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MA student
Writing, Rhetoric, & Discourse
DePaul University
Online Writing Course
Access Survey
In Teaching Writing Online, we spent a lot of time discussing how to project teaching presence and create community in the online environment. We also emphasized accessibility, because to a certain extent it is a legal requirement, and beyond that it is a best practice for teaching online, though one that sometimes conflicts with other best practices, such as the use of multimodal texts. I became quite interested in universal design for learning and accessible teaching, so for our final project, a "professionally or pedagogically useful OWI deliverable," I created the survey below, along with a guide for instructors which also serves as a rhetorical rationale.
In reflection...
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I am pleased with this project, both the product and the process. While I do see plenty of flaws in its usefulness as a pedagogical tool (too wordy, too long, some questions probably extraneous), as a presentation of my research and a demonstration of some of my goals and values as a teacher, I think it functions well. With revision or tailoring to individual courses, I think it could also be genuinely pedagogically useful, and I know my TAP classmates have already referenced it when adding questions to their surveys for their WRD 103 students.
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Really, though, the process was most valuable to me. This project was not supposed to be a major research project, but I found my research fascinating, engaging, and even moving. Reading in disability studies and disability rhetorics helped me not only rethink my teaching beliefs and practices, but also begin to accept and shape my own disabled identity. It also opened up a whole new area of interest which I intend to pursue this winter in the form of an independent study in disability and medical rhetorics.
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