Month: June 2020 (page 1 of 1)

This video is aimed at students’ English listening skill. Rather than listening to the recordings only, the video helps learners have a better understanding of the content. It includes many short dialogues under different situations, and learners have to choose the pictures that they think are related to the content. After they make the choice, the dialogues will repeat again but with subtitles that students could check whether their understanding is right or wrong. The interaction between learners and materials is inherent, because students have to choose the answer before the dialogues are repeated. Consequently, students are forced to engage in the practice and pay more attention to it. By doing practice on English listening, learners will have a clear idea of what words or sentences they should use under different situations in their daily life. In addition, this practice will not only enhance listening skill, but also improves learners’ speaking skill. With this understanding, learners are able to apply it into their daily life, for instance, communicate with others who speak English. 

During the class time, students could have a similar activity to practice English listening and speaking. They could be divided to small groups and create short dialogues for the given situations. Then, the other groups have to summarize what their classmates are talking about. This interaction among learners will help themselves make excellent progress on English learning. On the other hand, it is easy to provide either in the face-to-face class or in the online video class. To examine learning outcomes, feedback is given by the instructor and other classmates. First of all, the instructor could give feedback about the quality of the dialogues created by students. Then, the students who create dialogues could give feedback to other classmates’ answers. It is a highly interactive activity that requires each of the students actively engage in it by being the questioner and the answerer.

Besides giving dialogues, there are plenty of activities that could be given to practice English. For instance, one student describes a scenario in English and another student draws a picture about it. As Cc suggested, instructors could provide a variety of activities and let students pick the most favorite one. This will increase students’ interest in English learning and encourage them to learn better. 

https://factsuite.com/blog/diverse-and-inclusive-workforce/

Universal design appears in many public area. The curb cuts is the most common one that present universal design in engineering. Besides the curb cuts, there is a lot of designs commonly seen in our life that apply same idea. For example, the wash basin countertops could also be considered as the universal design. In some of the public washrooms, the height of wash basin countertops are different. Normally, there is a wash basin with a lower countertop, whereas there is another wash basin with a higher countertop in the same washroom. This design allows everyone who wants to use the wash basin can choose the one with their own preference and situation. People who sitting in the wheelchair could use the wash basin with the lower countertop. Kids who are not tall enough could also use the lower one. Even though it is a public washroom, everyone could choose the one that more suitable the self.

Applying to the learning design, some instructors use same idea on the designing of course assignment. They provide students a list of options on the assignments that everyone has a chance to choose with their own preference. For example, if you are good at art, you can design a poster about a particular topic which have learned from this course. On the other hand, if you are good at public speaking, you can have a presentation about that topic in front of the class. There are various forms of the assignment, each of the student can choose the one that they prefer. The basic idea of this learning design is that it allows everyone to make a choice according to their own preferences and situations. By doing that, every student in the class is included in and treated equitable.

As Caroline discussed in her blog post, the automatic doors and automatic grammar checker are good example of universal design as well. Both of these two are not only design for people who have difficulties, but also take convenience to others.