There are also more technology tools and systems than any individual can know about, use, or support. By focusing our thinking on the functions that we need to support our interactions as learners, instructors, and administrators, we start to see that many technology tools have considerable overlap: how many tools at your organization have a calendar function, for example?
We are used to asking learners to use a specific, narrow set of tools when they are in formal learning spaces with us. We offer them user accounts that give them access to email systems, virtual learning environments (VLEs), and word-processing and productivity tool suites.
When we think about our learners outside those formal learning interactions, things can get fuzzy. A great number of our learners are using their mobile devices as the technology interface for their online learning, so our task is to design interactions, tools, and systems to be friendly to mobile learners, and by extension, to learners with other types of barriers in their lives.
In order to reduce the cognitive load of making learners get familiar with new tools and systems every time they encounter new offerings, we can standardize the ways in which learners get access to materials, to each other, to instructors and support staff, and to the wider world. Here are four tools that absolutely must be accessible, and whose functions should not be duplicated among our supported systems.
Tool 1: Personal file space
If your organization has Google Drive, Box, Dropbox (name your tool) then you have an opportunity to increase access and accessibility for everyone. By providing learners, instructors, and staff units with a place where they can keep large files, we automatically expand the possibilities for how instructors ask learners to demonstrate their skills, how service areas provide information to prospective and current learners, and how our own information technology (IT) staff interact with colleagues and learners.
Even in recent years, per-person quotas for storage space limited the effectiveness of personal file storage as a foundation for accessibility because learners could quickly fill up their space allotment with just a few video files. This is a key drawback of using the LMS/VLE as a file-storage solution, by the way: per-shell or per-user limits usually exist within those closed systems.
These days, though, cloud-based storage space is cheap (and in some cases, unlimited). Institutions that support a cloud-based storage service for institutional users can expand access across many categories of interaction, and, in many cases, IT areas already own or endorse those cloud-based tools for other services, such as email. Reframe how non-IT colleagues see cloud-based storage by talking about how instructors can ask learners to keep copies of their work in their personal file space, both as a backup/portfolio/repository and as an all-in-one-place storage for files that are too large to be hosted in the LMS/VLE or that should not be hosted on non-password-protected sites like YouTube (think about learners studying counseling or doing projects on controversial and sensitive topics). Although cloud-based hosting is not a perfect solution regarding control, access, permission, and privacy, it is easier to craft policy and practices when file hosting takes place under the umbrella of organizational contracts and support systems. Give everyone across your institution IT-supported personal file space, and help them understand how to use it to expand access.
Tool 2: Calendars and planning software
What is the one thing that our learners all seem to need help with, whether they are beginners or finishing their graduate-school work (we could also include our instructor and staff colleagues in here, too)? Time management. We can make access to educational interactions smoother just by giving everyone on campus a way to keep track of activities, assignments, assessments, due dates, meetings, conversations, and events.
The key to selecting calendar or planning software with an accessibility mindset is that simpler is better. Especially with tools related to scheduling and time, the harder it is to use the tools (i.e., the more options/buttons/things to learn), the less likely people are to use the tool regularly. There are many scheduling add-ons embedded within tools that we often support. Your LMS/VLE has a calendar function. So does your student information system (SIS), your website management software, and the file-storage solution. This is one tool set where having more choices creates cognitive dissonance and overload. Choose the simplest one that allows users to interact with it on their mobile devices, and turn the other ones off.
Tool 3: Collaboration software
Zoom, Skype, WebEx, Blackboard Collaborate, Hangouts, BlueJeans, Adobe Connect – it’s hard to even count the number of live-collaboration platforms that have come into being in just the last five year. Often, it is up to individual departments and sometimes individual staff members to select, purchase, and use collaboration tools. Or our institutions officially adopt many such tools, simply because there are different legacy tools in use for the same function across various areas. Further, even among the organizations that adopt a single real-time-collaboration platform, many give access only to instructors.
All of these scenarios miss a splendid opportunity to provide wide and consistent access for learning interactions. Open up your platform so that learners can hold live remote sessions with one another, their instructors, the tutoring center, the registration staff anybody who might want to interact.
Collaboration software not only broadens the audiences who can use it but also provides access options to its users: they can text chat, control their video sharing, or hold audio-only interactions, all using the same tool. Chances are the people in your admissions office are already reaching out to prospective learners wherever they are; as learning-technology leaders, you can design your support systems to reach out to learners, as well. And don’t forget to ‘leave the lights on’ after campus staffers have gone home for the evening: round-the-clock access to collaboration tools allows study groups to have robust screen-sharing and visual tools. If you’re worried about people using the system inappropriately, let everyone know that their sessions are recorded and stored on backups.
Tool 4: Mobile-communication
Especially recently, inclusive design means making resources and content responsive for mobile devices. We should continue to think about how interactions can take place using phones, tablets, and laptops, both in our face-to-face learning spaces and remotely. Recent data show that learners prefer, by a large margin, not to use their phones for learning interactions. Meanwhile, phones are often the most convenient – or only – option for their circumstances.
In order to reach out beyond learners who self-select into online options, adopting tools that have mobile versions or that are responsive to mobile environments is a key design priority. Mobile access lowers barriers related to time, proximity, and schedule for the majority of our learners, so review your applications and tools that serve academic affairs, learner services, and instructor development, too, to make sure that they support mobile interactions.
All four of these tools are probably items that your area already supports, which is why changes, updates, and expansion of access to them makes academic life easier for your instructor colleagues, your learners, and for you, too. Think of the questions that your help-desk staff field most often, and create access to tools and guidance that directly address those challenges, using the plus-one design approach of universal design for learning (UDL).