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We want to be an inclusive university.
We don’t want to be discriminatory.
We want to respect religions and *** orientations.
This is something we do so freely;
why not respect different learning abilities?
In a classroom, you’re going to have students with a number of abilities,
whether they have a recognized disability or not.
And every individual has a different
medium of expressing their knowledge and understanding.
Sociology and Materiality of Texts asks
students to do two short quizzes in the classroom,
a presentation as part of a group, an essay,
and an exam at the end of term.
When you only have one way of assessing student...
students’ understanding of material, it’s somewhat limiting.
because you’re assessing a very particular way of learning.
By making everybody do all of these things, I’m trying
to give an opportunity for students who thrive on different
kinds of assessment to all do well in my class.
The more different kinds of ways that I can
give the students to critically interact
with what I’m trying to tell them, I think the better.
Students may understand the material very well,
but feel more comfortable presenting that in a different way.
If a professor suddenly says,
“You can do this…that.” “I’ll provide these kinds of resources for you.”
Suddenly you’re no longer part of the other, you know, you’re part of the entire group.
PowerPoints, handouts, and field trips
are good because they get students
engaged in different ways in the material.
And so those different modes of instruction appeal to different students who learn in different ways.
And I had one student who actually was...
who was assisted by OSD, who had said to me at the end
of the class that, in fact, these different kinds of ways of engaging with the material had actually helped her.
It wasn’t intentional; I hadn’t designed it for that reason. But, I mean, I think it’s a really great side effect.
If you have a course that
allows people to explore
different aspects of the way they can learn, we end up coming out with
diverse human beings who all share a body of knowledge but are able to do different
things with that knowledge in the world.