Why is Designing for Flexibility Important?
With the potential for ongoing challenges of COVID and other environmental factors to affect teaching and learning, it’s important to keep appropriate flexibility in mind as you design and teach your courses. A course designed with flexibility does not mean a course without standards or structure. Instead, designing with flexibility in mind allows students and faculty to adapt to changing circumstances when needed, while maintaining a commitment to academic excellence, even in difficult times.
It’s important to note that flexibility is not synonymous with a lack of structure, expectations, or a commitment to academic excellence. Research has shown that not having structure or expectations can place a burden on our students to provide that structure for themselves. Instead, it’s important to think about flexibility in service of the structure and expectations you’ve established.
With changing protocols and health considerations, implementing “structures of care” is more important than ever. As Professor Mimi Khúc, Scholar/Artist/Activist in Residence in Disability Studies at Georgetown University, noted in our CNDLS podcast on accessibility, “if we define and then create structures of care simply to help us work better, or be more productive, or be excellent, we’re actually not caring for ourselves as full humans. We’re caring for ourselves as producers only.”
At Georgetown, cura personalis asks us to address students’ whole selves, including both academic excellence and personal well-being. As you design your courses, we encourage you to think about how flexibility with content, assignments, and class time might support your overall goals and expectations of your students.
What are some strategies for flexibility coupled with academic excellence?
The approaches below can be used to design a course and class climate that incorporates flexibility, care, and rigor. Not all of these will be effective or useful for your goals.
Course Structure and Management
| Strategy | Why | Recommendations |
|---|---|---|
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Actively think about the culture you want to create from Day One. |
As Khúc articulates, “I want to create a culture in my classroom that students feel like they can talk about their needs, not feel ashamed about having needs, [...] because access is a collective community project. |
Visualize the ideal classroom procedures when things don’t go according to plan, i.e. students have to quarantine, the schedule shifts, students need to miss class due to illness or other reasons. What would you want to happen? |
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Reflect on how your syllabus design so as to develop explicit structure & buy-in. |
Encourages engagement and participation from the beginning of the semester. |
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Create a ‘Class Norms’ document. |
Students have a chance to see your expectations and priorities and add others. These can include participation expectations, attendance, Zoom, and device policies. |
Spend the first (or part of the first) class session working together on preferred norms. Your preferences can and should be listed as well, and students have a chance to see your priorities and add others. These can include attendance, Zoom, and device policies, as well as guidelines for how to engage in difficult discussions where opinions might vary widely. |
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Embed flexible attendance policies. |
The last two years indicate our ability to deal with uncertainty and change – this extends to what it means to attend class. Focus on rigor instead of rigidity. |
Avoid the binary of excused/unexcused by granting three absences, no questions asked. Also take care to communicate consequences if absences exceed that amount.
Include Zoom participation as attending class.
Offer a certain number of class sessions as available via Zoom.
Include asynchronous ways of participating that count towards class attendance.
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Articulate Zoom use in advance in class and on your syllabus |
We’ll continue to face students’ public health-related absences from class. How will you plan to make course materials available to students who are absent due to illness or quarantine? |
Some sample ideas on responding to absences:
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Prioritize health and wellbeing. |
Make wellbeing and mental health resources accessible and transparent so students can access the support they need to thrive. We know from student feedback that they noted when faculty included this information on their syllabus. This practice communicates care. |
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Class Session Engagement
| Strategy | Why | Recommendations |
|---|---|---|
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Recognize that everybody has access needs and that they're different over time. |
You and the student are going to work together to meet access needs to make this class experience meaningful for everybody. |
Stating this idea directly at the beginning--in your own way--goes a long way with students who will hopefully receive the message that “this is a class and a professor who is flexible, willing to think about me as a person, as a human.” |
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Provide students a preview of class sessions. |
Helps structure each class in advance for students or can help them recoup from an absence. |
Create a visual presentation like PowerPoint and post on Canvas before class. |
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Mitigate the effect of absences. |
Establishes care for one another and helps to create an inclusive space by all carrying some of the load of that note taking, while supporting the ability to review the notes when absent. |
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Meet with students individually or in small groups |
Can help you determine “access needs” and learning goals, where you can ask directly: Do these assignments feel manageable, do these feel accessible to you? Do you have any access needs that you can anticipate? |
This may take the form of a pre-semester check in via a Google form where you ask students about their needs. Throughout the semester, consider creating smaller teams or groups of students who can work together on reading or study questions in-class and virtually, as needed.
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Providing Flexibility to Students through Assessments and Access
| Strategy | Why | Recommendations |
|---|---|---|
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Time your assessments with wellbeing in mind. |
Supports student wellbeing and rest during term breaks. |
Whenever possible, aim to avoid having assignments due after long weekends |
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Build assessments for formative, iterative use. |
This strategy relieves too much emphasis on a particular time period of the semester. |
Assign low-stakes assessments more frequently as opposed to infrequent, high-stakes ones. Check out this mini-webinar on alternative assessments. You may also want to familiarize yourself with Universal Design principles at the heart of accessibility. |
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Flexible deadlines. |
As professionals, we need flexible deadlines all the time. As one professor told us, “I've never had my students exploit flexible deadlines to the point where I feel like they're lying or they're all taking advantage of me” (Khúc). Students tend to strive to meet the norms of the class and take care of each other. |
One approache is to adopt a ‘time bank’ system, whereby students can draw one two-day extension, or one-day extensions on two separate assignments. Do note that too much flexibility in deadlines can place an undue burden on our students to create their own deadlines. Finding balance and being responsive to students' needs may mean being flexible in the moment is better than designing without deadlines or expectations. |
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Consult with the Academic Resource Center. |
The ARC can aid your decision-making around flexibility that makes sense for the students and the standards of the class. |
Pose the question: “How can this class be accessible to you? I have seen your accommodation letter, I know you're working with the ARC, so how can I make this class accessible to you?” |
Resources
CNDLS website. “Accommodations and Accessibility in Assessing Students.” Accessed 30 Nov 2021.
CNDLS Instructional Continuity website. “Syllabus Design Guidance for Spring 2022.” Accessed 30 Nov 2021.
Ivester, Sukari et al. “Co-creating the course syllabus.” Cal State East Bay. https://www.csueastbay.edu/dsj/faculty-pilot-projects/sukari-ivester.html Accessed 30 Nov 2021.
Katopodis, Christina. “A Lesson Plan for Democratic Co-Creation: Forging a Syllabus by Students, for Students.” Hastac. 13 Dec 2018. https://www.hastac.org/blogs/ckatopodis/2018/12/13/lesson-plan-democratic-co-creation-forging-syllabus-students-students. Accessed 30 Nov 2021.
Lubreski, Kim, et al. “From Accommodations to Accessibility.” What We’re Learning about Learning, featuring Libbie Rifkin, Joseph Fisher, and Mimi Khuc, Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, October 2021. Anchor, <https://anchor.fm/cndls>
Nelson, Amy. “Collaborative Syllabus Design: Students at the Center.” Open Pedagogy Notebook. 19 March 2019. http://openpedagogy.org/course-level/collaborative-syllabus-design-students-at-the-center/ Accessed 30 Nov 2021.
Patson, Nikole. “Collaborative Note-taking as an alternative to recording online sessions.” Faculty Focus. May 12, 2021 https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/online-assessment-grading-and-feedback/collaborative-note-taking-as-an-alternative-to-recording-online-sessions/. Accessed 1 Dec 2021.
Supiano, Becky. “The Student-Centered Syllabus.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. 22 Nov 2021. https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-student-centered-syllabus?cid=gen_sign_in Accessed 30 Nov 2021.
