 My name is Afsaneh Sharif. I'm faculty liaison senior project manager with Center for Teaching Learning Technology. Very excited to be here today. I wanna acknowledge that I'm zooming in from the traditional ancestral and unseated territory of the Musqueam people. Hope you and your loved ones are staying safe and well during the pandemic and global crisis. On March 2020, most of us experienced a form of disablement. We all needed flexibility, accessibility and accommodation as we had to move to remote teaching. One of the few positive or plus side of the pandemic was that the pandemic resulted in valuable advancement in accessibility and inclusion. And it is important for all of us to hold on to these gains. And that's why today's session is focused on accessibility and how we can support our students. Our agenda, as you see is briefly, this is an introductory session. Our agenda is about reflection on accessibility at UBC, what we mean by inclusive design and accessible design introduction to open in teaching and learning and why it matters and rational of how OER resources support accessibility. I also wanna emphasize that by no means I'm an expert in this and I'm learning as well through these workshops and we always encourage feedback if you identify any gaps or anything that be improved, we really appreciate it. So let's look at what do we mean by accessibility and why it matters. First, I would like to see that if you can share one word or a few words to describe what does accessibility mean to you. You can use the mic or chat, draw from your classroom teaching, your own activities or practices, your research activities. In general, what does accessibility mean to you? If you can share it in the chat, it would be really good or use your mic. Equal access, equality, anytime, any place if open education, removing barriers, barrier free. Yeah, these are all great points. Thank you all for bringing this to me. So let's see that how we see accessibility and what does it mean here? Accessibility in education means giving all the students equal opportunity to learn. And it's about making sure that our online content if we are teaching online or a classroom environment is accessible and making sure that students have equal opportunity or access to the same opportunities. If you want to consider the whole concept of accessibility there are different factors that help in order to make things accessible. One is assistive technology, the tools that disabled people use. One, the other factor is designers, instructors and developers. And the third one is the disabled individual itself. So these three needs to work all together in order to make things accessible. And I just wanna emphasize that designing for accessibility is a good design that everyone benefit. Now let's look at the concept overall that why accessibility is important and why we need to be really aware of this and making sure things are accessible when we offer a classroom or a webinar or in a classroom environment. According to a statistic Canada, we have one in five Canadian over 15 has one disability. Consider this number, which is significant number, is through all the sectors of our society. It's presented everywhere and UBC is not an exception. Let's look at some of the data here and accessibility, what does accessibility mean and how it works and how we embrace accessibility at UBC. Looking at some of the data existing at data, UBC AMS 2020 academic experience survey report shows that one quarter of our undergrad students have one or more disability, which is in comparison with 2019 data. It's about significant increase three percent more and mental illness stands out as the most common disability. And I also need to emphasize that one third of these people who self-identify actually have registered with Center for Accessibility. So two third, they are not registered or they don't even look for accommodation or they might have a difficulty in identifying this themselves as a disabled person. So that might actually give you an idea that what kind of a students might sit in your classrooms or you're working with in order to provide support. Another data that I would like to bring your attention to is about UBC Vancouver and Okanagan undergrad experience survey which shows, which for me, it was really eye-opening to see that from UBC Vancouver and Okanagan, at Vancouver, 64% of our students worry regularly about how to pay their tuition fee and living costs and they're about 6% have care responsibility. Similar kind of a range even more at UBC or with 84% to be worried about how to pay their tuition fee and living costs as well as the responsibility. And the reason I wanted to share this data with you is considering the accessibility from another lens about affordability and how we can make things more accessible from that perspective to our students. One of the policy I also considering accessibility and how it works at UBC, I'd like to bring your attention to UBC disability accommodation policy which call LR7 policy. It has different guidelines for individual, disabled individual students as well as instructors and what is overall UBC responsibility in that case, which is providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for students with disability, ensuring that eligibility students are not denied admission based on their disability and making facility courses, programs all accessible. So with that, this is one of the things that maybe we don't really pay attention when we offer our courses to understand that whether they are fully accessible to students who might be using assistive technology. Continuing on that policy, there are a few other things that I'd like to mention is UBC is responsible to provide advice and guidance for students with disability about accommodation process, providing information in the academic calendar as well as ensuring that faculty and staff have enough training and information about policies and procedures in regards to the accommodating students to with disability. There are different resources and centers that help in order to move UBC towards more inclusive and more accessible community. And one of them is UBC Center for Accessibility that they're available to help students and for accommodation. Some of the services that they provide is note-taking sign language interpreting, extended time. Some of the students who might have disability or cognitive impairment, they might contact them to extend their timeline. They're providing alternative formats as well as providing assistive technology when possible, audio recording and many other services. If you're not familiar, I would strongly recommend that you check their website. Also think about privacy of information. So if you're teaching online, you get a letter of accommodation to ensure that students' privacy is very important in this area and find out more about this center. If you're at UBC, you must have received an announcement today about the opening up center for workplace accessibility, which is another step for us to become more accessible and inclusive at UBC, which is for staff and faculty to provide support for us. Now, I'm going to briefly to talk about what do we mean by inclusive design and accessible design and how we can move towards designing more inclusive and accessible materials. So some of the tools we use Canvas for our online courses and programs. And I would like to just briefly to go over a few of the tools that might be useful while you are trying to make your courses accessible. I just wanna mention again, I know that being a student as well as instructor online, I can see that how every concept might be challenging some of the features, particularly if you're teaching full-time and this might be an extra step to ensure that your course is accessible. So I'm going through different things, different process, but any steps that you take in order to make your courses accessible is good. So you don't need to do everything at the same time or all at once, gradually it is important to do. So within Canvas, and Canvas has a built-in accessibility checker in its content editor so that you can run it and it shows you what some of the issues are and to help you to resolve those. Another tool that I wanna bring your attention to which is not yet used significantly but if you wanna know and be a various Blackboard Ally which help you understand how accessible your course is and it provide alternative format for your courses. It automatically provide alternative format for your course content, things such as E-pop, audio, electronic brain. Another thing about this is that it also shows you how the institution is doing overall through Blackboard Ally based on the number of courses is online. It gives us that update as well. So if you're interested, you may wanna contact lthob.ubc.ca to request access to Blackboard Ally. Inclusive and universal design for learning, we have developed workshops and resources on that that we will talk about those briefly today. But I just wanna again mention that accessible design is a good design and we are going to talk about it under a larger umbrella of universal design for learning and then talk about inclusive teaching resources that exists. So what does accessible and inclusive design mean to you? Just wanna in a very simple language to talk about design process that consider the full range of human diversity with respect to ability, language, gender and other forms of human difference. In any design decision that we make, we can include or exclude more students in our process. So we can consider that inclusive design is a design process in which product, service or environment is designed to be usable for as many people as possible. Particularly for those who have been considered or excluded to be able to use that service. So again, I wanna emphasize that any decision that we make, any steps that we take, it can open up access to one more students and that's a good way to move forward. One of the definition provided here that I code is from British Standards Institute that consider inclusive design as a design for mainstream products or services that are accessible to and usable by as many people as reasonably possible without the need for a special adaptation or a specialized design. So again, just wanted to briefly to talk about accessible design and then talk about universal design as a bigger umbrella that how we move towards more inclusive approach and design. This session is by no means focused on universal design but if you're moving to make your content more accessible, I think it's important to know about universal design and how you can use this framework to move towards a more inclusive design. The universal design movement in learning has its roots in universal design architect and universal design for learning is a set of principles for curriculum development that give all the individual equal opportunity to learn. It's proactive design and it actually helps us to think about redesign and design new design rather than accommodating students. So it's a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how a human learns. So as I said, today's session is not gonna be focused but I wanted to share with you this framework that we use here and the three principles that he has and then how we are gonna use one of the principles of UDL and focus on that and make our content and share with you a few basic tips to make your course content more accessible. The three principles of universal design for learning. The first one is multiple means providing multiple means of representation. And what it means by that is that if you're developing the content to think about that you just don't use only text. You use other format, alternative format in order to provide the same kind of information for your students. If you provide audio, you may create and provide a transcript or the kind of an image to describe that. So it means that providing alternative formats and provide your content in different ways. The second principle is providing multiple means of engagement. You need to keep your students motivated throughout your journey. And it's important to find based on their diversity and their needs, different ways to get them engaged throughout the process. So one student might be interested, they get excited with group activities, another one not. And the third one is providing multiple means of action and expression. And normally this would be an area when you think that how to assess your students and give them different opportunity to show and demonstrate their knowledge. Again, I would encourage you to get familiar with universal design for learning and we are gonna share some of the resources that we have in this area. But today's session we are gonna go and focus only on the top principle which is the providing multiple means of representation which means how to ensure your content particularly if it goes online is accessible. So the first tip that I'd like to share with you is about describing your visual. And what I mean by that is that if you use any images in your online course and your PowerPoint in any format that you use ensuring that the image, there is an alternative text for it. So if you're adding it on the website or PowerPoint, you right click, there is an area that it says alternative text or description. So why is it important? Because most of the time I ask instructor when they are designing this or they think about alternative text, I would always say that this is different from the caption or description of the image. This means that what is the main message that you want to deliver through this image? If it's decorative kind of image, you can kind of tag it and say this is decorative. But if it's something that there is a message that you want and this example actually show you the difference is that the alt text is that if you close your eyes and I read the alt text, you can imagine what the image is trying to say or what is the main message. So this is one example of alternative text and make sure that you provide that throughout your course materials. Also, another step is that to transcribing your media, providing students with equivalent information to the audio and video content. If you have a video or link to the external videos, make sure that there is at least close caption or a transcript to that videos for people to make it more accessible. Again, this is not only if you're providing alt, it's not only for people who use assistive technology, someone who doesn't have strong internet connection may benefit from the alternative text if the full image is not loading or transcript for media, it's not only for people who might have some impairment hearing or visual. It is useful for people who's English is not first language. So they might need to listen and they are not familiar with the accent or they cannot understand the terminology. So it gives them the option to go back and forth to be able to understand the full content. So as I said, if you plan to think about it in advance to know how to make things more accessible, next time you add an image to your PowerPoint or an online classroom or in your classroom, you will think about adding that transcript or alternative text as well. Another thing that I like to kind of bring your attention to is that use of the color contrast. The number of people who might be color-blind and sitting in your classroom and they may not even know is pretty high, particularly in male students. So make sure that you use color contrast, particularly do not use color to convey information. And what I mean by that is that sometimes people get this mix up with not using the color at all. But if you say that my correct answers are in green, you might have color-blind students who sit in your classroom and they don't see green. So do not use color to convey information or emphasize or make sure that you use color contrast. Font size is another thing to ensure that students are able to, if it's online to adjust their font size, make the screen bigger as well as it's readable for them. Again, these are very simple things that if you consider prior to design or develop your online material, it makes a huge difference. Another way to ensure, again, if you are using hyperlinks external resources in your online, make sure that you not say, click here for more information, try to describe your hyperlinks. The reason is that if for some reason the link is broken, the person can find and let's say the simple way would be Google it and find instead of saying click here, you might say click information about open education at UBC. So it would be easier for them once the link is broken to find out about that or to find that link again. Another way to make things more accessible is use of headings. People who have a vision impairment and use assistive technology, for them in order to understand the order of their reading, it is important that you use headings. That way, the assistive technology that they use show them the importance and the level of importance when they use their tubes. Now, I know that many of us have been using PowerPoints when going online or even sharing or through webinars. So again, some of the basic things that you can do for PowerPoints is that just in general is providing alternative text on graphics, avoiding access animation. I would say that if they're accessible template provided with your own logo or faculty or department or association use those or use PowerPoint template, the ones that they provided that they have run the accessibility checker and it's accessible. One of the, again, simple way is that to ensure that each slide has a unique title. That's another way. Use high contrast color scheme and have a copy of your slides available. In some cases, as you saw, we'll have posted this on our Wiki site. Sometimes we turn this PowerPoint to a PDF and send it prior to the session to our participants and accessible version of the PowerPoint in PDF format. So provide different options for people to be able to access your content as well. Provide audio transcript. If you're using table as much as possible, avoid. But if you use, make sure that they have table header and check the content. If you're sending people to external length, make sure that they're accessible and use at the end the accessibility checker in order to make your content more accessible. So those are, as I say, a few very basic things. And since this is an introductory session, we thought that to share with you overall, what do we mean by inclusive and accessible design? What are the existing resources? How UBC is moving to our more inclusive and accessible? And we are gonna share some of these resources for you, but these are just a few simplest steps to make your content, your courses and classroom more accessible. Now I'll pass it on to Louie. And Afsani, there was a question in the chat. Is it better to share the PowerPoint file or a PDF copy or is a PDF copy okay? And just wondering your thoughts on that. I honestly would say both of them works as long as they are accessible. For people who are using assistive technology, as long as it's accessible, doesn't matter what format. Sometimes we just send it as a PDF prior so that we don't share that, like some of the details they might, you might wanna actually create a participants kind of a PDF version that is accessible but doesn't make any changes as long as both of them are accessible. I think that is a kind of individual preference. I think it's AJ, I think you have your hand up or as well as that. Yeah, hi, my name is AJ and I'm one of the advisors of the Center for Accessibility. And yeah, the part with those headers is really important because then for screen readers, like a lot of students would actually, I'd say most often use like the Word document version because it can incorporate those headers and then it can work really easily with the screen reader program. But again, a lot of times if you just say to students, like if there's a preference in terms of how these materials please let me know in advance and then it can be a way that works for them. But sometimes it really depends on the individual and some kind of softwares that the student might be using. Yeah, I can have issues with different types of formats. So that's where it's often the individual, like kind of if there is a need for an individual though it's often just going to open that conversational doorway so they can let you know. Thank you for that answer. That's fantastic and thank you for joining us today. So I'm going to just talk a little bit about open educational resources and how they can relate to accessibility as well. So what other factors will impact accessibility and accessible learning? So one thing is the actual little access to the learning materials. Barriers such as affordability of the learning materials, the technical format of the material. And in these days, we're still using Zoom quite a bit, the bandwidth, both technical and personal needed to connect with those resources. And these can all impact learning. I want to take a moment just to talk again about how cost is an accessibility issue. And Afsani has dug into this a little bit but looking at the 2020 AMS academic survey, there's real trend you can pull out that shows that the cost of learning materials have real impacts on both student wellness as well as teaching and learning. So within that survey, they found that 28% of UBC Vancouver undergraduate students indicated that they were somewhat or strongly concerned about not being able to come back to UBC at some point in the future due to financial reasons. Additionally, the same survey found over 19% of both graduate and undergraduate students reported having concerns about food insecurity. That's the ability to obtain or being unsure of the ability to obtain food or feed oneself on a monthly basis. So this financial precarity can lead to decisions that may impact learning. And we definitely see that in the survey as well. So 67% of undergraduate students reported that they went without a textbook or other course resource due to cost at least once in the past year of the survey. Within that there was another 28% that reported that they frequently or often go without access to such learning materials specifically due to cost. So if we know roughly a quarter of students in our classes are not able to regularly access the materials they need to be successful for that course. I think that's a real teaching and learning issue and also an accessibility issue. For that, I wanna just bring up the topic and the definition of OER. So OER is a strategy that is often used for accessibility that can address a lot of barriers like the affordability and technical formats. So OER are teaching and learning resources. They can be a full course materials, course materials, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, softwares and any other tools, materials or techniques that are free of cost and access barriers which also carry legal permission for open use. Generally, this legal permission is granted through the use of the open copyright license, most commonly a creative comments license which would allow anybody to freely use, adapt and share the resource anytime or anywhere. OER has been a long and thought of as a strategy for providing accessible and access to learning. The 2012 UNESCO Paris OER Declaration which was sort of one of the founding areas where OER was formally defined, I recommended that governments promote and use OER to widen access to education at all levels thus contributing to social inclusion, gender, equity and special needs education. Just to dig in a little bit to what it means for a resource to be open, I wanna just talk briefly about the five R's of open content. These were formulated by David Wiley who was an early and leading scholar in open education and he said, he was sort of looking at what makes content open. And he said, open content is that content which is licensed through an open copyright license to provide the following rights. So the first is the right to retain and this is the right to make own and controlled copies of the resources or the content. Download it, duplicate it, store it and manage it. So in these days, students are often asked to purchase access to a learning resource, so a textbook or they can rent them but they don't actually have the right to retain that content. So often their access will expire. They don't have the right to download it, store it, upload it to their Google Drive or other places. And so they don't really have the right to manage it in the ways that they might need to manage it. The second right is the right to reuse and this is the right to use the content in a wide range of ways. For example, in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video. And so being able to reuse the content in a wide range of ways makes it more open. The right to revise, this is the right to adapt, adjust, modify or alter the content itself. So the very classic is translate the content into another language. Or we've seen here at UBC, a project where a instructor took the images in a open psychology textbook and replaced the images with images of people that better reflected the demographics of his students in his courses. So he revised an open textbook because it had that right for revise. There's the right to remix and this is the right to combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new. And the classic, we talk about that you could take 3D, we've seen projects that take like three or four chapters from a neuroanatomy text or a brain science text and combine it with two or three chapters from a psychology text to create a brain and behavior text. And they're able to sort of remix those two textbooks into something new that fits their teaching context. And then finally, the right to redistribute. And this is the right to share copies of the original content, your adaptions, your remixes with others. For example, give the copy of the content to a friend, students being able to email it around, you being able to hand it out to your students. So using OER is really a great strategy for accessible course content. Just to summarize, it saves students time and money. Online versions are free for students and instructors. There's no access code needed. There's no expiration date. It's easy to circulate among unlimited number of students. And then importantly, there's no need to gain permission to pay or permission or pay to use or copy or distribute the OER. And it can be used, edited or adapted without fear of copyright infringement. So this means if you're using a textbook, that's an open textbook, that's a piece of OER and it's not accessible, you can go in and add the universal design for learning. As well as students can maybe shift the format to something that works better for them as well. So a key aspect as OER can be changed to suit your needs, student needs, the teaching methods and the curriculum or the accessibility needs as well. So OER is widely used here at UBC Vancouver in the 2020-21 academic year. An estimated 19,000 students took part in 60 courses or course sections that were using OER in place of paid textbooks. So, and that number has been slowly growing since 2011 when we began trying to track that a little bit. So what else besides costs can it affect accessibility? So all sorts of things affect the accessibility of a resource and these things are very much context dependent and can vary from student to student. I really like this list, which was originally compiled by Josie Gray, who's an advisor for inclusive design and OER collections at BC campus. And I think these are all great aspects of what may affect accessibility. For example, a student's day-to-day life can affect their ability to learn and access a resource. Consider a student has to commute on a very crowded bus for hours a day and may have more anxiety this term because of that or a student has multiple roommates and they're all trying to download or attend streaming sessions at the same time. Those are gonna affect the accessibility of their learning. Another examples are differences in digital literacy and technology access among students. Many of us who work on a computer all day take for granted our comfort and experience working with digital content, but a student can't learn well from a resource they don't know how to use or even if they don't like using. Some platforms may not work well on mobile devices like tablets, so that may be something that impacts the accessibility. And then finally, and Asani has really talked about this, but one thing I wanna highlight is the structure of information in your course design. How you organize and structure your textbook or your course or your resource to make it easy to use and easy to find information and navigate is important. This means paying attention to things like the numbering of chapters, the titles, the use of sections and subsections, your numbering systems, use of headings and more. These considerations will vary from context to context, but the more intentional you are about thinking about the structure, organization, navigation, the more useful and powerful your content will be and the more accessible it will be. So day to day life, digital literacy, access technology, all these things are very individualized and context dependent. These are things where I think OER in particular has the potential to really make a difference. Everybody has a preference in how they'd like to access the learning materials and open educational resources are available in multiple formats that makes it possible for students to pick the format that they're most comfortable with and work best for them. Just to provide an example, this is a screenshot of an open textbook in the BC open campus or the BC open textbook collection. So this is principles of social psychology. And I just wanna point out all the different formats you can get this textbook in. So you can see it's available online on a website, but it's also available to download. So if a student's having bandwidth problems, they can download it and use this textbook offline. They can download it in a variety of different things, a digital PDF, a print PDF. Maybe they are using a tablet and downloading it as an eReader file and EPUB or a Kindle file works best. I also like to point out that it's also available in a variety of editable formats. So the raw files are there and I think the editable formats are like an XML file or if you wanna import it into another textbook publishing, but it's also on where docs are often available there. So you can go in and edit and do those. And so providing these sort of multi-modal points of access into our resources, something that OER is really good about and can really help with accessibility. So if somebody's struggling with a PDF, they can go in and take a different format and access to materials that way as well. And again, that open copyright license means that people are continually improving this. And the open education, I would say community really understands that if a open or OER resource is not accessible, then it's not very open. If it's not open to all people, it's not an open resource. So there is this real strong push to make sure that anything that's considered OER is also considered accessibility. So things like the BC Campus Open Textbook Collection, they do do accessibility reviews and all the content that goes in there. And then finally, and AJ hinted at this, but I also really just wanna come back to this idea of talking with your students about were they able to use and access those materials. So oftentimes, we just kind of assume students are able to go out and figure things out. It's good to ask them whether in process or before, were they aware of all the different formats or modalities available and how to use those formats? Did they find anything confusing, structurally or not? Were they able to access or find the information that they needed? Did it work on their devices? So we don't often ask our students too much about how are you accessing these materials? Are you doing it on a phone? Are you doing it on a screen reader? Are you doing it on a full computer? And it might be good to check in with them and see how, if people are being able to do that. So one of the things that I think has been really important and great about, not important, not great, but one of the things that's been really good that have merged from COVID, I think it's the concept of empathy. And I think that goes both ways. I feel students have more empathy for what instructors have been going through and more understanding of what it takes to do teaching and learning. And also instructors having more empathy for students. And I really think bringing sort of a lens of empathy into how you design and develop your courses, your teaching or your open educational resources is really a great starting place for making your content accessible. So I wanted to share some resources that I use that are particularly, I think, great resources for getting started with accessibility. The first one I wanted to share was that BC Campus Open Education Accessibility Toolkit. I'm just gonna drop a link into the chat with that toolkit. So this is a great guide to more in depth to the idea of doing accessible making your content, whether it's a course or whether it's OER accessible. So because this is an open resource, it's in a textbook format. We were able to use that open resource to port it into a different format here at UBC. So we used it as the basis for the OER Accessibility Toolkit where we're really trying to support the creation of accessible OER. But both toolkits are fantastic and have a lot of tips and suggestions and information about making your course content available. If you're interested with OER and either working with it or creating OER and making your OER accessible, there are some resources here at UBC. The first is the Open UBC website, which is a website for open scholarship at UBC and it's full of resources, toolkits and contact information for getting started with using or sharing or developing OER. And then if you are interested in developing OER, there is the UBC OER Fund. And this is a fund with two grant pathways for creating the creation, adoption, adoption and integration of high quality OER, including assessment materials into UBC credit courses. And I will just note that there is a requirement that all materials developed through this grant meet accessibility guidelines and practices. And there's also an inclusive teaching course in which Afsani helped develop a module on an introduction to universal design for learning. And Afsani, I'll let you describe that a bit. Thanks Will. I would strongly, this is an open course. So you must be able to easily to access that. There are five modules. One of them is about introduction to universal design for learning with examples from UBC faculty and faculties and departments. Each principles is in detail with examples from instructor as well as students experiences. You can easily access it and the whole course is focused on inclusive teaching with different resources. I would strongly recommend that you get access to that as well. So we were actually on time and we wanted to save some time at the end for questions and we encourage you to go ahead and unmute or post a question in the chat and we'd be happy to try to answer. And AJ, do I see your hand up? Yeah, I was gonna say probably one thing I wanted to highlight too is thinking about how to increase accessibility and course design is thinking about that like at the Center for Accessibility I think it's like 50 to 60% of registrants are related to mental health. And of that the vast majority I'd say the biggest chunk would be related to anxiety and thinking about that probably the most common interim concession that a lot of instructors choose is the reweighting of a midterm exam to the final. So for students with anxiety that is really, really difficult as a course approach. So like if there's one thing that could make a humongous difference across campus would be thinking about your own course but also talking to other instructors about the idea of like when you're creating an exam to have like a backup version kind of ready so that if anyone does miss the initial one due to family, cultural, religious, disability, whatever that there is kind of another version that they might attempt. Oftentimes too, there can be like just the amount of stress that students are caring right now like partly that all of these things are true like students who are low income are living an hour and a half out and so they're often like exhausted and they're having to study late at night and all that kind of stuff. So there's just a lot of exhaustion that I think happens because of that like those financial components and like sometimes we think of like international students having a lot of money but sometimes it's family, brother everyone in the family, grandparents everyone coming together to help fund that student to be here and so they carry an incredible amount of stress and pressure on like exams and assessments so especially when they miss one and then it gets reweighted it's now even kind of like more so and then if they miss the midterm they miss the final and a lot of faculties they'll only entertain like a late withdrawal as kind of the outcome of that process and so that's a lot of money for especially like international students but also for domestic students and sometimes when the withdrawal is the only option students can also lose their loan eligibility and can't will no longer be able to self-fund themselves in that way. So if there's just one component that would be really amazing is championing to have like another attempted an assessment and also thinking about the planning of that assessment because students need to book their exams with our office at least seven days in advance. So sometimes like instructors will have a makeup exam that's about two or three days later will the student miss the deadline to try to book that? So now it's a different form of concession like the reweighting. So just even think about when that's scheduled so that it gives enough time if the student does miss that that you can communicate with them and maybe have that makeup exam eight days, nine days so that there's a little bit of time for communication and they can still schedule that that would be huge. So that's my putting that out there. Thank you, that's awesome. Yeah, absolutely great suggestions. Yeah, thanks so much. As you mentioned, these are very, very important steps to make things. And particularly on the assessment I just want to mention that that's why when we offer the UDL one of the principles is focusing on the assessment is that forgiving that a students different opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge. So maybe not only final exam give them a final project give them opportunities to choose from different ways that they can show that they achieve those outcomes. So we totally see the point and that's what we are trying to promote through UDL to emphasize on that that student mental health as you mentioned is one of the things that create those barriers more and more for them to be a way to understand and enjoy the best out of that learning experience. So with UDL and promoting it we focus on one of the area would be on assessment to think about it how we can evaluate a students in different ways and give them different options to do that. We still have a bit of time any other questions or comments? I have a question just for the sake of asking one. So this is sort of, I wasn't thinking this is an issue of accessibility but maybe just since I've got a receptive audience here of experts on accessibility I wonder if you have an opinion. So lately I've been noticing that I teach a big first year world history lecture there's 150 students in it and I have an online options so they got either live stream or coming person but you add those two up together and it seems like my attendance is at about 65% or something like that. And I think probably in previous years when it was just all in person into the semester that's probably normal in history and you know so no real cause for concern but that was just making me reflect on you know and as I think for next year should I continue to do it live stream as an accessibility option for various reasons including things like commuting from far away and all that. But anyway so the making it more easy to get to class by live streaming has not actually had any positive impact at all on attendance the combined attendance is about the same as always if not even 5% worse. Anyway so I just wonder if you have any thoughts about how attendance in lectures can is it could be a question of accessibility and then on the one hand an answer could be like make sure you don't to be accommodating don't you know test specific things from a specific day of a lecture class because they're not all coming all the time. On the other hand that then it is discouraging at regular attendance. Anyway do you have any opinions about am I just sort of in here in question? I can share some of my experiences when I teach online is that I can say that a few ways that I need to make sure that it increase the attendance is that I'm making my example more inclusive in order to bring invite the students to bring examples of content as well get them as a partner in the course development as well as about live streaming or in person. I would say that in my experience is that I try to find different ways. One is that if I wanna go online perhaps I record it so it's available for students later on to access it. The second is that every cohort has different needs or it might be different. So I've been in a term that I did something everybody loved that people were engaged the same approach not everyone. So you might try to actually ask your students get them engaged to say that well, this is what I'm planning. How do you want to proceed or what can be due to make the best of this experience? But AJ and Will might have other ideas as well to share. Yeah, do you wanna go first of all? Sure, and I'll just say I think this is a question oftentimes asked like will lecture capture or streaming decrease attendance? And I don't know if there's any clear answers but I do like the idea for a variety of reasons particularly in these days where the technology is pretty easy of having the ability for students to access the recordings or the live stream in a way in case something came up. So it's just sort of that like coming with empathy here's a resource that we can use and you can provide it. I also think sometimes there's anxiety about so there are strategies where I've seen people will say instructors will say, if you'd like a copy of the recording ask me but I'm not gonna put it out there openly. I do think sometimes that's a great strategy but it can also produce anxiety for students. So not all students wanna self disclose directly to their instructor that they missed a class even if it was for legit reasons or if they have more reasons like they didn't understand or they were for whatever reason that we're having trouble following recording is helpful for them too and they might not wanna disclose that for various reasons. I'll look over at AJ and what you follow up on that too. Well, yeah, I think like students can be very hesitant to talk to their instructor that component why like maybe they just were sexually assaulted they may have seen of their perpetrator on campus. They're students dealing with chronic pain in the mornings who if there's up unpredictably they can't get to class. Like there's I think for so many students I've worked with the ability to review recorded lectures especially students with ADHD. I mean, I've never done an intake with a student with ADHD who's told me that they either just listened to the instructor or they just take notes, can't do both. And so that's often why you might see like audio recording of lectures so that they can kind of capture that in case there's gaps in the intention, that kind of stuff. So I'd say across the board the recording of lectures has made such an equitable environment for so many forms of disability. So it's been really helpful. And to also just as instructors think about like what do I need the students there for? Like is there essential learning outcomes related to their participation or attendance or is it just kind of nice to have the full class for the sake of viewing a full class? And so to really get clear on those learning outcomes and why students would be attending if it's just one way direction of information like just the conveyance then probably, yeah, like having students record but if they have to do things like practice their language skills with each other in a language class that kind of stuff is where so that clarity of why it's important students to be there because there's so many students again who for reasons of disability have you far out can't attend all those kind of pieces and that can be really challenging for them. And I'm happy to stay on the line if there's any kind of questions, you know, we don't have to be anywhere right away. I have a question about recording. So I teach a seminar class and there's a lot of discussion. And so I found it, I haven't been recording much except for when we have guests who do more like a lecture style thing. And because I just felt like the students then would like be less inclined towards being vulnerable and participating in discussion but I'm not sure if that's the right way to go because I've had a few people be like can we have like take home notes? And I'm like, it's not really something we can take notes about. Like it's a hard thing to do because it's professional practice. So it's like we're talking about like ethical stuff and like deep questions. And so I feel like it's this balance and having trouble sort of striking in terms of making sure there's something for people to look back at but also wanting to really engage students during class to feel like they can share freely and not have that be, or like be wrong. They can say things that end up being like not the best idea and not worry about it. I don't know if you'll need insight on that. Yeah, I think that what I've seen some instructors do which has been nice is sometimes like they, just having someone that is a note taker during group discussion so that they can distribute a copy of those notes to the group members who are taking it and that when it's kind of like who would like to volunteer to be a note taker in the group, it could really but then again the student who has ADHD doesn't feel like they have to be the note taker that kind of piece. So I think that that's been something that's worked often well. We kind of tell students like under Canadian copyright law, like students can record if it's for personal use. And so like the only time we tell students like if they have the audio recording of lectures as an accommodation, they wouldn't be allowed to use that as if other students can't take notes. So as an example, there was like an elder talking about trauma in residential schools, no one could take notes, therefore like no one could record. But if like the idea that kind of is like if students can take notes, we would support that accommodation of recording game place. Cause again, some people can't take notes like maybe it could be chronic pain. There could be disassociating in those discussions. Like there's so many reasons that it could be really helpful just to make sure that somehow there's a mechanism that students do get some kind of summative component of what was discussed in that group discussion. Totally that makes sense. Thanks so much. That's really helpful. Can I follow up? Since technology has changed they're asking us to do things like record, right? So all of a sudden it's opened up this thing that like two years ago we didn't even think of it now. It's why aren't you recording? Cause I guess it's having other classes. And one of my thoughts initially was I'm going to say no, because like if you miss a class for a doctor's appointment, just miss class like no big deal. Like this is what it's been like for the past hundred years. And it's nothing wrong with like you don't need to memorize every bit of information. I want you to go back a second time and listen to my lecture. Like it's a one time experience and what you get, you get, what you don't get, you don't get. So I've been, I live stream and in one sense being, accommodating this new moment but then also doubled down on many times saying I'm not recording. But I'm wondering if in light of what you're saying and you said about students with ADHD and their intake, they like really want that. So do you have an opinion about the negative anxiety that extra material could create versus the general benefit that it is? I think the discussion to students like around like here's a requirement or here's just an additional resource for you. So I think there is that kind of fear when it's known as like you're expected to like re-review and know everything and that kind of thing. But it's like actually this is just another modality so that for those of you who like, you know, again, someone could be present and again for reasons of ADHD they've got gaps in attention, disassociated identity disorder like they could again just disassociate in the middle of class, their anxiety be so high they can't take in information. There's just a bunch of different reasons why students just sometimes are physically there but not there. And that ability to review that recording later helps them to actually take in that material. So I'd say by far and away we've heard from so many students that like I prefer in learning classes I'd say it's a major thing because they can talk to their peers they can ask the professor, it's interesting. Like they, and so they found it sometimes better but for so many students it's been helpful to be able to re-watch recording students with learning disabilities. They just can't process information as fast as their peers. And sometimes we think that everyone has the same level of processing speed which is like not the case. For students with learning disabilities kind of like being stuck in a traffic jam like they're going to get there it just takes longer. So you'll often see them listen to the recordings but sometimes it might slow it down listen to it several times that kind of piece. So it's definitely helps in terms of accessibility. And but again, if there's a requirement to be there that's okay too, right? It's just making sure that there's a reason for that being there rather than just because it looks nice to fill the seats in the room or something. I was just going to add one more thing is that normally what I would recommend is that spend the first few session of your classroom to understand and get to know your students in a sense that sometimes you can easily communicate, give them some resources about well-being, health and give them a heads up if they need accommodation if they need support to reach out to you to know in advance and also create that open communication create that comfortable safe environment where they can come and ask you exactly what they need and perhaps in advance if you tell them that these are the activities this is how it's going to form if you need other format or if you need help those are the things that you can clear understand the classroom climate in the first few sessions in order to be easier for you to communicate and respond to your students needs. And I was just going to add the note I really like the way you phrase your intentions and I think students always really respond well when an instructor phrases their intention so the intention of these resources are to be treated as resources and not for requiring to pay attention it's my understanding that the lecture should be a one-time experience and these are just in case you didn't get everything from that lecture that you needed to get they're available but do not go there if you don't need to. I see we're right at 3pm and I just want to be mindful of the time but I want to again first thank AJ for coming today and providing his expertise in this area but thank all of you for also participating in today's session. I really appreciate you coming on a I don't know sunny Thursday afternoon as well.