This activity is a capstone for the Addressing Technology-Access Barriers to Online Learning learning path, and asks you to create a presentation to advocate for ways to strengthen and evolve your institution’s policies and practice around technology-access barriers.
This activity should take approximately fifteen minutes. Compose your response in either:
- word-processed format
- record an audio file
- record a video file.
Include the elements listed below.
- Frame your response to this activity in the format of a report, letter, or, request to a specific organizational leader (e.g., your campus president, chief information officer (CIO), or chancellor).
- Identify at least two technology tools, applications, or systems that are widely used in your online or technology-mediated learning programs.
- List at least one access barrier that exists for learners who use each of the technologies you identified (e.g., mobile-device, disability, design barriers).
- Predict the impact to the institution of each of the barriers (e.g., reductions in learner retention or satisfaction), as well as the costs (in terms of effort, time, and funds) of addressing such barriers.
- Craft a closing ‘recommendations’ section with your justifications for at least two policy ideas to adopt across your organization (e.g., adopting a core suite of tech tools, regularizing the interface among tools, expanding inclusive procurement methods, adopting access-first planning processes).
The aim of this activity is to create a document that you could actually send to your leadership or raise in committee conversations in order to advocate for specific changes that build on the foundations that you actually have in place for online and technology-mediated learning at your institution.
Press the play button below and listen to the below example as a model:
Click here to view the audio transcript
At my institution, we use several emails. For example, we will use Gmail, or Outlook, however, I would make the recommendation that all employees should use Outlook. Also, when analyzing the different storing and file sharing methodologies we have Google Suite, and we also have SharePoint and some people use Dropbox, but I would probably make the recommendation that we all use SharePoint. This is because we often serve International students and G Suite would not be a likely choice. For calendar software, people use various calendars including iCal, Google Calendar, and the Outlook Calendar. I would recommend we keep everything in Outlook so we are using our tools all within the Microsoft Suite. This will ensure more cohesiveness across the institution and specifically in our department.