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London Online is a course and project, which for the past two years has followed a collaborative development/training model in the production of interactive learning materials and the professional development of those staff involved. This model pairs ESOL teachers with digital materials developers all of whom work in FE/ACL organisations in London . They have shared ideas and skills and learned and worked together in pairs and as a whole team, in the development of 11 units of material closely mapped to the ESOL curriculum. A broad aim was to improve the skills and understanding of participants in the use and production of e-learning materials whilst at the same time producing engaging and interactive learning objects, which could be used to compliment more traditional material and methods. These objects are made available free to the sector including the source/authoring files.
Another key aim of the course/project was to produce material which was not only relevant, useful and easy to use for learners and staff but also where possible professional and high quality yet easy to customise, thereby encouraging and supporting the widest possible usage. Also to try and create 'engine' based material, which teachers or possibly even students could easily use as a basis for the creation of new/additional material. A simple objective in this area was to keep all assets (text, images, sounds) external so that these could be customised, or replaced without specialist skills to suit different staff/learner needs. This might and did vary based on the skills of the digital material developers and the constraints of the course/project timescale but nonetheless has proved a successful and desirable objective.
It is important to keep in context that these materials are not aimed at public domain distance learning but as resources to be used (with discretion) by teachers to engage and support learners as part of blended delivery. Also the material is not developed by commercial developers or in most cases staff with existing high level programming skills, so to some extent remains an example of development in progress rather than finished and final product.
The 03-04 materials are available for use online at www.talent.ac.uk/londononline or for download by registering at www.tower.ac.uk/curweb/londononline The 04-05 materials will be available from the same location very soon.
As lead trainer on the course/project for the last 2 years I have been privileged to work with my co-trainers, steering group and course participants in the development of these materials. An aim from the very beginning was to try to produce material which would extend the functionality, usability and interactivity of material staff were using and producing in packages such as Microsoft Word and PowerPoint and wherever possible enable the material to be easily customised. Like with much of the interactive content found on-line it seemed the best tool to use for this was Macromedia Flash. This was partly because of the access to this product by the participants but also because of the range of interactivity, which can be developed with it as well as the ubiquity of the flash player compared with other plug-in technologies. We wanted to concentrate on the Flash based learning content itself so with permission used one of the Digital Brain produced html layouts from the NLN materials as the container for the flash files. Usability was a key objective both for the learner and teacher. Accessibility issues were considered and discussed but there were some key decisions in the development process, which are perhaps best described with reference to one or two of the learning objects.
This example of the ‘engine’ based material can be found at www.talent.ac.uk/londononline/jobs/page1
Text: In this particular example all of the text seen on screen can be changed by editing the text file which 'feeds' it named data.swf. This is done by opening the file in notepad. The group were encouraged to use this technique wherever possible but did vary based on time and skills etc. I regard this facility as extremely important, because often pre-built materials are not used by practitioners (and therefore their learners) because they are unable to take ownership of the material and customise elements they disagree with, or need to change, to make them relevant to their learners needs.
The data.swf text file includes some configuration settings like font size and colour and a next link option, which only appears when the assessment is successfully completed. The format of the text file could have been xml but to enable the widest possible usage and customisation it was decided a simple text file with separate variable names would be easiest for staff to edit. This also enabled some simple instructions for editing the text file to be included within the file itself. The configuration settings are aimed at pre-setting the colour scheme and although these could be changed in different copies of an object to suit individual preference, there should also be an option for the user to change colour and font size within the object at runtime. To improve accessibility this should have been included and will be built into a future version. Some of the learning objects produced by the group do include this feature. However it would be relatively easy for a teacher to copy the engine based objects and change the config settings to meet an individuals needs.
Audio: The audio is provided by a number of external mp3 files which can be edited or replaced. This enables staff or learners to re-record the audio used by the object which is especially useful if text changes have been made. The text file configuration options can also be edited to control if the introductory audio plays automatically when the LO is first launched and the user has mute and repeat controls for the audio too. It was concluded by the group that audio in terms of instruction and narration was essential for the ESOL learners as well as being a crucial and intrinsic part of some of the learning activities. As the audio is external it would be easy for a teacher to re-record these files to suit their own learners needs or even build this into student activity and assessment.
Images: The external jpg images are resized automatically when the object is launched allowing any size landscape shaped images to be used although no pixels are removed so large images will take longer to load. No alt text is displayed over the images but this would defeat the purpose of this particular learning activity anyway, however a virtual magnifying glass is built into the object to enable a clearer view of the images and text, if required by individual learners. The 'right click + zoom in' feature built into the Flash Player further extends this ability to view the images and text more clearly if needed. From demonstrations it seems many staff are not aware this feature exists in the flash player and can be used with most flash based content.
This particular object is developed to provide an easy drag and drop interface with automated feedback to the user on click of the result button. The 'draggable' buttons and feedback elements are easy to reset via the try again button. Navigation does work via tab and enter keys and Windows accessibility features such as mouse keys and the instruction and button text is read by a screen reader such as Jaws but this particular object is not designed to be suitable for screen-reader users as pedagogically this would be of little use. An alternative perhaps even off-screen activity should be provided.
With all the assets external it is relatively easy for staff to change the text, audio or pictures used by an existing object or to copy and paste the entire folder to create brand new content. As the original source files are also made freely available anyone with knowledge of Macromedia Flash can further customise the material or use the .fla files as a starting point for new content.
A further extension of this model for customisation/creation of new content was the development of a 'front end' to this process. Using a 3 rd party tool Zinc 2 available from http://www.multidmedia.com the picturegrid editor was created. The picturegrid editor is freely available for download from http://www.tower.ac.uk/curweb/ilt/resourcesdetail.asp?DocID=2148
This tool takes the author through a step by step process of creating a 'drag n drop' interaction similar to the sample found at www.talent.ac.uk/londononline/jobs/page1 In addition the swf file containing the created interaction is embedded in a PowerPoint file and Word document for further customisation. Zinc allows interaction with the Windows file system and therefore selection and copying of files on a users pc to a common location in the process of packaging the new or edited learning object. Basically this replaces the method of manually replacing files and editing the data.swf text file with an automated, step by step more usable process. This should also enable and encourage staff to adapt the content for individual learners including amending content based on learner evaluation and feedback. The output generated by the tool also includes Word and PowerPoint files with the object embedded. This enables teachers to add learning content or guidance before or after the interaction or simply to use this interaction to enable their learners to test their understanding of existing content.
This tool could almost be seen as a 'proof of concept' example of the value of external assets and easy customisation. I developed this partly for this reason and there has been a great deal of interest in this editor with a large number of downloads and growing number of examples of new material for different subject areas created using it. Feedback from staff across the sector has been extremely positive. There are many other possibilities for easy to use tools such as this, which could benefit a wide range of learners and teachers including the ability to address particular accessibility and usability issues.
Developed and used as a fun activity for the participants on the course the material from 03-04 also includes a multiple-choice/true/false quiz template which can again be easily used to build new content and has some configuration and usability features built in. An example quiz can be found at http://www.talent.ac.uk/londononline/welcome/check1/
An aim here was to provide an easy to use quiz engine with automatic scoring, audio controls and differentiated routing based on score achieved. The current version does not appear to work correctly with Jaws so in this regard would need further development. The xml which 'feeds it' (quiz_d.swf) is edited using notepad just like the previous example. The xml is not QTI compatible which could be a possible future development together with a 'front end' similar to the picturegrid editor. In fact I did develop a partly working version of that at the time, it just became clear that a QTI version would be more useful but also take more time to develop.
These are my own personal reflections on the subject of learning object accessibility in general and the London Online material in particular. I should start by saying I have been involved with the development of accessible web sites and worked with blind users to assess and improve the accessibility of those sites and remain committed to those objectives. However I am encouraged by the role-based guidance provided by Techdis, which differentiates the accessibility requirements and considerations for public web site content and those issues related to learning content for use with a group of learners particularly in a blended learning situation. I have heard it advised on many occasions (not by Techdis) that "you mustn't use Flash because it's not accessible" indeed I had a conversation with someone interested in being a participant on the course/project who voiced that very opinion and possibly decided not to apply for that reason. There is also no doubt that some if not a large percentage of the London Online material is not fully accessible especially not to a screen reader user. However this must be discussed and assessed in context. Encouraging and enabling staff to use, customise and even create interactive learning objects without the need for specialist skills leads to far greater accessibility than if those same staff were to stick to traditional practice. Providing responsive pedagogical solutions is often far more important and effective than making something 'technically accessible". Likewise a learning object, which is technically accessible to a screen reader user, doesn't mean it's accessible to everyone, or that the learning content is of any use. Making the picture grid interaction fully accessible to a screen reader could well be an example of this e.g no longer matching text to pictures but text to alt text? Learning from user evaluation and feedback and being able to adapt material as a result can again lead to greater accessibility than might otherwise be the case.
Most of the staff involved in the London Online course/project have only just begun learning the technical skills and understanding of learner and curriculum needs required to develop effective interactive materials. There's also little doubt that it's more difficult to develop fully accessible material in flash (if there is such a thing as fully accessible) but I believe that's partly because the tool is often used to create a wider range of interactions than might otherwise be attempted in html or other tools. The scope of the course/project only really allowed us to explore the possibilities of accessibility together with 'customisability' and I'm sure there are many improvements that could be made. I would hope that the staff involved in developing the London Online materials, like myself will continue to learn about developing effective and inclusive learning material and if possible develop tools and techniques to enable and encourage others to do the same. It would be great if other across the sector were able to share developments and resources in the same way.
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