I recently wrote about my experience when attending tuts for the Occupational Therapy students at university. You can read it here.
Those tips relate to both the online and in person experience. However, I’ve found that there are some pointers on how to create a friendlier experience online as well.
- Disabilities hidden off the screen
Mainly on Zoom, be mindful of physical and emotion barriers to a person participating at their best. I’ve realised that there are factors of a persons disability that are totally missed on Zoom. For example, students can’t see my walking frame online. There are invisible deficits that mean they’re unable to manage them at all. It’s so important to consider the other barriers that you can’t see. Even just working out if a persons vision is understood. There are more things to consider when working in an online environment.
2. Think about the environment the person is in
If I have 20 students on my screen, all in different environments, I think about them and how they’ll perform differently. Especially in a virtual space, it’s important to think about your own environment and how that’s presenting to the person. Eg: If you’re sitting in front of a window, I won’t be able to see their eyes as bright light will impact the ability to see and will change the experience. During a recent tut, I asked a student to move for this reason. This is also something to consider in face to face environments and where you’re meeting people. A tut I attended was run in a massive space and because of my difficulty talking, projecting is quite difficult, so I asked them to move closer so that everyone could hear better. Think about adapting your environments to help the participant.
3. Consider what the person can see
On a digital meeting, I had so many students and they each went around and introduced themselves, but because my vision isn’t great, I had no idea who was talking. So I asked them when they introduced themselves, to wave so I could see them. It’s important to think about body language as a communication strategy with a person.
4. Make sure you’re actively listening
One student posed a question to me, but another student was moving around. For me, I could not concentrate because I was distracted. It made it really difficult to concentrate on my answer. But there’s also a vulnerability that comes into it. If a student is moving around a lot, I think sometimes that they’re not listening and I take it personally. Consider your own actions when listening or others are talking.
For me, these tuts are opportunity to give them practices, and give constructive feedback on how they could get better. What are some of your tips during a physical or digital meeting that can make participants more comfortable?