Digital Accessibility

Making an online course accessible…

Louisa: I’ve been struggling to make my materials Smiley-face compliance I like it. I even took that asynchronous course, “How to Make Your Course Look Like It Cares.” Useful.

Gavin: Really? I must’ve missed that announcement. Probably lost under another reminder about “cross-platform inclusivity in tertiary ecosystems.”

Louisa: New accreditation review. The committee is serious about accessibility, clear design, and diversity. Digital kindness, I guess.

Gavin: Digital kindness? My course pages are more like a cluttered attic.

Louisa: That’s why they want this done. It’s like campus buildings: ramps, wider doors, automatic doors. If physical spaces are accessible, online spaces should be too.

Gavin: Fair point. My old slides aren’t exactly user-friendly.

Louisa: The training helps. Takes a bit of time to get 100% green smileys but if you take the course it makes it a bit quicker to tag images, organize headings, and write alt-text.

Voice-over
If twenty percent of all students suffer from some disability it is fair to make course materials accessible to them. The wheelchair ramp is a good analogy. But make sure the easement goes all the way.

Website Recovery (1)

40 years on…

Ali: My website crashed.

Zayed: Backed up?

Online education 1981

Ali: Not for some time. Seems like an out-of-date plugin crashed it. I approached four techies to look into it, they all said they were too busy.

Zayed: Didn’t want to decipher other people’s code?

Ali: So I decided to do it myself.

Zayed: Sounds very time consuming.

Ali: Well forty years ago I used to do this on a 64 terminal Hewlett Packard. Resurrecting my inner troubleshooter.

______

Voice-over

Opened the hood. Old plugin. Disabled that. Now chugging along in recovery mode, reconceptualizing visuals and functionality, looking at new themes and plugins. To be continued.

Isolation and online learning

How’s it going in self-isolation…

.

Einar: Well, it’s a weird experience. I can go outside the house and do home maintenance. That’s good. Delivery service of food boxes dropped on the doorstep followed by a sharp rat-tat-tat-tat at the door. I open it, delivery man keeping his distance takes my photo or my driver licence placed on doorstep, then flees.

.

Rahim: Do the police check on you?

.

Einar: Have had almost daily telephone calls checking that I’m isolated, administering questionnaires and so on but no further visits yet.

.

Rahim: Psychologically?

.

Einar: I have bursts of enthusiastic activity. Then a sort of zombie-like slowdown for a few hours.

.

Rahim: Work?

.

Einar: School’s closed so I have to put all my classes online. The school is woefully behind in online learning. It doesn’t use Zoom, it has its own system which is most unintuitive. Most teachers can only use email but students only use LINE. There’s an app gap.

________

Voice-over

Teachers are encouraged to make their class content visually attractive. Not just talking heads. To simplify, and to entertain. It’s the age of memes. If lessons are to be delivered by email teachers might resort to greater use of emojis. Like emoji film quizzes. Would that result in students sending in assignments using LINE stickers? That might be a perfect match of meme exchange. With this new virus rampant, schools are dumping lessons online holus-bolus and willy-nilly. For a model math lesson, see...

https://youtu.be/BSxM6_zEw2k

...

Online Education: Immortality as Motivation

Immortal Jellyfish: Turritopsis nutricula

...Ghosh is quizzed by his academic sister Cerese:

Ghosh: I’ve enrolled. Marine Biology. Online.

Cerese: But distance learning can feel very isolating. Studying on your own. Not knowing if you’re the only one having difficulty.

Ghosh: And his field: immortality. Jellyfish.

Cerese: OK. Great topic. Useful. But academics don’t always make their online offerings palatable. Long tracts of text, no pictures – did you know 80% of what we learn is visual?

Ghosh: PDFs to read, JPGs to illustrate, YouTube talks to listen to, site links to virtual reality museum tours, videoconferencing one a week of the online learning community.

____________

Voice-over

Online learning is not for everyone.

Instructors have a responsibility to entertain as well as educate. For example, Shin Kubota is great at karaoke.

Students have a responsibility to make sure they have a need for taking the course. Who can argue with immortality for motivation?

See movie on online education here:

http://youtu.be/Qb5HwW3220g

...