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Topic: Accommodating the Learner
Date: November 16, 2020

For the webinar link click here.

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Here is a full review of all of my 5 Course Observation Check-Ins.

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The course syllabus for GER 431 The Middle Ages for Beginners: An Introduction to Middle High German can be found below.

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There are way more aspects to consider when teaching and creating a course than I would have ever imagined. Things change constantly. Specifically, my plans for the Course Design Project changed constantly. Looking back on all my Course Design Project Check-Ins I've noticed that it definitely was a work in progress. The Check-Ins helped me to structure my train of thoughts and implement new approaches that I came across over the course of the term. I've realized that you need to be flexible. Maybe something doesn't work out the way you planned it, or you forgot to take something into account. Or it simply doesn't work in the context that you have to work with.

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Another 'aha' moment that I had stems from the webinar that I gave. Before doing research on my webinar topic "Accommodating the Learner" I simply thought that course instructors are just legally required to accommodate students with disabilities. But accommodation is so much more! Accommodating my students means putting the students at the centre of my course. As instructors we shouldn’t be teaching a course for our benefit, but for the benefit of our students. And in order to do that, we need to know our learners and then go and take this into account when designing and teaching our courses.

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As I've already mentioned in our last Zusammenfassung of the term, before taking this course I wasn’t aware of how much of an impact reflective writing can make. It can help students to develop academic skills, better understand a topic and enable them to review their progress. A great deal of students’ time will be spent thinking: thinking about what people have said, what they have read, what they themselves are thinking and how their thinking has changed. There is not a right or wrong way of reflective thinking, there are just questions to explore. And I think that's great! I do believe that students don't get enough opportunities to actually stop for a minute and reflect on what they've been doing or learning (as I've experienced myself as a graduate student). We live in a fast paced world, especially when it comes to education. Reflective teaching and learning is a way of helping students to become active, aware and critical learners.

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What I found extremely beneficial for my learning in the course was how the professor treated me and all other students as competent equals. I enjoyed for example doing the webinar in collaboration with the professor because it combined my own independent research and collaboration, and also because it was much less intimidating than other traditional presentations.

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"Sometimes life gets in the way of your studies. Perhaps you've been ill, you've had a lot of work in other classes, someone has broken your heart." 

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"Sometimes life gets in the way of your studies. Perhaps you've been ill, you've had a lot of work in other classes, someone has broken your heart." 

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Quoted from the course I observed.

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I was also particularly thankful for the way that deadlines for assignments were handled in this course. It was nice to be treated, for a change, as a capable grown-up student, who is able to get everything done in a timely manner. Even though that sometimes meant handing in assignments 'a day late'.  Having this leeway minimized the unnecessary stress and anxiety that I most of the time feel when I realize that the end of yet another term is approaching fast.
That's why I took this approach and actually implemented a dual deadline policy in my Course Design Project as well. Why would I want to torture my students and let them beg for something that I would grant them anyway?

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I loved the collaborative aspect of this course. In a weird way I felt really connected to my peers during this online term. Unfortunately, not as I would if I actually saw them on campus and could go for a coffee with them. But out of the 3 online courses I took this term, this course has created by far the best community feeling for me. The professor used collaborative tasks that were simple yet effective. I didn’t feel the pressure to always have to contribute something that was new or unique, but I could rather focus on the dialogue that we were creating in the course, for example when we all contributed to bulleted lists as a group. These tasks made me feel like my contributions couldn't be wrong. Everyone had something to offer. It was easy. It was just kind of naturally flowing. And I also loved being able to see what others were thinking and what ideas we were sharing or disagreeing on. This course was truly designed for community!

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I honestly have to say that at first, I wasn’t the biggest fan of MS Teams as the LMS for our course. I felt that it was yet another platform that I needed to get accustomed with when LEARN was already there and a platform in which I knew how to maneuver. MS Teams seemed so confusing and overwhelming to me. And even though I’d say that I’m still only about 65% familiar with all the features that MS Teams has to offer I’m grateful that it was used for this course. I think it worked amazingly for this grad course and in the way the professor worked in the collaborative tasks and assignments. That's when I had my 'aha' moment: the collaborative function. With MS Teams, I felt I was actually working together with my instructor and my peers.  Posting anything in MS Teams seemed so much less intimidating than posting on LEARN where everything seems to count for a grade. I was way more motivated because everyone was working together in this course.

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An example of where I was flexible when it came to my Course Design Project was that I included (non-mandatory) synchronous elements. Before taking this course I wasn't in favour of the notion of a synchronous course, as I had only taken asynchronous courses before the pandemic myself. That's what I knew and that's what I wanted to go with. However, I realized that an asynchronous course with (non-mandatory) synchronous class meetings would work way more in my favour of teaching a combined translation and literature class.  I love the idea of being more flexible thanks to an asynchronous course but also having the optional synchronous elements creating instructor presence and student-student interaction.

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So, what totally blew my mind was that instead of focussing on accommodating each and every student I can design a course to build in accommodation from the start. By utilizing Universal Design for Learning principles all my students will benefit, not just those with disabilities, and it will reduce the need for specific accommodations later on. Win - win.

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"Teachers using UDL offer their students what architects bestow on their buildings: coherence, utility and access for all."

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"Teachers using UDL offer their students what architects bestow on their buildings: coherence, utility and access for all."

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Orelove, Fred P., et al, editors. Educating Students with Severe and Multiple Disabilities. Brookes, 2017.