By Terri J. Matiella, Ph.D.
UTSA 2020-21 Next-Gen Faculty Fellow
Co-Director, Core Curriculum and Assessment for Environmental Science
Senior Lecturer, Department of Environmental Science and Ecology
Inclusive teaching refers to the classroom strategies used to address the needs of students with a variety of abilities, backgrounds and learning preferences. Promoting these strategies doesn’t have to be a lot of work. You can add an optional video or infographic that may stick with students longer than reading text explaining the same concept. You can also allow students the option to turn in assignments in a medium that helps them learn new ideas in a way that works best for them.
If you have a weekly reflection or discussion board, allow students the option to turn in the assignment as a normal written assignment, image, or a short 2-minute video. Some students may express themselves better in speech than in writing, while some process information more deeply when they can work with the material in several formats.
As an Adobe Creative Campus UTSA faculty and students have free access to create their videos in Adobe Spark Video and Adobe Premier Rush, and upload them to Panopto. They can then submit their Panopto videos and/or Spark and YouTube links to Blackboard for review.