Higher and further education providers are facing the challenge of supporting the interaction needs of an increasing number of students who feature accessibility preferences to use both elearning contents and services. In the next future, we can expect that, within adaptive elearning systems, both automatic and manual procedures will interoperate to elicit users' interaction needs for ensuring accessibility. In this paper, we report findings from the user experience with the self‐assessment of interaction needs, as part of a content personalization system, which tackles possible mismatches in the interaction between the user and the learning objects. All stakeholders involved in providing this service along with intended user groups (students with visual, auditory or mobility impairments, and without impairments) participated in the evaluation with over 100 users described in this paper. From the evaluation, results follow that our approach allows students to self‐assess and report adequately their interaction preferences. Furthermore, the paper describes findings of interest and open issues about how massive online courses may address the accessibility needs of an increasing number of elearning users.
ResumenPara satisfacer una demanda creciente de disponer cursos abiertos masivos (MOOC) en los que se deben atender las necesidades de cada persona, también de quienes tienen alguna discapacidad, en el trabajo presente se propone un marco de servicios, estándares, normas de calidad y consideraciones que deberían atenderse. En este trabajo se analizan primero las cuestiones relacionadas y los antecedentes existentes, resaltando la aparente contradicción existente entre la pobre atención que se presta a las cuestiones de accesibilidad y adaptabilidad para atender la diversidad funcional de quienes participan en dichos cursos y los desarrollos y normas existentes que deberían ser utilizados. Se destaca aquí el trabajo previo en una arquitectura de servicios abiertos que atienden las necesidades detectadas en un proceso de recopilación de requisitos de usuarios con y sin discapacidad en instituciones de educación superior que utilizan tecnología, que ha sido evaluada en un proyecto de investigación europeo (EU4ALL). A continuación, y basándonos en las metodologías de diseño centrado en el usuario, se propone un conjunto de escenarios para ilustrar las necesidades de cualquier usuario MOOC, y las limitaciones derivadas de la falta de apoyo que actualmente se presta a la diversidad funcional de esos estudiantes MOOC. Posteriormente se discute la aplicabilidad en ese conjunto de escenarios de la antedicha arquitectura de servicios EU4ALL, así como de otras propuestas identificadas en la literatura. Finalmente, se apuntan las principales líneas de actuación presentes y futuras, en las que se está trabajando para la detección de estados afectivos del estudiante que condicionan su proceso de aprendizaje y que podrían utilizarse, por ejemplo, para intentar reducir los ratios significativos de abandono que se experimentan en los MOOC.
Abstract:The EU4ALL project (IST-FP6-034778) has developed a general framework to address the needs of accessible lifelong learning at Higher Education level consisting of several standards-based interoperable components integrated into an open web service architecture aimed at supporting adapted interaction to guarantee students' accessibility needs. Its flexibility has supported the project implementation at several sites with different settings and various learning management systems. Large-scale evaluations involving hundreds of users, considering diverse disability types, and key staff roles have allowed obtaining valuable lessons with respect to "how to adopt or enhance eLearning accessibility" at university. The project was evaluated at four higher education institutions, two of the largest in Europe and two mediumsized. In this paper, we focus on describing the implementation and main conclusions at the largest project evaluation site (UNED), which was involved in the project from the beginning, and thus, in the design process, and a medium-sized university that adopted the EU4ALL approach (UPV). This implies dealing with two well-known open source learning environments (i.e. dotLRN and Sakai), and considering a wide variety of stakeholders and requirements. Thus the results of this evaluation serve to illustrate the coverage of both the approach and developments.
This chapter introduces a standards-based and adaptive framework whose main objective is to adapt user interfaces, content and learning environment to learners’ needs, including their functional diversity issues (i.e., disabilities). The framework is intended to be general (e.g., two different learning management systems and two large pilot sites are being considered) and to that end it is implemented in terms of an open architecture, which aims at providing services for Accessible Lifelong Learning. The chapter focuses on accessibility and adaptation issues, and their interoperability requirements. The covered topics are the required standards, interoperability requirements of the architecture, user model, recommender system, and their application to the end-user services that are being implemented at UNED University, one of the large pilot sites of the EU4ALL European project. Some of the challenges and solutions provided are discussed as well as the future work of related research areas.
Abstract. Open Educational Resources (OER) and MassiveOpen Online Courses (MOOC) have not developed with an inherent capacity to attend to the needs of disabled students. In our research, we aim to understand the social, contextual and organisational issues behind these inadequacies. Through this, interventions and best practices can be developed to improve the situation.
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