When you picture a place to teach, a garden may not immediately come to mind. But a question about food access, an investigation of soil chemistry, a design challenge, or a writing assignment could all begin there.

The Learning Gardens Lab is a community learning space in Southeast Portland where PSU faculty can teach alongside the people who care for it. You might start with a class visit or work with the lab’s educators to design an activity around a course goal. The Learning Gardens Lab team of educators can offer on-site support as you integrate the space into your teaching.

Our new video introduces the space through the people who learn and work there. As you watch, think of a question from your course that students might understand differently by investigating it here.

A learning goal or a question is enough to start a conversation with the LGL team! You can talk through what students might do there and what would make a visit work for your class, including timing, transportation and accessibility.

Preparing an accessible course can feel like a large undertaking, especially when you’re looking at materials accumulated over several years. Begin with one course you expect to teach in spring—or the next course you'll teach—and the materials you plan to reuse.

Over the next two weeks, establish a working copy, find out what needs attention, and begin making changes:

1. Make a working copy of your spring course. Spring shells should begin appearing the week of Feb. 8, 2027. In the meantime, create a sandbox and import your existing course materials. Make updates there, then copy the revised content into the official spring shell where students will enroll.

2. Open Panorama from the course menu. It will automatically scan your course for accessibility; results may take time to appear. (If Panorama isn’t in your course menu, enable it under Settings → Navigation, then select Save.)

3. Use the report to decide where to start. The first report may feel overwhelming, and that’s okay. Remove unused materials, then address severe issues before major and minor ones. Here's how to find and interpret your report.

4. Review your materials. Panorama doesn’t check Canvas quizzes, linked Google files, webpages or most publisher tools. Keep a review list for your course and use Grackle for Google materials. The Canvas accessibility guide and accessible syllabus template can guide your review.

With Hypothesis, students can highlight passages in a course reading and add questions or comments alongside the text, where classmates can respond. This shared annotation gives them a way to work through ideas together as they read.

Our guide offers examples of how to use Hypothesis for guided reading, discussion, and other collaborative activities.