Jennison Asuncion

We asked our students with disabilities participants to list the benefits that they derived from using eLearning. The top five, for all students were:

* Availability of online course notes
* Help in learning and academic success
* Help in understanding course lecture content
* Ability to work at own an individual pace
* Ability to work or learn from home

What will be interesting will be to see if there are any differences once we analyze participants based on specific disability/impairment.

Jennison

Folks,

As we move into week 2 of this very active seminar, I just thought I would welcome anyone who has recently joined us. Catherine and I have been reading with great interest all of the various posts in all of the threads. We are pleased to have so many folks willing and interested in sharing and exchanging information! We’re learning from all of you, and we hope that you are all benefiting from the various discussions.

If you have recently joined or haven’t done so already, please tell us a bit about yourself and your specific interests in eLearning and accessibility under the “getting things started” thread. You can also learn more about the research we carried out by browsing through:
“research background and approach”
“Definitions” and
“most/least accessible forms of eLearning based on our student participants”.

Also, I note that folks are suggesting different links of interest that are associated with issues of eLearning and accessibility. Claude, thanks for taking the initiative and placing them in one spot. Those of you who have links of interest still to share, please post them to the “your favorite articles, resources and tools” thread.

As we continue to share more preliminary results of our study, we encourage everyone to keep the conversations going, starting new threads as appropriate.

Jennison

Folks,

As we move into week 2 of this very active seminar, I just thought I would welcome anyone who has recently joined us. Catherine and I have been reading with great interest all of the various posts in all of the threads. We are pleased to have so many folks willing and interested in sharing and exchanging information! We’re learning from all of you, and we hope that you are all benefiting from the various discussions.

If you have recently joined or haven’t done so already, please tell us a bit about yourself and your specific interests in eLearning and accessibility under the “getting things started” thread. You can also learn more about the research we carried out by browsing through:
“research background and approach”
“Definitions” and
“most/least accessible forms of eLearning based on our student participants”.

Also, I note that folks are suggesting different links of interest that are associated with issues of eLearning and accessibility. Claude, thanks for taking the initiative and placing them in one spot. Those of you who have links of interest still to share, please post them to the “your favorite articles, resources and tools” thread.

As we continue to share more preliminary results of our study, we encourage everyone to keep the conversations going, starting new threads as appropriate.

Jennison

In some of the discussions on accessibility and eLearning for students with disabilities we have had so far, one issue that has come up is training and experience on the part of the students, especially on the use of some of the more sophisticated adaptive software and hardware, along with mainstream applications.

Consider the following two scenarios.

1.  A PowerPoint presentation has been created to be completely accessible; however, the student does not know the commands in their adaptive software or hardware to access it. Compound this with the student possibly having little to no training in the basic functionality of PowerPoint.

2. A web-based piece of eLearning has been developed to be fully accessible. Again here, picture the student who  does not know how to use the browser and/or the adaptive hardware or software.

Have any folks here encountered this type of situation where it was uncovered that the problem was actually either a lack of necessary training or experience on the part of the end-user and not necessarily an issue of something being inaccessible?

How are learners with disabilities being trained in the use of adaptive software and hardware where you are?

I raise this, because I have seen a couple of cases where students have declared something as not being accessible. However the issue ended up being that they just did not know how to use their adaptive technology in combination with the application.

Jennison

In some of the discussions on accessibility and eLearning for students with disabilities we have had so far, one issue that has come up is training and experience on the part of the students, especially on the use of some of the more sophisticated adaptive software and hardware, along with mainstream applications.

Consider the following two scenarios.

1.  A PowerPoint presentation has been created to be completely accessible; however, the student does not know the commands in their adaptive software or hardware to access it. Compound this with the student possibly having little to no training in the basic functionality of PowerPoint.

2. A web-based piece of eLearning has been developed to be fully accessible. Again here, picture the student who  does not know how to use the browser and/or the adaptive hardware or software.

Have any folks here encountered this type of situation where it was uncovered that the problem was actually either a lack of necessary training or experience on the part of the end-user and not necessarily an issue of something being inaccessible?

How are learners with disabilities being trained in the use of adaptive software and hardware where you are?

I raise this, because I have seen a couple of cases where students have declared something as not being accessible. However the issue ended up being that they just did not know how to use their adaptive technology in combination with the application.

Jennison