JISC

Overview

This project extends our vision of creating learning resources adapted to the needs of students with diverse needs in order to create a better learning environment for all learners, wherever and however they study. The aim is to develop resources that extend the functionality and flexibility of VLEs to enable institutions to meet the needs of learners with disabilities who may require their learning resources to be adapted to meet their specific needs. Through a series of workshops and follow up activities, we will bring together specialist teachers, tutors, researchers, designers and technologists to develop a set of specialised widgets.

Aims and objectives 

This project aims to identify appropriate learning designs (digital and non-digital) derived from practice that can be re-purposed as widgets

created for specific learning needs that conform to the learning object metadata standards for accessibility. The widgets will be designed by teachers and tutors who work directly with disabled students and will meet the specific needs of their learners. The aim is to form, explore and document a Community of Practice that will integrate with existing CoPs to create a network for evaluation, adoption and adaptation of the materials to ensure longevity and sustainability beyond the lifetime of the project.

Project methodology

This project applies the expertise of the Accessibility Research Centre (ARC) at Teesside University, TechDis and the Portland College to develop solutions to support disabled learners. The project partners will bring together specialist teachers in teaching and technology to develop a set of specialised widgets through a series of workshops and follow up activities based on the model developed by JISC Centre for Excellence in Teaching & Learning in Reusable Learning Objects. The resultant widgets will be stored in a searchable repository on a Wookie server hosted at Teesside University that can be accessed, downloaded and distributed by the community and evaluated by teachers and groups external to the project.

Anticipated outputs and outcomes

The outputs that will be produced as a result of this project will be a suite of high quality widgets that are applications created for specific learning needs that will be classified and searchable by type, subject matter, complexity, adaptations and disability type and will be available for use and adaptation by the wider learning community. We also expect this project will result in a Community of Practice (CoP) drawn from its participants and other evaluators that will integrate directly with existing CoPs via TechDis, the Regional Support Centres, Moodle user groups and other groups to ensure critical mass and longevity.

Technology / Standards used (if applicable)

• IMS AccessForAll,
• W3C Widgets specification,
• WCA Guidelines,
• W3C XHTML 1.0 Transitional,
• W3C CSS specification,
• ECMA-262 JavaScript standard,
• Apache Wookie (Incubating).