Smartphone technology's dominance—coupled with an ever-evolving internet landscape within which apps privilege the visual and the audial over text—has educators at a crossroads: do we insist on shoring up traditional reading skills through offline sources and hard copy text, or do we transition into a twenty-first century in which our students are no longer strong readers, but expert scanners instead? This interactive session will: present pedagogical research contextualizing this (il)literacy trend; profile several project-based classroom assignments suitable for post-secondary writing programs; explore how these inter-related assignments attempt to confront the literacy crisis by supporting the adaptation of delivery modes for writing prompts for students who learn best through a combination of seeing, hearing, and reading.
Andre Cormier is a Professor of English and Communications in the School of Language and Liberal Studies at Fanshawe College. He is a UDL advocate and has partnered with Fanshawe's Accessibility Services and Organizational Development & Learning to provide workshops encouraging UDL... Read More →
