track late assignments with a simple Canvas quiz

This fall and winter I worked with two instructors from very different disciplines to achieve a common goal – making their courses inclusive through a flexible assignment policy. Both courses gave students opportunities to recover without penalty from what would otherwise be a setback – a late, missed, or low-scoring assignment. Flexible assignment policies aren’t new, but instructors are now extending grace to students without the requirement to ask in advance, provide an excuse, or share official documentation, such as a doctor’s note. Our collective pandemic experience has revealed the inequity of having the instructor adjudicate the validity of the excuse, as well as the impracticality of producing documentation on demand. (Can you readily access a doctor when you’re too sick to work? If you could, wouldn’t that take up time and energy you’d rather use to complete the work itself?) Finally, as a third instructor commented to me, simply reading the traumatic narratives that students share voluntarily (let alone requiring these excuses) implicates her in a form of voyeurism. Discomfort aside, students’ entreaties take up time, requiring at least one exchange of emails, and that can fill up the inbox and prove hard to track over the course of the term.

As an elegant fix, the courses I’ve worked on explicitly state in their syllabi and assignments that no reason is required and that permission is granted automatically – eliminating the need for email back and forth and the inequitable requirement for justification. This policy fit the goals of both instructors – one who was interested in student retention in a difficult course, and the other who had implemented a labor-based grading approach to extend greater agency to 100-level, Gen Ed students.

But the instructors still needed a way to track the excused assignments. So what’s clever and new (to me) about these courses is how the instructors and I executed the policy in our LMS – a graded Canvas quiz (in a 0% weighted assignment group so as not to interfere with the final grade) that inquires only about the logistics:

What is the assignment? (Be as specific as possible.)
How are you using this particular opportunity for flexibility (of the three opportunities granted)? (The assignment is late/missing/requires revision.)
When will you turn it in? (This helps me grade it promptly.)

Because the quiz is set to accept just 3 attempts, the instructor doesn’t need to manually tally the number of permissions already granted. And once the student fills out the quiz, safe in the assumption that permission has been secured, they can get down to the business of completing their work, without shame or delay.

One instructor framed these opportunities as “tokens,” like the tokens you spend at Chuck E Cheese — they’re only good when you’re in the establishment, so while it’s great if you finish the term without needing to use them, there’s no particular reason to save them up! “Tokens are my acknowledgment that we all make mistakes, misread instructions, and that life things come up. We falter. Use a token!” (“What are tokens in this class?”, Dr. Jenna Goldsmith). The Canvas quiz was termed a “Token Tracker,” complete with a cartoonish golden coin icon. By week 6 of the term, just short of half the students had availed themselves of it.

I was excited to learn of these instructors’ policies and to help craft their execution in Canvas. If you’d like to try out this inclusive assignment policy, or have an idea for another policy that will be unfamiliar to students, consider how you can use the tools at hand to present the policy as easy and natural — as much a part of our standard operating procedures as the old, inequitable way of doing things. Students will be more likely to benefit that way.

With gratitude to Dr. Jackie Goldman, who first shared the idea of an automated “extension quiz,” and Dr. Jenna Goldman, who adapted the quiz for use in her course.

Evaluating Textbooks

When selecting a textbook, there are a number of factors to evaluate. In addition to assessing the textbook for appropriate content, one category that I recommend looking at is how inclusive the textbook is. Here are a few guiding questions to ask when evaluating textbooks for inclusion:

student studying on a laptop — Photo by Surface on Unsplash

What is the cost of this textbook? Have you looked for open (free) textbooks, perhaps from the Open Textbook Library or considered writing or adapting your own? Affordability is inclusive.
Do the textbook images of people represent diverse cultural heritage and lived experiences?
Are the contributions to the field that are highlighted in the textbook from a diverse range of scholars in the field? If not, is there discussion about why certain voices were historically excluded from the field?
Is the textbook accessible? If there is an e-book, do the images have alt text, for example? Can students with disabilities access all materials in the book?
If the textbook is an e-book, are the concepts presented in multiple ways, such as text, infographic, slide decks, or multimedia elements? Giving students choices in how they explore the course concepts empowers them to use their existing preferences, and helps them develop new strengths and avenues for learning.

What to Do When the Textbook Is Not Ideal

It’s tough to find a textbook that is inclusive and has all of the concepts you are hoping to teach. What can you do when you find a textbook that has the concepts you need but is lacking in inclusive excellence? Here are some simple ideas for addressing this:

Consider giving publisher feedback. Write a brief email to the publisher about your concerns around a lack of representation in the book or whatever it is that you see as missing.
For any text you choose, consider inviting students to write to the publisher if they see areas for improvement, whether that is with cost, bias, or other issues. You could include the contact information for the publisher in your course materials page, inviting students to write in feedback directly to the publisher.
Acknowledge to your students that the textbook isn’t as inclusive as you would like it to be. Share the ways that you are advocating for better quality. You could also invite students to have a bias hunt discussion about the textbook or course materials. Then you could collect that feedback and send it to the publisher.
If the textbook lacks contributions from a diverse range of scholars, consider adding scholarly articles, images, or interviews from diverse professionals in your field to your course learning materials pages, in your LMS course site.
Consider highlighting professional organizations in your field that promote and mentor the professional development of scholars from specific historically underrepresented communities.

Have you had success in this area of evaluating textbooks? Have you found a publisher or textbook that has made gains in this area? If so, please share your resources in the comments.

References:

We believe textbooks should be diverse and inclusive. Here’s what we’re doing about it.

Peralta Online Equity Rubric

UDL Progression Rubric

Open Textbook Library

Image credit: Surface on Unsplash

By Susan Fein, Instructional Designer, OSU Ecampus

I recently volunteered to lead a book club at my institution for staff participating in a professional development program focused on leadership. The book we are using is The 9 Types of Leadership by Dr. Beatrice Chestnut. Using principles from the enneagram personality typing system, the book assesses nine behavioral styles and assesses them in the context of leadership.

At the same time, a colleague asked me to review a book chapter draft she is co-authoring that summarizes contemporary learning pedagogical approaches. These theories are derived from every conceivable arena, including psychology, philosophy, epistemology, neuroscience, and so on. In both of these situations, I found myself immersed in far-reaching and seemingly unlimited perspectives, principles, beliefs and approaches to explain the constructs of human behavior.

Was the universe trying to tell me something?

Here’s What Happened

To prepare for the book club, I completed five or six free online tests designed to identify my predominant enneagram style. Imagine my surprise when my results were all different! A few trends emerged, but the tests failed to consistently identify me as the same enneagram type. Does that mean the tests were flawed? Certainly that may be a partial contribution. After all, these were not the full-length battery that would be used if I were paying for an assessment administered by a certified enneagram practitioner.

But frankly, I think the variation had more to do with me. My mood, the time of day, my frame of mind; was I hungry, was I tired and a myriad of other factors likely affected my responses. The questions were subjective, scenario-based choices, so depending on my perspective in that instant, my selection varied, producing significantly different results. I suddenly realized that I wasn’t the same person from moment to moment!

Does that sound absurdly obvious? Was this a “duh” moment? At one level, yes, but for me, it was also an “ah-ha” moment. As educators, do we expect students to respond or react in a predictable and consistent way? Is that practical or realistic? I don’t think so.

Now I was intrigued! How could my role as an instructional designer be enhanced and improved through recognition of this changeability? How might I apply this new insight to support the design and development of effective online learning?

I didn’t have a clear-cut answer but I recognized a strong desire to communicate this new-found awareness to others. My first thought was to find research articles. Google Scholar to the rescue! After a nearly fruitless search, I found two loosely-related articles. I realized I was grasping at straws trying to cull out a relevant quote. I had to stop myself; why did I feel the need to cite evidence to validate my incident? I was struggling with how to cohesively convey my thoughts and connect them in a practicable, actionable way to my job as an instructional designer. My insight felt important and worth sharing via this blog post, but what could I write that would be meaningful to others? I was stumped!

I decided I should talk it over with a colleague, and that opened up a new inquiry into design thinking. Rushing back to my computer, I pulled up images of the design thinking process, trying to incorporate the phases into my experience. Was my insight empathy? Did it fit with ideation? Once again, I had to force myself to stop and just allow my experience to live on its own, without support from theories, models, or research.

In desperation, I sought advice from another trusted co-worker, explaining my difficulty unearthing some significant conclusion. We had a pleasant conversation and she related my experience to parenting. She said that sometimes she lets stuff roll right off when her teenager acts out, but at other times, under nearly identical circumstances, she struggles to hold it together and not scream. Then she mentioned a favorite educational tool, the grading rubric, and I was immediately relieved. Yes, that’s the ticket! I can relate my situation to a rubric. Hurray! This made sense. I rewrote my blog post draft explaining how rubrics allow us to more fairly and consistently assess student work, despite changes in mood, time of day, energy level, and all the other tiny things that affect us. Done!

Satisfied, I asked a third colleague to review my draft and offer comments. Surely she would be approving. After all, there were no facts, tips, tools, research or actionable conclusions to correct. What could she possibly find to negatively critique? She felt that the ending was rushed and artificially trying to solve a problem. Oh, my, how on target she was! I realized that I had no idea how to elegantly extricate myself from this perilous journey I’d started. My blog posts are usually research-based summaries of the benefits of active learning, blended learning and the like. Safe and secure ground. What was I doing writing a personal reflection with absolutely no solid academic foundation? This was new and scary territory.

Who Cares? I Do

In the end, I had to let go of my need to cite valid research-based arguments. I gave up my desire to offer pithy words of wisdom or quotes from authorities. Ultimately, this was a personal reflection and, as my colleague gently reminded me, I had to be vulnerable.

So what, exactly, is my point? What is it about those chameleon-like outcomes that feels important to share? What do I want to say as a take-away? Honestly, I’m not sure. I only know that in recognizing the influence of human factors on my moment-to-moment reactions, I was unexpectedly expanded. I felt more empathy for the faculty I work with and the students they teach. (Maybe I can fit design thinking in here after all…kidding!) I sensed a stronger connection to my humanity. I deepened my compassion. But is any of this important? I mean, really, who cares?

I do. I care. I work with people and for people. I work to support student success. My job allows me to partner with instructors and bolster their confidence to have positive impact on their students’ futures. If I am more open, more inclusive, more humble, more willing to consider other people’s ideas or perspectives, that’s not such a bad thing. And I don’t need research to validate my experience. It’s okay for me to just be present to a new awareness. It’s okay for me to just be human.

The other day, my six-year-old asked me what the word “industrious” means, and I was overcome with pride and, moments later, mild panic as I tried to answer his question and couldn’t clearly articulate the meaning of the word.

This experience ended well (thanks, Alexa), but prompted me to think about how often we use words without fully understanding what they mean. We don’t question the meaning of these words when they are used in our work or daily interactions. We may use these words ourselves on occasion–or with regularity–but when we stop and try to define these words, the proper associations and descriptions don’t come immediately to mind.

In my work as an instructional designer, it’s common to talk about universal design or inclusive design, and in many cases, to use these descriptors interchangeably, when talking about design that is usable by a wide range of people. To a lesser extent, accessibility is used in a similar way, but, I think, our shared understanding of this term is more reliable.

For this blog post, I would like to spend some time defining and distinguishing these terms and grounding them in a historical context to more fully convey the nuances and layers of meaning ascribed to each term. I’ll wrap up with some strategies for designing courses to better meet the needs of all learners.

Accessibility

According to the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), “Web accessibility means that websites, tools, and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them.” It’s clear from this definition that accessibility is intended to address the needs of users with disabilities, so let’s consider disability.

Prior to 2001, the World Health Organization (WHO) defined disability as a personal health condition. This definition placed emphasis on the individual. However, in 2001, the WHO redefined disability as a mismatched interaction between a person and their environment. This new definition places emphasis on the environment, rather than the individual. As a result, the onus is no longer only on the disabled individual to manage their health condition; rather, those who have influence over the environment need to make changes to the environment to better accommodate everyone who is interacting with it. In our case, the learning environment is the web, or more specifically, online courses.

Unlike the other two design approaches we’ll consider, accessibility is intended to address the needs of users with disabilities. Another distinguishing feature of accessibility is that it describes an end goal. Our web content should be presented in such a way that the end result is an accessible website or technology. While this post will not go into the how of making web content accessible, here are some elements you may be familiar with: alternative text (alt tags), headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.), color contrast, captions and/or transcripts, reading order, keyboard navigation, and descriptive URLs are all examples of accessibility elements. All of these elements define what our design should look like, not how to get there.

Another distinguishing feature is that accessibility is required by law. We won’t delve into the specifics here, but it’s important to recognize that accessibility is a legal compliance issue.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

While accessibility addresses specific features of a website or online learning environment, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) takes a broader approach. UDL guidelines still emphasize accessibility, but the emphasis is not solely on making disability accommodations or complying with the law. The goal of UDL is to provide the greatest degree of access and usability for the widest range of individuals.

UDL includes a framework with three general principles, each of which includes multiple guidelines and checkpoints for actual practice. A UDL approach is structured and practical and, similar to accessibility, UDL defines an end goal: a product that is usable by the widest range of individuals possible. The framework, however, emphasizes the design, which is only one aspect of creating an online course.

To broaden our understanding of UDL, it’s important to understand that UDL emerged from universal design, which is an architectural concept. Architecture, unlike the web, is physically fixed, and as such, the emphasis is on a single design that works for everyone.

Inclusive Design

While UDL emerged from architecture, inclusive design was “born out of digital environments,” and, while architecture is fixed, the web is flexible and ever-changing. As such, inclusive design emphasizes flexibility and process. Inclusive design is iterative. With an emphasis on iteration and process, inclusive design cannot be separated from the lived experience of actual users. In other words, if the users (in our case, students) are contributing to and evaluating the design, then we can no longer separate the design and delivery–the creation and facilitation activities.

With a focus on process, inclusive design emphasizes co-creation and frequent feedback from multiple developers as well as end users. In particular, seeking contributions from excluded communities during the entire design and evaluation process is critical to an inclusive process.

Unlike accessibility and UDL, inclusive design is focused on process and iteration. To help illustrate how we see these three design approaches working together, my colleague, Elisabeth McBrien and I created the figure below (figure 1).

Three circles. The outer circle represents inclusive design. The middle circle represents UDL. And the smallest circle represents accessibility. — Figure 1. An inclusive design process will always include UDL and accessibility as end goals.

We see accessibility compliance as core to any design. UDL goes beyond the requirements of accessibility to meet the needs of all users. In an inclusive design process, UDL and accessibility are always the end goal, but inclusive design emphasizes the importance of feedback and iteration. We can always improve and we always have more work to do.

In Practice

Now that we have a better understanding how accessibility, UDL, and inclusive design work together to contribute to a learning environment that meets the needs of all learners, how do we apply them and improve? Ecampus has many guidelines and templates that help us to meet the goals of accessibility and UDL, but how can we be more inclusive throughout this process?

Here are some inclusive approaches that you might consider integrating into your course facilitation and teaching:

Build rapport with students. This is accomplished by infusing instructor presence whenever possible. Respond to Q&A questions and emails within 24-48 hours. Share resources. Deliver feedback promptly. An important element of rapport and presence is showing your personality, so consider using video to welcome students and to encourage them throughout the course.
Solicit feedback. One of the easiest ways to solicit feedback from your students is to use a survey. Keep surveys short and consider asking students to share in a few words how the course is going or what they find most challenging.
Establish clear criteria and structure. Rubrics, templates, examples, and consistent naming and organization of course materials are just a few ways to provide clarity and structure.
Acknowledge student contributions. Praise is an instant confidence booster. Do you have a student–particularly, an underrepresented student–who did an exceptional job on one of your assignments? Let them know. Consider sharing their work as an example–with their permission, of course.
Feature counter-stereotypical examples of people in your field. One common barrier to success for underrepresented students is that they don’t see themselves reflected in a particular discipline. Make sure your readings, examples, and other course materials represent a variety of identities. If there’s a lack of diversity in your field, find a way to acknowledge this to your students.
Promote student agency and autonomy by giving them choice, whenever possible. Providing choice and promoting agency allow students to connect your course to their own experiences and values.
Emphasize real world applications of course work. Often, we assume that our students understand the purpose of course activities, but this is not always the case. Sharing real world applications will help students to see the value and greater purpose of their studies.

Final Thoughts

We’ve covered a lot in this post, and I hope that we’ve come away with a better understanding of disability, accessibility, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and inclusive design. One of the most important takeaways is that inclusive design is an ongoing process of feedback and iteration. As our student body changes, so do their needs. In an upcoming blog post, Elisabeth McBrien will share more details about student needs and how you might use student personas to design more inclusively.

As we continue the challenging–yet meaningful–work of creating welcoming online learning environments, it’s important that we have a shared understanding of what that work entails, what work we have done, and what work we have yet to do.

Resources

Appert, L. et al. (2018) Guide for Inclusive Teaching at Columbia. Columbia University: Center for Teaching and Learning.
Gannon, Kevin. (2018) The case for inclusive teaching. Chronicle of Higher Education.
Hogan, Kelly A. and Sathy, Viji. (2019, July 22) “Want to Reach All of Your Students? Here’s How to Make Your Teaching More Inclusive: Advice Guide.” Chronicle of Higher Education.
The inclusive design guide. Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University. CC-BY 3.0.
Inclusive Teaching: Supporting All Students in the College Classroom. EdX course from Columbia University.

Ecampus Course Development and Training

Providing inspiration for your online class

Tag Archives: inclusive

An Inclusive Time-Saver: “The Token Tracker” Brings Structure to Flexible Assignment Policies

Tips for Evaluating Textbooks for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion