Prompt

Consider the learning environment for your current design. What potential barriers can be reduced or eliminated to provide more pathways for learner success?

Throughout designing our interactive learning environment, we’ve prompted a few main goals for learners, which are: addressing what a balanced diet is, debunking and looking into what a bad diet is, and understanding nutritional myths. It’s definitely crucial to make a learning environment that is easy and accessible for everyone so they can benefit the most from it. By incorporating what we were taught in universal and inclusive learning designs, we will be able to create multiple ways for learners to find success in their nutritional goals.

There are definitely lots of possible barriers for learners, but throughout this blog post, we can hopefully find ways to mitigate them. First of all is accessibility for individuals with disabilities. With the standard format we have right now, it may be hard for individuals with impairments to get the same amount out of our class as someone who doesn’t. To ensure that everyone is able to use our class, I think it would be a good idea to provide multiple formats with audio and visual inclusion. This could include captions and audio-to-text transcriptions, similar to something like a Brightspace page.

One additional aspect that is important for the success of the learners is their motivation and engagement. Learners may struggle to connect with the material, but by incorporating interactive activities like a case study or role-playing scenario, we could make the content more relatable. Another way is by making our environment less serious by giving quizzes that provide immediate feedback. This would allow students to assess the problem and use their knowledge to address and fix the issue they got wrong. One thing I think our group has addressed is multiple instructional methods for all student learning styles. We could maybe add something more creative, though, like a project that shows how you can map out a diet plan on a poster board, giving a visually pleasing plan for a week of proper nutrition.

I think we also can’t forget about the cultural aspect of food and how much that molds someone’s diet. There should be discussions of different cultural cuisines and traditional foods. Someone’s culture can enhance the relevance and inclusion that diets have, highlighting that a diet does not have to be boring and can be something familiar to the learner. We could also do a discussion board that gets learners to talk and share their cultures, creating a class that fosters a group of encouraging and happy students.

By implementing this, we will be able to ensure all backgrounds and abilities can actively engage and have a fun but informational time with the material. A truly inclusive learning environment not only accommodates disabilities but also supports diverse learning styles, cultures, and personal motivations. With this learning environment in mind, we can help students build a sustainable, informed approach to nutrition.

Comment:

Hi Cassie!
I really appreciate how your group acknowledges how learning code for the first time can be very intimidating, putting learning methods in place to help increase understanding and eliminate some of that anxiety and confusion for the students. The solutions to unexpected situations is very practical and a real concern as things come up in peoples lives and sometimes students will not be able to attend class. The last part is within potential barriers as I would assume you would need quite a few pre-requisites to start coding IE: Computer but your addition of code on paper completely eliminates this making coding quite frankly accessible to anyone! I’d love to see if you guys could see if you could even make it more accessible thinking about how visually impaired would be able to code or how you would structure your learning design for a student with those needs. Anyway very well though out and thank you for sharing!

References

Inclusive Learning Design:
University of Victoria. Inclusive learning design. EdTech UVic. 

Inclusive Learning Design

Universal Design:
University of Victoria. Universal design. EdTech UVic.

Universal Design