Hello readers, On behalf of the teams that contribute to the Extra Points blog, we want to extend a sincere thank you for being such an engaged community of readers. We directly support the University of Minnesota’s teaching mission, and this blog has been a terrific space to share information and highlight current topics. Our goal is to ensure the content we create is timely, relevant, and useful for your work. To do that effectively, we believe the most important voice in the room is yours. In this post, we are asking for your guidance: What do you want to learn about or discuss next? Your challenges, curiosities, and innovative ideas are the best source of inspiration for our future posts. Your feedback will directly help our teams plan and write articles that address the real-world needs of instructors and staff. What topics or formats would be most valuable to you? To get the conversation started, here are some of the types of articles we often write. Are there specific topic...

Extra Points contributors are interviewing University of Minnesota instructors working to comply with the updated digital accessibility policy effective April 2026. These blog posts highlight the approach they take as they lean into the challenge of revising their course content to be digitally accessible. This post highlights Deanna Koepp , Associate Professor of Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development in the College of Biological Sciences , Twin Cities.  Interviewer: When did you first start hearing about digital accessibility?  Deanna Koepp (DK) : I sort of knew in the background that digital accessibility was a thing, but I didn't truly focus on it until last summer. That's when I received a notification from CBS (College of Biological Sciences) about an approaching compliance deadline in April. I went to a workshop by the IT people in CBS where digital accessibility suddenly moved from a vague awareness to an urgent, concrete task. Interviewer: What were your initial...