Current Courses

Summary

How do we balance a commitment to inclusive online learning environments with the recognition that some learners will experience access barriers where other learners experience access supports? This MicroCourse provides learners with the opportunity to explore access friction as an invitation to rethink our assumption that making learning “more accessible” is the obvious path to inclusion. Instead we will take up the question raised, in different ways, by John Lee Clark and Aimi Hamraie: who includes whom? Our learning starts with the basic understanding that

Access friction can pose challenges to implementing access and demonstrates there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to addressing access (“Glossary.” In Access Anthology: Reflections on Disability Art and Culture, no date, page 66)

Recognizing access as collaborative practice, this MicroCourse includes a peer review activity in which participants upload draft Accessibility Statements to Moodle, and provide feedback for each other's drafts grounded in responses to the readings and discussions for Day 2 and Day 3.

By participating in this collaborative activity, learners will:  

• Identify frequently encountered sources of access friction (Example: Asking learners to keep cameras on to facilitate lip-reading; Giving learners the option to keep their cameras off to support mental health needs) 
• Craft student-centered approaches to navigating access friction in online environments
• Apply ideas from the MicroCourse resources and from the discussion forums to transform access from how "we" include disabled learners, to how disabled learners include us

Learning Opportunities

In place of rigidly defined learning outcomes, this MicroCourse provides open-ended learning opportunities:

• Recognize what constitutes access friction in online learning  
• Practice effective methods for responding to access friction, without lapsing into familiar, and questionable assumptions that "more" access translates readily into more inclusive learning