Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA) – Page 8

Disturbing directions; failure to recognise disability diversity

Sue Watling / October 11, 2013January 18, 2014 / digital divide, digital exclusion, digital inclusion, digital literacies, social impact of the Internet, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

The Oxford Internet Institute world usage map shows the dominance of google. We’d all be shocked to see our online profiles. Google makes Orwell’s Big Brother look simplistic. Like digital exclusion, no one talks enough about data protection and it’s probably too late. The damage is done. The Oxford Internet Institute’s Cultures of the Internet report suggests more than half of British people use the Internet ‘without enthusiasm’. They go online because they have to rather than choose to, reporting problems with privacy, frustration and time wastage with a decrease in the usage of social networking sites.

A government with Digital First policy and practice should take notice. Multiple public and private agendas drive us online yet an Office of National Statistics (ONS) report shows over 7 million people have no internet and 16 million lack the skills and confidence for effective use. Digital exclusion has many levels from disconnection to disinterest. The primary issue with exclusion is it’s inherently invisible. Exclusion from digital platforms for discussion and debate makes you voiceless. Powerless. The silence is increasing. Research data is consistent. The ONS say of the 7.1 million people offline, the elderly and disabled are least likely to be connected with 3.7 million adults with a disability having no internet access. Barriers to access for users of assistive technology remain highest of all. Yet society has the technology. The latest SCOPE report Enabling Technology shows what is possible, but government enthusiasm and allocation of resources to make it happen are invisible too. Google domination is not complete but for all the wrong reasons.

The Cultures of the Internet press release contains the worrying suggestion digital exclusion is self imposed. ‘In the past, academics studying the internet tended to focus on the digital divide, examining why certain people did not go online: whether it was to do with choice or lack of access. This study shows that a small percentage of the population (18%) still have not used the internet and it suggests that most non-users have made the choice that it is not for them.’

Within the report (page 22) this disturbing direction is partially countered with the statement ‘While disabilities…are a continuing source of digital exclusion, over half (51%) of people with a disability use the Internet. This is a rise of 11 percentage points from 2011 (from 40% to 51%). Unfortunately, 51% is still considerably less than the 84% of non-disabled respondents who use the Internet, leaving a major digital divide for the disabled.’ [my emphasis]

There are mixed messages here which fail to recognise the diversity of the category ‘disabled’. They fail to pull out the specific issues of inaccessible internet design which cannot be interpreted by a screen reader or navigated by a non-mouse user. The category ‘disability’ lumps sensory, physical and cognitive impairment together with no acknowledgement of the range of different access issues individuals face through costs and learning curves of assistive technologies as well as poor online practice which discriminates against anyone operating outside a narrow range of access criteria i.e. the ME Model. Mouse. Eyes.

Cultures of the Internet makes interesting reading. We should take time to pay attention to the consequences of the shift to online ways of working. It isn’t being paranoid to highlight the social effects of a digital society, most of all the varying patterns of exclusion and engagement. If the higher education curriculum included critical reflection on internet implications rather than unquestioningly accepting changing digital cultures, it would be a start. If ‘digital’ graduate attributes were an expectation this would increase awareness of the social consequences of digital exclusion. Without this awareness attitudes which suggest it’s a life style choice rather than an act of discrimination will continue to be replicated and reinforced.

TELEDA is coming…

Sue Watling / October 9, 2013January 18, 2014 / Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age (TELEDA) is coming. The virtual doors open 25 October for 9 days of online induction. Learning Block One commences 1 November. TELEDA is a 24 week M level course (30 CATS) designed to give participants experience of being a virtual student as well as examine issues raised by digital education, in particular open educational resources and inclusive practice. There is emphasis on critical reflection through a choice of digital diary formats with evidence of reflection required for the assessed eportfolio.

One course isn’t enough to cover all aspects of teaching and learning in a digital age and a second 30 credit module is under discussion. Together these will constitute a postgraduate certificate in digital education or teaching and learning online.

TELEDA is as much about the impact of the internet on education as about how people learn in virtual environments. Most of the resources are freely available. While the new cohort are completing application forms and getting head of school/department approvals, participants have been given links to a short video clip and a paper which cover one of the themes running through the 24 weeks; digital literacies.

Digital Natives Digital Immigrants by Mark Prensky was written over a decade ago but the dichotomy has stuck in public consciousness and the idea of young people being inherently digital – while older people are getting left behind – remains influential. While some people find the language of the paper contentious, and Presnky himself has revisited the original ideas, the issues around the appropriateness of educational systems – designed in a pre-internet age – offer valid discussion points. http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf

The TELEDA pilot was a step in the dark for everyone but if you don’t try something new you don’t know what might come out of it. As more programmes consider blended and distance delivery, I remain the confident the opportunity to be an online student is the best mode of discovery for resources and activities which work – or don’t work – in virtual environments. What is increasingly clear is the original rhetoric of elearning has not lived up to its promise. Learning online is not a case of doing more for less. Retention requires resources. Of the human kind as much as a technological infrastructure. There is currently renewed interest in research into digital education; research based on the practical as well as the theoretical. We live in interesting times where virtual learning is being revisited and reassessed. I’m proud and excited to be part of the process.

Still not fluent with the ontological (and others) but hopefully gaining ground

Sue Watling / October 4, 2013 / PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

The phd is taking shape. The biggest challenge is time. Progress is slow because of the vastness of the project versus scarcity of hours. Each week I give up sleep and half my weekend. At the CERD Awayday 60 hour weeks were reported and accepted as normal. It shouldn’t be but it is. You can’t support, develop, meet, teach and commute without overspill. thankfully, doing a PhD is beneficial. I’m good at positive thinking and I love words but suspect if there were more time to immerse myself in texts I’d progress faster.

I’m still not fluent with matters ontological and epistemological. I don’t feel comfortable with the jargon. What I feel/believe to be true (ontology?) and my understanding of the nature of knowledge (epistemology?) is developing but I haven’t read enough. I don’t know what is enough. There’s been some progress though. I’ve positioned myself in the post-modern with regard to O and E. From this side, the dark side for the positivists, meaning is both contextual and contested. The inside interests me. Personhood is both external and internal facing. Grant me the serenity to know the difference between what I can and can’t change – and all that. I value experiential learning as the ground for scaffolding knowledge construction and see the process of critical reflection is the catalyst. Adopting an essentialist objectivist standpoint wouldn’t work for me.

One valuable aspects of doctoral research is the opportunity to position yourself; locate your ‘being-in-the-world’. It’s a bit like DIY psychoanalysis. Or the messages on the Brayford Pool Bridge. Where have you been. Where are you going. The answers are more complex than you might think. I’m interested in the digital identity. How online text – anything from a tweet to a tome – is interpreted by the reader. Barthes message in The Author is Dead, reinvented as reader-reception theory by Stuart Hall, offer useful starting points for considering the ‘presentation of self’ online. Virtual reality is the ultimate replication of the real; the simulation. The internet epitomises the postmodern condition.

Regarding ‘being’ I’m still not entirely sure where I am. Which could be expected from someone dabbling in postmodernism. Identity contains multiple contradictions. Is open ended and unfinished. We’re all products of our background and location with little certainty about what lies ahead. Berger and Luckman write about social reality hanging on a thread which can be cut. Most people have experience of thread cutting. I think this is what open ended-ness refers to. We can’t write the future. Or rewrite the past. We are what we are. Postmodernist theory is an attempt to capture the late 20th century human in an age of the machine and information overload.

Mike says I need to look at the slippage from modern to postmodern. Take care not to characterise them as all of one and none of the other. This is useful advice. Marshall Berman in All That Is Solid Melts Into Air insists the world remains a modern one; ‘We might even say that to be fully modern is be anti-modern’ (1981: 14). Anti-modern or post-modern, I need take ownership of my social reality.

Terrible tangents or interesting times ahead?

Sue Watling / September 29, 2013 / PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

What’s an ammonite got to do with it? I’m thinking about my pilot phd interviews and wondering about the process. As a research activity, my PhD offers the chance to explore the interview in more depth. I’m adopting a postmodern standpoint which challenges traditional ways of working. Opens up alternative possibilities. Nothing is fixed in postmodernism. I need to think spirals not squares. I don’t do numbers very well but I know the ammonite is formed in a Fibonacci spiral. As the developer of Walking the Labyrinth circular thinking suits me. My mind is an unfinished map full of links and connections. If I’m researching my practice in teaching online, maybe I should be researching the practice of interviews online too.

The word interview comes from early 16th century French entrevue, from s’entrevoir ‘see each other’, from voir ‘to see’, on the pattern of vue ‘a view’ http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/interview Their face to face nature is implicit but this is the digital age as well as a postmodernetic one. What’s interesting is I’ve been here before.

In theory, a truly postmodernist researcher would probably talk themselves out of existence but I find the mental gymnastics useful. The bricolage of postmodern ideas matches the eclectic nature of my thinking. Linkages keep appearing. In the way Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age brings together my work on open education and digital inclusion so the phd is bringing together a decade of teaching ICT in adult and community education with widening participation and my first Masters degree. In 1999 I used the internet – via a dial-up modem, dot matrix printer and 5 and quarter inch floppy disk – to collect first person narratives for my MA dissertation. I didn’t know anyone else doing this at the time. It generated in depth responses from people across the world. It also created ready made transcripts in digital format ideal for analysis; when studying part-time the pragmatics become significant.

I want to get personal. I’m interested in attitudes to technology for education. Like it or not, virtual learning is the future and I want to find out how to do it better. Explore the relationships between individuals and their machines. It may have more influence on engagement than has previously been acknowledged. Online interviews are flexible in terms of time and distance and the process would be more manageable for me as the researcher. The key question – and I don’t yet have the answer – is how participation through technology might compare with participation away from it? Would an email interview dilute or enhance responses?

It’s no secret how my own relationship with technology is fractious. I’m convinced the network conspires against me. My computer behaves inexplicably. I log on and trigger a fault switch. Irrational but true.

computer error message

Yet I value the capacity of digital education to create meaningful educational endeavour. Virtual reality has limitations but so does face to face. How effective is a 50 minute lecture? A seminar group where no one’s done the reading? Group work with variable degrees of interest? I meet with Mike most weeks for 30 minutes. I test my ideas. Say where I am and how I’ve got there. Most of the time we don’t agree but it doesn’t matter so long as I can theoretically ground myself. We swap readings. My head spins. If I could lie down afterwards in a darkened room I would. You don’t get that sort of experience online – but you get a different one – equally valid – just different.

When it comes to postmodern research method, writers like Scheurich, Stronach and MacLure have useful things to say but they predate the internet. Classic action research texts from McNiff, Whitehead, Reason and Bradbury are great for method but have a focus on face to face. Where newer editions of these and of qualitative research manuals address the digital there is less about the postmodern. I haven’t yet found the published research into the links between postmodern theory and contemporary online educational and research practice. Which intrigues me. I’m either going off on a terrible tangent or have interesting times ahead 🙂

MOOC praxis; do it different, make it new, ‘Call me Al’

Sue Watling / September 24, 2013January 18, 2014 / PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

image source http://blog.ezinearticles.com/2013/03/new-ezinearticles-wallpapers-to-freshen-up-your-background.html

Make it New was a Modernist slogan, in particular for Ezra Pound. Early 20^th century poets challenged the loose flowing vocabularies of Tennyson and Longfellow, preferring directness, a minimum of words for maximum effect. Modernist poetry is epitomised in Pound’s Station of the Metro and William Carlos Williams’ Red Wheebarrow. There’s a lot to learn from poets who are constantly making it new and doing things differently.

For a few months MOOC made it new. The MOOC front is quiet now. When the BBC News reported last week’s launch of the UK consortium FutureLearn the hype and fanfare were missing. Yet MOOC are valuable learning tools for higher education. All staff interested in blended or distance learning should do a MOOC.

For myself, poetry and MOOC connect through Modern and Contemporary American Poetry; a Coursera MOOC. It began its second run a few weeks ago. ModPo was my first encounter with MOOCing. I revisted the ists – imagists, modernists, confessionalists. I’m hanging around again, seeing what’s changed. Similar resources. The assessments seem more structured – peer review and comprehension-type multiple choice which require engagement with the content. ModPo uses a range of different materials; text, image, video, audio, discussion and live webcasts (available afterwards through You Tube) and is run by Al ‘You can call me Al’ 🙂 Filreis (He really does say this!)

The University of Lincoln Academic Workload Model 2014/15 (draft) contains six categories of academic activity. Under Formal Scheduled Teaching Duties (FSTD), the eighth category is ‘scheduled time spent on distance learning supervision and guidance’. None of the seven categories under Teaching Related Duties (TRD) mention online, nor does the word appear anywhere else in the documentation. This suggests the reality of online learning in terms of preparation and practice has not yet filtered through to process at Lincoln. I’m searching for data comparing workloads between face to face and online teaching. One paper suggests online instructors spend three times more time than face-to-face instructors evaluating student work. but this doesn’t take into account preparation, facilitation, admin and performance tracking (got to love the language of a VLE!) I wonder if the apparent scarcity of literature reflects the lack or the nature of online learning. Either way, MOOC show possibilities. With the current shift toward blended and distance learning they have much to teach us – for free – about how to construct and facilitate virtual learning opportunities. MOOC praxis challenges what it means to learn; turning tradition up side down.

Digital Education is not about replicating what is already being done but rethinking and reinventing how we might teach and learn in the future. ‘The challenge is to systematically explore the integration of pedagogical ideas and new communications technology that will advance the evolution of higher education as opposed to reinforcing existing practices.’ (Garrison et al., 2010, p. 31)

As the gap between the rhetoric and the practice of digital education widens, questions are being asked about the failure of virtual learning to fulfil its promise*. In this space, MOOCs offer valuable opportunities to engage with alternatives. To do it differently. Make it new. Call on Al…

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Garrison, D. R., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Fung, T. S. (2010). Exploring causal relationships among teaching,cognitive and social presence: Student perceptions of the community of inquiry framework. The Internet and Higher Education, 13(1-2), 31-36.

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* Feenberg, A and Freisen, N. (eds) (2012) (Re)Inventing the Internet: Critical Case Studies. Rotterdan: Sense Publishers

Feenberg, A. (2011) Agency and Citizenship in a Technological Society. Lecture to the Course on Digital Citizenship, IT University of Copenhagen, 2011. http://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/copen5-1.pdf

Freisen, N. (2008) Critical Theory. Ideology, Critique and the Myths of E-Learning. Ubiquity vol 9 issue 22

Reeves, T. C., McKenny, S. and Herrington, J. (2010) Publishing and perishing: The critical importance of educational design research. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 2011, 27(1), 55-65

Saljo, R. (2009) Digital tools and challenges to institutional traditions of learning: technologies, social memory and the performative nature of learning. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, (2012) 26, 53-64

Interrogating TELEDA – for better or worse…

Sue Watling / September 2, 2013 / PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA), Uncategorized

This research should not be about ‘teaching educationalists to use technology’ but being critical about the role of the university as a site of knowledge production and negotiation. HE is accommodating new technologies but of necessity the process needs to be critiqued. (supervisor feedback earlier this year)

After a summer of discontent with theory, I’ve decided where my research is located; it will be pedagogically as much as critically informed.

The relationship between the university and learning technology is open to critique but my research remains within the discursive practices of ‘teaching educationalists to use technology’. Digital-first policies are increasing pressure to shift to blended and distance learning. There is an urgent need to find ways to adapt traditional lecture and seminar formats to online delivery. Not the passive transmission model of powerpoint and word repositories, but the building of genuinely experiential learning based on shared practice and collaborative group work. Time to argue about the politics of alternative technologies is running out. We need to make better pedagogical use of what we already have; to reinvent design and delivery which supports critical thinking and reflective practice while acknowledging internet access is changing what it means to know and to learn in a digital age (CIBER, Wolf, Saljo) Ecology as well as pedagogy is required.

I get nervous about calls for a radically different approach to education. While agreeing the need for curriculum resilience within fluid knowledge landscapes, I have less confidence in alternatives such as Edupunk’s contested DIY model as portrayed by Kamenetz Pathways and guidance might be more effective than freedom in an unfettered internet. Rather than move away from the university in Edufactory style, my research will investigate how to do different and better with what is already in place. Revolution is not the only response.

TELEDA was designed to be progressive. Resources include signposts towards critical pedagogy and social inclusion, learning activities are collaborative and communicative and technology is presented as potentially divisive. Participants are continually encouraged to consider inclusion. My approach is embedded in existing critiques of technology for learning. These include Feenberg’s call to analyse technologies as historically situated (1999) and restructuring the dynamics of technological design and development as social and political processes (2005) and Selwyn’s theorising of educational technology as a profoundly social, cultural and political concern (2010) Time again this summer I’ve returned to Foucault and distributed flows of power through discursive practice. I’ve discovered the places where Giroux has applied postmodern ideas to teaching and learning and where education represents the practice of freedom and a pedagogy of hope (Freire, hooks, Giroux). The work of Warshcauer, Seale, Selwyn and Facer, van Dijk and Seyeart on critical approaches to digital divides and exclusions continue to inspire me.

My PAR will interrogate TELEDA, for better or worse, It will focus on how virtual engagement for staff and students need not represent the automation of teaching but offer support for the higher level thought processes integral to a university education. Here I find Friesen’s critical approach to the myths of elearning and the work of Reeves and Harrington on research into learning design to be useful. The growing recognition of space between the rhetoric and the practice of elearning (Conole, Oliver, Feenberg, Reeves, Harrington etc etc) is supporting a rethinking of the translation of subject disciplines from the face to face to virtual design and delivery. Reeves et al suggest six possible theoretical bases for this research. I have chosen this one

‘Researchers with postmodern goals are focused on examining the assumptions underlying contemporary educational programmes and practices with the ultimate goal of revealing hidden agendas and empowering disenfranchised minorities. Although increasingly evident among researchers with multicultural, gender or political interested, research in the postmodern tradition is rare within the field of educational technology.’ (Reeves et al 2010: 60)

So here it is. For over 20 years I’ve worked with technology for education. I was there at the beginning – from pre internet to dial up, MOOs and MUDs to Second Life, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook. I’ve lived and breathed in the spaces between the rhetoric and reality of virtual learning. Those spaces are now being made public and while the critique is essential, so is the need to find new ways to move forward. I believe this research will combine all the essential elements. I’ve gathered the work of critical theorists who speak of social responsibility and inclusion and am ready to construct my PAR framework for establishing a foundation for truly inclusive virtual teaching and learning, one which may appear more pedagogical than political but which nevertheless enables the rethinking required to build progressive online higher education appropriate for a digital age.

see PhD page for full references

The E word as in E-learning – what does the E stand for?

Sue Watling / August 23, 2013 / digital divide, digital exclusion, PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA), Uncategorized

Electronic is the commonest answer. Which is misleading. It implies the two go together when they don’t; electronic has nothing to do with learning. elearning requires a new pedagogy. An inherent problem is the way existing educational theories have been moulded to fit. They won’t. They can’t. Not only does face to face practice not sit well within virtual environments, to create workable online educational experiences is to accept the reality of elearning engagement is the diametric opposite to how elearning has been presented.

Conventional rhetoric tells us elearning has the power to transform. The HEFCE ‘E’ could well include easy, efficient, effective, extended, economic – effortless? I made that last one up but the promotion of elearning as the answer to reducing costs and doing more for less implies a seamless transition from the traditional classroom to a virtual one. The anomaly – and the true reality – is elearning means increased costs and doing much much more – in terms of the design and delivery of learning activities as well as the technical, administrative and professional support systems which are all part of an effective elearning framework.

What would I call elearning?

Enigmatic? Exacting? Exigent?

The complexities of managing online learning are enormous, even Elephantine – as in the problem of the Elephant in the room. The resourcing the time, space, place and skillsets – all essential components. The real costs of elearning are so big no one dare address them. You could call it Expensive learning. Without a dedicated team containing a blend of technical and pedagogical understanding of digital literacies, digital scholarship and digital ways of working, elearning will continue to appeal to a narrow student base, retention will remain poor and the quality of online resources be an ongoing cause for concern.

As if this were not enough, elearning privileges those with means of access and the capability of using that access appropriately. If you are limited by an outdated browser, run an old operating system, live in an area with a poor connection speeds or depend on assistive technology, elearning will be problematic.

Out of all the possibilities the biggest e of all remains E for EXCLUSIVE.

Planning digital futures in teaching and learning

Sue Watling / August 8, 2013August 15, 2013 / Teacher Education, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA), Virtual Learning Environment

There are two sides to every story, sometimes three, four or more. Experience influences interpretation and a university should contain oppositional views. Negotiation is the name of the game and there is nothing like educational technology to polarise views. As the new academic year brings discussions around implementing a digital education strategy, I feel a growing sense of unease. The VLE is mostly a repository of attachments to module guides, lecture notes and powerpoint presentations; it has become an information conduit not a communication facilitator.

Adoption remains patchy. Early promises of transformation have not been fulfilled. Rather than blue sky thinking around what might be possible maybe we should begin with what we know. Using technology can take more time than it saves, it’s likely to break down, disconnect, not be there when needed, involve steep learning curves, operate through an ever diminishing set of access criteria and is ultimately a poor substitute for human face to face interaction.

I continue to support teaching and learning online. I believe it enhances distant and blended learning and 24/7 mobile access to relevant content and procedures can only be an advantage to busy people living busy lives. So why the distance between the users and non users, the early and late adopters? Rather than prioritise innovation, should we pay attention to resistance? Not everyone is comfortable interacting with a machine. One reason is time. Promises of efficiency are diluted by the reality. Managing teaching and learning online requires significant amounts of time to adapt content, facilitate collaboration and group work, moderate communication, and respond to students on individual basis by text or video. Technology is not always efficient. It breaks down. It confuses. Why cant I find anything on the portal?

In a recent editorial for Learning, Media and Technology, Neil Selwyn* asks how technologies which arrived on promises of a ‘freer and fairer education’ have had the opposite effect. What happened to ‘…pre-millennial expectations of the cyber-campus and seamlessly ‘blended’ learning?’ Where are instances of digital technology which are ‘…genuinely enabling and empowering for those that use them?’ Promises of transformation go on; mobile learning – flipped classrooms – more open educational resources and courses. The voice of the academics are seldom heard. Digital divides by their nature silence those who are late adopters or lag behind.

Unless we listen to staff who are teaching and supporting learning – rather than being driven by interests outside of the lecture theatre/seminar room – we’re not going to achieve bottom up sustainable change. I still believe in the affordances of virtual learning environments to widen participation and offer genuinely authentic learning experiences. I still believe ICT can disrupt and democratise – but the essential workloads need to be acknowledged and shared. I agree with Selwyn who suggests digital technology for university educators should be developed by the same university educators. Greater resources for courses and those who teach on them has to be worth revisiting as digital futures for teaching and learning are planned.

* Selwyn, N., 2013, Digital technologies in universities: Problems posing as solutions?, Learning, Media and Technology [P], vol 38, issue 1, Routledge, Abingdon Oxon United Kingdom, pp. 1-3 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17439884.2013.759965#.UgM0jdLqmSo

Contemplating Failure Part Three

Sue Watling / August 2, 2013August 15, 2013 / Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA), Virtual Learning Environment

As Blackboard faces upgrading and the procurement process grinds on, Getting Started offers its annual overview of the ways the VLE is used across the university. On a scale from good, less good to not at all. Getting Started has always had differential levels of participation. I believe the disparity has less to do with attitudes to transition and is more a reflection of the way Blackboard is used across individual practice. As a T&L Coordinator supporting the use of technology, the gaps suggest I’m not doing a very good job. My current downer on all things virtual continues. Students like their VLE but workshops and surveys suggest differential use between modules and courses is an increasing cause for concern. The question of minimum standards has been mooted although how this would be mandated or policed is less clear. I get despondent over exclusive practices, but there are bigger issues around initial engagement in the first place. Feenberg * may be right. The technology has failed. As Laurillard ** says we are on the brink of transformation – but have been there for some time.

Maybe if we took the technology away?

My MA in Open and Distance Learning with the OU was delivered online. Four of six modules used a variety of tools and assessment activities. I chose the last two from social science. Resources were delivered in traditional distance learning style; cardboard boxes full of cds and books. No online element – not even a discussion. Assignments were posted and returned hand marked. This was not long ago. I learned as much about the affordances of technology to enhance learning, and the power of online communities of shared practice to create new knowledge, by their absence as their presence.

Getting Started is a useful snapshot of VLE engagement. I call for inclusive practice but if Blackboard is not being used, or is a holding place for a collection of Word documents, conversation around TechDis Accessibility Essentials or the DDA/Equality Act is doomed. The gap between my conception of virtual learning and the reality of a VLE as a repository for Word and PowerPoint requires rethinking. Discussions around the Digital Education Strategy need to focus on the low end-user and non-user. Pushing up to blue skies will not address resistance.

Is resistance to Blackboard political or personal? Is it indicative of broader attitudes to internet enabled communication and information? You may as well ask if exclusive practice is deliberate or inadvertent? No one intentionally sets out to exclude. There is innovative and exciting use of Blackboard across the university but they remain in pockets. The problem with technology is the divide between those advocating use and those who are the users. The digital divide has less to do with access and more the way access is managed and the continual problem of content being presented in single formats based on assumptions the user can access it. I don’t have the answer in the present economic climate. All I know is in their relationship with technology, people will find their own level and stay there. It might not be effective or inclusive – but without increased human resource and ring fenced funding to support change – the current situation of good, less good or not at all is probably about as good as it gets.

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* Feenburg, A. (2011) Agency and Citizenship in a Technological Society http://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/copen5-1.pdf

** Laurillard, D. (2008) Digital technologies and their role in achieving our ambitions for education http://eprints.ioe.ac.uk/628/1/Laurillard2008Digital_technologies.pdf

Failure is not an Option! https://suewatling.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/2013/06/02/failure-is-not-an-option/

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Contemplating Failure Part Two

Sue Watling / August 1, 2013August 15, 2013 / digital inclusion, digital literacies, equality and diversity, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

Diversity is what makes the world go round. Or at least it should. Experiments of conformity must fail. Equality of opportunity is the fairest system; not being squeezed into narrow behaviour ranges or receiving privilege simply because you belong to a dominant group. One of the largest ever examples of discrimination is being created by the shift to digital practices and lifestyles. The design and delivery of online content increasingly privileges a narrow range of access criteria – the MEE Model – based on the assumption all users operate with a mouse, eyes and ears. This fails to reflect the diversity of ways people do use computers and access the internet but it is successfully excluding those who rely on assistive technology or non-standard methods.

Inclusive practice with digital content can directly challenge exclusive behaviours. The Web pioneers campaigned for accessibility “…if we succeed making web accessibility the norm rather than the exception, this will benefit not only the disability community but the entire population.” (Dardailler, 1997*)

I’ve been reflecting on increasingly exclusive web design and contemplating the failure of guidance from the WAI and Equality legislation; asking the question what lies at the root of exclusive digital practice? I’m coming to the conclusion its more to do with psychology than technology. We look for the quickest option, the easiest route, familiar ways of working. But as the social shift to digital ICT continues, so does the need to raise awareness of what digital exclusion looks like.

The new e-learning package Bribery Act and Anti Money Laundering on the HR Portal elearning page https://portal.lincoln.ac.uk/C11/C0/Online%20Training/default.aspx is an example of how commercial companies appear to be unaware of the principles of inclusive digital practice. Here are some examples.

The narration starts with no warning. There are no user controls to stop, pause, restart, move backwards or forwards. The narration is only on a few slides, each time starting unexpectedly. This sequential use of audio can’t be an alternative format so it’s not clear why it’s included. The audio can be toggled on or off in the Accessibility controls but you need to open the menu to find this. The volume can also be controlled here but the option is mouse operated (no sliding scale – one click for every number between 1 and 100). There is no ‘save settings’ button. The only way out of the Accessibility menu is to close the window. Close equates Exit more than Save.

The standard keyboard command Ctrl and + to increase magnification doesn’t work; it does reveal the zoom icon in the top right which runs up to 500x in digits but makes no difference to appearance. To customise appearance to preference is through line spacing and text size in the Accessibility panel. This was not successful. Images run over text

Buttons don’t resize.

Colour contrasts don’t all adapt to my choices as well as text frames not resizing.

Text boxes merge.

The background colour can be changed but this lost the content on certain slides offering a green screen.

bribery exp 1

There might be a clue on slide 28 which contained images and suggests the background layer may be positioned on top of the graphic layer – only a guess but something somewhere is not right.

The keyboard controls appear to be only for moving through the bottom bar buttons; not offering alternative navigation which should be standard practice.

There are no alternative ways to navigate through the slides nor click on text which is bold or part of an image and links to additional information

accessibility features

Tab and Shift highlight essential structures but moving from slide to slide in this way is slow and laborious. Shift also brings up the Contents menu which Esc doesn’t close – only a mouse click will do. These keyboard alternatives are unrealistic for navigation. There is no information about how to access the content without a mouse.

The accessibility window has an image of a wheelchair. I wonder why?

This image associates accessibility of digital content with disability and disability only with wheelchair users; neither fair nor accurate assumptions and going against the principle of inclusive practice which is achieving improved assess for all. It’s like saying transcripts are only for people with hearing difficulties – which ignores those with no speakers or headphones or who simply prefer text to audio.

There are other design issues which are questionable. External links take you into a new window with no warning and closing the window returns you to the elearning menu page – rather than the last slide.

Where a name is given as a source of further information, the name is hyperlinked to Outlook which assumes the user has Outlook installed; I don’t have Outlook on my home laptop – so without any details such as an email address or phone number there is no way of contacting the person.

The use of transitions to load pictures is reminiscent of death by PowerPoint. Slide 7 has an spelling mistake in the answer window. This suggests not only was the resource not piloted for alternative usage outside the dominant MEE model (Mouse, Eyes and Ears) it also hasn’t been proofed for errors.

I’m not responsible for this resource but it’s indicative of how inclusive practice with digital data is a dying art.

I wonder if anyone else caring about equality of digital opportunities is also contemplating failure.