What’s the alternative? Widening participation by making VLE-based distance learning available to those without internet access

What’s the alternative? Widening participation by making VLE-based distance learning available to those without internet access Centre for Open Learning of Mathematics, Science, Computing and Technology (COLMSCT) Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302). Val Hancock COLMSCT Associate Teaching Fellow [email_address]

The OU Associate Lecturer (AL) Student Student in prison

Action Research

Research

Student interviews

Prison education staff interviews

Prison Tutors forum

Action

Prison Tutor Support wiki

Trial

Tutor pack

Alternative materials

Research

Statistics

Tutor questionnaires

Student questionnaires

Student interviews (formal) We’ve got an intranet with Moodle. Can we load the course website on it? Can my brother access the forum and tell me what’s being discussed so that I can reply? I print things off at home and bring it in for the students I wanted to do a Computing degree but I have to do Sociology instead because you don’t need internet access for that I didn’t know you could submit assignments by email, I thought you needed to go to the website Not having internet access slows you down. You have to get a book from the library which they might have to get in for you. Prison education staff interviews (informal)

Prison Tutors Forum There was an e-activity at the begining of the course which required students to engage in online discussions on their rain gauge experiment, I got around this one by anonomising examples of the messages post to the TGF and printing it off for my student to use for his assignment Just wonder what colleagues do in this situation?I hopefully can and will see the students F2F but what about all the online stuff? When it comes to changing TMAs, accepting paper instead of eTMAs and so on, how much authority does the AL and/or the course team have? At what point do these alterations need permission from elsewhere in the university? I think it is too much to expect either the prison Education Officer or myself to provide hard copies of everything they need Are you allowed to take CDs or USB sticks into the secure unit? This is often a problem in prisons and so in the past I've had to resort to printing off things that would be easier to transfer digitally (assignments, CMAs etc). If you can create a CD-R with all the course website material on it makes life much easier. I'm not clear on who provides the student with TMA questions when they are only available online (I sent a hardcopy of TMA01 just in case)

Alternative approaches Course Component

Alternative approach

Course news

Alert prison education staff by email, phone or post

Web references

Offline versions of web pages emailed or on CD

Printed pages

Internet searches

Mediated search by OU library, tutor or prison staff

Alternative sources e.g. books, DVD encyclopedias

Videos & podcasts

Offline versions emailed or on CD

Transcripts emailed or on CD

Collaborative tools

Offline tutor group (or dummy) forum/wiki/blog

Offline responses

Download assignment

Email as attachment

Print and post

Computer Marked Assignments

Post paper OCR form

Assignment submission

Email to electronic submission system

Paper submission

Course website

Download to prison intranet running generic Moodle

Homing pigeon

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/homing-pigeon-faster-internet-africa/story?id=8550501

Tutor Pack

Getting started

TMA00

M150 course website

General support

Useful forums

Useful sites

General Advice

TMA01

Question 1 (i) (b)

Question 1 (i) (f)

TMA02

Question 2 (v)

Question 3 (i)

Question 3 (iii)

Specific Advice

Statistics

9 students registered

2 withdrew before the course started

1 did not complete the course

6 passed the course

EDO Framework

Categorise activities requiring internet access

E ssential

students will fail the course if the activity cannot be carried out

D esirable

students can pass the course if the activity cannot be carried out but their overall grade is likely to be affected

O ptional

many students outside prison will not engage with the activity

Discussion

What are your experiences of problems due to lack of internet access?

How did you overcome these problems?

What do we mean by ‘accessibility’?

Is the EDO framework useful?

Is this a learning design issue?

Further information

Alternative approaches to online activities for prisoners and others without access to the Internet (COLMSCT project): http://www.open.ac.uk/colmsct/activities/details/detail.php?itemId=474c44f736651&themeId=48a9748015077