Understanding e-Inclusion in the context of disabled

learners in Higher Education

Dr Jane Seale, School of Education, University of

SouthamptonPresentation to the e-inclusion seminar series, Kings College,

London, March 6th 2008

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Overview• Examine different perceptions of inclusion use

these to identify and critique common conceptions of e-inclusion.

• Using early results from a current research project will present case studies of disabled university students and use these to illustrate and discuss the complex relationship between disabled learners, technologies and their educational experiences

• Discuss implications for developing and strengthening our theorisation of e-inclusion in higher education contexts.

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Inclusive education

• Increasing participation and removing barriers

• Discourse dominated by arguments regarding integration in schools (mainstreaming) or specialisation

• Inclusive education, seen as a final destination

– E.g. outcomes focus on physical presence in a mainstream school rather than quality of learning experience

• Teachers learn about pathologies in order to fix them

– Teachers who opt to specialise in learning support are encouraged to acquire an identity as experts in learners’ deficits

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Inclusive e-learning (compared to inclusive education)

• Increasing access and removing barriers

• Discourse dominated by arguments regarding web accessibility and universal design (Seale, 2006)

• Inclusive e-learning is seen as designing e-learning so that widest possible number of learners can benefit and the specific needs o learners are met

– Inherent is notion of equality of opportunities..

• E-learning staff who opt to specialise in learning support are encouraged to acquire an identity as experts in learners’ deficits/specialist technologies

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Digital Inclusion

• Increasing access to technologies and people’s ability to use them

• Discourse dominated by arguments regarding the digital divide, social exclusion and barriers

• The process of digital Inclusion is seen as creating gateways, opening doors, letting people in

– Assumptions regarding a natural progression from digital exclusion to inclusion

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Digital Inclusion• Emergent concept of a continuum rather than a dichotomy

• The outcome of digital inclusion is viewed as:

– productivity and contribution to society (in terms of getting work, being economically self-sufficient and being a good citizen)

– Equity

– Autonomy, independence

• Practitioners are encouraged to focus on the characteristics of the digitally excluded in order to identify barriers that they can seek to explore and reduce

– Access to or ownership of technology-give it to them

– Skills, confidence, capability- educate them

– Attitude- motivate them

– Differential use- Show them

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Inclusive e-learning (compared to Digital Inclusion)

• Increasing access to technologies

• Discourse dominated by arguments regarding the digital divide, social exclusion and barriers

– The paradoxical second digital divide

– Have access to technology but can’t make full use of it

• Inclusive e-learning starting to be viewed as a continuum

– Introduction of notion of optimum accessibility

• Practitioners are encouraged to focus on the characteristics of the technology in order to improve design processes and systems

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Digital Decisions and Empowered Choices• Digital divide is not solely about access to

technology but about equality of opportunity and equality of outcome.

• Some people are making digital decisions – whether to use technology or not – even though access is available to them

– they are making an empowered choice.

Neil Selwyn, London Knowledge Lab

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The LEXDIS Project• JISC funded: Learner Experience Phase II

• Mike Wald, Jane Seale, E.A Draffan

• Produce 30 case studies describing disabled learners’ different e-learning experiences

– Explore and describe how disabled learners experience and participate in technology-rich environments

– Investigate the strategies, beliefs and intentions of disabled learners who are effective in learning in technology-rich environments and identity factors that enable or inhibit effective e-learning

http://www.lexdis.ecs.soton.ac.uk/

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LEXDIS: Participatory MethodsPhase 1:

– Advise on importance of research questions, rephrase, add, take away

– Advise on media/methods for “plus” element

• Phase 2: Contribute own experiences in a form and media of their choice

• Phase 3: Advise on analysis of data and key implications to be drawn out of the data

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Will the experiences of the LEXDIS participants help develop our conceptions of inclusion?

• Evidence of exclusion

• Evidence of inclusion

• Evidence for digital decision-making

• Evidence for complex relationships

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Evidence of exclusion

• AT not meeting needs

• Access and accessibility barriers

• Stigma

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Jo- AT not meeting needsWhat about any assistive technology? Were you offered any?

I was, but I can’t cope with it.

What were you offered?

Things like Jaws and ZoomText, I think. It magnifies text and that.

And to read the screen?

Yes.

And you didn’t feel the need, for any reading?

No, I didn’t get on with it.

Even for very big documents?

No. Mainly the applications are not set up very well. I don’t work well with them. It would enlarge things so that you can’t see the whole thing in one go, which I like to be able to do. Whereas, if I use something like Word, and just change the font size, I can see it all on the screen at the same time.

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Kate- accessibilityWhen you are using Adobe that’s the PDF Reader then...

...which I make 140% because it’s tiny. My lecturer uses a lot of scanning from Adobe which obviously makes it even smaller – because then you’ve got 2 pages on 1. He puts the materials on Blackboard, which is great, but then they’re really really small so to print them off is impossible.

Do you open it in Adobe, read it at 140% but not bothering to print it out because it’s so small, or do you save it with larger print?

Sometimes, when it’s scanned in, you can’t actually change the font size. So I prefer reading it from printed copy rather than off the computer screen as I get headaches, what have you... so I do tend to print it, but often I give up on the printed version and go back to the computer. Then it takes me longer to read it. I have to sort of break it down so if you have a 40-page document which would take me 3 hours to read, and I have to do about an hour and then stop and do something else and then come back and do a bit more.

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Nikki- access issues On being required to post comments on discussion list in order to pass unit:

The website gets jammed up and crashes. On MSN you can see who’s logged on. On there you can’t. If you put a message on, you can sit there for 2 hours waiting for a reply. I had to continue to go back to the library. Those who have internet at home can check it all day. But, I went to the library in my pyjamas because it got so late!

This is unfair.

If you don’t communicate on there, you don’t pass.

The student residence are the ones who don’t have the internet.

Ours are 40 years old and condemned. The new ones are supposed to have the internet. Eventually I managed to do my project.

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Kim-access to effective supportAny other assistive technology ..

I would love to be able to do the one that talks.

Have you not got TextHelp, or do you mean Dragon?

I have, and the guy came round once to help me set it up. I did the voice recognition bit, but he didn’t …

Speech recognition.

Yes. I have it on my computer, but I don’t know how to use it. It’s not completely trained to my voice. So way more hassle than typing.

It would be if you haven’t trained it.

I have had it half trained, but the guy came to one session and never turned up to the next one.

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Paul K- Stigma

You’re at home with recording things.

In lectures it’s a little bit intimidating, because a lot of lecturers still – They are fine with it but if you get up in front of a lecturer with 600 people and ask “Will you record that for me please?”

Do you take yours down to the front?

You have to –this is the thing you have to as there is no way what would be really good is not going ‘Oh I’ve got dyslexia look at me’ and it does feel like that sometimes. It would be good if there was an interface that we could use that recorded at the back. Bluetooth, for example, which I don’t know a lot about, but something along those lines may work

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Reena- Stigma

But with technology, I still think there’s a stigma to it. If I did have assistive technology I would use it on my home computer. There’s no way I would use a lot of it in the lab because I wouldn’t want that stigma on me like that thing – which is bad, but it’s how people are.

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Evidence of inclusion• Skilled/literate

• Access

• Independence

• Impacted positively on learning

• Productivity and efficiency

– Wasting time

– Saving time

– Better grades

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Michael- Digitally literate

When did you get this computer?

I bought this computer in 2001.

Was that with your DSA?

No – it was before I started at university. I bought it and I looked at it, and I thought I could do a lot more with this. So, I changed the mother board, I changed the CPU, I increased the RAM, didn’t like that so I put a new case onto it then as well.

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Hannah- independence

Can you think of any technologies, or any examples?

I would definitely say probably the ones that had the most profound affect on my learning were when I was using an on-screen keyboard with sip puff and then with a leaf switch for the first time – simply because I was having to rely on anyone else to write down what I wanted to be written down.

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Kim- positive impact on learning experience

Do you feel that assistive technology affects how you learn?

Yes. It’s starting to, because I’m starting to use it. For example, this Mind Map thing. Fantastic. I printed it off and had everything in front of me in the order I wanted to write it – very clear. And I had all the notes about what I wanted to do. It’s very useful.

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Nicki- productivity- saving time

Using AT affects how you learn?

Yes. Before, when I did essays, I didn’t have the Dragon Speak to speak to it. I’d sit there and type it in and it would take me ages. Whereas with that it’s so much quicker and it takes me near enough half the time, and reading is better as well.

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Michael- productivity- making life easyDo you feel using those technologies affects how you learn?

Definitely. It makes life easier for you. When I think of how we used to have to do things like writing things out – essays for instance. It was monstrous. If you wanted to change anything, you had to write it again. On a word-processor you can just write it – and say “I don’t like that” and change it round. It’s made life so easy.

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Jim- productivity- improved grades

My grades have improved since being at university, in a sense that I am now able to use the technology that they’ve given me. Beforehand, when I was at school especially, they insisted that we used fountain pens. Imagine – if you shake the pen, the ink goes everywhere. They wouldn’t allow me to use a biro, so in the end I just didn’t write ... I’d write a couple of lines rather than a whole sentence. Likewise, in exams now, if I have to do it by pen and paper, I’d quickly get hand-cramp. It’s related to essential tremor. If I’m able to type, I’m physically able to do more than if I was actually to do it by hand.

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Jim- productivity- improved focus

In phase 1, I said that I could type 60-70 words a minute, compared to writing. Obviously, I can type faster than I write, so when I did actually get the technology, it allowed me to take more notes, to write more and to actually physically sit down and do more of an assignment, and to get better at it because I wasn’t getting so worn out by just the actually manual hand writing. It allowed me to focus more on the work that I was doing, rather than trying to use the pen and paper.

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Nicki-productivity- staying on the courseGetting the DSA was.....

A massive turning point. It was brilliant – if I didn’t have it I’d still be stuck and I probably wouldn’t still be on the course to be honest ....

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Digital Decisions• Shall I use technology at all, if so what for?

• Which technologies shall I use?

– Choosing between AT’s

– Choosing between technologies for learning and technologies for socialising or playing

• Is the time it takes to learn to use AT going to save me time in the long run

– Invest time to save time

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Stacey- computer or not?

For learning or revising, I prefer to do it by hand rather than on computer, because it doesn’t go in otherwise. It’s tactile. As well as that, the Internet on my computer seems ‘temporary’, whereas if it’s on paper, then it’s hard copy. My computer has crashed about three times since we’ve been at uni, and I’ve lost everything that way! (laughing) As well as that, there is something about knowing that if it’s on the computer, I don’t have to remember it – in a way. If I’m writing it down, I know I need to learn it. It sinks in and I prefer writing by hand.

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Nick- which technology?

I wouldn’t scan it in unless I knew exactly what pages I was using. In the past, even to an extent now, because of the time-scale it takes – if it’s a specific chapter and I can turn the pages easily, I still haven’t quite worked out whether it’s quicker to use Dragon or to scan it.

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Nick- digital decision- learning or socialisingWhy not use these?

I think I’m more of a technophobe than I realise. It’s also the ‘time’ which I waste on FaceBook and so on. Newspaper websites – it’s “guilty pleasure” because I think that I really should be working instead, so I don’t try out all these wonderful things. It sounds so backward, I’m sure.

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Jim-time-digital decisions-learning or playing

What about taking part in an online community, like virtual world, or Second Life?

Yes. I used to. I used to play lots of games – MMRPGs, they’re called – the massive multi-online like Warcraft, that sort of thing. I used to do that, but I grew out of it, as I felt I had to do more work!

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Stephanie: Can I afford to invest time in order to save time?

You said very early on, that I’ve never forgotten “I feel as if I’m doing 2 courses. I’m doing a physio course and a skills technology course – because you were struggling. Do you still feel that?

…when I got all my software in autumn last year, and they said: “You need to have your training on this” – as you quite rightly have said – I did feel like I was doing 2 courses and that was, frankly, too much. I had to stay with my old bad habits because I just didn’t feel I had the time to take out to learn something new to help me. It was a viscous circle, really.

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Nick- digital decisions-curriculum issues

In what way do your assistive technologies affect how and what you learn?

I'm more likely to pick essay questions and assignments where the reading material is on Blackboard and already available electronically. It takes time for me to adapt things into electronic /format myself. So I often choose questions not just based on interest, but on the ease of accessing the material.

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Kim- digital decisions about using supportHow were you supported, then? You have done it by trial and error. You said that both your online learning has been by trial and error – for your university-based stuff, and using your assistive technologies. You haven’t had the training each time?

I don’t want to make them sound bad, but I think that’s a lot to do with me being so busy, and not getting in touch with them so much. Their emails are always there. There is always help available from the Dyslexia Access People.

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Digital agility

• Agile users

• Agile decision-makers

• Agile strategy developers

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Stephanie- digital agility-use

Was there a moment during the school transition work – where suddenly you thought: “Well, actually, I can – I’m not technophobic – I can do these things”?

Yes. Again, it’s been more recent, because there was an assignment I had to do this week. We got together in groups to discuss it, and they were all in awe of my preparation that I’d done. My Mind-Map. They do Mind-Maps as well, but this is all typed. They said: “Does it type it for you?”. I said: “No you type it in as you would you hand write it, or type it in Word, but it pulls it all together. You can re-organise it and can add notes. You can edit it “…They said: “Wow!”. These are people who are pretty much first class honours students!

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Stephanie- digital agility- strategies

For me, reading is a big problem, because it is time-consuming and I get very tired reading, even after 10 minutes. And I found anatomy very difficult to assimilate. I have used different technologies. I got some flash cards from Amazon and, because I learn visually, the cards are great, but I also need to have that reinforced audibly. I just found that if I recorded cards onto a disk, I could play it on my way to school.

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Robert- digital agility-trying new things

The positive thing was that I learned new things and I had tutors on the side because I had people who used it as well. This helped me to develop more courage to use new things. To extend my space.

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Sarah D- Digital Agility- problem solving

… you’re quite clearly so technologically happy

If you search on Google with shortcut keys; you find page after page where people have put in all these shortcut keys. On a computer game that I was stuck on – I was stuck on and I searched “Co.dust” (or whatever it was) and it came out with all these pages where people had gone through it and done a walk-through, and basically said what you need to do here and there.

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Kim- digital agility-determination

How do you use your technologies for your learning, including your assistive technologies?

I use Inspiration only because I have decided that I am going to do as much as possible to further myself in my life. So, I have all this stuff and I’m going to mess around with it. For this report, that’s what I did.

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Complex relationships

• Tempered value

– Using technology adds value in some ways and takes in others

– I like technology but not as much as I like people

• I could cope without it

• I want to be able to use technology, but…

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Sarah W-tempered valueHas it made a difference as to what you learn? Without it, would you have been put off doing the course?

There’s no possibility of us not having it, but it is helpful to go home and get onto the library website, and find out where the books are going to be. I just come here to the library, get the books and go home – place holds and things and they can let you know when the books are ready.

What are your feelings about using technology?

I love it. It boils down to organisation.

Could you cope without?

I don’t mind not having it ‘as such’. I’d probably use my time an awful lot more productively if I didn’t have it. Equally, I find it difficult to be productive without having the Internet to get onto. It’s like losing an arm.

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Sarah B-tempered valueDo you feel that actually using the assistive technologies has helped your learning and do you feel that it affects it?

I would say it helps my strain injury, but it hinders my learning. Because, my injury is the kind of thing that if I wanted to, I could just ignore and not use the assistive technology. I could do the things I needed to do quicker.

You think the assistive technology slows you up in your learning?

Yes, it does. And, that’s why I never really got to grips with Dragon 8 too much, because it was quite good, but I didn’t have the time. It was only now and then that I had an essay, and when I did have it, I had to get on and do it. I didn’t really have time to learn it… Maybe, if I’d organised my life better, I could have learned how to use Dragon 8 in the time that I was doing my essay, but then it didn’t seem as important. Maybe Dragon 9 is easier to use.

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Sarah D- I could cope without

What are your feelings about using technology to help you learn?

I love using technology. I used to find writing – actually handwriting in books – I had a tendency, I would start writing and I would just stare out of the window. And I wouldn’t do anything.

The opposite is, would you cope without using technologies?

I’d cope, but I wouldn’t get as much done and I probably wouldn’t be here at University.

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Jim- I could cope without, but..

What are your feelings about using technology to help you learn?

Could I cope without them? Yes. I could cope without them, but they are an advantage to me myself. We can’t lead two lives - you know what I’m saying. They do help me learn and they are a positive thing to anyone that does need the technologies. It does smooth out the bumps.

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Michael- I want to be able to use technology but….

This Latin especially – my worst time when I come to an exam, because I can’t have any of this technology there. So, what I’m doing is looking at a sheet of paper with a Latin text on it, and I’m going to have to then put some of that onto the answer book or keep marking the page across. So, it’s going to make life that much more difficult. Because of using technology, you lose out on the support…

Have you asked if you can use your computer?

No. No

Is it worth trying?

I don’t think I would really want to....

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Evidence for empowerment?

• Don’t get a sense of extreme dependency on support systems or the technology

• Opportunities: Generally, access levels, skill levels and support levels are good

• Outcomes: Technology appears to be positively influencing outcomes

• Agility: Embrace technology on their own terms

• Decisions and Choices: not simple, not trivial, influenced by lots of factors but “owned” by disabled learners

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Theorising inclusive e-learning

• Probably helpful to move away from understanding inclusion solely in terms of access and barriers

– Explains relationship disabled learners have with people and systems who install or remove barriers

• Need theories and concepts that can handle the observed complexities

– Explains relationships disabled learners have with people, systems and technology

– Expand our understanding of digital decisions and relationships to digital agility

• Central to this is exploring concepts of resilience and risk taking

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• Slides will be available from: http://www.slideshare.net/Jane65

• Or can email at: J.K.Seale@soton.ac.uk