Beyond open; creating inclusive Open Educational Resources in HE
Tags: Okhe2, Education

Introduction

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are digital teaching and learning materials, which are freely available through an open license like Creative Commons CC-BY license. As such, the digitised nature of OERs can be wide ranging including eBooks, online learning, videos, or other media.

Open licences allow them to be used, shared, changed, and redeveloped by others. While there is still some debate about what makes an OER ‘fully’ open, it is widely agreed that their access, adaptation and sharing should not include a cost.

The OER movement; believed to have started by Massachusetts Institute of Technologies (MIT) OpenCourseWare initiative in 2001, has continued to grow rapidly over the last 18 years.

It is worth noting this growth in the creation, adaptation and use of OERs is Higher Education (HE) is a just one part of HE’s move towards openness. Another significant ‘open’ movement being that of Open Access (OA) which aims to disseminate research to the widest possible audience by publishing it openly.

As HE drives forward OERs and OA publishing, it is also shaping the culture of the 'open movement' as a whole. This influence, I believe, gives HE a responsibility for ensuring the culture and creation of resources has an inclusive focus on quality.

In this post I will explore the drivers influencing the wider culture of openness in HE and how this may be affecting the accessibility and inclusiveness of OERs.

What is accessible learning and why is it important for HE and OERs?

Under the Equality Act 2010 universities have a legal responsibility to deliver quality teaching and learning to all students, ensuring disabled students have their needs to access education met.

Universities traditionally address these responsibilities through support services like University of Manchester’s Disability Advisory and Support Service. These services are focused on supporting students with disabilities who may need ‘adjustments’ to learning materials and practices to be able to access learning. This may include requesting alternative formats of learning materials be provided or that materials be provided in advance of teaching sessions.

Local accessibility policies tend to focus specifically on ensuring learning materials meet minimum standards. Policies may include good practice for creating materials that are ‘dyslexia friendly’. For an OER’s design this could mean ensuring:

It includes alt-text tags for images so a visually impaired learner using a screen reader may get a ‘read out’ of what is included in the image.

It includes larger or re-sizeable text and font sizes, as well as using sans-serif fonts for those with visual difficulties such as dyslexia or Irlens syndrome.

It includes closed captions or transcript for media such as videos and audio for those learners with auditory related disabilities.

Steps to achieving the accessibility of learning materials is driven by services like DASS meaning that these changes to the development of learning materials are made on an adjustment basis after the academic is contacted by DASS about a learner registered with them.

This culture of ‘fixing’ materials can create a view for practitioners that ‘accessible = more work’. Whereas accessibility principles should be viewed as good design practice, which usually benefit all students by making materials and OERs easier to use and understand.

Current practice however, means that other students who may have disability or impairment but are not registered with the a disability support service within their HE institution (HEI) probably won’t benefit from this enhanced accessible learning material.

This fix culture also has other negatives in that teaching staff continue to be unaware of what accessibility is beyond a few interactions with services like DASS and are unable to apply good practice design from the start, preventing change at scale. This model also limits the impact experts working in these services can achieve.

Imagine if slides and handouts were always available before teaching and lectures. The ability to read and prepare fully in advanced of teaching sessions would enable all students to discuss and identify points they don’t understand and be ready with questions. This in turn benefits academics by making better use of their time and institutions themselves through more effective teaching.

Greater investment by HEI’s in this area would enable experts to collaborate with teaching practitioners and OER creators to embed accessible design principles into their materials and module design.

This is specifically important for OER’s because of how they are used and shared by those who did not create them. Therefore if a teaching practitioner is unable to make adaptations because of a barrier in understanding accessibility or software they will not be able to continue using the resource.

Schaffert suggested that a strategic approach to the implementation open resources would benefit HEI’s by supporting them to elevate the accessibility of materials, “… and to ensure the quality of educational resources developed for existing students and teachers.”

How does an Inclusive learning approach to resource creation differ from accessibility?

Accessibility goes hand in hand with inclusive practice when developing learning materials and OERs.

“Inclusive practice is an approach to teaching that recognises the diversity of students, enabling all students to access course content, fully participate in learning activities…” (Equality Challenge Unit, 2013)

Inclusive practice goes beyond accessibility by identifying further learner audiences who may on some levels be excluded by current design of learning materials, OERs, teaching practices or assessment. This is especially important for HE whose students may come from anywhere in the world and be at any age, it is also important for their distance learning students.

The barriers to learning they may face could include the understanding of:

colloquial language

culture

local academic policy

Inclusive practice differs from traditional teaching in HE as it encourages teaching and assessment through a variety of different formats allowing the learner to self-select what works for them. It also helps practitioners to design their learning materials and OERs in a structured way as discussed in this article.

Applying it in practice can highlight unseen barriers such as the use of metaphors and similes to explain theories and context, as used in this OER, which may prove difficult for students who speak English as a second language to understand.

“Classroom” Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

Inclusive practice itself is an approach, which will continue to grow, as we understand more about the different barriers each of us faces in the learning environment.

To highlight these hidden barriers when developing teaching and OER’s, HEI’s should teach criticality as part of its learning design, encouraging practitioners to consider:

Do the activities and interactions exclude or create barriers for the learner?

Are the examples I use representative of a diverse audience of learners of different ages, genders, sexual orientations and abilities?

If an OER is openly licensed but not designed for a diverse audience, ensuring it’s inclusive, is it as open as it could be?

“Inclusion” Photo by Brittani Burns on UnSplash

On larger scale UK HE, still has many issues to address with regards to open and inclusive practice. A vitally important one being ‘Why is my Curriculum White?’. This movement aims to challenge course content, reading and design by highlighting the need for diverse range of voices and opinions in teaching; specifically the representation of racial diversity in materials and reading.

OER design can become more inclusive by learning lessons from this movement even on a smaller scale. Inclusive practice and ‘Why is my curriculum white?’ both aim to ensure representation and diversity in learning. For an HEI’s to address these issues in its OER’s, there are a couple of simple to implement approaches their design should consider:

Diversity in names, genders, and nationalities where case studies, examples, and questions are included, where relevant.

If HE isn’t creating diverse OER’s, are creating open OER’s?

I also wonder how much is indeed possible without a diverse team of staff who themselves understand the different issues they have faced? Or by not having students themselves as partners to learning and OER design?

How is the culture of HE affecting the creation of inclusive OERs?

There are many influences in HE affecting the inclusiveness and accessibility of OERs and teaching in HE. The consequences of reduced funding for disability support and fee reductions for example, it could be argued is creating a culture that puts students second and competition first. In the next part of this post I will highlight those influences and drivers I feel are having the biggest impact.

Teaching Excellence Framework and competition in Higher Education:

It is fair to say the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) has created a culture of marketization and competition in UK HEI’s. TEF was introduced as a way to measure the quality of teaching in HEI’s and colleges across England, in the Office for Students own words TEF aims to;

TEF outcomes result in an award level for an institution of bronze, silver, or gold. Depending on the level a HEI is rated, will determine the fee level they can charge their students. These ratings aim to better inform students when choosing where to study, setting up a customer > business relationship culture between students and HE providers.

In its need to quantify and assess institutions the TEF ignores a large part of what HE is for. In 1963, Lord Robins government paper determined HE’s purpose to be “the advancement of learning” and acknowledged “…the search for the truth is an essential function of institutions of higher education…” these findings also received agreement across political parties.

The cultural effects of the TEF must be acknowledged in relation to the quality of OER’s, as OERs in their openness are somewhat altruistic in nature. The way they contribute to the HE and society as a whole, put simply, is not and cannot be measured by TEF.

Reduced funding to support disabled students

In 2015 the conservative government announced it intended to cut funding for students with disabilities in HE. This was framed by the then minister for Education as “better targeting” of students receiving the Disabled Students Allowance (DSA). However, the implications of the cuts resulted in fewer students ‘qualifying’ to receive DSA and HEI’s left to pick up the cost of what had previously been covered.

The ‘Disabled Students’ Allowances Consultation: Equality Analysis’ report recommended cuts to funding for:

IT equipment and consumables

Specialist accommodation

Non-medical helper support

An example being the provision of a digital voice recorder for students receiving DSA which it was determined that two thirds of students receiving it found it useful. Which the report describes as;

“This additional cost to Government represents questionable value for money…”

Photo by Charlie Firth on Unsplash

The wording of this mirrors and perhaps influences the culture in HEIs accessibility ‘fixing culture’ where changes to materials and OERs may be seen as ‘additional’ work. Again, this is reflected in government policy approach of ‘reasonable adjustment’ where institutions have a legal requirement to prevent students with disabilities facing a disadvantage because of their disability.

This approach drives forward a legal compliance culture in HE which reductions in funding and additional responsibilities for HEIs affects its ability to address and adopt an inclusive approach. For OERs produced in HE it means a changes to address inclusion aren’t at a high enough place on the agenda; and meeting minimum accessibility standards remain as the only standard HEIs and government require them meet.

It is also worth noting that a paper by Chiwandire and Vincent found that the 2015 funding cuts for students with disabilities disproportionately affected smaller HEIs.

How can Universal Design for Learning help HE to address issues of inclusiveness in its open resources?

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) approaches the design of learning materials and teaching practice by designing for those learners who are ‘in the margins’, it aims to ensure a diverse range of:

In doing so, providing opportunities for all learners to get the most out of learning through diverse formats, teaching methods and assessment. This approach supports learners with differing ways of learning, prior knowledge and abilities by allowing them to make choices according to their preferred ways of learning.

This video gives an overview of UDL and why it’s important for the design of teaching materials.

‘What is Universal Design for Learning?’ by www.ahead.ie

UDL is different from accessibility and inclusion as it also considers learners motivations and independent study strategies helping them to see their progress through scaffolds, models, examples, and goals ensuring they stay motivated and engaged.

As UDL covers both accessibility and inclusive teaching principles and provides suggestions practitioners can apply as best practice not just meeting the minimum, it means HEIs can improve in both these areas by adopting its approach to teaching design and OERs.

UDL is not designed to be applied to practice as a ‘prescriptive fix’ but as suggestions practitioners can adopt to reduce barriers for their students it is practical to apply.

Examples of these under the principle of engagement include:

“Provide learners with opportunities to formulate and revisit their goals.”

“Use prompts and scaffolding to help student visualise desired learning outcomes.”

These are both good teaching practice, which we may not as practitioners and OER developers be applying consistently.

The broad lense approach of UDL to learning removing barriers makes UDL it a great model for openness in HE. However, the challenge in taking the UDL approach is its size. Which makes it difficult to implement the full framework at scale across HE or an individual HEI. HEI’s could consider promoting elements of UDL through marketing communications and masterclasses to address its biggest challenges rather than trying to implement it all at once.

Where does this leave openness in HE and its OERs?

As discussed, there are many practical steps HE can take to become more open in their culture, teaching, and OER design. Movements like OA and OER should be utilised to influence changes in practice by promoting best practice such as inclusive teaching, and UDL.

It is important to note the open movement in HE may itself still faces other challenges and barriers to participation not covered in this post. Padma and Nick Turnbull both discussed some of these in OKHE1 discussing issues of impostor syndrome and how the culture of HEI’s that encourage publishing research in high impact journals are barriers to openness.

In my OKHE1 post I suggested the idea of improving quality of accessibility in OERs by implementing a peer review and badge approach. Although I still believe this idea has merit, I can now see how this may negatively affect participation in producing OERs.

If open is about sharing and supporting a community of open knowledge, then introducing a peer review approach, may well lead to the same elitism we see in academic publishing today. This approach also does not include methods for institutions to improve the wider inclusivity of their OERs and teaching materials.

In conclusion openness is having a big influence on HE and by embracing it institutions can use openness to also improve quality and inclusive practice for all students. This progress towards openness in HE needs to continue to ensure it becomes, not just a part of, but at the heart of HE’s culture.