The current state of accessibility of MOOCs: What are the next steps?
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The document discusses the current state of accessibility in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and proposes necessary steps to improve it. It highlights the importance of making MOOCs accessible to individuals with disabilities to ensure equal educational opportunities and provides findings from various studies on the accessibility of different MOOC platforms. The research aims to develop tools and recommendations to enhance the accessibility of MOOCs for all users.
![Study 1. Understanding accessibility policies
• Accessibility policies in the
major MOOC platforms
• Typology of information
quality
Accessibility
statement
Country Language Type For profit
Coursera X USA, English Network Commercial
edX X USA, English Network Non-profit
Udacity USA, English Network Commercial
Canvas X USA, English Network Commercial
Lagunita
Stanford Online
USA, English University
Khan Academy USA, English Network Non-Profit
NovoEd X USA, English Network Commercial
Peer to Peer University USA, English Network
Non-Profit
FutureLearn X UK, English Network Non-Profit
The University of Edimburg X UK, English University
Open2Study X Australia, English Network
Commercial
Iversity Germany, GermanEnglish Network Commercial
OpenCourseWorld Germany, GermanEnglish Network
Uned Coma Spain, Spanish University
Miriadax Spain, SpanishPortuguese Network Commercial
UPV [X] Spain, Spanish University
Telescopio Guatemala, Spanish Network Non-Profit
Uab iMOOC Portugal, Portuguese University
Eco Learning X European project Network Non-Profit
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The current state of accessibility of MOOCs: What are the next steps?
- 1. The current state of accessibility of MOOCs: What are the next steps? Francisco Iniesto Supervisors : Patrick McAndrew, Shailey Minocha and Tim Coughlan The Open University GO-GN Seminar 10-11 April 2016, Krakow, Poland
- 2. 1. Who am I? 2. Rationale. Study context 3. Methodology and Hypotheses 4. Studies 5. Conclusions
- 3. WHO AM I? • Computer Engineer at UAM. Extensive experience in IT consulting and software development using Agile techniques • Mst. in Languages and Computer Systems. Specialized in teaching, learning, collaboration and adaptation at UNED. Master's thesis: Accessibility and standardization in the cycle of creation educational materials. • Part time PhD research student at UNED : Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential services for people with special needs. (Covadonga Rodrigo & Timothy Read) • Full time PhD research student at the Open University and in the Institute of Educational Technology (IET), under the program Leverhulme Open World Learning (OWL): researching accessibility and Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs). (Patrick McAndrew, Shailey Minocha & Tim Coughlan) • Member of the Global OER Graduate Network, a worldwide network of PhD researchers and their supervisors in the field of Open Educational Resources (OERs), MOOCs and open learning. • Collaborator on research projects: OpenScout, research chair “Technology and Accessibility” UNED – Vodafone Foundation and OLA!.
- 5. Indeed, the Porto Declaration on European MOOCs highlights: “Importantly, we stress that MOOCs must not be seen as the outcome or exemplar of online education. Rather they need to be understood in a wider context as there is a long history of research on open and online education and a variety of approaches and tools to provide quality learning opportunities to all.” It is this aspect of providing ‘opportunities to all’ that can only be achieved if MOOCs are accessible to all. RATIONALE. STUDY CONTEXT
- 6. 2554 2966 3462 3830 4283 4224 4808 6294 6104 7469 7670 7847 7469 7397 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 UNED Disabled Student Registrations 34 50 185 139 320 405 462 647 709 728 804 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 UOC Disabled Student Registrations
- 7. 2013 UB 682 27,70% UAB 337 13,69% UPC 158 6,42% UPF 120 4,87% UdL 56 2,27% UdG 103 4,18% URV 146 5,93% UOC 804 32,66% URL 39 1,58% UVic-UCC 10 0,41% UIC 5 0,20% UAO 2 0,08% Total 2.462 100% Students distributed by disability at UNED 20152016 Students with disabilities registered in Catalonia, 2013 3874 1380 357 572 27 658 141 182 36 38 29 18 52 6 27 Physical Mental Hearing Visual Physical, Visual, hearing, mental Physical, Mental Physical, Hearing Physical, Visual Physical, Hearing, Mental Physical, Visual, Mental Physical, Visual, Hearing Hearing, Mental Visual, Mental Visual, Hearing, Mental Visual, Hearing
- 8. RATIONALE. STUDY CONTEXT Context: lll for people with special needs OU’s Equality and Diversity Annual Report states: “More than 21,000 disabled students are now registered, representing just over 12% of the OU student body. This is double the proportion of three years ago and far in excess of the performance indicator in the University’s equality objectives”. Distance education in general attracts more disabled students than traditional education, and this trend is emphasised further in open education: • 12% of students of the Open University in the UK (OU) are disabled • (8% in the rest of UK universities) • 16 % of the users of open resources published by the OU (via iTunesU, YouTube and OpenLearn) declared a disability
- 9. RATIONALE. STUDY CONTEXT Context: ICT + Disabilities: • The possibilities that ICT offer people with disabilities to improve their wellbeing and the possibility of their insertion into the work market. • The fact to make digital people with special needs increases the work rate in this collective. • 100% consider that the incorporation of ICT into the workplace has increased their work possibilities. Context: Accessible MOOC Learning: Benefits such as: • Openness • Low cost • Ubiquity (Time, space and rhythm) • Acquiring knowledge • Social learning: Connectivism • Achieving new competences • Develop professionally
- 10. ACCESSIBILITY ISSUES IN MOOCs MOOC platforms: • Web based eLearning engines • Scheduling academic curriculum • Synchronous and asynchronous communication Interface elements: • Logging in, logging out • Navigating in courses and content • Multi layered structures eLearning materials: • Specific technology. Barriers : • The interface elements • The manner in which users interact with these objects • Components which do not always share a consistency of interface logic: • Posting in a forum • Making up elements in tests or timed quizzes • Embedded videos • Variety of document formats Effective eLearning environment : • Learner’s abilities • Learning goals • Where learning takes place • Which specific devices the learner uses
- 11. HOW SHOULD THE MODEL FOR AN ACCESSIBLE MOOC PLATFORM BE? The minimum required level of accessibility : Guarantee access to the content by means of the platforms. Produce the content accessible in itself. Evaluate the access conditions. The technological platform. The content of the MOOC must be the same for all of the students. The students must be able to access the content using assistive technologies. It is necessary to offer alternative textual descriptions for multimedia content. Assistance must be provided.
- 12. RATIONALE. STUDY CONTEXT Group of papers Reference Description Assessment with users Sanchez-Gordon & Luján-Mora, 2013 Five Coursera courses for evaluating the accessibility of the Coursera platform and the contents of these courses, with a particular focus on learners in their old age Al-mouh, Al-khalifa & Al-khalifa, 2014 Ten Coursera courses of different disciplines for their suitability for blind or partially sighted learners; none of the courses reached the minimum level of accessibility Bohnsack & Puh, 2014 Five MOOC platforms for blind users: Udacity, Coursera, edX, OpenCourseWorld, Iversity. Except for edX, all the other platforms had severe accessibility problems. Student data Rizzardini, Chang, Gütl & Amado- Salvatierra, 2013 MOOC that incorporated accessibility features to benefit a true open online education for the wider population. The MOOC at Galileo University was designed to provide equity access Liyanagunawardena & Williams, 2016 Pre-course survey for 10 courses on the FutureLearn platform to show evidence that learners in their old age are already participating in MOOCs MOOC framework Sanchez-Gordon & Luján-Mora, 2014 Two categories of web accessibility requirements: for personal and for non-personal disabilities. Both MOOC's platforms and contents must meet web accessibility requirements Sanchez-Gordon & Luján-Mora, 2015 Three-layer architecture to extend the Open edX platform to enhance the accessibility Rodríguez-Ascaso & Boticario, 2015 MOOC framework consisting of services, standards and quality procedures related to accessibility
- 13. RESEARCH QUESTIONS The educational context. How MOOCs can help people with disabilities to improve their knowledge and skills? Accessibility state. How could the accessibility in MOOCs be improved? Adaptation and delivery. How could MOOCs resources be adapted to meet the accessibility needs of the end-users?
- 14. HYPOTHESES 1. Accessible MOOCs -> to people with disabilities who are those ones that most barriers encounter when accessing educational environments. 2. Tool to assess and know the status of the accessibility of MOOC courses and their platforms can provide indicators of the main problems found in them. 3. These indicators may be useful to adapt the educational content to the end user. 4. To derive recommendations for accessible MOOCs, and develop guidance on how MOOCs can be more accessible
- 15. METHODS •Methodologically -> the study will be mixed-methods. •Interviews •Questionnaires •Usability and accessibility test •Technical accessibility evaluation-> evaluation instrument
- 16. STUDIES Q1 Study 2(b, c) Study 3 a Study 4 a Q2 Study 1 Study 2 (a, b) Study 3 (a, b) Study 4 b Study 5 Q3 Study 2 (a, b, c) Study 3 a Study 4 b Study 5
- 17. Study 1. Understanding accessibility policies • Accessibility policies in the major MOOC platforms • Typology of information quality Accessibility statement Country Language Type For profit Coursera X USA, English Network Commercial edX X USA, English Network Non-profit Udacity USA, English Network Commercial Canvas X USA, English Network Commercial Lagunita Stanford Online USA, English University Khan Academy USA, English Network Non-Profit NovoEd X USA, English Network Commercial Peer to Peer University USA, English Network Non-Profit FutureLearn X UK, English Network Non-Profit The University of Edimburg X UK, English University Open2Study X Australia, English Network Commercial Iversity Germany, GermanEnglish Network Commercial OpenCourseWorld Germany, GermanEnglish Network Uned Coma Spain, Spanish University Miriadax Spain, SpanishPortuguese Network Commercial UPV [X] Spain, Spanish University Telescopio Guatemala, Spanish Network Non-Profit Uab iMOOC Portugal, Portuguese University Eco Learning X European project Network Non-Profit Feedback!
- 18. STUDIES Study 2 (a, b, c). The opinion of stakeholders • Three periods of interviews. Semi-structured interviews, 45 minutes, blocks related to the research questions • MOOC platform providers, course providers and MOOC experts. • WIP, 3 interviews done at the moment, 5 interviews confirmed, 4 waiting for confirmation • End-users. • MOOC platform providers, course providers and MOOC experts. • Thematic analysis • Human Research Ethics Committee process Feedback!
- 19. STUDIES Study 3 (a, b). Large-scale data from users • Data from past courses in FutureLearn • Questionnaire (survey) in a MOOC course. • Start of course survey -> educational expectations. • End of curse survey -> accessibility evaluation. • Carry out this study within a MOOC -> related to accessibility and usability. Feedback!
- 20. STUDIES Study 4 (a, b). The user interaction. Usability and accessibility studies • Accessibility and usability tests in the laboratories to users with and without disabilities to interact with MOOCs. • Data from FutureLearn related to user interaction on MOOCs. • “steps” include all the interactions users perform inside a course such as visualizing a video-lesson Feedback!
- 21. STUDIES Study 5 (a, b, c). Data using the evaluation instrument • Iterative method of trial and error. The evaluation instrument is developed by iterative steps that will improve the instrument. • First iteration will be focused primary in the use of automatic tools, tutored by an expert from the IET in order to avoid biases. • Second iteration of this instrument -> vector of characteristics, it will be reviewed by several international accessibility experts. • Third iteration -> the final vector of characteristics. Feedback!
- 22. FEEDBACK BETWEEN STUDIES Evaluation instrumentData from questionnaires Providers Interviews Users Interviews Providers Interviews Data from Futurelearn A&U studies
- 23. CONCLUSIONS Based on accessibility assessments and empirical investigations with stakeholder-groups: To derive recommendations for accessible MOOCs To develop guidance on how MOOCs can be more accessible To provide the foundation for supporting those with disabilities to follow a route to open learning that meets their particular needs.
- 24. The current state of accessibility of MOOCs: What are the next steps? Francisco Iniesto Supervisors : Patrick McAndrew, Shailey Minocha and Tim Coughlan francisco.iniesto@open.ac.uk