This spring, Professor Yen-Chu Weng, UW College of the Environment, brought together students from the University of Washington and National Kaohsiung Normal University in Taiwan to evaluate the accessibility of interpretive signs in nature parks.
Professor Weng’s course, “Environmental Issues in East Asia”, was a five-week collaboration with Professor Chen-Chen Cheng’s course in Special Education from National Kaohsiung Normal University. The partnership was the result of a 2023-2024 UW Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Fellowship. COIL Fellowship projects link university classes in different countries, provide students with critical digital literacy and virtual collaboration skills through shared assignments and projects and allow faculty members from each country to co-teach and manage coursework.
Students attended joint lectures on the basic design principles for accessible interpretive signs and inclusive communication for people with disabilities. They also conducted field work to observe and analyze interpretive signs in their respective cities – The UW Arboretum and the UW Farm in Seattle and several parks in Kaohsiung and Tainan, two major cities in Southern Taiwan. In a survey following the project, students ranked the following as having the strongest impact on their growth: Learning and understanding other ways of seeing the world, growth in self-awareness, greater understanding of different cultures, and understanding how to interact with people from different cultures.