Keeping the diversity flag flying

The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018 came into effect on 23rd September. It’s now a legal requirement for all digital resources supporting teaching and learning to be accessible.

Designing for Diverse Learners is a re-purposing of the UK government’s six posters on accessible design to create a single page set of criteria covering the principles of digital accessibility. These are for anyone who writes emails, creates word documents or builds presentations with text and images. Following the guidance anticipates and removes potential barriers to access. Based on years of experience of supporting inclusive practice, working with Jisc TechDis (sadly no longer with us) and with knowledge derived from teaching a range of users of assistive technologies, Lee Fallin and I have collated the basics. These include font size, colour and contrast, justification, link text and alternative formats. If everyone creating digital content follows this advice it would make a huge difference.

image of a padlok against computer code — We’re in the process of designing a digital home to host the poster and subsequent work. We’ve plans for supporting resources, including a card sort activity and board game. The idea is to create workshops with activities which promote and support the discussion and sharing of a digitally inclusive higher education experience.

In the meantime, an ex-colleague from the University of Lincoln, Marcus Elliott (now at NTU) has begun to extend the Diversity poster, and shared the output in a blog post Thinking about Diverse Learners. The work demonstrates the value of a creative commons culture of reuse and repurpose so all credit to Marcus for showing the value of an open approach in this way.

Marcus has taken the NHS Design Principles, based in the NHS constitution, to add an additional page on the Principles of Design (see above).

When it comes to digital accessibility, the NHS are worth exploring. They’ve had a Digital First policy for nearly a decade, spelt out in their Digital Data and Information Strategy.

When I co-wrote Social Work in a Digital Society back in 2011, it was driven by the need for more digitally inclusive health care practice. at a time when the government were moving to put all their information and welfare services online. Back in the day I provided sessions for social work students designed to raise awareness of how service users, often already marginalised and disempowered, are expected to have the digital access and literacies to negotiate an online benefits system. Since then, the NHS have bought in online GP appointments and medical checks from home with digital systems for online consultations.

Universal Credit, designed to incorporate all payments into one, is the government’s move to a digital first provision of welfare. This week there’s been calls for stopping it. Voices include Sadiq Khan, Lord Mayor of London and Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury on the grounds of it leaving too many people worse off. The parameters of digital exclusion mirror existing discrimination yet nowhere in this week’s media has there been mention of universal credit being a welfare system managed online.

logo for Universal credit, blue letters on whit background

Digital accessibility is about all these things. Digital literacies are not only about readable font and good colour and contrast. They’re about digitally inclusive practice too.

My eyes are tired. Too many evenings and weekends doing data analysis using s software package which does not adequately respond to magnification. I’ve been drafting the thesis chapters to build the framework within which the analysis is located as well as writing blog posts like this one calling for change. It’s a lot of screen time on top of the day job.

spaniel puppy lying down with big sad eyes

For me, tired eyes equates to an increasing reliance on clear digital text. Too often I find unresponsive design and zoom controls being prevented from working effectively. Design trumps accessibility. I’ve said this before and will be saying it again. The steps needed to make digital content accessible are not difficult.

Seven key principles guide the NHS in all it does. They are underpinned by core NHS values which have been derived from extensive discussions with staff, patients and the public. Marcus is spot on to add these to the Design for Diversity work.

Lee and I have ambitions to have the poster printed and displayed above every photocopier alongside the CLA requirements. To have cards which are on everyone’s notice board or wall. We want to see an institutional digital accessibility strategy based on the principles of the Web Accessibility Initiative; to build time for developing inclusive practice into the work allocation process, and a greater general awareness of how digital accessibility matters, so much, to everyone.

hundreds of lego people

Because digital inclusion isn’t only about people with disabilities. It’s about temporary disablement through broken bones or sensory impairment. It’s about a socially democratic internet. When my uveitis flares up I need steroid medication. The treatment enlarges the pupils of my eyes, letting in too much light and making me see through a white fog. With resisable. responsive design and clear readable font with good contrast, I can continue to work in digital environments, Without it I can’t. I’m disabled by the technology which in theory should be creating a more inclusive user experience.

image of a tick list with a pen

My concern is the new UK legislation will be seen as a set of tick boxes, without the underpinning knowledge of what digital exclusion is really like and the consequences of inaccessible digital design for learners. The student experience should be at the heart of higher education and the new act is an opportunity for change, to ensure digital accessibility is a supported literacy, alongside reading and writing, in order to make the increasingly digital society in which we live and work an inclusive one too.

There is now a law which supports this. Ros Walker from the University of Stirling has written a post for the ALT blog titled Important New /Accessibility Regulations. Its a valuable post well worth reading. I have just one query. Ros writes ‘This work would largely need to be addressed jointly by service providers within the institution such as disability services, web development and IT.’ I would add learning development and academic practice too.

With my colleague Patrick Lynch, we’ve built inclusion into the learning design module of the Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice (PCAP) at the University of Hull. I facilitate a digital inclusion session for our Professional Practice in Higher Education Teaching and Learning module for postgraduates who research and teach. There’s also a workshop in the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Academic Professional as Development Framework (APDF) run by Lee and myself.

Promoting digitally inclusive practice as integral to the enhancement of learning and teaching is the way forward and there is now a law which supports this.

The future is looking bright.

My hope is it’s looking more accessible too.

white plasticine person carrying a gold key

Design for Active Learning (D4AL)

What is Design for Active Learning?

Design for Active Learning (D4AL) is about developing activities which encourage students to become actively involved in their learning experiences. D4AL offers a scholarly approach to learning and teaching which is evidence based and demonstrates the impact of intervention through an iterative cycle of evaluation and design.

How does Design for Active Learning connect to Learning and Teaching Enhancement?

D4AL encourages the adoption of iterative loops of evaluation and reflection, for example Schon’s ‘reflective practitioner‘ and Brookfield’s ‘critically reflective teacher‘ alongside continual dialogue with the student voice and reference to collected data on student learning.

How will staff benefit from a Design for Active Learning approach?

D4AL is about supporting staff to ‘teach less to teach more’, to support student centred activity and enhance their own teaching practice through a scholarly approach to curriculum development [1]

Design for Active Learning cycle

When is a Design for Active Learning approach required?

Areas where D4AL will be most useful may include

‘Sharing Practice’ across disciplines and faculties for joining up pockets of excellence and student satisfaction
Disseminating online best learning and teaching practices both online and face-to-face
Developing appropriate learning and teaching interventions in reponse to data informed drivers (e.g. external NSS and TEF and internal SEERs and AMRP)

Where does Design for Active Learning begin?

An intial meeting with Teaching Enhancement Advisors from the Directorate of LTE often begins with questions like these;

What works well with your students?
What are the causes for concern?
What does success look like?
How can we help you achieve this?

Why does Design for Active Learning matter?

D4AL supports the implementation of the Education Strategy and the university’s strategic themes of Employability, Internationalisation and Inclusivity. D4AL lies at the heart of the university’s commitment to an ‘excellence agenda’ across all its activities, including learning and teaching^[2] while also supporting the continuous development of curricula and co-curricular learning^[3]

Front Cover of University of Hull Strategic Plan

Who facilitates the Design for Active Learning process?

Teaching Enhancement Advisors have developed D4AL as a consistent approach to supporting the enhancement of learning and teaching across the university; this enhancement might or might not include technology.

How do I find out more?

Visit the D4AL page on the LTE Sharepoint site which is currently under development or contact lte@hull.ac.uk

[1] Approach to Quality, Standards and Enhancement http://preview.tinyurl.com/y87b77up

[2] University of Hull Strategic Plan http://preview.tinyurl.com/yaf6y9d9

[3] University of Hull Education Strategy http://preview.tinyurl.com/ybgaymnc

Let’s…

Stumbled onto a video of Gardener Campbell talking about educating the whole person. Sidetracked through the serendipity which characterises the internet. Start at A and find yourself at Q and R without being too sure how.

On the way I bumped into teaching scholarship – as you do – and an interesting analogy from the late 1990’s by Randy Bass in The Scholarship of Teaching: What’s the Problem? Citing Boyer, Bass claims problems in research are welcomed while problems in teaching are seen as failures of practice. Boyer’s Scholarship Reconsidered (1990) is remains a seminal work on SoTL (less than Scholarship Reassessed (1997) by Glassick, Huber, Maeroff) and its principles of scholarly approaches to teaching still hold i.e. ‘It should be public, susceptible to critical review and evaluation, and accessible for exchange and use by other members of one’s scholarly community.’ (Bass, 1999:2)

The HEA report Defining and supporting the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) a sector wide study suggests SoTL themes hve expanded. They may now involve peer review, CoP and more interdisciplinary approaches. It also involves student engagement through redesign of curricula which encourage undergraduates to be research informed and engaged. The HEA report claims continued confusion around the definition and practice of SoTL. It recommends linking SoTL to the TEF, adding CPD to workload models, making SoTL more explicit in the UKPSF and greater recognition of SoTL across all REF units of measurement.

The value of SoTL is in the L. How students Learn. Few benefit from lecture style transmission of content unless it’s recorded so they can revisit and review. I’m unlikely to meet Gardener Campbell but have watched and listened, paused to revisit, shared (seen it reshared) and stored the link for future reference.

Any HEI with a policy for recording timetabled teaching sessions supports their students learning. They can catch up on what they’ve missed through illness or unforeseen circumstances and have meaningful discussions; the benefit of so called flipped learning i.e. access to transmitted content at a time and place which suits then get together – face to face or online – for discussion with the benefit of time to reflect and craft comments. A deeper approach which – if linked to a collaborative document – presents opportunities to extend learning by searching and sharing associated links, commenting on the contributions of others and summarising the whole learning experience. What’s not to like?

Using audio and video is a no-brainer. So much content is freely available (eg British Film Institute, Film Education, Vimeo, YouTube, Teacher Tube, Ted Talks, Khan Academy, MIT) or licenced for use within UK HE like the excellent Box of Broadcasts (BoB). You can make your own audio/video with webcams and mobile devices although this raises the DC (digital capabilities) issue. Not problem. Lets link it to scholarly practice and persuade institutions to invest in the digital skills of their staff as professional development. It also raises issues of IP which can be complex and opening the copyright box will be the topic of a follow-on blog (brave, stupid or what?!) 😉

Back to Gardener Campbell and Educating the Whole Person. Gardener says granular analytics does not represent the whole person yet the current push towards big data claims it can be used to design personalised learning. How? Footfalls and logins give little meaningful information about learning. Counting the number of VLE sites is irrelevant compared to what goes on there. Ditto forum posts. The data tells us nothing about content quality. We need more critical thinking around the types of data collected and why.

It all comes back to scholarship. Inquiry into what you do and why you do it. How do you know it works? Where is the evidence of impact? SoTL provides a framework for taking this forward.

Lets be more joined up about linking CPD with Academic Practice. Encourage action research, action learning sets, appreciative inquiry, critical reflection and loops of experiential learning.

Let’s make opportunities to get people around a table to talk about teaching, underpinned with research into how students learn, and how best to design learning experiences which can be personalised to encourage motivation, enthusiasm and ownership.

Lets start investing as much into learning and teaching as we do research and technologies.

Let’s bring in the student voice and build mechanisms for recognising and rewarding evaluated learning design.

Let’s do all this. Now! We’re all here to support the student experience so let’s have some exciting thoughts about how to go forward into the future.

images from pixabay except BoB from http://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/help-consultancy/ucreate/facilities/box-of-broadcasts/introduction

Building a digital capabilities framework Part 1

In my new role I will be working with colleagues on the TEL Team to develop a digital capabilities framework. There is already excellent work being done at the University of Hull to support students, for example the Digital Student site at http://www2.hull.ac.uk/lli/skillshub/digitallit/

Digital Student Home page from the University of Hull at http://www2.hull.ac.uk/lli/skillshub/digitallit/

There is also the Hull Employability Awards where one of seven sets of criteria is Digital Literacy and Knowledge Management. Attributes include the following recommendations for demonstrating digital confidence and capability:

Choose and use digital tools and appropriate blends of technology to suit needs
Use both generic and specialist digital tools, data sets and service effectively and efficiently
Locate, access, understand, critically evaluate, manage and use information in multiple formats (including digital and physical) from a wide range of sources
Manage digital identities and public-private boundaries in online social spaces to maintain professional reputation, stay safe and cope with distractions and digital overload
Engage with and collaborate in online information and communications networks.

Externally to the university there is the Jisc Digital Capabilities framework at https://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/building-digital-capability

Jisc have also developed digital capabilities profiles which include sets for teachers, learners and researchers and map across the the model above.

There is also the Jisc NUS Benchmarking Tool which adopts a different approach. Firstly this establishes the starting point, then suggests what Developing, Developed and Outstanding digital practices might look like developed as part of the Jisc Digital Student Project and the Jisc Change agents’ network

I can’t miss out my old time favourite which is the SCONUL 7 Pillars of Information Literacy through a Digital Literacy Lens and the first framework to recognise the importance of accessibility and digital inclusion.

I think it’s important for a DCF to be relevant to the world beyond the university and the educational sector. The Government’s Digital Inclusion Strategy was published December 2014, a few months before the Make or Break the UK’s Digital Future report. The strategy includes ten actions which the government will be taking forward in their drive to achieve digital inclusion which seems to me the best approach to begin with. Inclusion not exclusion. In particular Actions 3, 4 and 8 may be useful for developing a baseline of digital capabilities for HEIs.

3. Give all civil servants (replace with academics) the digital capabilities to use and improve government services (replace with student learning experiences). Methods to achieve this include identification of the digital capability needed to do jobs and provide services to users, mapping out what skills individuals have at present, then provide training* where needed to fill any gaps.

4. agree a common definition of digital skills and capabilities – in this case the definitions that Go ON UK will consult on, agree and publish (see below)

8. bring digital capability support into one place through Go ON UK.

The starting point for all frameworks must be No 4; a common definition of digital skills and capabilities. The GoOn framework and set of Assessment questions both offer useful starter conversation points while the Digital Unite website has sets of digital skills resources to help achieve confidence with the five areas identified in the GoOn Framework. These areas are:

Managing information – find, manage and store digital information and content
Communicating – communicate, interact, collaborate, share and connect with others
Transacting – purchase and sell goods and services; organise your finances; register for and use digital government services
Problem-solving – increase independence and confidence by solving problems using digital tools and finding solutions
Creating – engage with communities and create basic digital content

GoOn UK Assessment questions downloadable from http://www.go-on.co.uk/get-involved/basic-digital-skills/

Do you feel confident with all of these?

I think they offer a solid baseline of generic digital capabilities on which to build. We should all feel capable of managing these digital ways of working and if not, know where to go for appropriate support and resources.

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I have a problem with the word training when it comes to technology enhanced learning and teaching and believe it would be better re-framed as Digital Academic Practice. Combining technology training with a digital form of CPD and teacher education, which includes digital pedagogies as well as practices, may help make it more relevant to academics than technology training on its own has been doing so far.

More about this in Building a Digital Capabilities Framework Part 2.

Why digital capabilities matter

Make or Break: The UK’s Digital Future was published by the UK government in February 2015. It contains the recommendation for defining the internet as a utility service, which should be available for all to access and use. It calls for the entire workforce to embrace current technological changes and acquire new and differing levels of digital skills needed to interact with digital technologies. These skills being necessary life skills as digital literacy is needed to fully participate in society (p6).

The impact of the internet on the educational sector and the need for adaptation to new digital ways of working is clear. There is reference to the ways digital technology can challenge traditional methods of delivering education and how teachers need to adapt and educational institutions must place greater emphasis on providing every citizen with adaptable digital skills (p7). The report contains the greatest details for schools and FE but makes some specific references to HE. This includes the need for digitally-skilled graduates (p10). Because digital literacy has become an essential tool underpinning almost all jobs (p11) universities should ensure all graduates are digitally competent (p12)..

Introducing digital capabilities

image of a cat looking at a laptop with the txt On the Internet no one knows you're a cat

image from https://funnyjunk.com/The+internet/funny-pictures/5019751/4

We need to understand the internet.

We need more conversations about the impact of the internet on professional and personal lives.

We need to agree what constitutes digital capabilities and skill-sets.

A digital capabilities resource centre within an HEI might include the following:

develop a professional online identity
communicate professionally online
create an effective online presentation
source copyright free content
knowing how the internet can support subject specialisms
staying safe online
protecting data online
evaluating and authenticating online content
reliably telling the difference between peer reviewed knowledge, public information and personal biased opinion
understanding how everything online is monitored, tracked and recorded
knowing digital footprints are permanent
looking on google to see what information prospective mentors – partners – employers have access to
taking advantage of the affordances of digital connection and collaboration for learning, teaching and research
supporting and enhancing learning and teaching with effective online resources and activities
ensuring graduate attributes include those of the digital kind
understanding the social impact of the internet
understand both benefits and barriers of digital ways of working

Paul Gilster in Digital Literacy (1997) suggested digital literacy was about ideas not keystrokes. Nearly two decades on, technology has advanced to such an extent that a working knowledge of relevant keystrokes has become essential. Digital capabilities today should include ideas as well as keystrokes. Glister also described the ability to make informed judgement about ‘unfiltered’ content a core competency and this need for criticality remains core to any digital capabilities framework.