Inclusive Design
A study on the effect of inclusive course materials on student interactions with a course
Teaching Challenge
How to create a student-centered experience that includes students of all abilities and backgrounds?
Context: Understand how students with disabilities interact with and access the course.
Students with documented disabilities will inform instructors of their course-related accommodations. However, I wanted to go a step further and develop a course that was developed specifically for students with disabilities to see if all students benefit from the course accommodations.
Goal: Identify inclusion opportunities in course design.
Closed-captioning of lecture videos may not be sufficient for students with visual disabilities. Video lectures include graphics that aid instruction but no course materials existed that provided alternative text to graphics found in lectures.
Method: Quasi-experimental design to compare two sections of a course with or without descriptive text of graphical content within video lectures.
Two sections of a research course were taught. Both sections included lecture videos with closed captioning. Both sections also had access to the audio script via the video-hosting website. However, one section included two supporting documents with the lecture videos:
Lecture notes that included a basic outline of lecture and all text written on the board (file on top right).
Descriptive script that included screen-reader friendly document headings, pop-up captions, alternative text of all graphics, and timestamps of when the graphics were displayed in the video (file on bottom right).
Lecture Notes for Screencasts.docxANOVA Tutorial Script.docx
Closed-Captioning Only
Screenshot of course section with only closed-captioning available to students.
Inclusive Lectures
Screenshot of course section with access to lecture notes and alternative text for graphics.
Impact: Students in the more inclusive course spent more time in the course than did students who only had access to the closed-captioning and script.
After removing five outliers, students in the section with inclusive lectures spent significantly more time (Mdn = 5,345 min) in the course than did students who only had closed-captioning lectures (Mdn = 3,960 min), t(15.86) = -3.45, p = .003, d = 1.50 (see Figure).
This difference was found without the instructor explicitly referencing this material to students.
Students in the inclusive lectures also had higher grades on average than students with only closed-captioning, but this difference was not statistically significant.
Implications: Inclusive course materials influence students' learning experiences.
Including supplemental inclusive materials that go above and beyond standard closed-captioning supports students of all abilities.
Students spend more time in the course when supplemental inclusive materials are made available.
Providing students with inclusive materials may be associated with earning higher grades.