Tip Sheets: Inclusive Teaching and Learning
Ensure your in-person presentations are accessible to all learners with this practical guide covering content, delivery, and environment.
Design PowerPoint presentations that are accessible to all learners with this guide focused on layout, visuals, text, and assistive technology compatibility.
Create Word documents that are accessible to all users with this guide focused on structure, formatting, and compatibility with assistive technologies.
Active Learning Classrooms (ALCs) and Flexible Classrooms (FCs) promote collaboration, engagement, and technology-enabled learning. These spaces encourage peer and team-based learning, shifting students from passive recipients to active co-creators. Effective use involves fostering group work, accountability, and adaptable instructional strategies that enhance participation and deepen learning outcomes.
Enhance student participation and real-time feedback with backchannel tools that support inclusive, low-barrier communication during class sessions.
In large, crowded, undergraduate classes students can feel anonymous, passive, unmotivated, and isolated (Trees & Jackson, 2007)
Let your students see you as a real person
When teaching online, it’s especially important that students see you as a real person.A content warning is a statement made prior to discussing, displaying, or sharing content that some students might find disturbing.
Transcripts are text alternatives to multi-media materials
Effective visuals help your audience understand and remember the key points of your presentation.
Early engagement quick tips are useful for instructors to foster engagement in the first weeks of a term.
Introduce yourself to your class.Tell them about your background:
A pronoun is a part of speech that replaces a noun or noun phrase to eliminate unnecessary noun repetition in communication
Student participation is shaped by a variety of factors including personality traits, comfort with English language, cultural norms and customs, life circumstances, neurodivergence, and disability, to name a few.
Assessment is an integral part of your course design.
The following best practices for creating PowerPoint presentations were compiled from Kapterev, Delwiche & Ananthanarayanan, and the University of Western Ontario’s “PowerPoint Primer."
The tools described below – Empathy Maps, Learner Personas, and Learner Journey Maps – can help you get a better sense of your learners’ lived experience.
Most people strive to be gracious and sensitive when accommodating another person's needs.
Ensuring that courses and program activities include global perspectives is central to the development of an internationalized university.
While stress can be a normal part of the university experience, instructors can design courses that focus on learning while reducing the unnecessary hurdles that can increase stress and interfere with learning
As instructors and teaching assistants you often have direct communication with students and, therefore, you have the potential to help students feel connected and supported in their learning environment.
Good course design involves considering the strengths and needs of all learners.
Good teaching involves considering the strengths and needs of all learners.
The term universal design (UD) originated in the mid-1980s from the architect Ronald Mace, who is internationally recognized for advancing the concept and design of barrier-free buildings for people with disabilities
According to recent advances in neuroscience research, there is no such thing as an “average learner” (Rose & Meyer, 2002; Rose et al., 2013; Rose, 2016)