ENroute Yearbook 2020-21
Welcoming Questions PM Cicchetti , School of Arts & Creative Industries , Fellow
Last January I came across
an episode on Conversations about Online Learning , an Edinburgh Napier podcast produced by the Department of Learning & Teaching Enhancement . Gavin Henrick , from Brickfield Education Labs , was talking about the merits of thinking about accessibility in learning technology . That got me wondering .
As a concept , accessibility is usually played against the opposing notion of barriers . But barriers come in many forms . In my own practice , I often find myself working with students who come from a practitioner background , and who can be unfamiliar with ( if not downright intimidated by ) academic conventions and practices . In previous years , I used to convene induction sessions at the Screen Academy before the start of the trimester , so that students could get a sense of what was expected and not find themselves thrown in at the deep end once things get rolling .
As the pandemic made that impossible , I followed Henrick ’ s lead and added a new ‘ Welcome Pack ’ section to my Moodle page . I modelled it after the common ‘ FAQ ’ sections that populate the World Wide Web , banking on the universal familiarity of that format to lower the ‘ barrier ’ of unfamiliar expectations . I recruited previous students to write friendly ‘ survival tips ,’ and incorporated those in my ‘ Welcome Pack ,’ alongside more conventional elements such as learning outcomes , assessment criteria , and so forth .
I offer this idea to colleagues as a way to implement feed-forward strategies in their VLEs and , in the process , fill in knowledge-gaps that might have a negative impact on the learning environment !
A screenshot of Pasquale ’ s ‘ Welcome Pack ’ on Moodle
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