Course Description: When a Task is Unclear, Name What's Missing

A self-paced short course that gives autistic young adults a concrete, repeatable way to spot what's missing from a vague instruction and ask for it – with bosses, coworkers, teachers, friends, family, or romantic partners.

Format: Eight short lesson blocks, one 90-second video, one practice activity, and two reflection questions. A table of contents supports both paths: work through the sections in order, or jump straight to what's needed.

Tools: Articulate Rise 360, Canva, Claude, and YouTube.

The need: Vague instructions come up everywhere – "help out," "clean this up," "look this over." For autistic adults, instructions that lean on idioms or leave out specifics can be especially hard to act on, and common advice like "just ask" doesn't specify what to ask. This course fills in the what.

Design choices:

• One small framework, nothing abstract. An instruction can be missing four things – what, when, how, or how well. Each pairs with a ready-to-use clarifying question and an everyday example, so learners never have to invent a question from scratch while already feeling unsure.

• Shown, then practiced, then applied. A 90-second video follows Juan, an assistant librarian, using the framework on a realistic "help out" request. Learners then try it on a low-stakes scenario with supportive feedback before applying it to a situation of their own. A short section normalizes asking, to lower the social pressure that often blocks the behavior.

• Private reflection, built past the tool's limits. Rise 360 has no saved free-text reflection, so I added one as a custom HTML widget (built with AI assistance). Responses save only in the learner's browser – nothing goes to a server – which is what makes the reflection genuinely private. Framed as thinking space, not graded work.

• More than one way in. The same idea appears as text, a narrated video with captions and a full transcript, and a color-coded graphic organizer that downloads as both an image and an accessible Word document. Reflections can be typed or dictated.

• Accessible and low-load by design. Plain, literal, neurodiversity-affirming language with no idioms; segmented content; learner-controlled pacing; alt text; WCAG-compliant contrast; calm, low-clutter layout with no autoplay.

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