Tonight I watched two session from the Elon Teaching and Learning Conference from this past June. The first session tied into something I discussed today: image accessibility and use of accessible multimedia. The title of the session was “Incorporating Accessibility Principles into Student Video Projects” presented by Nicole Triche, Associate Professor of Cinema and Television Arts, Elon University, Staci Saltz, Lecturer, Elon University, and Sana Haq Assistant Professor of the Practice, University of Miami. They are all involved in production of multimedia and started this research several years ago. The session focused on accessibility for people with hearing and vision loss and content and trigger warnings. I don’t know much about how to approach trigger warning so this was of interest! Triche indicated that about 466 million people in the world have hearing loss, and captioning helps everyone including second language learners, beginning readers, and people in different environments. Triche talked about the FCC TV standards: accuracy, synchronicity, completeness, and proper placement. For accuracy, Triche talked about including full lyrics, proper spelling and spacing/ capitalization/ punctuation, and non-speech information (sound effects, music playing, audience reactions, and who is speaking). For synchronicity, captions should coincide with spoken words and sounds and displayed on screen at a speed that can be read by viewers. Completeness of captions is critical: the entire video should be captioned. Proper placement refers to caption location. I did not know that captions should not block faces or text and in some cases be positioned under the speakers. Triche listed options for professional caption (rev.com), manual captioning with Adobe Premiers, or “automatic and free” using YouTube. I did not know that YouTube captions don’t have non-speech information, punctuation, and capitalization.
Haq then presented on accessibility for people with visual impairments. Audio descriptions can be used to communicate visuals. Haq described exposition: descriptions of people, locations, and objects on the screen; and subtext: action and facial expressions. Haq cited data from the CDC that about 24% of Americans report “functional vision problems or eye conditions that compromise vision.” Audio descriptions, Haq mentioned, can be used to teach students how to think critically about what is going on in video. The YouTube examples of audio descriptions of the Lion King were fascinating: in some cases you have music and audio descriptions at the same time. Haq also talked about describing visual elements that are essential to understand and appreciate the content and use discern attributes and gestures. I had not thought about using vocabulary that is appropriate for visually impaired audiences.
Saltz then talked about the difference between content and trigger warnings. Content warnings “describes something that might upset viewers, that might make them feel bad, without referring to a traumatic experience.” Saltz then defined trigger warnings as “are to prevent people who have experienced traumatic experiences to be exposed to something that might trigger a physical and/or mental reaction.” Importantly, Saltz contrasted “triggered” and “offended/upset.” I honestly never thought about the difference! The goal is to take into consideration the mental and physical wellbeing of the audience. Saltz explained that because student videos don’t have the content rating system, it is important for student content producers to keep in mind the content and audience. Trigger warnings, rather than upsetting the audience, are for viewers with extreme phobias, medical conditions, and survivors of traumatic experiences. This session was full of details and considerations that I had not learned about previously. While I won’t be producing documentaries (maybe?), it is important to keep in mind captions, content warnings and trigger warnings, and audio descriptions when producing videos.
The next session was by Neil Witikko from the College of St. Scholastica and Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning and Associate Professor in the School of Education. The session was entitled “Silver Linings: Using the Best of our Pandemic Experience in our Post-Pandemic Classrooms.” Witikko describe the progression of instructor experiences from the spring of 2020, the fall and winter of 2020-2021, and the fall of 2021. Witikko’s goal was to share some of the experiences and ideas he saw that are important to keep post-pandemic. The first “silver lining” that Witikko described was “tighten our course objectives so that we can teach deeply.” I love this! Identifying course objectives to create assessments, teach lessons with scaffolding, and provide retrieval practice and ongoing formative assessments and feedback before “final” assessment are the foundation of sound courses, I think. Witikko also spoke about the use of alternative assessments: multimodal presentations (videos, webpages, blogs, student video portfolios), student engagement with readings, and group projects. Witikko described K-W-L charts, double-entry journals (idea from the text and column for reaction/connection), author says/I say (again, two columns for responses), reading study guides, concept maps… the goal is to “nudge students to engage in your reading and video content before class…” The next idea that Witikko shared was “rely on the best tools that our learning management system offers” including announcements, discussion boards, electronic assignment submissions… grade book, and video/audio feedback. They suggested front-loading micro video lectures (5-6 minutes) to facilitate active learning sessions. Witikko recommended using simple technology to provide rich feedback and showed several examples of quick feedback using screencasts. I enjoy learning what other institutions and their instructors are doing. I did not know about double-entry journals and author says/I say. I also like the idea of reading study guides. I will keep some of these suggestions in mind!
