Catherine Fichten

As Jennison indicated in the "research background and approach" thread, our research  involved evaluating the perspectives of students, disability service providers, eLearning specialists, and faculty.

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Because I am faculty, I think the role of professors in ensuring accessibility of eLearning is pivotal. But… most of us know little about making exciting web sites. Or about how to make our materials accessible. So we need folks like many of you to give us a hand.  

While many of us see ourselves first and foremost as teachers, we  do not see ourselves as "course designers" or "instructional designers." Perhaps this is why PowerPoint is, by far, one of the most popular forms of eLearning in colleges and universites. Many of us play with PowerPoint - and manage to make either wonderfully accessible or truly inaccessible presentations! So we need help - to teach us, AT OUR LEVEL and WHEN we need help, to make teaching materials more accessible. Even simple things like alt tags on images and figures are beyond most of us. Nobody told us there is a need - or that it is possible to do this! We also need help from the college to do sophisticated things like captioning video clips and online lectures, providing described videos, and the like.

Are these things your faculty can do? If so, how did they learn? What sort of support does your school/institution provide to assist faculty make eLearning accessible? What can be done to increase awareness, affect institutional culture, and ensure universal instructional practice?

As Jennison indicated in the "research background and approach" thread, our research  involved evaluating the perspectives of students, disability service providers, eLearning specialists, and faculty.

<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Because I am faculty, I think the role of professors in ensuring accessibility of eLearning is pivotal. But… most of us know little about making exciting web sites. Or about how to make our materials accessible. So we need folks like many of you to give us a hand.  

While many of us see ourselves first and foremost as teachers, we  do not see ourselves as "course designers" or "instructional designers." Perhaps this is why PowerPoint is, by far, one of the most popular forms of eLearning in colleges and universites. Many of us play with PowerPoint - and manage to make either wonderfully accessible or truly inaccessible presentations! So we need help - to teach us, AT OUR LEVEL and WHEN we need help, to make teaching materials more accessible. Even simple things like alt tags on images and figures are beyond most of us. Nobody told us there is a need - or that it is possible to do this! We also need help from the college to do sophisticated things like captioning video clips and online lectures, providing described videos, and the like.

Are these things your faculty can do? If so, how did they learn? What sort of support does your school/institution provide to assist faculty make eLearning accessible? What can be done to increase awareness, affect institutional culture, and ensure universal instructional practice?

Hello from Montreal! As this is my first post, I would like to join Jennison in welcoming you to our seminar. Based on the introductions so far, we have a great variety of experience and insight among us.

Before discussing the research itself, we thought it important to provide the working definitions used in our three-year investigation. This way, as we discuss results, you will have an appreciation of where we are coming from. These definitions were also provided to research participants.

We defined eLearning as the range of information and communication technologies that professors use when teaching their courses in the classroom, online, or a combination of both. Examples include PowerPoint used in the classroom, online tests, CD-ROMs, and course management systems (e.g., WebCT).

We defined accessibility as the ability of learners, regardless of their disability, to easily and independently use eLearning. For some, this may include the use of adaptive hardware (e.g., an adapted mouse) or adaptive software (e.g., software that reads what is on the screen).

Catherine