To prevent the spread of infectious diseases such as Covid-19, people must maintain a safe physical distance between themselves and others. Therefore, there has been a profound increase in online learning and working remotely except going to schools or offices in this situation. Then, the adjustment is from our learning activities is to create a workspace for each student because the teacher can follow up with students to provide feedback and track the progress in real-time. For example, in this course- EDCI 335, we use Notion with our instructor, then it would be easier for him to track our processes of completing each task.
Because of this pandemic, students may study in different time zone. Then, the web browser-based activity must be accessible in the country that my students are currently in. For example, one of the learning activities that our pod decided is to let them watch short YouTube videos. However, some countries block YouTube channels, which would be an obstacle for some of my students. Then, we will have to make sure the online resources must be accessible to everyone. The solution that we come up is recording the YouTube videos and then upload it to the learning activity page for students if YouTube channel does not work.
Moreover, there would be many uncertainties or unexpected challenges for us during the online learning environment. Therefore, contacting the instructor in the first place is essential. Then, I will provide multiple contact information such as personal phone number, email, Facebook to my students in order to provide support for them as soon as possible.
Also, from my personal online learning experience, most of the students who attended the live lecture with inactive attitudes such as muted microphones, and cameras off. It may create a sense of isolation or even freedom for students. Therefore, cooperative learning activities are essential to our interactive learning resources because they allowed students to work together as a team to commit to the task. Even though they cannot talk to each other face-to-face, there are different web-based software such as Zoom or Skype to provide video chat for participants to join in a closed meeting. They can also form the group in Messenger or Discord applications to chat with each other than a video call. After that, one of the group members can write down the progress of each meeting in their group’s workspace; it helps the instructor check in real-time.
Regardless of ability, age, gender, disability, or different cultural background, all my students who register in my workshop have an equal opportunity to learn and grow. In my workshop, I assumed that there are people with color blindness and loss of hearing, then the videos in the learning activities must be contained subtitles. For students with color blindness, I will use both colors and symbols, keep it minimal, and avoid lousy color combos. It will help those who are color blind, low vision, and possibly students with other print disabilities, making everyone have equal access to my design learning without making the specialized design.
I never thought about some students not being able to see certain colors on presentations due to color blindness. Thank you for drawing my attention to this and making me consider it further. It is such a simple but important way to be inclusive.