This microcredential provides teachers and professionals working in education with the skills to understand, design, and deliver online learning that is accessible and inclusive.
Under the guidance of online teaching experts at The Open University, you’ll develop the pedagogical, technological, procedural, and legal knowledge you need to enhance the accessibility of your online courses.
Discover the benefits of a blended learning approach
Although online teaching presents new challenges, online learning can provide a truly accessible and flexible mode of study with proper insight and planning.
This course will provide you with blended teaching strategies that combine the benefits of online study with face to face teaching.
You’ll explore how current technologies and emerging innovations are improving study for millions of learners with disabilities such as hearing impairments, visual impairments, speech, language and communication needs, and physical disabilities.
By supporting all students to study effectively using technology at a distance, you’ll learn how to mitigate the major challenges to teaching in an unpredictable world and create a more inclusive environment in your online classroom.
Improve your practice for teaching students with disabilities
From evaluating good examples of online learning practice to responding to feedback that learners have found elements of teaching inaccessible, you’ll explore inaccessible teaching examples from across all forms of education and discuss scenarios with broad applications.
The final assessment offers you the chance to improve the accessibility of materials or activities that you’ve created or that are relevant to your practice.
How do The OU champion improvements in equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI)?
Education should be about creating opportunities for everyone.
According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), 451,580 students declared a disability in 2020/21. Given these figures, almost all educators will engage with disabled students as a regular part of their work.
For over 20 years, The Open University has been teaching wholly online courses and supports over 20,000 students with declared disabilities every year.
You’ll benefit from the OU’s world-leading expertise in accessibility practice and research that underpins all of the principles and content covered in this course.
Throughout the course you’ll take part in weekly activities to support and consolidate your learning. At the end of the course, you’ll submit an assessment which is marked and graded by subject matter experts.
This course is part of a suite of Online Teaching microcredentials from The Open University: Creating Courses for Adult Learners; Evaluating and Improving Courses; Embedding Social, Race, and Gender-Related Equity; and Teacher Development: Embedding Mental Health in the Curriculum.
Academic credits from this course can contribute to The Open University’s Masters in Online Teaching.
