Take a NAP 8: Accessibility checkers

The final core habit of the eight we’re calling Nottingham Accessibility Practices — the NAPs – covers accessibility checkers. These can be an important tool in identifying issues or catching errors in your documents. Much like spell-checkers, accessibility checkers can be found in most text editors and are easy to use. Within Microsoft Office you …

Take a NAP 7: Formats and assistive technologies

The Nottingham Accessibility Practices – the NAPs – are eight core habits that will help make your teaching materials and publications more accessible.  In this seventh post in our series on the NAPs we’re looking at how materials can be formatted to be used with assistive technology tools. Those who will benefit most from accessibility …

Take a NAP 6: Colour

Colour is one of the most important features to be aware of when creating accessible content. In this post, part of our series on the eight Nottingham Accessibility Practices – the NAPs – we’ll look at why colour can be an issue and how to design to overcome that. To make your content easy for …

Take a NAP 5: Tables

The Nottingham Accessibility Practices — the NAPs — are eight core habits that will help make your teaching materials and publications more accessible. We’ve covered format, text, images and multimedia so far, and in this post we focus on tables. Tables are a great way to organise, summarise and compare large amounts of information. However, relying …

Take a NAP 2: Text

In this series of blog posts we’re looking at the Nottingham Accessibility Practices — the NAPs. These are eight core habits that will help make your teaching materials and publications more accessible, but also more available to all.  Follow our  “Take a NAP” series. Text will be the main way that a lot of your …

Creating MS Teams breakout rooms in advance: Advent Calendar #18

Did you know that you can save some vital time during your online session by setting up and populating MS Teams breakout rooms ahead of your teaching session or meeting? It’s easy to assign participants to these rooms in advance. As the organiser of the meeting, click on it in your Calendar (if a stand-alone …

Three simple ways to engage students in lectures

A common question that we get asked is about are the best ways to poll students in face-to-face lectures, or seek short one-word or short-phrase answers. There are many third-party tools out there but to use those, you will need to evaluate them with regard to data protection, security, accessibility, sustainability, archivability and suitability. It’s …

Screen Sharing Options available to the presenter during a Microsoft Teams Meeting

How often in a Teams meeting have you said “Can you see my screen?” over the past couple of years? I am guessing a lot. However, are you aware of all the options available when you click on the Share icon in a Teams meeting? If not, you will be by the end of this …

Anonymous forums in Moodle

We are occasionally asked about how staff can set up anonymous forums in Moodle. At the time of writing there is no official anonymous forum in Moodle. Moodle is designed to be, like the lecture theatre or seminar room, a safe learning space where students feel comfortable speaking in a community of learners. There are …

Advent Calendar #18: How to create a festive video message in Powerpoint

Today we show you a (reasonably) simple way to make a festive video message. It could be for your students, or if you’re not sure of the postal deliveries this year, even for your family and friends… How to create a festive video in Powerpoint, step by step: Create a folder on your Hard Drive …