Learning Path: Accessibility and Inclusion in Teaching

Engage with this self-paced course to familiarize yourself with accessibility basics for bCourses. This course is designed to help you develop accessible instructional materials within bCourses using best practices. As you apply the recommended changes, your course's accessibility will improve, making learning more inclusive for all students. In this course you’ll learn to:

• Add alternative text for images

• Caption your videos

• Use color effectively

• Structure content with headings

• Promote screen reader compatibility

Here are the links to acces the course: 

1.  Accesibility Basics for bCourses Direct link (Does not require CalNet authentication)

2. Accesibility Basics for bCourses Self-enrollment link (Requires CalNet authentication and the course will be added to your bCourses Dashboard.)

Ally is a set of tools within bCourses that helps make course content more accessible by delivering  the following functionality:

• Allows students to automatically generate alternative formats of your course materials, such as tagged PDF, HTML, BeeLine Reader, Electronic Braille, ePub, Immersive Reader, MP3, and translated versions, enhancing accessibility. Watch the tutorial on Ally for students at UC Berkeley to learn about this feature. 

• Provide instructors with accessibility scores next to uploaded course documents and images so instructors can learn how to create more accessible content. Next to your uploaded course documents and images, Ally displays colored dialsindicating accessibility scores. These scores help you identify and resolve barriers to accessibility. Click on a dial to view specific issues and suggestions for improvement.  Watch the tutorial for instructors using bCourses to learn about this feature.

• Review and remediate bCourses Page content using the WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) Instructor Feedback Tool. When editing course pages that use the Rich Content Editor, you'll see an Ally feedback indicator in the top right corner. This tool provides real-time, contextualized guidance to help you create accessible materials. Click the score icon to start enhancing specific content accessibility. Read Ally WYSIWYG Instructor Feedback Tool to learn more

• Identify and fix accessibility problems in your bCourses site using the Ally Course Accessibility Report. This report gives an overall accessibility summary of your course materials, available through the course navigation. To enable this feature:

  • Go to your course “Settings” and select "Navigation."

  • Find the Ally Course Accessibility Report, select the three vertical dots, and choose "Enable."

  • Save your changes. Now, selecting the Ally Course Accessibility Report in your course navigation will open an interactive dashboard that displays accessibility scores and issues.

SensusAccess is a self-service solution that automates the conversion of documents into a range of alternative formats including mp3, e-books, Braille, and Daisy. The service can also be used to convert otherwise inaccessible documents such as image-only pdf files, scanned images, lecture notes or other educational material into more accessible formats.

SensusAccess operates through a webform that operates through most major browsers. Select the following external URL to access SensusAccess portal. By following the four easy steps on the SensusAccess page you can have your document converted into an alternative, accessible format. The result is delivered in your email inbox. You may upload one or more files, enter a URL to a file or simply type in the text you wish to have converted. The form expands as you make your selections. Review the SensusAccess Tutorial that demonstrates how to convert course materials to accessible formats. 

Depending on the quality of the source file, conversion results may vary greatly. In order to achieve the best conversation results, observe the practices outlined in Conversion Best Practices. 

If you have any questions about SensusAccess please feel free to email sensusaccess@berkeley.edu.

Read Universal Design for Learning (UDL): A Guide for University Faculty to grasp the essentials of UDL.It's designed to show you why adapting your teaching to meet diverse learning needs isn't just beneficial but necessary. Discover the fundamental principles of UDL that help all students access, engage with, and demonstrate their learning through multiple methods. This introduction sets the stage for more in-depth strategies on implementing UDL in your courses, highlighting how these approaches are backed by neuroscience to accommodate the unique ways students process information.

 If you have any questions about this guide or would like to discuss UDL with a CTL colleague, please feel free to email teaching@berkeley.edu, or schedule a consultation.

In this workshop, we will focus on practical strategies for creating an inclusive learning environment from the start of your course, specifically designed for smaller classes with fewer than 50 students. While inclusion and diversity are essential values in education, integrating these concepts into daily teaching and course content can be challenging. Using the key principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as our foundation we will discuss how they can be integrated into your teaching to support and engage all students. You will learn how to apply these inclusive teaching strategies to develop a classroom that caters and accommodates to diverse learning modes and needs, ensuring that every student has the necessary support to succeed. This workshop focuses on smaller class settings which allow for more personalized interactions and targeted support.

View details and register for this workshop

In this workshop, we will focus on practical strategies for creating an inclusive learning environment from the start of your course, specifically designed for smaller classes with more than 50 students. While inclusion and diversity are essential values in education, integrating these concepts into daily teaching and course content can be challenging. Using the key principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as our foundation we will discuss how they can be integrated into your teaching to support and engage all students. You will learn how to apply these inclusive teaching strategies to develop a classroom that caters and accommodates to diverse learning modes and needs, ensuring that every student has the necessary support to succeed. This workshop focuses on smaller class settings which allow for more personalized interactions and targeted support.

View details and register for this workshop. 

Why do we grade the way that we do in higher education? What does the research say about our grading practices? How might we grade differently?

Explore recent articles and resources on grading and its effects on student engagement, motivation, and overall learning in this Teaching@Berkeley newsletter issue from October 2023. This newsletter offers some background on the terms around different forms of grading (e.g. alt grading, ungrading) as well as some student perspectives on these new, non-traditional ways to evaluate student work. Instructors can also read through the Alternative Grading Frameworks page on our CTL website to learn more. 

If you are considering grading differently, we encourage you to meet with us in a 1-on-1 consultation to brainstorm.

Do you dread when midterms roll around in your course? Wondering how you can best support students during the challenging exam period? Let’s explore metacognition and how this skill can support the diversity of students in our courses. In a recent article, researchers found that activities that prompted students to reflect and self-assess improved exam performance over term-focused assignments, particularly for students with lower ACT scores. In this session, we will dig into these findings and consider how metacognition can benefit students taking exams in a variety of disciplines.

View details and register for this Spark Talk. 

Rethinking traditional assessments isn't just about changing formats—it's about embracing diverse approaches that accommodate different skills and learning styles. This session explores how to design authentic and scaffold assessments that allow space for practice, feedback, and revision. We'll also discuss how to make assignment instructions transparent and provide clear rubrics to ensure all* students understand what is expected of them, promoting a fair and inclusive learning environment.

View details and register for this workshop. 

Think of a course assignment that often causes frustration or challenges for you or your students. This activity invites you to review that assignment and brainstorm possible changes with equitable assessment strategies in mind.

Reflect on the following questions:

• How does this assignment align with your course learning objectives?

• What skills or knowledge do you want students to demonstrate?

• How can this assignment better reflect real-world applications of the course material?

• Can you break this assignment into smaller, more manageable parts?

• What opportunities can you provide for students to receive feedback and revise their work?

• How can students reflect on their learning process through this assignment?

• Could you incorporate elements that allow students to showcase their progress over time?

• What additional support or resources might students need to succeed in this assignment?

Engage with these questions and ideas to explore new ways of making your assignments more equitable and motivating for your students.

Ever feel like your course has to “do too much”? Want to explore course redesign, but feeling constrained by the sheer amount of material you need to get through? Let’s explore content coverage and how it relates to (and perhaps thwarts) our goals of fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion in our disciplines. In a recent paper focused on the health sciences education pipeline, the authors found that requirements for content coverage did not serve the development of professionals in the field and actually presented an unnecessary barrier to students from historically marginalized backgrounds. In this session will dig into their research findings and consider how these might apply to courses in our own departments.

View details and register for this Spark Talk