Faculty Professional Development for Building Accessible Online Courses – old version

#10211

Speaker(s)

  • Lene Whitley-Putz, Training and Development Coordinator, @ONE for training

Session Details

  • Length of Session: 1-hr
  • Format: Lecture
  • Expertise Level: Intermediate
  • Type of session: General Conference

Summary

For most faculty, mandates for creating accessible online courses are overwhelming, and few campuses offer comprehensive training for teaching accessibility. This workshop focuses on five key skills for making content accessible.

Abstract

Providing professional development on accessibility to faculty can be time consuming. It's often difficult to gauge the comfort and skill level of faculty, and difficult to design appropriate material tailored to faculty needs. In this workshop, we’ll walk you through five accessibility techniques we have been teaching faculty in the California Community College system that will help them design a more accessible course, including showing them how to use a few nifty tools to ensure they’re on the right track when developing online material in their CMS. We’ll share a host of cloud-based resources with you, and provide you with access to our Creative Commons Licensed Accessibility course.

Keypoints

  1. Faculty can design and develop accessible course content in their CMS
  2. Campuses can provide training on accessibility tailored to faculty needs and skill level
  3. Training in accessible design can help increase the accessibility of online courses

Disability Areas

Cognitive/Learning, Deaf/Hard of Hearing, Mobility, Vision

Topic Areas

Accessible Course Design, Uncategorized

Speaker Bio(s)

Lene Whitley-Putz

I hold a PhD in Rhetoric and Communication from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and an MA and BA in English from CSU, Chico. Before attending Chico State, I worked full-time, and took a variety of courses at my local campus, Saddleback College. I teach in both communication studies and writing programs, and have extensive experience teaching writing to students who are unprepared for academic writing, including supervising tutors and being an administrator and graduate assistant in writing centers.

Designing my first online course was an eye-opening experience, and I quickly realized my traditional teaching toolkit needed some augmentation! In 2011, I completed the @ONE certification program. The professional development and subsequent collaboration with teachers across the state has had a dramatic effect on my teaching. Both my online and face-to-face teaching is more focused, more student-centered, and more engaged.

In 2014, I completed the Quality Matters "Peer Reviewer" training and in 2016 I completed the Online Learning Consortiums Certificate in Online Learning. I bring these areas of expertise to the peer review process at OEI.