Awareness of Disability: Lessons from an Immersive Workshop Course
摘要
Based on my experience of conducting a five-day immersive workshop for MBA students—wherein disability awareness was presented as a means to perspective-taking and as a source of innovation for the self and others—I outline how educators can conduct pedagogical experiments toward increasing awareness of disability. The workshop pedagogy included games (e.g., narrating a picture to someone who is blind), learning accessibility solutions (e.g., using apps to ‘see’, learning sign language), speaker series (e.g., laying out a business case for disability awareness), and roundtables (e.g., engaging with individuals who have single or multiple disabilities). The workshop concluded with students writing a reflection paper and presenting their accessibility solutions for real-life disability-related cases to a jury of persons with severe disabilities. In outlining workshop pedagogy and my learnings, the aim is not to be prescriptive, instead, I hope to start conversations about how we can promote disability awareness through our classrooms.