An investigation into the perspectives of providers and learners on MOOC accessibility

An effective open eLearning environment should consider the target learner’s abilities, learning goals, where learning takes place, and which specific device(s) the learner uses. MOOC platforms struggle to take these factors into account and typically are not accessible, inhibiting access to environments that are intended to be open to all. A series of research initiatives are described that are intended to benefit MOOC providers in achieving greater accessibility and disabled learners to improve their lifelong learning and re-skilling. In this paper, we first outline the rationale, the research questions, and the methodology. The research approach includes interviews, online surveys and a MOOC accessibility audit; we also include factors such the risk management of the research programme and ethical considerations when conducting research with vulnerable learners. Preliminary results are presented from interviews with providers and experts and from analysis of surveys of learners. Finally, we outline the future research opportunities. This paper is framed within the context of the Doctoral Consortium organised at the TEEM'17 conference

Accessibility in Health related Virtual Learning Environments

Supporting patients and informal carers is an essential task in managing chronic diseases. Many of these diseases are either directly linked to disabilities or are age related and, thus, also strongly correlated with potential disabilities. Furthermore, as the population ages it is becoming more and more common to give an old person with a set of mild disabilities acting as informal carer of another person with some type of chronic disease. Support material and professional help can be provided through the use of an eLearning platform. These platforms are usually known as Learning Management Systems (LMS) or Virtual Learning Environments (VLE). People with disabilities, linked to physical and/or cognitive impairments can obtain an extraordinary advantage from access to eLearning but, in practice, they find important barriers when the Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) and contents are not delivered in the suitable adapted forms according to their needs and preferences. All VLEs are supported by a set of different technological layers. Those layers can interfere with the final user gaining access to such adapted resources. Conflicts with user agents, assistive technologies and the delivery format of the resources are the most common problems. The accessibility of current VLEs, a mature technology, provides an interesting case study regarding the types of problems that can be encountered by users in current web application

A preliminary study for developing accessible MOOC Services

The flexibility of the MOOC service allows students to learn at their own time, place and pace, enhancing continuous communication and interaction among all participants in knowledge and community building. This model especially benefits people with disabilities, which can improve therefore their level of employability and social inclusion, reaching a better quality of life. Unfortunately the access to MOOC platforms present severe barriers: there is a lack of accessibility on the learning resources, the communicating tools and personalized user interfaces. All these issues add extra difficulties such as the need to develop specific digital or even social skills for students with functional diversity. In this context, MOOCs are leading a revolutionary computer and mobile-based scenario along with social technologies that will emerge new kinds of learning applications that enhance communication and collaboration processes. For that reason, this paper describes the need for designing an information model and related specifications to support a new strategy for delivering accessible MOOC courses to learners with special needs, in terms of their preferences and context of use based on a particular application profile. This user profile’s design is based on standard metadata schemas, data that provides information about other data, regarding the achievement of accessibility from content to user preferences

Quality Management of Learning Management Systems: A User Experience Perspective

Learning Management Systems (LMS) have been the main vehicle for delivering and managing e-learning courses in educational, business, governmental and vocational learning settings. Since the mid-nineties there is a plethora of LMS in the market with a vast array of features. The increasing complexity of these platforms makes LMS evaluation a hard and demanding process that requires a lot of knowledge, time, and effort. Nearly 50% of respondents in recent surveys have indicated they seek to change their existing LMS primarily due to user experience issues. Yet the vast majority of the extant literature focuses only on LMS capabilities in relation to administration and management of teaching and learning processes. In this study the authors try to build a conceptual framework and evaluation model of LMS through the lens of User Experience (UX) research and practice, an epistemology that is quite important but currently neglected in the e-learning domain. They conducted an online survey with 446 learning professionals, and from the results, developed a new UX-oriented evaluation model with four dimensions: pragmatic quality, authentic learning, motivation and engagement, and autonomy and relatedness. Their discussion on findings includes some ideas for future research

Accessible lifelong learning at higher education:outcomes and lessons Learned at two different PilotSites in the EU4ALL Project

[EN] The EU4ALL project (IST-FP6-034778) has developed a general framework to address the needs of accessible lifelong learning at Higher Education level consisting of several standards-based interoperable components integrated into an open web service architecture aimed at supporting adapted interaction to guarantee students' accessibility needs. Its flexibility has supported the project implementation at several sites with different settings and various learning management systems. Large-scale evaluations involving hundreds of users, considering diverse disability types, and key staff roles have allowed obtaining valuable lessons with respect to "how to adopt or enhance eLearning accessibility" at university. The project was evaluated at four higher education institutions, two of the largest in Europe and two mediumsized. In this paper, we focus on describing the implementation and main conclusions at the largest project evaluation site (UNED), which was involved in the project from the beginning, and thus, in the design process, and a medium-sized university that adopted the EU4ALL approach (UPV). This implies dealing with two well-known open source learning environments (i.e. dotLRN and Sakai), and considering a wide variety of stakeholders and requirements. Thus the results of this evaluation serve to illustrate the coverage of both the approach and developments.The authors would like to thank the European Commission for the financial support of the EU4ALL project (IST-2006-034478). The work at aDeNu is also supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (TIN2008-06862-C04-01/TSI “A2UN@”). Authors would also like to thank all the EU4ALL partners for their collaboration.Boticario, JG.; Rodriguez-Ascaso, A.; Santos, OC.; Raffenne, E.; Montandon, L.; Roldán Martínez, D.; Buendía García, F. (2012). Accessible lifelong learning at higher education:outcomes and lessons Learned at two different PilotSites in the EU4ALL Project. Journal of Universal Computer Science. 18(1):62-85. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/37117628518

Using accessible digital resources for teaching database design: towards an inclusive distance learning proposal

[Proceedings of] 13th Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE'08), Madrid, Spain, June 30-July 2, 2008This paper introduces a pilot experience in teaching database using accessible digital resources in 3er course of Computer Science degree at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. A platform containing learning material in different formats (video, audio, slides presentation) has been designed allowing students accessing resources as well as to be evaluated by means of tests. Preliminary results show that 46.81% of the students have already interacted with the system and 97.12% of the students passed the tests.Publicad

Aprendizaje INCLUSIVO centrado en las necesidades de las personas. Avances en estándares, plataformas y desarrollo de servicios de aprendizaje personalizados

[Resumen] La mayoría de los informes e iniciativas que promueven el afrontar los retos del aprendizaje centrado en el estudiante insisten en desarrollar escenarios y sistemas educativos con capacidad de adaptación. Sin embargo, dichos desarrollos todavía no cubren las cuestiones más básicas de atención de las necesidades derivadas de la diversidad funcional de los estudiantes. Después de repasar los objetivos destacados por numerosos informes y normativas, en este trabajo presentamos cuestiones tecnológicas relacionadas con los estándares necesarios, la situación de los sistemas de gestión del aprendizaje y el soporte dinámico basado en técnicas de modelado del usuario que afectan al desarrollo de los escenarios requeridos para abordar la autonomía personal en educación. En concreto, se introducen aspectos relacionados de los desarrollos del grupo de investigación aDeNu de la UNED

Developing a pedagogical framework for blended distance learning at the National University of Lesotho

Amid the global enthusiasm for adoption and implementation of blended learning, innovations in higher learning institutions in sub-Saharan Africa and other developing countries are reported as less successful and unsustainable. The identified challenges include, among others, the limited Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure, inadequate policies, adoption of blended learning models not suited to educational contexts, and innovations that are not aligned to the institutional goals. This action research (AR) adapted Graham, Woodfield and Harrison’s (2013) framework for institutional adoption and implementation of blended learning to design and develop a contextually-relevant adoption strategy for Open and Distance Learning programmes of the National University of Lesotho (NUL). Using the qualitative and quantitative research instruments in this parallel convergent mixed methods research design, participants were selected from the key ICT and education stakeholders in Lesotho to explore the existing national and institutional ICT strategy, structure, support and technology experiences of the tutors and learners. The samples respondents were selected at the national level (5), at the secondary schools (3), the members of the NUL Management Team (3), the NUL senior administrators (3), the NUL IT specialists (2), 30 tutors and 209 learners across the three AR research cycles of this study. Given the identified challenges of inadequate ICT strategy, structure, support as well as technology experiences of the tutors and learners, this study concluded that a contextually-relevant blended distance learning model for NUL should comprise face-to-face, print-based and online instruction. The key contributions to the new knowledge derived from this research include an adapted blended learning adoption framework (Graham, Woodfield, and Harrison, 2013) which adds the tutors and learners to the markers of progress in the transition from the traditional pedagogy to a technology-based pedagogy and a methodological approach which incorporates Piggot-Irvine's (2002) spin-off cycles into Elliott's (1991) action research model for a deeper understanding of the researched educational context. The study recommends the ICT and education policy development or review at the national and the institutional levels in Lesotho and other developing countries as well as a further exploration of the frameworks proposed in this study