Tip Sheets: Inclusive Teaching and Learning

Use this checklist to guide you toward creating accessible face-to-face presentations.  Start with practices that you find quick and easy, then build from there. 

Use this checklist to guide you toward creating accessible MS PowerPoint slides.  Start with practices that you find quick and easy, then build from there.

Use this checklist to guide you toward creating accessible MS Word documents.  Start with practices that you find quick and easy, then build from there. 

In the context of higher education, the word “backchannel” refers to conversations that take place among students during a classroom lecture or presentation.

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. 

As a provider of educational programs, the University of Waterloo is legally obligated to accommodate students with disabilities, as per the Ontario Human Rights Code

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)