocate for themselves who's going to be you can read their mind and you don't know what they need if they don't tell you what they need they're also technology issues involved they may not have the ability to function well especially with older students coming back they may not even understand how to use word or Excel let alone surf the web site or get on the learning management system and so they're kind of behind in that which creates a barrier for them to be successful so the idea of universal design a curb cut is the perfect picture of that it is accessible to everybody it helps people riding a bike or skateboard or people with disabilities who have a walker or a wheelchair and if you try to apply that then to learning you there is a principal or a theory Universal Design for Learning UDL and the idea is that we all have ramps coming up to the building physical structures we wouldn't wait for someone to come to our door in a wheelchair before we build the ramp you have to plan ahead you know that you have to accommodate people so we need to start thinking about these accommodations in our curriculum its really a universal design is a principal of curriculum development that gives equal opportunity its not a one-size-fits-all but rather give options is flexible so that the individual needs can be met of the student so in higher education there's this this research articles an excellent research I've posted on our facebook on our blog its at curb cuts in cyberspace and it was a research study done on online courses that utilized the principles of UDL and what they found is if you utilize these principles it minimizes the need to provide accommodations for students because you already have done that ahead of time they also found and they weren't expecting this but three students informally disclose that they had a learning disability one's that didn't already that were not set up in the system and they said that they had a disability not not to say they needed help but to say wow thanks you've met my needs this and one of them even said that this was the most manageable course they have ever taken the article does give specific examples and we'll go into little here today too of what that looks like so one example is providing audio and text versions of class lectures that helps every student in your class room students with learning disabilities visual or hearing impairments or if English is their second language it gives students choice it lets them choose what modality works best for them so that they can be successful Universal Design for Learning really takes apart all the different steps in learning so we have the recognition networks the what of learning strategic networks the how of learning and effective networks to why of learning and if you look at each up those specifically then you can take apart your curriculum and think of what you can implement what strategies you can use that can help the student in each of these three categories so for the recognition network they, something we can do is present information and content in different ways for example providing visual audio and in text the strategic network it's helpful to differentiate the way students express what they know so differentiating your assignments providing them different options we all learn different and so allowing students even choice maybe that they can do this or that and the effective networks provide different ways to stimulate interest and motivation for the learning so we can look more closely at that and I'm not going to go through all of these but really it's all about providing options providing options of content providing options for comprehension and physical action an expression of an application of the learning and different ways to engage the students generally in teaching we provide all of the content upfront and then we test the students and then have activities but a better way to approach our teaching is to do it backwards to think about your learning objectives first what do you want your students to be able to do then build activities of what those activities will be so that they can do that and then identify what pieces of information are absolutely necessary for them to be able to complete those activities it minimizes the cognitive overload it minimizes what they read and they're doing more it creates a more student activity and engagement in the learning rather than them being passive when students are passive they they don't really retain much information if they're active they'll be able to apply and remember and actually use what we teach them so I provided a reference that Kathy Moore blog has a PowerPoint that talks about action mapping it goes through this process with you and and maybe down the road we can have a workshop just focused on that you could bring your content and we can talk about ways that you can apply it to your specific class another big key point out of this is that we we are not alone we cannot tackle this alone we really have to work collaboratively together we all have perspectives and ideas and information and if we pull that together it will it will develop better pedagogy it develop better curriculum for for our school we all have valuable pieces that information to give to each other and so we should use each other so that we actually won't have a law suit at our college and that really I mean the law is important not not to have a law suit what it does is it make their content better in it leads to better success for all of our students so it's just making a richer environment a richer curriculum for students so now that's all the information that I have to share but ...