A presentation given to the Western Sydney Institute of TAFE as part of an exchange of ideas about blended learning and designing accessible learning resources to enhance student learning.
2. Who
are
Blended Learning Manager,
@Lynnae_
we? 15 years as an educational
technologist and leader in
higher education
l.rankine@uws.edu.au
Blended Learning Advisor
@GinaSalibaa
Teaching background in
secondary education; leads
teaching development in
blended and fully online at UWS
g.saliba@uws.edu.au
Blended Learning
Professional Developer
Teaching background in
TAFE; certified Blackboard
trainer, leads working party
on accessibility
t.bowring@uws.edu.au
8. Leveraging opportunities…
Fully F2F
(no online
components)
Completely online
(no F2F components)
Technology
enhanced
(no reduction in
F2F contact)
Mostly online
(some F2F
contact)
Blended
Adapted from: Graham, C., Woodfield, W., Harrison, J. (2013) A framework for institutional adoption and implementation of blended learning in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education. Vol 18, pp4-14.
11. Extending to fully online
• Opens up options for
students who cannot
access a UWS campus
including those in
GWS and those
beyond
• Provides programs for
those who prefer to
study online
13. Where are we headed?
• Creating a digital
learning environment
• Supported by engaging
on campus learning
events
• Offering collaborative
formal and social
learning spaces
17. Key considerations for accessibility
Legal
Requirement or
is it?
Cost
Monetary or Man Hrs
Reasonable
adjustment
Is for everyone
Universal Design
There are some
Simple Wins
Students are increasingly seeking to engage in learning when and where they choose and being supported by existing and emerging technologies for learning. Fully online units and courses offer flexibility in mode and place of study and typically involve a mix of synchronous and asynchronous online experiences. Online our students have informal and formal real time online discussions and presentations to foster interactive learning and social connections. There are structured and self-directed learning activities and assessments and students may be participating in simulations, discussions with industry professionals, engaging in interactive case studies, providing peer feedback and accessing interactive learning resources.
When students come to campus they will have active and vibrant learning experiences where they experiment, solve complex problems, discuss, collaborate and present virtually and in person. Their learning occurs in spaces and contexts designed to foster interactive learning.
Nearly 30,000 iPads have been provided to students and continuing staff making learning more accessible anywhere and anytime. In class student response systems using iPads and other mobile devices enable students to provide immediate feedback on their understanding of complex mathematical concepts and pose questions they would like discussed in class.
Students use mobile apps to demonstrate their answer to equations and teaching staff can provide re-usable demonstrations of solving equations and mathematical problems in a more lively manner than has previously been possible. Digital storytelling and screen casting apps are used to practice, review, annotate and listen to the approach being taken to solve an equation or problem. Students save worked through equations or submit as assessment tasks.
When students construct knowledge that is embedded in in practice, they can develop additional layers of meaning and ways to represent that meaning. Students engage in industry projects, work placements or community and workplace practice.
FYI: this image is of students using mobile devices to augment the reality of the community/business they are studying.
UWS is leveraging the opportunities provided by technologies to support learners, many of whom are digitally literate, frequent users of mobile devices, and seeking highly interactive, visual, immediate, and socially engaging learning. At UWS there is a strategic and systematic approach to combining times and modes of learning, integrating the best aspects of face-to-face and online interactions for each discipline, using appropriate ICTs. From 2012, every undergraduate unit is experiencing a curriculum transformation to design student focussed learning experiences that has a blend of these elements. UWS is progressing well with the institutional transformation and we are extending our approach to include fully online units and courses to provide greater access to university study.
We bought a lot of iPads. As of next year we will have 45,000 iPads in use for teaching and learning
Students were asking for it (surveys, feedback)
Students wanted flexibility
Students need the challenge of this approach to learning for future careers
Even fully online students
May want to use engaging, collaborative and exciting on campus spaces
Attend occasional workshops and learning events
Successful to UWS’ transformation to enriched learning has been the great staff and student communities willing to innovate and push the boundaries of what has been previously the norm, and a commitment to learning enhancement.
** Firstly, not every one of our students received an iPad. Only first year students when they enrolled did. **
Inclusiveness, providing educational opportunities for those that may otherwise not be able to
However in saying that, when we think about making our resources accessible we prefer to think of it as accessible for all not just those with disabilities and
prefer the use of the term ‘Universal Design’ which I’m sure many of you would already be familiar with
So, similar to how when a lift is added to a building to provide access for those with disabilities also being useful to able bodied people, adding accessibility options such as captions to videos can also be useful to everyone. I myself have participated in a MOOC that had an academic presenting content via lots of 5 to 10 minute talking head (thankfully captioned) videos. I found it much more productive to read the captions rather than watch the video. One minute to read or five minutes to watch the video.
So I guess the two main points are inclusiveness and if you make it accessible you end up making it more accessible for all
With 30 000 iPads now in the hands of our students as well as other tablets and smart phones etc its easy to get caught up in the wizardry. Doing an activity because you can or because it looks flash. But we should always look back at what we are trying to achieve, what are the learning outcomes that we are that we are trying to achieve and ask ourselves is this the best way to achieve them.
Most importantly that the pedagogy is the driver not the technology
We aim to present the content in multiple ways to ensure all learning styles are catered for
Some of our academics are now adding formative assessments very early in the unit to gauge level of understanding and possibly help determine if its the right course for their students. Can also identify key gaps that may need extra resources
We are seeing the use youTube and OER resources more and more. We find that these are much more effective when they have been contextualised and have activities built around them. The ones that have just been added to a page by themselves as they are tend to not be as effective.
Your video's don't need to be studio quality, in fact student feedback suggests that they would rather see a not so polished video created by their lecturer than a series of more high quality videos by someone they don't know
scaffolding literacy, essay writing, referencing, maths, PASS
consistency in sites, UWS has developed their own basic standards against which sites can be checked against
supports around technologies and tasks show exemplars
qilt
Blended Learning Technology toolkit
sunset tool
Legal Requirement or is it
When I was first asked to chair the accessibility working party I was of the belief that there was a legal requirement for the university and everyone else to make their web content W3C compliant. I’m sure many of you would have heard of the man who successfully sued the Olympic committee over accessibility of their website in 2000 when the Olympics where in Sydney. Then there’s a mountain of websites and documentation relating to accessibility such as
WCAG Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
DDA Disabilities Discrimination Act
NTA National Transition Strategy
AVCC Guidelines to students with disabilities
UWS DAP UWS Disability Action Plan
However when reading all these they don’t give a clear statement on legal requirements and send you on a never ending loop back and forth between each other. So as the chair of the committee I asked the UWS legal team to provide us with a definitive statement. They in turn employed the services of an external law firm who responded with a 15 page document.
Reasonable Adjustment
In short the response was that UWS will meet its legal obligations if it provides reasonable adjustments for students having issues with web accessibility or would be able to demonstrate that doing so would impose an ‘unreasonable hardship’ to UWS.
However the report did go on to suggest that UWS should be proactive in reviewing and working on its accessibility
Universal Design
Spoke about this on previous slide
Simple wins
If done at the time of creation a lot of this is not that hard to do and there are plenty of simple things you can do like alt tags, Structuring content with headings (for Html and word docs)
Retro fitting will obviously be harder so try to build accessibility planning into your content creation process
Cost
The major cost of accessibility be it monetary or man hours is the captioning of video and audio (don't rely on youTube). If you used a script in creating the video use it as the basis of your caption file or add it as a script file.
