Helping Duke students learn more and helping more people learn from Duke.

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June 2022

We briefly interrupt your summertime pleasure reading and poolside relaxing to bring you just a handful of updates from Learning Innovation, including an op/ed about blindspots to discrimination in the blind review process, a Panopto workshop, a national book discussion, and some tips on using accessible color palettes when emphasizing text or ideas.

Kim Manturuk, Learning Innovation's Associate Director of Research, Evaluation and Development, recently published an editorial for Inside Higher Ed reflecting on an important gap created by the blind review process for conferences and publications. Read Blind Review is Blind to Discrimination now.

Upcoming Events

All events are virtual and in Eastern time unless otherwise noted.

Add Interactivity to Panopto Videos with PlayPosit
Thursday, June 2, 1 - 2 pm
Do you use Panopto or Warpwire at Duke to teach with video? Are you working with instructors to record videos? Learning Innovation is working with PlayPosit - an online learning environment - to enhance your hybrid and online teaching through easy-to-produce video modules. In this session you will learn how to:

Repurpose existing content for a new use in your course (e.g. broadcast it!)
Reuse video content already created
Upcycle (modify and embellish) the resulting learning objects you’ve established to scale your impact and engage your learners

This session will be facilitated by PlayPosit staff.
Register Now

Academic Innovation for the Public Good: "Empires of Ideas"
Wednesday, June 22, 7 - 8 pm
William Kirby is Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration and T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies at Harvard University. His forthcoming book, Empires of Ideas: Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China, examines whether the most preeminent global universities could, in the coming years, be found in China rather than the United States.
Register Now

Find more events and opportunities for training, funding, consultation and more from the Duke Teaching Support Network.

A monthly series highlighting simple steps you can take to improve accessibility in your class.

Using accessible color palettes for emphasis

The thoughtful use of color in slides, documents and websites can help users engage with and navigate your content. However, certain color combinations or the overuse of color can make your content unreadable and overwhelming to people with impaired vision, color blindness and visual sensitivity, among others. Consider the following tips to make your content more visually accessible:

Make sure the colors you use for the foreground and background of text and graphics have enough contrast to make it easy to identify each element. The Duke Branding Guide has a Color Accessibility Grid that makes it easy to tell whether the intersecting colors have enough contrast (see the key at the bottom of the grid for rating definitions).
In Sakai, use the Styles drop-down menu in the Text Editor (see image below) to select styles that have already been set to meet contrast standards.

Avoid using red and green together in text or graphics–people with colorblindness may not be able to distinguish between the two colors–blue and orange is one common alternative. Also, keep in mind that there are other kinds of color blindness, so it’s a good idea to upload files to a Color Blindness Simulator to see what information might get lost.
When using color to differentiate between elements in graphics, find other, additional ways to differentiate the elements. For example, with a line graph, have different types of lines (dotted, dashes, etc.), or in a bar graph, use different shading patterns.
Avoid using several bright colors, or preferably avoid bright colors altogether. Muted colors can be calming and less overwhelming, particularly for people on the spectrum.

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