Accessibility in Teaching and Guidance (5 cr)

Evaluation scale

Pass/Fail

Content scheduling

Start-up webinar Wed 5.2.2025 at 16.00–17.00
Guidance clinic Tue 11.2.2025 at 16.00-17.30
Guidance clinic Mon 10.3.2025 at 16.00-17.30
Guidance clinic Thu 3.4.2025 at 16.00-17.30

Objective

The purpose of the course

Digital accessibility is one of the factors affecting the quality of online teaching. It is also a legal obligation and every learner’s right. In this course, you will learn what accessibility in teaching means, what the act on digital accessibility requires from teachers, and how you can take accessibility into account in the planning of the learning process, teaching situations and learning materials.

Course competences

In this course, you will promote and develop your interpersonal competence, facilitating learning and developmental skills.

Interpersonal competence refers to teacher’s ability to strengthen learners’ competence. You will be able to support learners’ competence for continuous learning, such as self-regulation and reflection skills, and the ownership of their own learning process. As a teacher, you will also have the ability to take into account learner diversity and learners’ personal starting points and goals when planning and carrying out learning sessions and guiding learning. Your approach is dialogical and ethical in a way that supports the well-being of learners.

Facilitating learning skills refer to a teacher's collaborative approach and ability to planning, implementing, assessing, and developing learning and guidance processes taking into consideration the diversity of learners. It also refers to understanding of group processes and group phenomena in learning, employment of versatile and working life-oriented learning resources and ability to design, implement and facilitate learning processes in digital environments in a pedagogically meaningful way.

Development skills refer to a teacher's ability to further develop their own and their organisation’s practices and operational culture in collaboration with others. It refers to willingness and ability to develop vocational learning, work, and entrepreneurship at regional, national and international level. I t also refers to teacher’s ability to acquire and justify information on the development needs of vocational learning and the world of work, in order to use it to promote learning, and forming of relevant partnerships networks in an innovative and solution-oriented manner.

Learning objectives

The objective is that after the course, you will know what accessibility means and understand why it is important from the learner’s perspective. You can take accessibility perspectives into account in the planning of the learning process and in different teaching situations. You can produce accessible teaching material.

Content

The concept of accessibility, Universal Design for Learning -framework, accessible learning process, accessibility in teaching situations, accessible learning material

Materials

Muuronen, A. & Eskola, S. 2020. Tulevaisuuden korkeakoulu - Kaikkien korkeakoulu. Opettaja saavutettavuuden arvioijana ja kehittäjänä. Julkaisussa Tulevaisuuden opettajuus. Toim. P. Risku, S. Laitinen-Väänänen, A-L. Ojala, A-K. Tiihonen, & H. Torvinen. Jyväskylä: Jyväskylän ammattikorkeakoulu, s. 222-242. Jyväskylän ammattikorkeakoulun julkaisuja 283. https://www.theseus.fi/handle/10024/344999

Saavutettavuuskriteeristö. 2019. Väline korkeakoulun saavutettavuuden arviointiin. OHO-hanke. https://esok.fi/hankkeet/oho-hanke/julkaisut/saavutettavuuskriteeristo/at_download/file

Työelämän saavutettavuus. Vates. https://www.vates.fi/tietopaketit/tyoelaman-saavutettavuus.html

Ylänne, K. & Kirsi, M. 2022. Saavutettavat asiakirjat verkossa. eOppiva-koulutus. https://www.eoppiva.fi/koulutukset/saavutettavat-asiakirjat-verkossa/

You will find additional learning materials and assignments in the online learning environment.

Teaching methods

The course is implemented as online studies and is based on independent work with materials and learning tasks. The course includes four voluntary online webinars. There are predefined phases for course work, but you can follow your own schedule. The work is guided at guidance clinics and with regular guidance messages.

Exam schedules

This course does not include an exam.

Student workload

In total, the course consists of 135 hours (5 x 27 h) of students’ work
- Orientation 5 h
- Self-directed learning in online environment, reading the learning materials 55 h
- Completing the learning assignments and self-assessment 74 h
- Feedback 1 h

The actual workload of the course depends on your own starting point and the employability of the learning tasks based on it.

Assessment criteria, approved/failed

The criteria for assessing the approved level are as follows:

Interpersonal competence
You recognise the diversity of learners and have ways to encounter different learners.

Facilitating learning skills
You can take accessibility perspectives and the needs of different learners into consideration in the planning of the learning process, different teaching situations and digital learning materials.

Developmental skills
You can develop the accessibility of digital content you produce yourself.

Further information

The assessment is qualitative and is based on learning objectives. The methods for evaluation of the learning process are feedback and self-assessment. Competence assessment is based on criteria and the teacher makes the assessment decision once all the learning tasks have been completed. The assessment material consists of the learning tasks of the course and self-assessment tasks.