Category: Accessibility and UDL

The Problem with Best Practices

October 11, 2023 by Eva Grouling Snider

“Best practices” is a bad way of looking at teaching. How can we frame teaching practices more productively to encourage experimentation and innovation? I’ve got a gripe I’d like to share. My hope is that my griping might help you consider your teaching practices in a new light. Here goes: I hate the phrase “best […]

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Helping Students Fit Education Into Their Lives (Part 2)

April 19, 2023 by Eva Grouling Snider

In this special two-part blog post, we examine what Ball State students say about flexibility and how teachers can offer students flexibility so they can fit their education into their busy lives. In Part 1 of this two-part blog post, we examined what students have to say about flexibility. Both quantitatively and qualitatively, Ball State […]

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Helping Students Fit Education Into Their Lives (Part 1)

April 12, 2023 by Eva Grouling Snider

In this special two-part blog post, we examine what Ball State students say about flexibility and how teachers can offer students flexibility so they can fit their education into their busy lives. Our students need flexibility in their education. As the cost of higher education has risen, the days of students managing 40-hour weeks between […]

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Six Tangible Ways to Support First-Generation Students

March 22, 2023 by Cheri Madewell

Help first-generation and other students unfamiliar with higher education navigate the business of being a student with transparent course materials, agency, and guided learning through your course design. As a first-generation college student, neither of my parents (or their parents) attended college. The small and private, four-year liberal arts college I attended may as well […]

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How Changing Our Assumptions Can Impact Student Learning

December 14, 2022 by Shane Lanning (they/them)

It’s easy to unintentionally make assumptions about the background knowledge students bring with them to class. How can we check the assumptions we make, and how can we assist students who do have background knowledge gaps? In August 2022, I facilitated a workshop on implicit bias and course design. My overall goal was to engage […]

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Toward Mobile-First Teaching Practices

October 3, 2022 by Eva Grouling Snider

Explore how the web design practice of “Mobile First” can be applied to course design to create mobile-friendly courses. Before we start, a quick warning. I’m going to assume that you value creating a good learning environment for all your students. Your students are using smartphones all the time, and that includes interacting with your […]

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