My proposed project combines a face-to-face learning
community series of meetings with an eight-week online MOOC from FutureLearn “Developing
Your Research Project”. To support the learning community a separate password-protected
website will be developed to keep track of face-to-face meeting dates, times
and venues and to introduce the topic of learning through MOOCs and the
benefits of peer support in learning communities. The dedicated website will
also provide an alternative to the MOOC’s LMS for both asynchronous discussions
and peer review of assignments.
The following discussion outlines the design elements that I
will build into the face-to-face learning meetings and the dedicated group
website to support universal instructional design and accessibility from an
ethical perspective.
Based on the information contained in the online training
videos in both CANVAS and Lynda.com on universal design principles, I am
building into the learning project multiple means of: 1) engagement, 2) representation
and 3) action and expression. I will address multiple means of engagement,
which refers to ways to catch the interest of the learners, to sustain their
effort and persistence and to encourage self-regulation, by having the course peer
support taking place not only in the MOOC LMS (where peers are unknown and only
available asynchronously in the discussion postings) but also in face-to-face
meetings and in the group website where the peers are known to each other. I
will address multiple means of representation whereby perception and
comprehension will be enhanced by repeating key information, already provided
in the MOOC, orally in the peer meetings and again in writing by restating assignments
and discussion prompts and other relevant information in the group website. I
will address multiple means of action and expression, which refers to physical
expression, communication and executive functions, by encouraging peers to
choose how they wish to present their assignments – using multimedia options
not just written summaries, for example, and by having calendars and other
prompts in the website to help them keep on-track.
As the facilitator/convenor I will help the learners by
being friendly, using a conversational style, within the website that will have
at least one video, and also by building warm-up activities within face-to-face
sessions and developing a pre-course “information and Q&A session” (both
online and face-to-face) to deal with concerns of learners. When I add peer or
self-assessments to the website they will be to reinforce the learning and monitoring
progress only.
The project will be peer-run to the extent possible and
learners will have the opportunity to decide how they wish to interact and
reflect, whether in dyads or in small groups or as a whole group, especially in
our face-to-face meetings. Netiquette, and ways of interacting in face-to-face
meetings will be jointly agreed.
In developing the website structure and content I shall
endeavour to use words and graphics together. I will ensure that text versions
of audio materials are made available and closed captioning is used when videos
are made. I will keep the text size at 9-12 points and use high contrast, avoid
background patterns and keep line length to 10 words. I will aim for
consistency with the labels and positions of similar information so that it is
perceived as coherent and uncluttered.
One of the interesting points in the Lynda.com (2016) video
on “Face-ism” was that a high face ratio made one appear more intelligent. I suppose that as I will want to appear to
have some ‘authority’ on the topic of MOOCs in general it may be advisable for
me to use a ‘head-shot’ only in any photo or video that I make for the website!
References
Canvas.
(2016). Accessibility: designing and
teaching courses for all learners. (video). Retrieved from https://learn.canvas.net/courses/1159
Lynda.com,
(2016). Universal design principles. (video).
Retrieved from https://www.lynda.com/Higher-Education-tutorials/Five-Hat-Racks/193717/514903-4.html
No comments:
Post a Comment