Campus Technology Insider Podcast January 2023
Listen: How CSU Global Designs for Inclusive Online Education from the Start
00:08
Rhea Kelly: Hello, and welcome to the Campus Technology Insider podcast. I'm Rhea Kelly, editor in chief of Campus Technology, and your host.
Campus Technology recently published 14 technology predictions for the coming year, based on input from higher education and ed tech industry experts across the country. A key statement on that list was this: Digital accessibility will be central to an inclusive campus culture. As Brian Fodrey, assistant vice president for Business Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University, put it, "Campus leaders must be thinking about how we are preparing our respective communities to take a more proactive and comprehensive approach to removing barriers and promoting all aspects of digital equity…. Prioritizing digital accessibility practices in all aspects of campus operations and life creates a more supportive community and inclusive culture for all."
That focus on digital accessibility is central to instructional design practice at Colorado State University Global. As the nation's first fully online, accredited nonprofit state university, CSU Global strives to achieve universal design standards in all of its programs, and to make courses accessible to a wide range of learners. For this episode of the podcast, I spoke with Associate Vice President of Digital Learning Andrea Butler and Director of Instructional Design Diona Hartwig about the importance of designing for accessibility from the start, ways to engage students in the online environment, and how inclusive design ultimately serves all students.
But first I have an exciting announcement to share. This fall, Campus Technology and our sister publication THE Journal are launching a new in-person conference called Tech Tactics in Education: Data and IT Security in the New Now. Join us November 7-9, 2023 in Orlando, Florida, for hands-on learning and strategic discussions about critical cybersecurity issues and data practices across K-12 and higher education. If you are an IT leader, data specialist, cybersecurity pro or other individual charged with technology decision-making on campus, this event is for you! Also, we have a call for speakers running until April 3rd — this is a great opportunity to share about your work, pass along best practices, learn from peers, make new contacts, and have fun all at the same time. For more information and to submit a session proposal, visit campustechnology.com/techtactics.
And now, on to the interview.
Andrea and Diona, welcome to the podcast.
Diona Hartwig: Thanks for having us.
Kelly: I'd love to get a picture of how the overall course design process works at CSU Global, sort of like how does it start? Who's involved? And at what point does accessibility and inclusive design come into the equation?
03:18
Hartwig: So all of our course design projects start with what we, we call it a kickoff call. In that kickoff call, we include the program director, the content expert, our instructional designer, the instructional design manager, we also add in our librarian. And then if there are any tools that we know we're going to use within that course, we add in our academic technology team as well. That meeting is really to get everybody on the same page: We discuss our timelines, the program director shares their vision and their ideas of where they want to see that course go and what those changes look like and what they'd like to see. And then after that meeting, it is really in the hands of the content expert and our instructional designer. They work collaboratively side by side, anywhere between four to 16 weeks, and it really depends on what the project is, depends, you know, determines the length of the project. So within that timeframe, they are meeting weekly to discuss any issues or roadblocks that they, that they might have, or to have a collaborative working meeting to discuss, you know, they've got an assignment and, and they need to work around that accessibility issue or the universal design issue. And they're also working continuously in documents throughout the entire time. We start that conversation of accessibility and universal design from the beginning. And you really have to because it's so much easier to design it from the start rather than going back and having to rework a course to make it fit. So we do have those conversations throughout the entire process as they're developing a course.