accessibility and moocs: an adaptive model for developing services for people with special needs

Accessibility and MOOCs: an adaptive model for developing services for people with special needs

Francisco IniestoSupervisors: Prof Patrick McAndrew, Prof Shailey Minocha & Dr Tim Coughlan

Leverhulme Doctoral Training Session24November 2015

Context: lll for people with special needs:

• Integrates education, work and personal life in a continuous process.

• People with special needs tend to choose distance education universities (eLearning) for their studies.

Context: ICT + Disabilities:

• ICT offers people with disabilities with possibilities: to improve their wellbeing and their inclusion in the labour market.

• Digital skills reduce unemployment rate in people with special needs.

• High percentage consider that the incorporation of ICT into the workplace has increased their work possibilities.

Context: Accessible MOOC Learning:

Benefits such as:

• Openness

• Low cost

• Ubiquity (Time, place and pace)

• Acquiring knowledge

• Social learning: Connectivism

• Achieving new competences

• Develop professionally

(Fisseler & Bühler, 2007; Díaz & Bonjoch, 2007; Vila et al, 2007; Kop & Bouchard, 2011; Downes, 2013; Siemens, 2013, Morrison, 2013; Haggard, 2013; Waard et al 2014)

MODEL a personalized system for recommending MOOCs adapted to user needs:

• Help to find MOOCs that are more accessible regarding his/her disability.

• Accessibility Analysis of both of eLearning platforms and educational resources.

• Personalization: adaptation to each assistive technology.

• Rated list of recommended MOOCs to best fit accessibility requirements and learning preferences.

Literature Review

Accessibility Assessment:

(Sanchez-Gordon & Luján-Mora, 2013). Review of five Coursera courses. Authors found Web accessibility problems in Coursera platform and the contents of the five courses, limiting access to elderly students.

(Najd et al, 2014). Evaluation of 10 Coursera courses on different topics (technology, design, humanities, physics, etc. according to WCAG 2.0 is aimed to blind or partially sighted people, none of the courses reaches the level A.

(Bohnsack & Puh, 2014). Evaluation of the accessibility of the five MOOC platforms more popular in the United States (Udacity, Coursera, edX) and in Germany (OpenCourseWorld and Iversity) for blind users. All platforms (except edX) had fatal accessibility problems in the initial stages of the interaction.

Accessibility Framework:

(Sanchez-Gordon & Luján-Mora, 2015). Proposal of a three-layer architecture to extend the platform Open edX to enhance course content accessibility for users with disabilities. The goal of the proposed extension is to enhance MOOCs’ accessibility by adapting course content to student needs, preferences, skills and situations.

(Rodríguez-Ascaso & Boticario, 2015) Accessibility and MOOC: Towards a holistic perspective. Authors offer a framework of services, standards, quality procedures and related issues that should be taken into account

Accessibility at EADTU, data from 5 different universities:

• Open University. UK

• UNED. Spain• Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Spain.• Universidade Aberta. Portugal.• Open Universiteit. The Netherlands.

Research in terms of people with disabilities and socialization

Accessibility at EADTU, data from 5 different universities:

• Open University. UK

• UNED. Spain• Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Spain.• Universidade Aberta. Portugal.• Open Universiteit. The Netherlands.

Research in terms of people with disabilities and socialization

• Availability of data and own reports.• Availability of data and own reports.• Government data• There is no data.• There is no data.

Accessibility at EADTU

Disabled Student Numbers Summary: Q4 2014-15 The Open University (The Disability Advisory Service)

Total of Active Students

Total Disabled Students

% Total DisabledTotal Disabled New

Students% Disabled Students

who are NewTotal Disabled

Continuing Students% Disabled Students who are Continuing

102.224 15.847 15,5% 2.905 18,3% 12.942 81,7%

25542966

34623830

4283 42244808

6294 6104

74697670

78477469

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

8000

9000

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

Evolution of enrolment of disabled students over period 2003 – 2015 at UNED (UNIDIS)

Report on Disabled Student Satisfaction (2013/14):

For Internal Use Only

Accessibility and policies at OU

Report from the "Accessibility and OERs (SCORE ):

• The responsibility for the provision of accessible OERs should not solely reside with resource creators

• There are a number of relatively simple strategies that could greatly enhance the accessibility of OERs,

• Provision of transcript for any audio/video material and ensuring that the resource is an easily customisable format

• There is a need to provide OER-related accessibility resources

• There is a need to address accessibility features of platforms where OERs are deposited

Open Media Unit 2014:

Number of disabled visitors to the platforms per year:

• OpenLearn (23%)

• iTunes U (18 %)

• YouTube U (14%)

(Gruszczynska, 2012)

Securing Greater Accessibility (SeGA):

• Accessibility Guidelines• VLE and Media Player Accessibility and Usability tests

Accessibility and policies at OU

Adapting online learning resources for all: planning for professionalism in accessibility (EU4ALL):

Implications of adopting the framework in the following areas:

• legacy curricula: the need to accurately describe and manage adaptation

• availability of accessible content: validation against standards such as WCAG 2 and providing alternatives as necessary

• course development and lesson design: appropriate representation and recording of decision points

• the need to ensure users have adequate training and IT skills.

• the culture change required to promote proactive consideration of accessibility

Imparting digital skills to people aged 55 years and over in the UK:

The group of 55 years of age and over is normally not recognised as being significant for the workforce and the economy.

If UK could boost its employment rate for workers aged 55--‐64 then it would boost Britain’s GDP by 5.4% or £100 billion.

Recommendations:

• MOOC on “Designing individual MOOCs and MOOC platforms for older and disabled students”

• A MOOC on developing social media strategy for digital professionals

• OpenLearn: Introducing Ageing, Success in the workplace, Using Voluntary work to get ahead in the job market(McAndrew et al, 2012; Minocha et al 2015)

Global or heuristic vision:

MOOC accessibility vector of characteristics.

Evaluation through automatic accessibility tools :

WCAG Accessibility Validation

Disability Simulators

User Experience (UX)

Testing Tools

Educational content evaluation

Text based: PDF, Word,…

Multimedia, Video lessons.

The MOOC platform

The educational content.

Are MOOCs accessible enough?

(Iniesto & Rodrigo, 2014)

Holistic approach evaluation

Past Case Studies

COLMENIA: Weprendo + UnX:"Emprendimiento y Desarrollo de Aplicaciones de Realidad Aumentada“. UNED.

UNED COMA"España+Francia+Cerca I". UNED.

Miriada X:"Estrategias de Marketing Online. CommunityManager". University of Cantabria.

UAb iMOOC“As alterações climáticas - or contexto das experiências de vida”. Universidade Aberta


Past Case Studies





All platforms obtain average results 5 – 6 /10 -> place for improvement. None of the platforms achieve reasonable values (higher than 60%).

For the educational content -> no standards (either platforms or accessible educational content). -> accessibility guidelines.

Lack of accessibility of audiovisual resources exist for all the platforms.

(Iniesto et al, 2014; Iniesto & Rodrigo 2014)


Past Case Studies





Present Case Studies

FutureLearn:• Introduction to cyber security. The Open University.• What is character? Virtue ethics in education. University of

Birmingham.• How to succed at: witting applications. The University of Sheffield. Coursera:• What a Plant Knows (and other things you didn’t know about

plants). Tel Aviv University• Cryptography I. Stanford• Machine Learning Foundations: A Case Study Approach. University

of Washington.edX• Mobile Computing in App Inventor: CS Principles. TrinityX (Trinity

College)• Introduction to Computational Thinking and Data Science. MITx

(MIT)• Circular Economy: An Introduction. DelftX (TuDelft)Udacity• Health Informatics in the Cloud. Georgia Tech• Google Play Services: Location & Context. Google• Data Analysis with R. Visually Analyze and Summarize Data Sets.

Facebook.

Past Case Studies


WCAG Accessibility Validation: eXaminator

Disability Simulators: aDesigner


Testing Tools: Sortsite

Educational content evaluation: Manually


Past Case Studies



Disability Simulators: aDesigner



Educational content evaluation: Manually


Present Case Studies



Mobile Checker: TAW

Disability Simulators: aDesigner + Virtual Users



Educational content evaluation: Manually + PDF Accessibility Checker

Do we have a real feedback in terms of accessibility from the MOOCs stakeholders?

MOOC providers:

• How each provider works in terms of accessibility?

Students:

• Have feedback from users of the courses

Coursetalk. (https://www.coursetalk.com/)

• Can we get information about accessibility there? => NO

• Coursetalk. Develop an accessibility Coursetalk.

Next steps

•Fisseler, B., Bühler, C.: Accessible e-learning and educational technology – extending learning opportunities for people with disabilities. In: Proceedings of ICL, 2007, hal-00257138, pp. 26–28. Archives Ouvertes ,2007

• Díaz, M. P., & Bonjoch, M. R. ¿ Y después del trabajo, qué?: más allá de la integración laboral de las personas con discapacidad. Revista de Educación, (342), 329-348 ,2007.

•Vila, M.; Pallisera, M. & Fullan J. Work integration of people with disabilities in the regular labour market: What can we do to improve these processes. Journal of Intellectual & Developmental Disability, Volume 32, Issue 1:10-18, 2007.

•Kop R. , & Bouchard P., “The role of adult educators in the age of social media”. Digital education: Opportunities for social collaboration, 61-80, 2011.

•Downes S., “What the „x‟ in „xMOOC‟ stands for?” https://plus.google.com/109526159908242471749/posts/LEwaKxL2MaM, 2013.

•Siemens G., “MOOCs are really a platform”. http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2012/07/25/moocs-are-really-aplatform, 2013.

•Morrison D., “The Ultimate Student Guide to xMOOCs and cMOOCs”. http://moocnewsandreviews.com/ultimate-guide-to-xmoocs-andcmoocso , 2013

•Haggard D. “Massive open online courses and online distance learning: review”. GOV.UK Research and analysis. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/massive-open-online-coursesand-online-distance-learning-review, 2013

•De Waard I., Gallagher M.S., Zelezny-Green R., Czerniewicz L., Downes S., Kukulska-Hulme A., Willems J.: Challenges for conceptualising MOOC for vulnerable learner groups. eMOOC2014 MOOC stakeholder summit, pp. 33-41. Lausanne, Switzerland. P.A.U. Education, S.L. U. Cress, C. Delgado-Kloos (2014).

•Najd A. Al-Mouh, Atheer S. Al-Khalifa, and Hend S. Al-Khalifa. A First Look into MOOCs Accessibility. The Case of Coursera K. Miesenberger et al. (Eds.): ICCHP 2014, Part I, LNCS 8547, pp. 145–152. Springer International Publishing Switzerland, 2014

•Bohnsack, M., & Puhl, S. (2014). Accessibility of MOOCs. In Computers Helping People with Special Needs (pp. 141-144). Springer International Publishing.

•Rodríguez-Ascaso, A. y Boticario, J. G. Accesibilidad y MOOC: Hacia una perspectiva integral. RIED. Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia, 18 (2), 61-85. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5944/ried.18.2.13670, 2015

•Sandra Sanchez-Gordon S., Sergio Luján-Mora Adaptive Content Presentation Extension for Open edX. Enhancing MOOCs Accessibility for Users with Disabilities. ACHI 2015 : The Eighth International Conference on Advances in Computer-Human Interactions. IARIA, 2015. ISBN: 978-1-61208-382-7, 2015.

•Gruszczynska, A (2012). Report from the "Accessibility and OERs [Open Educational Resources]" survey

•McAndrew, Patrick; Farrow, Robert and Cooper, Martyn (2012). Adapting online learning resources for all: planning for professionalism in accessibility. Research in Learning Technology, 20(4), pp. 345–361.

•Minocha, Shailey; McNulty, Catherine and Evans, Shirley (2015). Imparting digital skills to people aged 55 years and over in the UK. The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK.

•Iniesto, F., Rodrigo, C., Moreira Teixeira, A. Accessibility analysis in MOOC platforms. A case study: UNED COMA and UAb iMOOC. Libro de Actas del V Congreso Internacional sobre Calidad y Accesibilidad de la Formación Virtual CAFVIR, Antigua, Guatemala, 2014

•Iniesto, F.; Rodrigo, C., "Accessibility assessment of MOOC platforms in Spanish: UNED COMA, COLMENIA and Miriada X," Computers in Education (SIIE), 2014 International Symposiumon, vol., no., pp.169,172, 12-14 doi: 10.1109/SIIE.2014.7017724, 2014

•Iniesto, F., Rodrigo, C. Pautas para la evaluación de la accesibilidad en las plataformas MOOC. Libro de Actas del VI Congreso Internacional ATICA 2014 ISBN edición impresa: 978-84-16133-42-0 Eds. L. Bengochea Martínez, J. M. Gutiérrez Martínez, A. García Cabot, E.García López. p. 57 – 64, Universidad de Alcalá, España, 2014.

References

http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2012/07/25/moocs-are-really-aplatform

http://moocnewsandreviews.com/ultimate-guide-to-xmoocs-andcmoocso

Accessibility and MOOCs: an adaptive model for developing services for people with special needs

Francisco IniestoSupervisors: Prof Patrick McAndrew, Prof Shailey Minocha & Dr Tim Coughlan

Leverhulme Doctoral Training Session24November 2015