The challenge of researching accessibility practices within Higher Education: an exploration of “shared enterprises” or “political games

The 2001 Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (SENDA, 2001) made it an offence for educational institutions in the UK to discriminate against a disabled person by treating him or her less favourably than others for a reason relating to their disability. Learning technologists have therefore been charged with the responsibility of ensuring that electronic teaching materials can be accessed by disabled students, which is requiring them to develop new practices. In an attempt to explore how learning technologists are developing these practices this paper will present a review of the accessibility literature and identify key issues that may influence the “accessibility” practices of learning technologists. These issues are explored and interpreted using Wenger’s (1998) Communities of Practice, which focuses on the development of “shared enterprises” and Konur’s (2000) Institutional Theory Tool, which focuses on the “games” that educational institutions might play when creating rights for disabled students. This interpretation suggests that educational research will face a challenge of providing a detailed and rich description of the “shared enterprises” that contribute to a developing accessibility practice and an explanation of the political games that may block or hinder this practice

E-learning accessibility practices within higher education: a review

The 2001 Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (SENDA) made it an offence for educational institutions to discriminate against a disabled person by treating him or her less favourably than others for a reason relating to their disability. The Act covers all aspects of student services, including provision and use of electronic materials and resources. Learning technologists have therefore been charged with the responsibility of ensuring that electronic teaching materials can be accessed by disabled students. In an attempt to explore how learning technologists are developing practices to produce accessible electronic materials this paper will present a review of current accessibility practice. The review will focus on what key professionals (academics, researchers, educational developers and staff developers) within the learning technology field are saying and doing about making electronic materials and resources accessible to disabled students. Key issues that may influence the "accessibility" practices of learning technologists are highlighted; the importance of these issues for developing an understanding of "accessibility" practices is discussed and implications for future research are identifie

Quality assurance for digital learning object repositories: issues for the metadata creation process

Metadata enables users to find the resources they require, therefore it is an important component of any digital learning object repository. Much work has already been done within the learning technology community to assure metadata quality, focused on the development of metadata standards, specifications and vocabularies and their implementation within repositories. The metadata creation process has thus far been largely overlooked. There has been an assumption that metadata creation will be straightforward and that where machines cannot generate metadata effectively, authors of learning materials will be the most appropriate metadata creators. However, repositories are reporting difficulties in obtaining good quality metadata from their contributors, and it is becoming apparent that the issue of metadata creation warrants attention. This paper surveys the growing body of evidence, including three UK-based case studies, scopes the issues surrounding human-generated metadata creation and identifies questions for further investigation. Collaborative creation of metadata by resource authors and metadata specialists, and the design of tools and processes, are emerging as key areas for deeper research. Research is also needed into how end users will search learning object repositories

Courseware in academic library user education: a literature review from the GAELS Joint Electronic Library project

The use of courseware for information skills teaching in academic libraries has been growing for a number of years. The GAELS project was required to create a set of learning materials to support Joint Electronic Library activity at Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities and conducted a literature review of the subject. This review discovered a range of factors common to successful library courseware implementations, such as the need for practitioners to feel a sense of ownership of the medium, a need for courseware customization to local information environments, and an emphasis on training packages for large bodies of undergraduates. However, we also noted underdeveloped aspects worthy of further attention, such as treatment of pedagogic issues in library CAL implementations and use of hypertextual learning materials for more advanced information skills training. We suggest ways of improving library teaching practice and further areas of research

Courseware in academic library user education: A literature review from the GAELS Joint Electronic Library Project

The use of courseware for information skills teaching in academic libraries has been growing for a number of years. In order to create effective courseware packages to support joint electronic library activity at Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities, the GAELS project conducted a literature review of the subject. This review discovered a range of factors common to successful library courseware implementations, such as the need for practitioners to feel a sense of ownership of the medium, a need for courseware customization to local information environments, and an emphasis on training packages for large bodies of undergraduates. However, we also noted underdeveloped aspects worthy of further attention, such as treatment of pedagogic issues in library computer‐aided learning (CAL) implementations and use of hypertextual learning materials for more advanced information skills training. We describe how these findings shaped the packages produced by the project and suggest ways forward for similar types of implementation

Electronic Social Networks as Supporting Means of Educational Process in Higher Education Institutions

Given research describes experience of electronic social networks use in educational practices. It was determined that electronic social networks can be a powerful tool for support of educational process in higher education institutions, namely to support study of different disciplines. There are main advantages of electronic social networks use for education: universal accessibility and free of charge; possibility of instant messaging and multimedia data; user-friendly intuitive interface; ability to search data and information; availability of event scheduling, invitations, reminder settings; support for synchronous and asynchronous communication between network members; access from different devices. It is emphasized that one of the main advantages of electronic social networks is receipt of quick feedback and convenience of their tools and services. Nowadays, it is important to include network educational interaction in existing models of study organization. It is advisable to use electronic social networks to manage educational process in higher education institution. Efficiency of electronic social networks use depends on intensity and need for their use in educational system management for implementation of organizational, educational, psychological and pedagogical functions and ensuring universal communication with subjects of educational process. Expediency of electronic social networks use to carry out research work at university is described. Electronic social networks are convenient tool to conduct surveys and questionnaires, to create thematic groups for specific issue discussion. Also it is possible to interact with researchers from different countries, share experiences and disseminate research findings, invite those who wish to participate in various scientific activities using these networks

Producing electronic materials for teaching the Humanities using authoring tools

У статті розглядається процес створення електронних дидактичних матеріалів за допомогою ІКТ, зокрема, програм-оболонок, для навчання студентів гуманітарних спеціальносте