{"id":1279,"date":"2025-08-25T14:06:33","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T18:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/edvice\/?p=1279"},"modified":"2025-09-29T12:41:22","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T16:41:22","slug":"emojis-explained-a-welcome-message-from-the-center-for-the-advancement-of-teaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/edvice\/2025\/08\/25\/emojis-explained-a-welcome-message-from-the-center-for-the-advancement-of-teaching\/","title":{"rendered":"Emojis Explained: A welcome message from the Center for the Advancement of Teaching"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Emojis\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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Dear Colleagues,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Welcome to the fall 2025 semester! Over the past weeks, as you created and launched your Canvas courses, you likely noticed the addition of emoji icons beside item titles in Canvas modules. This is not the universe judging your course content. As part of the <\/span>Accessible Temple<\/span><\/a> initiative, Temple has adopted <\/span>Yuja\u2019s Panorama<\/span><\/a>, a tool that assesses whether items within Canvas meet digital accessibility best practices and offers suggestions for remediation. While thinking about digital accessibility may be new to many of us, providing access to students is in Temple\u2019s DNA. Since the founding of this institution, Temple faculty members have been in the business of opening doors for our Owls. Through the classes you teach, the mentorship you provide, the relationships you build and the connections you forge, you create possibilities for your students. You help them accomplish their goals but also to access new conceptual and professional horizons.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Accessible Temple challenges us to extend that same dedication and care to addressing the accessibility of our digital course materials. When a student can\u2019t use the assistive technologies they rely upon to access course materials, when our Canvas courses are confusing or hard to navigate or when students have to spend more time interpreting the assignment instructions than they spend accomplishing the assignment, their experience of Temple as a space that truly honors diversity is diminished. In preparing programming for the Accessible Temple initiative, we here at the CAT realized how much we ourselves had to learn about accessibility. As we have educated ourselves, we have built new habits and ways of thinking about how we create digital materials, and we strive to support you in doing the same.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

We invite you to take advantage of our Accessible Temple resources and programming, and for those seeking information and support on other teaching-related topics, we continue to offer workshops, consultations and other services to all Temple faculty and teaching assistants.<\/span><\/p>

Accessible Temple<\/b><\/p>