Ramping Up Accessibility in Designing Assessment and Learning Activities

Here are additional ways to increase accessibility in your teaching.  When you’re ready to go beyond Accessible Teaching Basics, consider implementing one or two Ramping Up practices that suit your context. Aim for progress, not perfection. 

• Avoid giving grades for attendance and avoid penalizing students for missing class. There are many disabilities that impact a student’s ability to regularly attend class. 
• Offer some low stakes assessments that provide formative feedback, with or without grades, especially early in the term or at the start of a new unit of study. This helps students gauge how much time and effort the course involves.
  • To learn more: Refer to Low Stakes Writing Assignments (CTE Teaching Tip). 
• Provide guidance for when parts of large assessments should be completed so that students know the scope of work expected of them and can manage their time. 
• Avoid inflexible, unduly punitive, and high-risk course policies such as giving students zero if they upload the wrong assignment in a dropbox. Mistakes happen for several reasons, and such policies unfairly disadvantage students at high-stress times. Such policies are not aligned with the purpose of an assessment.
  • To learn more: Refer to Bloom’s Taxonomy Learning Activities and Assessments (CTE Teaching Tip).
  • You can also organize LEARN submission settings to allow students to fix an error on their own. To learn more: Refer to Managing Dropbox Submissions (IST Knowledge Base).

To Go Further

• Consider potential barriers (physical, social, etc.) when planning learning activities so that you don't unintentionally exclude students with disabilities. For example, if planning classroom activities that involve physical movement, consider who would be impacted by the physical layout of the space (e.g., steps).    
• Offer a variety of ways for students to participate, other than traditional answering and asking questions in class, so all students have an opportunity to earn grades and engage with you and their classmates.
  • To learn more: Refer to Inclusive Engagements Strategies (CTE Teaching Tip) and Online Tools for Collaborative Content Creating and Annotating (CTE Teaching Tip).