News Roundup: Accessibility and Closing Gaps in Higher Education

This week, educators write about the importance of accessibility and how to work towards closing gaps in higher education.

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Self-Assessment Leads to Rigor/Self-Regulation
John Warner writes about the importance of helping students see beyond the grade they receive on an assignment to considering what they learned about themselves by posing self-reflective questions such as “What do you know now that you didn’t before?” (Just Visiting)

Now is the Time to Think About Accessibility
Teaching itself is an accommodation, David Gooblar writes. He urges instructors to make learning accessible to all students in their classrooms, no matter what their various needs and learning styles are. (Pedagogy Unbound)

How Teacher-Scholars Prepare Students for an Evolving World
Arguing against the idea that academia is an elitist world that doesn’t prepare students for careers, Michael Gettings suggests that professors’ academic work models good scholarship for students and offers them opportunities to connect the skills developed in these endeavors to post-college work. (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Recruiting an Adult or First-Generation College Student
While many colleges are looking to bring nontraditional students to their campuses, they should be mindful that these students do not necessarily share the same profile and, therefore, may need different approaches to be successful. (University Business)

Barriers to Success and Upward Mobility and How to Fix the Problem
First-generation students face challenges that can be thought of as three distinct gaps: the opportunity gap, the awareness gap, and the achievement gap. Troy Markowitz shares how colleges can help first-generation students succeed by understanding and addressing these gaps. (Forbes)