Six Tips for Inclusive Teaching in Synchronous Online Courses

 You are teaching an online course with synchronous sessions and want it to be equitable. But what are the best practices for this style of delivery?

Six tips for inclusive teaching in synchronous online courses.

1.     Remember to consider the digital divide. Access to technology varies greatly across race and socio-economic groups.

For example: Bandwidth Distribution: Access to high-speed internet and personal computers varies significantly when considering a family’s race.

To help level the playing field, remember to:

a.       Refrain from requiring the downloading of large files during the synchronous session

b.        Similarly, when you have video content in your course, or in a session, make sure it is streamed.

c.       Allow students to download files in advance to prepare for the session

2.       Make sharing your video optional unless it is absolutely necessary. Video consumes resources. Resources that not everyone has.  Merely using the video conferencing meeting in MS Teams requires 4 Gig of RAM and video can draw even more memory.  Meanwhile, many students have limited financial resources and this will push many ‘affordable’ low-end machines to their limits.

    Respecting your students’ privacy and safety is another reason to keep video optional.  Sharing the video in the session may reveal the student’s home location or aspects about them that they need private for their safety.  Incidentally, they would never share this information if the course was held in a classroom.

    To illustrate, sometimes individuals seek safety from an estranged spouse or a stalker and sharing the local surroundings of where they live is an unreasonable requirement that would never occur if the class occurred in a room on campus.  It behooves us to adopt a teaching strategy that would subject someone to potentially jeopardizing themselves or their family to get a grade.

    Finally, we often forget about the student’s workspace and home life.  Not every student has a pleasant place to work in their home.  Perhaps they would rather not; show their communal kitchen which is the only place that they get Wi-Fi signal, reveal they have to watch their kids who are in the background, or show that their only access to internet outside of the college is in a local coffee shop.  Remembering their right to privacy affords everyone with self-respect.

3.       Be forgiving and flexible. IF the lockdown taught us anything as educators, it is that anyone can have technical issues. Those less advantaged often have more than their fair share of issues.  Know this in advance and be flexible. Try recording lectures sessions and offer the transcript afterwards.  Likewise, consider access to used assets as well as an asynchronous option to assist those who cannot contribute due to whatever issue they faced.  These issues are, more often than not, out of their control.

4.       Use live Captioning. Video conference technology has improved over the past few years. Stop using the dinosaurs that lack this feature. Products like Zoom and MS Teams have live-captioning options. Make sure to use the live auto-captioning and make your session accessible for everyone. Besides helping the hearing impaired, the captioning helps everyone when there are audio problems.

5.       Avoid Time Response questions. Revel in the silence.  It allows others to think. Time responses favor those with fast bandwidth and unfairly punish those with disabilities whose assistive technology may inhibit their reaction/response time.

6.       Ask – Don’t Assume. Invite your students to contact you privately with any issues that could impede their success. Also, anonymous polls can give you insight to technical and bandwidth issue that students may face. Armed with this knowledge, you can adapt your courses to be more accommodating on the fly.

Follow these tips and you may discover your more inclusive course may have an uptick in student success. 

References

Cohen, J and B Seltzer. 2020. “Teaching Effectively During Times of Disruption." Stanford University online resource.

Dello Stritto, M E and K. Linder (2017) A Rising Tide: How Closed Captions Can Benefit All Students. Educause. Aug 28.

Hamraie, A 2020. “Accessible Teaching in the Time of COVID-19.” Mapping Access.

Hicks, C, Brulé, E. and R. Dombrowski. 2020. “You Have to Put Your Class Online: Simple Things to Think About.” Online resource.

Khobragade, S. Y., Soe, H., Khobragade, Y. S., & Abas, A. (2021). Virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic: What are the barriers and how to overcome them? Journal of education and health promotion, 10, 360.

Lokken, F. (2017) Online Courses as Good as In-Person Classes. Inside Higher Ed.

Morris, K. K, C. Frechette, L Dukes III, N. Stowell, N. E. Topping and D Brodosi (2016) Closed Captioning Matters: Examining the Value of Closed Captions for All Students. Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 29(3), 231-238.

Moses, B. (2020) 5 Reasons to Let Students Keep their Cameras Off During Zoom Classes. The Conversation. Aug 17.

Passenger-Wieck, L . (2020). “An Equitable Transition to Online Learning: Flexibility, Low Bandwidth, Cell Phones, and More.” Pedagogy Playground

Rose, D & A Meyer (2002) Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Walia, A and S. Ravindran (2020) America’s Racial Gap & Big Tech’s Closing Window. Deutsche Bank Research.