ICALT-2011.Exploring a standards-based approach to the design and delivery of adaptable learning objects
1. Exploring a standards-based approach to the design and delivery of adaptable learning content. A Case Study. Voula Gkatzidou, Elaine Pearson Accessibility Research Centre Teesside University, UK [email_address]
16. Exploring a standards-based approach to the design and delivery of adaptable learning content. A Case Study. Voula Gkatzidou, Elaine Pearson Accessibility Research Centre Teesside University, UK [email_address]
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Exploring a Standards-based Approach to the Design and Delivery of Adaptable Learning Content. A Case Study
Previous presenters of this session have highlighted the importance of adaptability and personalisation and it is clear that each and every one of us is different in terms of who we prefer to learn. In the context of accessibility and disabled learners, no two learners are the same, they might require alternative access systems to access their learning content or they might require for it to be presented in different modalities or styles. So the concept of adaptability is of pivotal importance to disabled learners There are numerous existing approaches to adaptability and personalisation in the field of adaptable learning but not many of these attempts focus specifically on accessibility and most of these approaches either focus solely on technical standatds and usually lack a pedagogical perspective. The focus of this work is looking at adaptability for accessibility in order to enable learning rather than facilitate or enhance learning, as with disabled students, it’s a matter of access or no access at all if learning is not adapted to their needs.
Standards play an important role when it comes to realising th e potential of adaptability. For this work we have implemented the IMSAccessForAll specification that IMSAccessForAll allows for two subsequent specifications: accmd: that uses metadata to describe the accessibility of a learning resource, in terms of its availabilit of alternative components acclip: a metadata specification that describes the learner’s access needs and preferences This work is looking at providing tools to support an accessible relationship between the learner and the resource by designing tools such as a learning object authoring tool a learner profile tool an adaptation mechanism to provide a match between what the learner needs and what the learning resource has available.
Just an overview of how these tools are connected, we have the learning object authoring tool that allows for the design of adaptable learning object tagged in accmd A nd the learner profiliing tool on the other side that allows a user to express their profile in acclip. We have the tas ADAPTATION service in the middle that is responsible in adapting the learning object to suit the needs of the learner proflle and present the adapted content to the user.
Lotti is a web based authoring tool that supports the design of pedagogically rich learning objects, with the aid of learning design patterns, supporting the designer to create and appropriately label retrievable, re-usable and adaptable learning objects The unique aspect of lotti is its accessibility wizard that prompts the designer to assign an alternative component, everytime they import a new media file LOTTI is currently employingIMS ACCMD, IEEE LOM, and IMS CP
The Profile for Adaptable learning (PAL) tool is a mechanism that collects the user’s access requirements in terms of appearance, layout and selection of content Pal allows for the description of requests for alternative formats such as captions, audio descriptions, sign language etc. It summarises the acllip preferences into easy for the user to understand adaptability statements and it applied IMS ACCLIP metadata
The aim of this case study is to identify the practical boundaries of transformable content by examining the efficacy of an authoring tool and profiling mechanism in implementing the accessibility metadata standards for adaptation. The case study also aims to investigate the validity of our wider adaptation approach by providing a platform for experimentation with realistic examples of learner profiles and learning objects that have the potential to demonstrate the benefits of the metadata and the individual tools. Methodology : first we use the authoring tool to develop a range of learning objects and investigate the extent to which they could be adapted. We also use PAL to create a number of detailed learner profiles and then examine the outcomes of each particular case of matching the learning object to different learner profiles in order to understand the factors that lead to these outcomes
The sample learning object used for this study was an already existing learning object, the While Loop It was originally designed to help the teaching and learning of introductory Java programming for first year undergraduate students at London Metropolitan University learn JAVA programming. The ‘While’ loop learning object was chosen to be used in the study because it is a short, self contained resource authored in Flash which contains a single learning objective and explains an abstract programming concept that students find difficult to comprehend and has been extensively used in practice over the years. It follows a learning design pattern and consists of a title page, a concept page, a number of example page and an interactive quiz at the end.
The original ‘While Loop’ learning object is composed of the following media assets: text, images and a series of animations. During the re-development process, the original media assets of the ‘While Loops’ learning object have been used for its re-aggregation with LOTTI, alongside a number of accessibility enhancements. The following table summarises the learning object’s original media assets and the adaptable components that have been added with LOTTI. For text, we have added a graphic alternative, which in this case was a sign language alternative video For images, we have provided text descriptions and similarly added audio description to animation. For the video component, we have added a caption file (subtitles)
In the context of this case study the various personas are defined in terms of their access needs and preferences. This is based on a design technique that specifically targets user interaction design by allowing the creation of personas that are precise descriptions of a typical user and what they wish to accomplish. Personas are defined as user models and are fictional, detailed archetypical characters. to represent their specific access needs and preferences Personas are defined in terms of their needs and preferences and act as detailed, fictional and archetypical users. For the purpose of this case study, we have created five personas, as example learners, to represent their specific access needs and preferences. Each learner profile, which was written in English, and was expressed through PAL, which automatically translates it into XML statements expressed in IMS AccLIP
As you see on this table, the 5 personas we have created are summarised alongside their individual needs and preferences Persona A represents a hearing impaired learner and requires alternatives to audio, and in the case of While Loop learning object, that means subtitles for the video content Persona B is a low vision learner that is a screen reader user and needs text alternatives for all visual elements so the screen reader can read them out loud Persona C is a mobile learner, wishing to access all the learning content on his mobile device, and requires audio alternatives to all textual elements Persona D is a cognitive/motor impairements user that requires the use of a switch as an input device, prefers an onscreen keyboard to be presented and would also prefer the use of symbols. Persona E is a kinaesthetic learner, which represents a particular learning style and she would like to be able to change the sequence of the learning content,and also prefere graphic alternatives to text to suit her mode of learning.
So when it comes to mapping the learning object to each of the personas, this is table summarises of what happens for each case. For Persona A , the adaptation is pretty striaghtforward, with the TAS service being able to augment the video with t he captions file Similarly, for Persona B, text alternative and equivalents exist for all the media components, so the TAS service would be able to carry out the necessary adaptations as requested by the user Persona C specified a preference for audio alternatives to text, as he will be accessing the learning object on his ipod, and due to the size of the screen , he wont want. The animation and the image have audio alternatives, but the textual elements don ’ t, so the TAS service will only be able to fulfill partially his needs Persona D Persona E
To summarise, we have presented an approach In order to bridge the gap between user’s needs and learning content authors’ efforts and to respond to the challenge of designing adaptable learning objects It is clear from the study that AccMD can only be partially applied to rich media content, as it requires that content is managed as unique, atomic components, while rich media are, by definition, complex and can be composed of a number of synchronised media resources.
To summarise, we have presented a standards based approach that responds to the challenge of adaptable learning. Although we believe that the case study demonstrated the validity of our approach, we acknolwedge that its limitations in terms of the small size of sample learning objects and personas. So a replication of the case study is required in order to be able to confirm and get more in-depth results prior to running the case study again with the involvemnent of real learners. What this case study means to us in terms of moving forward, is that we can feed the results of this conceptual mapping into the design and implementationg ot the TAS adaptation service, specficially in terms of what rules and what intelligence should apply to it. Future work includes the integration of both LOTTI and the PAL tools within a development framework for an open source Adaptable Personal Learning Environment (APLE) [14] that provides a learning experience, adaptable to the needs and preferences of individual learners, regardless of any disabilities they may have or the context in which they are working.
Exploring a Standards-based Approach to the Design and Delivery of Adaptable Learning Content. A Case Study
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