Evidence of Leadership Towards Ethical Practice in Instructional Design
Artifact One: Diversity and Inclusion in Course Design
Description: For a team project in IT 578, I proposed a Diversity and Inclusion Course targeting learning designers. We developed a Canvas course housing four modules which we created using Articulate Rise. The modules addressed race, gender identity, and culture. The fourth module addressed Accessibility and Universal Design for Learning (UDL). I designed the portions on race and Accessibility and UDL. Charity Davenport designed the interactive graphic on brain networks for the UDL module.
Rationale for Inclusion: I created the race module to raise awareness among instructional designers and instructors regarding the need for diverse representation in instruction. Diversity and Inclusion impact learning, self-esteem, and student success. This artifact aligns with the AECT standards by taking a step in the right direction on the path to empowering learners with diverse backgrounds, characteristics, and abilities.
AECT Standards:
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Standard 2- Content Pedagogy
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Standard 3- Learning Environments
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Standard 4- Professional Knowledge and Skills
The image above contains a knowledge check from the course. The scenario involves, Mary Ann, who has designed a synchronous course for a Religious Studies professor. She included the diversity statement from his face-to-face course syllabus. Since she knew the professor used diverse examples in his case studies, she did not make diversity and inclusion a priority in other aspects of the course design. The question is, "Should Mary Ann have incorporated more techniques for inclusion in course design?"
The answer is, "Yes. She missed many opportunities by incorporating only two techniques." Learner feedback adds, "Mary Ann could have contributed to an inclusive course climate and enhanced student learning by focusing on building instructor-learner and learner-learner rapport, selecting stock photos representing diverse individuals, and/or suggesting guest speakers to serve as diverse role models."
Collaboration Acknowledgement: I collaborated with Charity Davenport and Ethel Bonner on this course. I designed the module on race. Charity designed the module on ethnicity, and Ethel authored the module on gender. Many thanks to Charity Davenport for moving the instruction from Canvas to a Google site for open access.
Artifact Two: Write Alt Text for Static Images in Rumie Bytes
Description: I created this microlearning module for The Rumie Initiative. Almost 200 learning designers are working to build a library of thousands of microlearning modules. This module was designed to teach the learning designers how to write alt text for static images. I researched, designed, and developed this microlearning module.
Rationale for Inclusion: This artifact demonstrates my experience designing learning for complex topics within the parameters of my client's format. I worked with my collaborator, Jenn Whittig to fine-tune the microlearning to convey as much information as possible within the microlearning format. I created custom graphics and custom videos to emphasize the importance of alt text for Rumie's learners. This artifact aligns with AECT standards by empowering learners who rely on screen readers for accessing content.
AECT Standards:
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Standard 2- Content Pedagogy
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Standard 3- Learning Environments
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Standard 4- Professional Knowledge and Skills
Photo by Gabriel Crismariu on Unsplash
The slide demonstrates the approach we took to help learning designers formulate alt text. The example includes three options that would suffice, but by putting some thought into the alt text, more is shared with the screen reader user.
In this slide, we use a quiz to reinforce the material and emphasize that any text in an image must be included in the alt text.
The text on this image demonstrates what the screen reader conveys with effective alt text.
Collaboration Acknowledgement: I collaborated with Jenn Whittig to reduce this information to a digestible size in the module.