“Education For All?”
In looking at distributed and open learning, it can be easy to get lost in focusing on the technology, the pros and cons of online learning, and what the future has in store. However, one thing that often gets forgotten about is how distributed and open learning can be a lifeline for people who lack access to educational resources, and that there needs to be a way to make education accessible for these people.
What is Universal Design for Learning (UDL)?
UDL is an educational framework that is designed to make learning accessible and effective for all students (Hotchin, 2024). This includes having design for engagement, representation, and action and expression (UDL Guidelines, 2024). For example, under engagement, there should be options for optimizing choice and autonomy (UDL Guidelines, 2024). However, what does it mean to optimize choice and autonomy? For educators, that could be trying to have more open topics within the framework. For example, the instructor could give parameters and what is to be expected, but then leave room for interpretation for the students to take their own approach.
Ensuring Accessibility in Online Settings
The main aspects that are necessary to make online settings accessible are having accessible content, user-friendly design, accommodation, and testing accessibility (Hotchin, 2024). One of the sites I have used is the MIT course work. It is accessible to everybody, but there are some issues. For example, here is a screenshot for lessons for Japanese. It has all the information laid out and it is not overly difficult to find things, but it is also very dry and not appealing to navigate. Moreover, for people who have trouble with literacy, there are no audio files available for them to practice the vocabulary. Ideally, there would be ways to make it accessible for people who are at the level but still not literate in the language.
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/21g-s56-japanese-vi-spring-2023/pages/lessons/
Ethical Challenges of EdTech
The ethical challenges of EdTech are privacy and data security, equity and access, commercialization of education, and the digital divide (Hotchin, 2024). In using any online platform, there will be some form of data collection, which can be bought by third parties or even hacked into, as was the case with InBloom (Regan & Jesse, 2018). In order to deal with this, it is important that the organization have transparency and mechanisms in place to protect data. Here is a video I found about what can be done from the California Education Board.
Ethical Considerations in Digital Interactions
As a participant in online communities, it is important to have a guideline on how students interact with each other and generally online. In one my classes, we had a style sheet on what we can and cannot say. It might seem overbearing, but actually most of the guidelines were common sense, and helped maintain a good atmosphere in the learning environment.
Applying UDL and Accessibility Principles
A learning environment I have been in as a student that addressed the principles of UDL was in an English Writing course. The instructor understood that the students were all in different time zones so they made sure to give a 24-hour leeway for handing in assignments. She also understood that some students had to use VPN networks or had unreliable internet services, which led her to posting all the work ahead of time so people could go ahead to make sure they did not miss out on deadlines. This was a helpful set of steps taken.
References
Hotchin, J. (2024). “Module 3: Designing Accessible and Inclusive Online Learning Environmentals.” EDCI 339. https://connectedlearningpathways.ca/category/edci-339-a01-module-3/
PBS. (2017). “Inside California Education: Education 101 – Protecting Student Data.” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdm06G_F–w
Regan, P. & Jesse, J. (2018). Ethical challenges of edtech, big data and personalized learning: twenty-first century student sorting and tracking. Ethics and Information Technology, 21: 167 – 179.
UDL Guidelines. (2024). https://udlguidelines.cast.org