Using Ally to be an Instructional Ally

 When you are an ally, you are someone who promotes and aspires to advance the culture of conclusion through intentional, positive and conscious efforts that benefit people as a whole.  You foster relationships based on trust and accountability with marginalized individuals or groups.  This requires that your effects not be self-defined and that your work is recognized by those who you are seeking to ally with. One such way of doing accomplishing this is to adopt inclusive teaching practices.

 

Blackboard Ally is a tool that can assist you on your path to promote inclusive practices. This platform tool scans for inaccessible content and offers advice for faculty on remedying inaccessible content. Besides contributing to courses accessibility, the tools also promotes principles of Universal Design for Learning, by offing students’ alternative formats to the content within the course. Impressively, it does this while being architecturally agnostic, i.e., Blackboard Ally works in D2L, Moodle. Canvas as well as Blackboard Learn.

 

Content is reviewed and a gauge illustrate how accessible it is.  Those with a low rating will appear in red while highly accessible content will have a green color.  Only faculty see this gauge and selecting it will provide the specific issues, if any, with the content and solutions to fix those issues.  This can help guide faculty through developing a perfectly accessible course.

 

Another feature of Blackboard Ally that helps promote inclusion is that alternative content option it provides students.  At a click of a button, students can have the content presented to them in various modalities, including: Tagged PDF, Beeline Reader, or MP3 Audio.  This can not only benefit students with disabilities, but all students can choose the modality the best suits they way the need to learn.  Likewise, Blackboard Ally can translate material in over 75 languages.  This can be very helpful to any student wishing assistance because English is not their first/preferred language.

Principle of Action and Expression - Guideline 2 - Criterion 2

Universal Design for Learning

Principle of Action and Expression - Guideline 2 - Criterion 2

When developing a course using the second principle of Universal Design for Learning, there are three specific guidelines to assist us.  The second, Expression and Communication, focuses on how learners effectively communicate and express their knowledge. 

Criterion 2 of this guideline advocates that we use multiple tools for construction and composition.

Avoid focusing too much on traditional tools while ignoring current tools.  Educational institutions tend to favor traditional forms to composition, such as writing research papers, while not staying current to contemporary trends in digital environments. Restricting learners to ‘old school’ techniques does not prepare them for the future, but instead restricts their learning and the range of teaching methods that you can adopt.  It also bars many students from succeeding. 

For example: Many educational institutions have policies baring cell phones, however their narrow conception of mobile devices does a disservice to students.  For the most part a standard smartphone has more computing power than the computers used to navigate the Apollo 8 mission to the moon.  The student’s device is more of a microcomputer that can receive phone calls than a telephone.  Moreover, smartphones are the primary means of access for a disproportionately higher number of non-whites and lower income Americans.  Many students have to choose between a smartphone or a laptop, and select the former for easier access, better safety, and affordability. To adopt policies that discriminate against mobile devices effectively targets these groups.  It also send the message that the school would rather be antiquated than adopt new technology.

Professionals have to stay current with the tools of their trade, and developing learning environments should prepare the learners instead of provide a skill in an archaic behavior.

When developing a learning environment, be sure to consider:

• Encourage mobile devices and non-traditional tools
• Provide spellcheckers and grammar checkers
• Encourage outline tools and concept mapping tools
• Use web applications
• Provide computer aided design and notation software

By following these suggestions, your course will assist students communicating and expressing their knowledge, as well as being in line with the Principle of Action and Expression in the Theory of Universal Design for Learning.