As instructors and course designers plan for accessibility and accommodations, many factors establish and maintain a classroom atmosphere and an accessible Canvas site to empower better learning. This guide focuses on the tools you can use to support student learning (and make your life easier). It is organized around the Planning Flexibility for Accessibility in your Teaching workshop that was held in April 2023.
🔑 Essential Requirements
UMN Essential Course Requirements are defined as "the core competencies and fundamental skills students must demonstrate to earn a passing grade or complete your course. Conceptually, these requirements often overlap with student learning outcomes, course objectives, and technical standards. However, essential requirements refer specifically to the foundational knowledge or baseline level of proficiency expected of all students" (source).As you are developing Essential Requirements for your course(s), the following resources may be useful:
- Teaching with Access and Inclusion principles
- The Self-Paced Online Teaching and Design Program has an online module focused on Inclusive Online Course Design that includes developing or revising course learning outcomes, goals and objectives. Note: the Foundations for Success is a required prerequisite.
⏰ Deadlines
- Use the Canvas Gradebook instead of an Excel sheet or other formats that students do not have access to help students track their progress (video overview of the Canvas Gradebook).
- Customize your Default Due Time from your Settings Tab in Canvas and explain to students why you’ve set this setting.
- For flexible Canvas assignments, set a due date so it shows up on the student’s to-do list. Do not enter a date in the ‘available until’ field as students will not be able to submit work.
- If you use the ‘available until’ dates with Canvas assessments (assignments, discussions, and quizzes), explain to students how that is different from the ‘due date’ and why you are using it.
- The “Assign To” feature in Canvas allows you to extend due dates to specific students.
- Due dates with External Tools (such as Flip, VoiceThread, FeedbackFruits, publisher content, etc) vary by tool and if/how it’s integrated with Canvas and the Canvas Gradebook.
- If you are using a learning tool that does not integrate with Canvas, include a link to the learning tool in your Canvas course on a Canvas Page and check the “Add to student to-do” list and/or communicate at the beginning of the week when something is due through the learning tool.
- Retake or Expanding the Quiz time limit in Canvas is found in Moderate Quiz
- For standard Classic Quizzes here’s information on how to Moderate Classic Quizzes
- For New Quizzes here’s information on how to Moderate New Quizzes
- Gather student feedback (or Facilitated Feedback)
🙋♀️ Attendance
- The Roll Call Attendance tool in Canvas is finicky and does not allow for much flexibility. An alternative is CLA’s ChimeIn (available to all UMN instructors) which offers flexibility in allowing students to complete class activities even if they are not able to physically attend class.
- Class-wide collaborative note-taking can be done with Canvas Collaborations
- Record videos for students to use as part of make-up work
- Additional FERPA considerations related to recording
- UMN supported videos recorders that capture your desktop: Kaltura Media, ScreenPal, Zoom
📝 Assessment Design
- If you provide students choice on which assignments to complete (i.e., cafeteria style grading) use EX (excused) in the Canvas Gradebook for activities students choose not to do.
- Let students know when feedback can be expected for assignments/projects
- Coach students on where to find feedback in Canvas and how to use it to improve their learning
- Hide grades while you’re providing feedback and release them to all students at once using the Canvas Grade Posting Policy (set this BEFORE you start grading)
- Include feedback timelines in the course syllabus (see sample weekly structure/workload syllabus section)
- Drop the lowest score for a student by creating rules for an assignment group. Note: You can also clarify to ‘never’ drop a score for a specific assignment.
- Create rubrics for assignments and discussions
- Describe how extra credit works for your course and how it shows up in the Gradebook (see sample assignment)
- Create varied assessment types using Canvas external tools
- Feedback Fruits suite of tools that support peer learning activities including self-assessment, peer review, and group member evaluation.
- Flip video tool enables students to record, view, react and respond to each other’s videos.
- Kaltura Video Quizzes allows you to add quizzes within a Kaltura video
- VoiceThread allows instructors and/or students to create, share, and comment on images, Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, videos, audio files, documents, and PDFs, using a microphone, webcam, text, phone, and audio-file upload.
♿ Accessible Canvas pages, assignments, and videos
- Use heading structures as screen readers can’t skim visual elements of text but they can skim heading structures (which provide visual elements for visual skimming)
- Running Digital Accessibility Checkers
- Easy: Use the Canvas Accessibility Checker
- Medium to Hard but more thorough: Run UDOIT on your Canvas course
- Learn about the 7 Core Skills of Digital Accessibility and try adding 1 or 2 to your course
- Add video captions in Kaltura
- Earn a badge through the UMN Digital Accessibility Badging Program