Welcome to the Tuesday Teaching Tip, an easy-to-implement tool that you can use immediately in your classroom teaching. 

TUESDAY TEACHING TIP:  Leveraging Technology to Enhance Learning

Inclusivity means ensuring all learners can fully participate using the technology that best meets their needs. But increasing accessibility is an ongoing journey consisting of small steps and doesn’t need to be all or nothing. What is one achievable, measurable change (or series of changes) you can make now that will make your course more accessible today and in the future? 

This week, we challenge you to address a high impact accessibility barrier: course files that cannot be accessed by students using assistive technology (such as screen readers or text-to-speech) and other technology tools vital to interacting, studying, and reading. 

Here’s one way to do it:

• Use the UDOIT accessibility checker in Camino to scan your course for accessibility issues. 

UDOIT scans your course to provide a summary of accessibility errors that can impact your students in Camino pages and files. Click on an error to view a simple explanation and solution. Click on Review Files to locate inaccessible course materials. 

• Focus on the materials for *this week*, or on a set of very high impact materials coming up. 
• If you have PDFs of course materials, search for an up-to-date accessible version online.

Did you know that accessible versions of your files (including scanned book chapters) might already exist online? See our guide to accessible PDFs for step-by-step guidance and what to do if you cannot find an accessible version of a text.

DID YOU DO IT?

Let us know how it went. We would love to hear your feedback about how you implemented today’s Tuesday Teaching Tip in your classroom. Click here to fill out our 3-question survey. The survey is anonymous, but if you choose to enter your name, you’ll be entered in a drawing at the end of the quarter to win a new book from Faculty Development!

UPCOMING EVENTS 

Learn about Transformative Teaching at our first CAFE of the quarter, Friday, April 4 at 11:45 (lunch included!) and hear from faculty across campus about how they’ve leveraged teaching grants to transform their teaching.

WANT TO READ A LITTLE MORE?

• See the Accessibility page on SCU’s Digital Resources for Teaching site
• Want to learn more about using these accessibility tools in your teaching design? Look out for announcements about Instructional Technology’s inclusive teaching- and accessible-design focused workshops taking place in Summer 2025.

This week’s Tuesday Teaching Tip was prepared by Eric Haynie and Colin Justin on behalf of the Faculty Collaborative.

 

Missed a teaching tip? Read them all here. Don’t forget to check out our Faculty Associates office hours here.

And check out our full calendar of CAFEs and other Faculty Development and Faculty Collaborative events.