Choose one (or more) of your planned learning activities from your Blueprint and identify any barriers to student success. How can you alter or adjust your current plan to reduce those barriers?

Activity 1: Account Creation and Posting

In this learning activity, learners are required to create a public Instagram account and explore different function and features of the application. Learners are expected to set up their profile, to create feed/stories, and to send direct messages. Moreover, learners need to follow other accounts and interact through liking, commenting, and sharing.  

Potential barriers and adjustments

First, we need to expect that some learners are not experienced digital environment. In this sense, our teaching team should provide a detailed instruction of learners who might face difficulties in creating an Instagram account. For example, we can create a poster clearly showing steps of creating the account. For those who prefer video instructions, we will include a link to the instruction videos. Moreover, our teaching team will hold office hours through Zoom. In this sense, learners can also directly contact us for more information. We accept both video calls and messages in chat box. We understand that learners might have different preferences and situations: some may be shy, some might prefer text communication, while others may feel comfortable showing their faces during interactions. Our teaching team is committed to accommodating all these preferences and providing the best support for all learners.

Second, our initial plan was to have students create a public Instagram account. However, we have realized that public accounts might raise privacy concerns for some students. For example, some might feel uncomfortable sharing (personal) information or thoughts in a pulibc domain. In this sense, our teaching team can accept both public and private account. However, for learners who choose to create private account, they are expected to share screenshots of their learning activities (e.g., story, comments, message, etc.) directly with our teaching team’s Instagram account so that we can best support their learning process. 

Third, some learners with disabilities might find this learning activity a little bit challenging. As previously mentioned, our teaching team can provide a wide range of support through visual, textual, audio approaches to best help our learners with different needs. Moreover, we will also ensure that we can provide the best tools for learners to complete the task. For example, the learning activity requires leaners to send messages in the application. We will recommend voice-to-text features and teach leaners how to enable such features on devices.  

We will continue to polish our blueprint through UDL principles.