The CDN team has been working hard on newly refreshed learning resources and teaching courses, which are now available on CDN Learn Online.
Make Your College More Inclusive
The Including Students who are Deaf, Visually Impaired or Deafblind course introduces strategies that colleges can use to ensure that students who are deaf and/or visually impaired have equality of access to further education. In an inclusive college every member of staff has a part to play and something valuable to contribute.
This newly refreshed resource is relevant for anyone working in student support, learning technology, needs assessment or teaching and learning. Creating accessible environments and learning experiences for people with sensory loss not only has a direct impact on those students, it also embeds quality and everybody benefits.
Sandy MacLean, CDN Curriculum and Teaching Lead said:
‘This course has been designed so that you can work through the sections at your own pace. You will find a mixture of text, images, and videos, and you will see reflective questions. These are intended to help you think about how you could improve practice in your own college and how you could inform a plan of action to improve practice in your college.’
You will learn about inclusive strategies that involve staff working together to ensure that students can access the college and learning resources they need, and to ensure your college meets the requirements of relevant legislation, i.e. Equality Act 2010; British Sign Language (Scotland) Act 2015; Public Sector Bodies Web Accessibility Regulations 2018.
Get expert advice throughout this course by dropping into our virtual staffroom where you will find a range of professionals sharing top tips. These short video clips and text articles offer high-quality expert advice and introduce you to the kind of professionals with whom you may wish to collaborate in the future. All our participants are happy for college staff to get in touch if you would like to talk more.
Click here to access the course – it’s completely free!
Focus On Positive Behaviour
The Promoting Positive Behaviour resource is for all staff in Scotland’s colleges, but is particularly aimed at lecturers. The course includes plenty of background information to help you understand the multiple influences on student behaviour. You will explore a range of strategies that have been identified as helpful to lecturers working in different contexts.
The course is split into three different sections:
1) The first section looks at the interaction of multiple factors that can impact on student behaviour. These can include our biological pre-dispositions; how we have developed and reacted to experiences; and the conditions in the world around us. Developmental psychologists refer to this as a biopsychosocial model.
2) The second section focuses on a range of strategies that are used by educators to manage behaviour and promote more positive engagement. It encourages you to reflect on these and think about which resonate for you.
3) The third section looks at how to deal with more serious and complex situations, which although less common, cause a lot of concern. The goal of this section is to introduce you to strategies and underpin knowledge that will help you and your college to prevent serious incidents. This includes a focus on trauma informed approaches.
You will encounter reflective questions, which will help you to personalise the meaning of the content on this course, allowing you to observe your own concerns and how you plan to deal with them.
Sandy added:
‘If you want to deepen your knowledge, the final ‘Resource Centre’ section, has some suggestions of further sources of information and professional development. This is not exhaustive so please get in touch if you know of other great courses or resources and we will include them in the Resource Centre.’
This is a self-paced course. You can dip into sections that interest you or you may want to complete the whole course from beginning to end and take the knowledge check for a deeper experience.
Click here to access the course – it’s completely free!
