Description: This study aims to uncover factors underlying teachers’ attitudes toward inclusion. Results confirmed three components of professional development, administrative support, and exposure and found two additional components, disruptiveness of behavior and locus of control of the teacher. The findings facilitate bridging the gap between the law and implementation of inclusion.

Facilitators: Christine Gleason (Northeastern State University)

Description: This round table brings together all types of practitioners to talk about tangible ways we incorporate accessibility into every role, responsibility, and process. This discussion is a space to learn alongside one another as we share accessibility best practices and resources. Bring your experiences, questions, and curiosity!

Facilitators: Cristina Colquhoun and Dr. Kathy Essmiller (Oklahoma State University)

Description: Women are often underrepresented in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) professions. Without access to equitable opportunities to explore careers, acquire interdisciplinary contents, and develop the 21st century skills that can further impede women’s abilities to participate in the highly competitive global workforce; and succeed in fast-growing, STEM-related emerging careers (e.g. analytics, data science). This multi-tier STEM Career Builder grant (2018-2021), funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), aims to discover what partnership models, strategies, and innovations can effectively support female high school teachers and students through the research, development (R&D) and implementation of five multi-tier interventions: (1) teacher professional development (PD), (2) a summer academy, (3) job shadowing, (4) mentoring, and (5) internships, and research fellowships.

Facilitators: Dr. Joselina Cheng, Alexia Benson (University of Central Oklahoma)

Description: The world is in unprecedented territory. You’re being asked to move your classes online, and seeing enrollment in existing distance education climb. Students are not on campus. How do we make sure that we keep our obligations to students with disabilities in the middle of all of this change? During this session we will discuss how critical it is, especially now, to build accessible educational environments. We will share some tips and guidance and leave you with resources to help.

Presenter: Rob Carr (Oklahoma ABLE Tech)

Wednesday, April 8, 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Central

Description: Each of us has a finite amount of mental bandwidth for all the tasks in our lives. By bandwidth, I’m referring to attentional resources. This isn’t about how smart a person is, but about how much of their cognitive capacity is available for learning. One of the most powerful bandwidth stealers is uncertainty. In this public health crisis, our students – and our instructors – are living in a situation where uncertainty is the only constant. What can we do, within classes and as institutions, to provide environments of certainty for our students so they can recover a bit of bandwidth for learning?

Presenter: Cia Verschelden (Malcolm X College)

Tuesday, April 7, 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. Central

Description: We will take some time to discuss how accessibility in technology spans across traditional higher education silos and some of the people that are key to moving accessibility from a project or add-on to a sustainable program.

Facilitators: Rob Carr (Oklahoma ABLE Tech)

Description: Identifying barriers to accessibility may not be as difficult as you think. There are tools and techniques that you can use, for free, to test your web and non-web content for accessibility. Join Steph Rogers from the University of Central Oklahoma and Rob Carr from Oklahoma ABLE Tech to learn some of the basics of testing websites, PDF and Microsoft Office content for accessibility.

Facilitators: Steph Rogers (UCO); Rob Carr (Oklahoma ABLE Tech, OSU)

Description: Open licensing, open access journals and open educational resources provide the foundation for a world in which universal access to education is possible. Governments are supporting this shift with a move toward open policies: requiring public access to publicly funded resources. Dr. Cable Green, Director of Open Education at Creative Commons, will provide an overview of open licensing and OER, and discuss specific examples where faculty, institutions and governments have moved the default on practice, culture and funding from “closed” to “open.”

Facilitators: Cable Green (Creative Commons)