As an individual with disabilities and researcher in assistive technology, I am thrilled to discover any way that online learning environments can be made more accessible to students with disabilities.

Bloomsberg University in Pennsylvania has integrated real-time sign language captioning into an online course to increase access for students who are deaf and hard of hearing — very cool! The course used the Wimba learning platform.

A grant funded this project, so I am guessing this captioning does not come cheap. It would be interesting to compare the cost of captioning an online course to providing interpreters in face-to-face classes. In any case, I hope this is just the beginning of endeavors to increase online learning acessbility.

Welcome to the Online Instructor’s Lounge (OIL). My name is Denise Lance. I have taught online for seven years for the University of San Diego via Onlinelearning.net. My course teaches general educators about including students with disabilities in their classrooms. As a doctoral student at the University of Kansas, I designed the web-based component of a course on language and deafness.

Back then, we used straight HTML pages, but I have since used both Blackboard and eCollege systems. Now that I have used eCollege for a couple of years, I tend to prefer it, but there are things I liked about Blackboard too. No course delivery system is perfect. I’ll save extensive discussion and comparison for another post.

I also understand learning online from a student’s perspective. I have taken courses on assistive technology with mainly print materials and email discussions. I earned an M. A. in English from National University completely online. As a freelance writer, I occasionally take online courses to hone my skills.

My latest online learning adventure is Yaro Starek’s Blog Matermind Program. Yaro is an internet business guru and professional blogger. Not only have I learned a ton about blogging, but Yaro’s use of audio recordings, video lessons, emails, forum discussions, print lessons, and pdf reports combine to create a great, multimodel learning experience. Although I am in a more academc setting and a dictated timeframe, I plan to revitalize my own course using some of Yaro’s strategies in my own teaching.

So, what can you expect to find here? Teaching online is a rather lonely task. In most cases, you do you not talk to students in person, but you also do not have colleagues in the office next door with whom to exchange ideas, share, and sometimes commiserate. I hope to create a place to do that here–through exchange of comments and eventually a forum. To spark discussion, I will post teaching tips, abstracts of research, news, book reviews, job leads, technology reviews and tips, and anything else that might help those who teach online.

Whether you teach for an institution of higher education, do corporate training, or offer courses or mentor independently, you are welcome to join us!

My hope is that you will find ways to invigorate your teaching as you connect with others who teach online!