Current and Evolving Accessibility Practices: Practical Advice from Two Institutions

Current and Evolving Accessibility Practices: Practical Advice from Two Institutions
Presented by: Afsaneh Sharif & Donna Scalzo, Office of Learning Technology, University of British Columbia, John Louviere & Neal Legler, Faculty Assistance Center for Teaching, Utah State University

Online learning environments hold great promise for expanding access to education for students with time and geographic challenges. Providing a supportive learning environment involves considering the needs of a wide range of learners and instructors, including those with physical and cognitive disabilities or technical limitations.
The ability to do this can be somewhat challenged within the structure of a course management system such as Blackboard (WebCT) Vista, as full control of the web interface may not be possible. In response to student and faculty needs, educational developers from two institutions, the University of British Columbia and Utah State University have worked to determine how some of the issues may be addressed through instructional design, rigorous web design methodologies and some technical applications. Please join us as we share current and evolving practices in this important area of online learning.

View the Archive here:

http://lecture.wimba.com/launcher.cgi?channel=chico_2008_1021_1301_32

Comments

Scratch - OWAU discussion 10/28

Aloha kākou, I while back, I learned about this product from a presentation at the eSchool conference. The speaker was so excited about Scratch and was having so much fun demonstrating it that my mind began racing immediately. "I could use it in `Ike Hawai`i courses and I bet I could use it to develop tons of activities for the A`o Makua `ōlelo Hawai`i courses". Then, reality set in as I returned to work intending to try it out after I finished my "next" task. Well, you know how that goes. 7 months later, I finally took a stab at it out of necessity of course. I really wanted some type of activity to teach my students about different Kapu in old Hawai`i without having them just read a list of them. So, what it Sratch? Simply put, it's a developer's tool (a very inexpereinced developer like myself). It allows you to create activities and games using "coding" that is in a drag and drop format. The codes are pre-written & range from phrases like ...

3/19 Owau: FaceBook CourseFeed & Blackboard

Initially when I first joined FaceBook, it was because I wanted to see what the hype was all about since many of our learners seem to be hooked onto this social networking site. After I set up an account, I didn't do much until my friends from high school, college and even my own family (including my dad) started inviting me to be their "friend" to network together. It was only until recently that I realized why our students would probably prefer logging into Facebook first before even thinking about opening up Blackboard to begin their online course. Once your network of friends is set up, it's definitly an easy way to keep updated on what's going on at a distance. I really haven't done much in Facebook besides the basics, but I thought it would be interesting for us to look at the CourseFeed interface ( http://apps.facebook.com/coursefeed ) that was developed. CourseFeed is a free Blackboard Building Block and Facebook app that alerts students in Faceboook w...

E pule kakou . . .

Aloha all, I was trying to think so hard of a "techie" tip and finally gave up. I even googled "tips and tricks" for various programs and then thought "I can't blog about something I don't actually use!" Then, as I was sitting in my Papa Makua class, doing all kinds of protocal and thought about how we keep looking for a short pule to do to open our meetings. I had `A`ali`i write a pule in Hawaiian. He was worried about the grammar and structure of it so I asked Kelly C. to kökua by editing and doing an audio recording so you can hear the pronunciation. Hope it's helpful :) E ho`omalu käkou E kö mäkou makua i loko o ka lani Mahalo no nä pömaika`i a pau. Mahalo no ke ali`i lokomaika`i o Pauahi a me këia kula nei. E `olu`olu, e kia`i iä mäkou i ke alahele küpono me ka lökahi. Ke nonoi ha`aha`a nei mäkou i ka inoa o Iesu Cristo `Ämene `Unuhi (translation): Let us pray Our Father in heaven Thank you for all the many blessings. Thank you for the gen...

Kamehameha Schools Distance Learning (KSDL) Owau

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