Category: Stumbling Blocks and Stepping Stones

This video is taken from the February 26, 2024 Stumbling Blocks and Stepping Stones on Accomodation Requests and Faculty Readiness. Here is a summary of what Kari shared with us.

The transcript you provided is from a presentation given by Gustafson from the Faculty of Applied Community Studies, specifically focusing on disability and community studies. Here’s a summary:

• Kari discusses the social and medical models of disability, explaining that the former locates disability within societal barriers rather than the individual’s body or mind.
• She talks about the concept of disability justice, an intersectional movement that goes beyond removing barriers and advocates for collective action. This movement is led by those most impacted by the system, including people of colour, trans people, and sexual minorities.
• She highlights the ten principles of disability justice from Sins Invalid, an artist disability activist group, and discusses their relevance in a learning context.
• She also covers Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which advocates for multiple means of engagement, representation, and action/expression in learning.
• Gustafson shares some practical strategies for inclusive teaching, such as allowing multiple formats of submission, breaking big assignments into smaller parts, providing choices for projects, and being flexible with due dates.
• The talk ends with a discussion on grading and feedback, emphasizing skill mastery or demonstration over written work or memorization.

This video is taken from the February 26, 2024 Stumbling Blocks and Stepping Stones on Accomodation Requests and Faculty Readiness. Here is a summary of what Cathy shared with us.

• She discussed accommodations, exceptions, and exemptions within Blackboard, a learning management system.
• Accommodations are meant for a specific student and apply to all assessments in a course for the entire term. They can be due date accommodations or time limit accommodations.
• Exceptions are applied to a specific assessment for one or more students. For example, if a student needs more time on a test or needs to take the test on a different day, an exception can be made for that one assessment.
• Exemptions can be given to one or more students when a grade is not going to be included in the overall grade calculation.
• Cathy also shared some of her practices for setting up courses for inclusion and clarity. For instance, she likes to indicate the worth of an assignment in the grade book and organizes all assessment information and submissions in a dedicated folder.

This video is taken from the February 26, 2024 Stumbling Blocks and Stepping Stones on Accomodation Requests and Faculty Readiness. Here is a summary of what Sarah shared with us.

• The psychiatric nursing department noticed an increase in accommodation requests from students, particularly for extended testing time.
• They held a meeting with Accessibility Services and Health Sciences to discuss the impact of these accommodations on Psychiatric Nursing and competencies.
• Sarah proposed the idea of universal accommodations, where all students would receive time and a half for their testing, regardless of whether they had an identified accommodation.
• This approach was seen as equitable, inclusive, and reduced anxiety for all students. It also prevented students from missing curriculum content due to extended exam times.
• The department approved the implementation of universal accommodations for most courses, with exceptions for clinical or simulated testing involving patients or clients, and for students who required separate rooms or double time.
• The new process was successfully implemented in the fall, with all faculty buying in, and they plan to continue with this approach.