Strategies for Instructors
- Immediately contact SDS for any questions and concerns.
- Faculty can advocate for their students to promote a healthy and comfortable learning environment for everyone.
- How could starting with an equitable and accessible course policy plan work to prevent this from becoming an issue in the future?
- Perhaps a more agreeable course policy could be implemented, such as one quiz of the student’s choosing being dropped from the final grade (Duke University, 2021).
- Universal Design for Learning is a framework that views accommodation as a norm rather than a special circumstance. By taking this proactive approach, instructors can reduce the sense of barriers for students to reach high achievement (CAST, 2018).
- The Plus One Design is a model that evaluates current practices and procedures on representation (e.g., what are students learning and how is it presented?), action and expression (e.g., how are students learning and demonstrating what they learned?), and engagement (e.g., how are instructors encouraging students’ connection to learning material?)
- Using responses from the prompts above, an instructor may consider how they can add to their current practice.
- Perhaps a more agreeable course policy could be implemented, such as one quiz of the student’s choosing being dropped from the final grade (Duke University, 2021).
- Reaching out to all students before the first day of class can help anticipate students’ accommodation needs and signal your commitment to equity and student learning.
- Research suggests that by surveying students about their learning needs ahead of the first day of class, instructors were better able to not only evaluate their students during grading, but they also stated that they felt a better connection to and understanding of their students (Duke University, 2021).
- Further recommendations from SDS also support this suggestion. A possible addition of a pre-start course survey to gauge students’ concerns about anything that may inhibit their performance could be helpful for both instructors and students in beginning the semester on the same page.
- If a student requests accommodations prior to the start of class, it is important to implement these, which may involve reaching out to SDS, and to provide them in a timely manner (e.g., a student who is blind may need access to a syllabus written in Braille on the first day). By offering a survey before the course start date, instructors are better able to arrange for these situations.
- It may be useful to use your first week’s quiz as a way to get to know your students in a way that is not graded but rather serves as a way for students and yourself to begin the course with a better understanding of each student’s starting knowledge.
- “Where do you know from?” is a model of assessment originating from McMasters University Department of Cultural Studies and Critical Theory that gauges students’ concerns. This model uses an open dialogue between students and instructors rather than a form of formal assessment for the same purpose. Depending on the context of your course material, this model may be more appealing.