Digital Pedagogy: Responding to Learner Diversity with Inclusive Online Instruction
All teachers acknowledge that students come to class with diverse perspectives, experiences and approaches to learning. Additionally, learners differ in age, ability, gender, ideologies, learning styles and more. Creating an inclusive classroom begins with acknowledging learner differences in content creation, instruction, learning assessment and learner engagement. Inclusive instruction recognizes students’ entitlement to a learning experience that respects diversity, enables participation, removes barriers and gives each learner an opportunity to thrive and maximize brain potential.
With online teaching and learning, educators can leverage on technology coupled with sound pedagogy to meet the needs of diverse learners and attain incredible educational efficiency that was previously unattainable. Technology provides different opportunities to make learning more fun and enjoyable in terms of teaching same things in new ways with a wide range of online teaching and learning resources. This piece references learning modalities in conjunction with the universal design for learning framework to suggest ways educators can deliver inclusive instruction online.
Learning modalities can be defined as the ways students use their senses to learn. A student may have strengths in one or more modalities of learning but weaknesses in others. Educators often aim to differentiate their instruction to ensure students can learn through their preferred modality.
Meanwhile, the universal design for learning framework situates teaching and learning in a context that gives all students equal opportunity to succeed; offering flexibility in the ways teaching, learning and the demonstration of learning take place. The goal is to use a variety of teaching methods to remove any barriers to learning and build in flexibility that accommodates every student’s strengths and needs.
Drawing from the learning modalities in cognitive science and the universal design for learning framework, below are two key approaches to delivering inclusive online instruction.
1.Create Content in Four Learning Modalities
The four major learning modalities are visual, auditory, kinesthetic and tactile. Each of these learning modalities are represented in any class setting whether online or face-to-face. Effective online instruction requires careful attention to these learning modalities and intentionally presenting content in ways that will appeal to all these modalities to ensure learning takes place during online teacher-student interactions. Visual modality refers to sight. Implying that, students who learn best through this modality need content presented in visual illustrations, graphical presentations, charts and drawings. Meanwhile, auditory modality refers to hearing. Learners of this modality learn best from verbal presentation of material such as the lecture method. Audio recordings of content, audio books and content presented through music are best suited for auditory learners. The Kinesthetic learning modality however refers to learning by doing, moving and acting. To ensure learners of this modality are not left behind, content can comprise virtual field trips with the use virtual reality tools and incorporate simulations of three dimensional graphics to replicate physical demonstrations. Additionally, the tactile learning modality refers to learning that utilizes the sense of touch. Educators can incorporate tactile content by making use of learning management system tools such as drag and drop, frequent chat box activities and mind mapping activities. Creating content in all four modalities as far as is possible for any given subject also caters for visual disabilities, hearing impairments, attention deficit and others by presenting alternative means to accessing and acquiring knowledge.
2. Allow diverse means of knowledge expression and demonstration of understanding. The Universal Design for Learning Framework suggests giving learners more than one way to interact with a material and demonstrate knowledge. Because students differ in the ways they navigate a learning environment and express what they know, educators should widen options for students to demonstrate what they know. For instance, learners should have the liberty to express themselves in written text or speech. Unless specific media, mediums and material are critical to assessment and measuring learning outcomes, it is important to provide alternatives to knowledge demonstration. Such alternatives reduce barriers to expression among learners and also increases the opportunities for all learners to develop a wider range of expression in a media-rich world. The use of learning technologies should not be limited to teachers but also extended to learners where there is room to respond to questions and assignments in varied formats such as text, speech, drawings, illustrations, comics, storyboards, visual art or video. Learners should have the freedom to use discussion forums, chats, annotation tools and animation presentations. Online teaching should encourage problem solving using varied strategies, tools and resources that are an optimal match between learner abilities and the demands of the task. Educators can support this process by providing technological resources like spellcheckers, grammar checkers, text-to-speech software (voice recognition), geometric sketchpads, pre-formatted graph papers, outlining tools, concept mapping tools and virtual mathematical manipulatives such as base-10 blocks, algebra blocks, etc. The need for learners to develop a variety of technological fluencies means using multiple scaffolds to assist learning and develop learner independence. Curricula should offer alternatives in the degrees of freedom available, with highly scaffolded and supported opportunities provided to all types of learners.
Online education being the fastest growing mode of education delivery in recent times. It is important for educators to leverage on technological advances to provide alternatives to the traditional one-size fit all instruction which makes no room to accommodate learning differences and learner diversity. Good instruction is instruction that is sensitive to the differences among individual learners and possess a repertoire of resources suited to meet the needs of each.
Since different modalities activate different parts of the brain, when students encounter new material in many different ways, they are in a better position to make more sense of the material. These two approaches work well to ensure the needs of all learners are catered for during online instruction and no one is left behind in the learning process.
Fun Fact — Different modalities activate different parts of the brain, and so, students encountering new material in many different ways puts them in a better position to make more sense of the material.
Author: Priscilla B. Appiah — https://www.linkedin.com/in/priscilla-b-appiah-0b6135119/
Education Policy & Pedagogy Researcher — Teacher -Teacher Trainer -Instructional Design Consultant –Education Technology Coach.
Team Lead — EDUCATION 360
