This content was published: January 31, 2025. Phone numbers, email addresses, and other information may have changed.
You’re invited! Helping Students Feel Like They Belong: Using Short Videos, Reels and More to Increase Accessibility
Posted by anne.grey
Presenters: Presented by April Ann Fong, Taryn Oakley, Troy Jesse, Peter Ritson, and Alexie McKee.
Summary
This Anderson Conference session focuses on helping students feel like they belong by using short videos, reels, and other materials to increase accessibility and transparency. The presenters discuss why accessibility matters, what barriers may make students hesitant to sign up for a class, and how instructors can make unfamiliar learning experiences feel more welcoming.
The session includes examples from field-based lab science courses, biology, environmental studies, and microbiology. Presenters share how short videos can help students preview labs, field sites, equipment, procedures, and common mistakes before they encounter them in class. These materials can support students who are anxious, absent, sick, unfamiliar with fieldwork, or unsure what to expect.
The presenters also share course changes such as pre-field trip check-in forms, more inviting course detail language, accessible birding resources, visual plant ID materials, equipment demonstrations, and student-created microbiology videos. Participants are invited to consider how these materials could be used, adapted, or expanded in their own courses.
Slides: Helping Students Feel Like They Belong
Presentation outcomes
- Discuss the importance of increasing accessibility and transparency for students.
- Identify possible barriers that may make students fearful or hesitant to sign up for a class.
- Explore how short videos, reels, and other materials can help students preview unfamiliar spaces, tools, and expectations.
- Review examples of materials created for field trips, lab equipment, course details pages, birding resources, plant ID, and microbiology content.
- Consider how students can be incorporated into creating and improving accessible course materials.
- Reflect on future projects, collaborations, and ways to move this work forward.