Presentation Type
Presentation
OER Level of Expertise
Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced
Audience
Faculty, instructional designer, Administrator, Staff
Session Abstract
A core benefit of OER is expanding equitable access to high-quality learning. Much of our community’s current focus has been on supporting socioeconomically diverse learners to this end. Learn how The American Women’s College has furthered its work by considering students with different learning abilities through scalable design methods.
Objectives of the Session
Identify best practices in digital accessibility as applied to OER.
Identify methods for sustaining digital accessibility of OER at larger scale implementation.
Full Description of the Session
Access to learning has a multi-faceted meaning at The American Women’s College (TAWC). The college began by adopting an OER-first strategy in course design processes in support of its mission to expand access to low-cost, high-quality education. Through this work, 4000 coursetakers of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds annually have benefited from an average of $100 in savings for each proprietary book replaced with OER.
Recent adoption of Universal Design for Learning principles and the Quality Matters course design rubric has brought a new meaning for access to TAWC. One way that the college ensures that learners of diverse abilities have representations of learning that meet their needs (Meyer, Rose, &, Gordo, 2014) is through the promotion of digital accessibility. Serving as a framework in that regard has been the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1. These standards have driven a variety of practices such as providing text-based alternatives for media, using distinguishable text, and creating robust and consistent navigation elements.
Meeting guidelines is a holistic challenge that TAWC has addressed through training, work processes, and systems. Covered in the session will be examples of each, ranging from faculty/subject matter expert onboarding modules to job aids, quality evaluations, and content management. Attendees should leave with an understanding of how such measures could be translated into practice to benefit students at any scale and model of OER adoption.
References
Meyer, A., Rose, D. H., & Gordo, D. (2014). Universal Design for Learning: Theory and practice. Retrieved from http://udltheorypractice.cast.org
Presenter Bios
Jeremy’s background is in teaching and learning, technology, and their intersection. He has taught at the secondary and higher education levels, designed distance programming, managed a wide variety of technology implementations, and provided strategic leadership to technology teams. He pursues a personal mission of expanding access to high quality education, including through the promotion of OER. Jeremy currently serves on the leadership team at The American Women’s College where he oversees course design, user support, data and analytics, and institutional research. Jeremy is a doctoral candidate in the field of interdisciplinary leadership at Creighton University.
Location
163
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Start Date
22-5-2019 3:25 PM
End Date
22-5-2019 3:50 PM
Sustaining Accessible OER at Any Scale
163
Access to learning has a multi-faceted meaning at The American Women’s College (TAWC). The college began by adopting an OER-first strategy in course design processes in support of its mission to expand access to low-cost, high-quality education. Through this work, 4000 coursetakers of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds annually have benefited from an average of $100 in savings for each proprietary book replaced with OER.
Recent adoption of Universal Design for Learning principles and the Quality Matters course design rubric has brought a new meaning for access to TAWC. One way that the college ensures that learners of diverse abilities have representations of learning that meet their needs (Meyer, Rose, &, Gordo, 2014) is through the promotion of digital accessibility. Serving as a framework in that regard has been the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1. These standards have driven a variety of practices such as providing text-based alternatives for media, using distinguishable text, and creating robust and consistent navigation elements.
Meeting guidelines is a holistic challenge that TAWC has addressed through training, work processes, and systems. Covered in the session will be examples of each, ranging from faculty/subject matter expert onboarding modules to job aids, quality evaluations, and content management. Attendees should leave with an understanding of how such measures could be translated into practice to benefit students at any scale and model of OER adoption.
References
Meyer, A., Rose, D. H., & Gordo, D. (2014). Universal Design for Learning: Theory and practice. Retrieved from http://udltheorypractice.cast.org