Building a class ethos of care and respect is essential to ensure each person in class feels comfortable participating fully and genuinely. To cultivate such learning environments in classrooms and online spaces, I practice located accountability as a fundamental commitment to design and facilitate courses in ways that are accountable to students and the localized contexts in which class takes place. My practical application of Angela Haas’ located accountability is shaped by the Buddhist concept sangha which is usually translated as “community,” but also connotes “refuge” or sustaining space within which community members feel comfortable enough to allow their best nature to be present. While located accountability centers the human needs of students, sangha/refuge actively attends to them by situating coursework as inseparable from the real world, promoting inclusion through accessible design, and drawing from students’ existing knowledge.
Coursework is the “Real World”
In my technical writing classes, students challenge the dichotomy that classrooms are separate from the real world by working with documents that they and their peers encounter on a regular basis. End-user license agreements are legally binding documents that often appear as a computer pop-up window. Instead of hastily clicking “I agree,” students critically read sections of license agreements from familiar companies such as Twitter, Netflix, and Chegg to identify primary user needs and obligations created by these documents. Students then redesign the text and remediate crucial clauses into visualized formats to help users, often their peers and families, understand what they are agreeing to when they click “I agree.” In addition to bringing document design and audience awareness skills into practice, this assignment highlights the stakes of writing and challenges the belief that effective writing is neutral. Students notice technical writing in familiar contexts and understand our class not as preparation for real life, but rather as real life itself.
Accessible Teaching and Teaching Accessibility
Accessibility is a principle that guides my course design because all effective learning must be accessible. Accessible design is also a concept I teach so students consider audience awareness expansively and inclusively. Students in one of my classes took a field trip to the campus accessible technologies lab to observe how assistive technologies such as screen readers and braille keyboards help members of campus who have vision impairments read and write. When we returned to class, students had material understandings of the importance of accessible document design and when they worked to design technical description posters, some students went to great lengths to compose accessibly. One student’s poster demonstrated the steps involved in making a slap shot in ice hockey. The central image was a hockey player surrounded by small text blocks explaining each step. In the design memo that accompanied the poster, the student explained that he used a color scheme optimized for colorblind accessibility and that each visual step in the slap shot process included detailed alt-text. The result was a poster so vividly designed that reading it felt like the student, a children’s hockey coach, was right there narrating each step. When students extend accessible design to this extent, it also becomes a paradigm for drawing broader connections to equity and inclusion.
Students engage when they have opportunities to relate their pre-existing knowledge and expertise to new applications. Opportunities for students to share what they know occurs organically when the class ethos is aligned with sangha/refuge because students are willing to share when they believe their experiences will be validated. Teaching accessible design is one venue for students to demonstrate transferable knowledge in creative ways. In my professional writing courses, students participate in a discussion board prompt that invites them to post an image (static or GIF) with a brief explanation about how it relates to the course. Students then respond to classmates’ posts by describing the images, particularly for people who might not be familiar with cultural connotations of the image. Beyond being an exercise in visual rhetoric, this activity is a launchpad to talk about alt text, the text-based metadata that accompanies images, allowing blind or vision-impaired readers to read textual description of images. Without knowing it, many students’ descriptions of posts function as highly effective alt-text. Working from what students find familiar can be a fruitful gateway for introducing new concepts and accessible design exemplifies this transition well.
Valuing Students’ Knowledge, Experience, and Opinions
Listening to students is the best way to access their preexisting knowledge. Something as seemingly simple as knowing how to correctly pronounce a student’s name requires attentive listening. In several recent classes, my students introduce themselves in several different ways during the first week, one of which is contributing a short video or audio clip to a discussion board. In the clips, students say their names, so the class can hear the pronunciation of their name. Being recognized by name might seem incidental, but for students with non-Anglo, less common names, or names that differ from the official class roster, practices like video introductions help establish an inclusive class setting from day one. Sangha/refuge means that I listen to all students, including those who are silent and creating mediums that allow private or anonymous feedback from students are another way to listen in order to teach responsively.
Any student who has taken a course with me will likely remember our use of notecards, surveys, or in-class polling. Quite often, students have opinions about class that they would rather not say in front of everyone or even send privately to the instructor. To access these opinions, students practice sharing feedback with me throughout the term. Some days each student receives a blank notecard and writes reflections about the class before choosing whether to include their name or submit it anonymously. I reach each piece of feedback, usually bringing them up anonymously or in aggregate in future ways, while identifying ways the course could be modulated to better address the shared feedback. More formally, students use these feedback mechanisms to participate in creating assessment structures for major projects by designing and suggesting rubric criteria. While some students are hesitant to suggest changes to a rubric, I explain that many professional workplaces ask employees to participate in formal self-evaluations before their supervisorial review. As a result, student’s recognize ways of articulating their strengths by participating in their own assessment, an exercise that not only allows their best nature to be present, but for them to give voice to it.
While sangha/refuge is not a topic I teach formally or overtly, it is a practical ethos I build with my students. It is a dedication to hold learning spaces that are inviting and welcoming to all, while simultaneously gauging when students desire challenges or opportunities to extend creatively.