It was requested by several readers, many months ago, but it’s finally here…
Terminology Tuesday: Year 1 – The Ebook
Terminology Tuesday: Accessibility (in Education)
What do folks in education mean when they refer to ‘accessibility’? Well, in the online learning context, it really means allowing all learners, across all browsers and devices, access to all course content in an equitable manner.
Learning should not be impeded by inaccessible course content.
In this context, accessibility does not necessarily mean increasing access to course content for individuals with disabilities. Of course, this is always a concern, but the perspective should change to just ensure course content is inclusive of all learners, not just those individuals with self-reported disabilities.
Sure, you should be conscious of ADA/508 compliance issues and include transcripts to all video or audio elements, use ALT tags for your imagery, and ensure your course materials are formatted in a way that can easily be processed by assistive technologies, but you should also look at accessibility from the broader lens of usability. Is your course functional? Is it mobile responsive? Are all applications used within your course accessible to all learners?
A lot of course content developers or Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) simply don’t think of these elements when developing the content, but it’s important, prior to launch, to review your course as a whole from an accessibility and usability perspective.
Content should be chunked into smaller portions to avoid cognitive overload, it should be presented in a logical format, it should be presented using various formats (e.g. text/audio/video) alongside relevant transcripts, the course navigation should be straight forward and/or explained at the beginning of the course, formatting should be consistent, and your assessment strategies should be varied.
Resources:
E-Learning Challenge #108: Show Your E-Learning Work
So, the folks at Articulate have done it again! One of the plaguing issues for e-learning developers is how to curate a beautiful portfolio of their e-learning interactions.
Now, you can easily do this within your E-Learning Heroes Community profile! Now you really have no reason not to have a portfolio!
The Concept
This week’s challenge was to build up your E-Learning Heroes profile by adding course samples!
The Method
To add course samples, you will need to access your profile by either clicking your avatar on E-Learning Heroes, hovering over your avatar and selecting My Profile, or by creating a new profile.
Once you have accessed your portfolio, you will select Add a Course:
Once selected, you will fill in the Course URL, Title, include an optional Description, and upload an image to associate with the course. Once completed, select Add Course, and your course will be added to your profile page.
The Result
Click Here to view my E-Learning Heroes Community profile.
Terminology Tuesday: Evaluation
As this series on the phases of Instructional Design comes to a close, I’m going to be talking about an under-utilized phase (in my opinion) – Evaluation. I’ve talked about Formative and Summative Evaluation in the past, and I have to emphasize the cyclical nature in which I believe evaluation should occur.
Evaluation is essential to the success of any course. How can you know if your learning outcomes are aligning with the course objectives? How can you identify whether your students are grasping the material in the intended manner? How can you identify training gaps in the course? How can you gauge the overall success of the course? Evaluation. That’s how!
Now, evaluation doesn’t need to just be reserved for post-implementation. You can evaluate your course at various phases in the Instructional Design process. For example, you might want to evaluate your analysis for the course…is a course going to solve the problem? You might also want to evaluate during the design phase…will the design of this course meet the project requirements (is it responsive? Does it meet the needs?)? You may want to evaluate during the development phase…What are the stakeholder’s thoughts on the prototype? And you’ll definitely want to evaluate in the implementation phase, because that’s where your users will likely barrage you with ‘it’s not working!’ emails.
But at the very least, evaluation should always occur at the end of the instructional design process as doing so provides you with feedback and additional context with which you can improve upon the course. No one is perfect, and that can be also be said for courses – no one course is perfect. You can get close, but there is likely always something you could have improved upon. Evaluation gives you the information you need to improve upon your courses.
Terminology Tuesday: Implementation
For the past month or so, I’ve been discussing the five main phases of Instructional Design. Now it’s time to talk about the implementation phase!
The goal of implementation is to get the training you developed to its intended audience. Or deliver the training. Essentially, you’re pressing the Power ON button for your course! There are several elements that might come into play along the way, but it’s all in the name of implementation. Some of these elements might include:
- Training faculty members or facilitators in the technology
- Making a course ‘go live’ for the audience
- Creating job aids and course documentation
- Installing the courseware on a client’s server
- Testing courseware in the intended environment
However you or your organization chooses to deal with implementation, the goal is always the same – get the training to the audience!
For some, the implementation phase might be the end of the road in terms of instructional design processes; however, for many (should be for all), there is one more critical phase: Evaluation. Stay tuned next week for my thoughts on evaluation and its importance in Instructional Design.
Moodle: Easily Reduce Main Page Scrolling
Last week I spent some time over at the E-Learning Guild’s Learning Exchange sharing tool tips. One of them was near and dear to my heart, as a student, and now as an Instructional Designer working in higher education and using Moodle as a Learning Management System (LMS).
The way our institution’s process works is that faculty members are responsible for adding all content to their Moodle course sites. As you can imagine, approaches to this are all over the map in terms of how faculty members choose to go about this task.
Often times, faculty will use the Moodle default settings, and when I receive their course to review, I see long lists of content and main page scrolling abound! I sob a little on the inside, but then I quickly rectify the problem. Here’s how I easily reduce main page scrolling on a Moodle course site:
- Turn Editing On.
- From the Administration block, select Edit Settings.
- Scroll to, and select Course Format.
- From the dropdown menu, select Show one section per page.
- Select Save changes.
If I’ve lost you, here’s a video demo:
