Choose one (or more) of your planned learning activities from your Blueprint and identify any barriers to student success. How can you alter or adjust your current plan to reduce those barriers?

One of our learning activities for our final project on Alzeminers includes a role-play activity where students are assigned the role of a doctor, nurse, patient and family member of a person with Alzheimer’s. The student has to research what the disease is like from their perspective from provided educational videos and readings. After the role-play activity students will come together in their small groups, to write a paper making suggestions to the Ministry of Health- to assist those impacted Alzheimer’s disease.

In order to ensure this experience is inclusive for all- the provided videos should include accurate subtitles. This will assist students with hearing impairment or who are working in loud environments- as they will be able to read the audio to follow along with the resource, rather than fully relying on the audio description. Moreover, the subtitles will be reviewed and corrected to ensure they are accurate. In some cases, subtitles can have errors, in translation- which can be confusing for the reader- especially if they are not relying on the audio description whatsoever. Therefore, ensuring the subtitles provided are correct is critical for the student’s experience.

Next, the reading materials involved in the research/role-play activity should be available beforehand for students to review before/after class. This will assist students with reading impairments such as dyslexia. Reading large bodies of material on tight deadlines can be challenging for all. So providing the options to review the material before/ after class to help those who need special accommodations will create a less stressful learning environment. This will ensure that students with dyslexia or other reading impairments have a fair opportunity to review and understand the material- rather than focus their energy on keeping up with others.

Finally, to make the group paper portion more accessible- students will be given class time to work on it and have the option to hand in a written copy as well as digital. Arranging a time to work on group projects can be difficult, especially for students who work or have other responsibilities outside of class. Therefore, providing some class time to work together can assist students in at least starting a baseline for their report. This can help take some pressure off the assignment and give students a head start on writing! Furthermore, giving students the option to hand in a written rather than a digital copy of the report- can assist those who do not have access to a computer/ digital device. Typically students have access to some digital device or computer, however, that is not always the case. Thus, having the option to hand in a written report can accommodate students who don’t have access to the internet or digital devices at home.