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.

James R. Miller, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Kansas, says that the iPhone may be an ideal platform for students learning online. According to Miller,

“People are beginning to expect on-demand delivery for education. They may be out in a field someplace or completely away from standard Internet connectivity. Well, if they can pick up their iPhone and turn it on, that technology is making it possible for them to get this on-demand education that they need.”

I have no problem teaching students on their iPhones rather than laptops if that’s the access method they choose. I can also understand that the touch-screen of the iPhone may offer a greater since of interactivity than clicking a mouse and that the audio capabilities cater to the many who learn best through listening rather than reading. However, I’m not going to be designing my courses specifically for iPhone users just yet. Read the rest of this entry »

For seven years, I have taught an online course on inclusion for general education teachers. The goal of the course is to help teachers accommodate students with disabilities in their classrooms.

At the heart of my course is the concept of universal design for learning (UDL), which proposes that learning should be multimodal in order to accommodate various learning styles. I assign readings from Rose and Meyer’s Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning.

In a nutshell, UDL relies on three principals:

1. Information should be presented in multiple formats (lectures, texts, audio, video, kinesthetic activities)

2. Students need flexible options for demonstrating what they have learned, through writing, presentations, skits, PowerPoints, art projects, models, etc.

3. Learning experiences should have flexible ways of engaging students so that they are interested and motivated.

A few weeks ago, I realized that I may not be as good as I should be about modeling UDL. Read the rest of this entry »