Accessibility in OER Implementation Guide from the MCC OER Cohort
Overview
In this section, you and your team will engage in a Landscape Analysis to uncover key structures and supports that can guide your work to support Accessibility in OER. You may or may not answer all of these questions, but this is an offering.
May 11 - Section One: Landscape Analysis for Accessibility in OER in Local Context (Work on during May 11th implementation)
In this section, you and your team will engage in a Landscape Analysis to uncover key structures and supports that can guide your work to support Accessibility in OER. We encourage to explore some of the questions from each category. You may or may not answer all of these questions, but this is an offering. We ask that you complete Parts One, Two and Six.
Part One: Initial Thoughts
What is your team's initial goal for this series?
Our team plans to develop a rubric for faculty on evaluating OER for accessibility.
Part Two: Introductory probing questions:
What does accessibility look like in our organization? How do we measure accessibility?
Accessibility has been a growing focus at our institution for a number of years, including a grant for captioning of online courses, a grant-funded position related to accessibility, the introduction of Ally in D2L, the development of a new accessibility policy related to web content and documents, and regular professional development in the area of accessibility. Instructional design can look at courses upon request, all video content must meet ADA requirements, and Ally measures accessibility in online courses. Instructors developing new online courses answer a few questions related to accessibility on their PGP.
What does OER look like in our organization? How do we measure access to OER?
OER at MCC is not widespread but is being used in a variety of subject areas and has the support of the administration. We don't have any measures, though we have polled faculty about their use of OER. Several faculty were recently recognized for their use and creation of OER.
Part Three: Clarifying questions for accessibility:
What is the organizational structure that supports accessibility?
Accommodations office, Instructional Design, and Purchasing
A new policy exists related to digital accessibility requirements.
Who generates most of the accessibility structures/conversations in our organization?
Instructional design and Accommodations
Where do most educators get support with accessibility?
Instructional design and Accommodations office
What content areas might have the largest gaps in access to accessibility?
Anatomy and physiology, music, art appreciation, math
Part Four: Clarifying questions for OER:
What is our organizational structure that supports curricular resources?
Bookstore, Instructional design, Library services, IT, Individual department text adoptions
What is our organizational structure that supports OER?
Instructional design, OER Cohort, Administration
Who generates most of the curricular resources in our organization?
High enrollment courses, each instructor, Library Services, Academic Support and Tutoring, Technology, Camtasia, Yuja
Where do most educators get support with curricular resources?
Instructional design, textbook/software representatives, department chair or coordinator, colleagues
What content areas might have the largest gaps in access to curricular resources/OER?
Medical professions (Nursing) seem to have the largest gaps in access to OER resources.
Part Five: Clarifying questions for Faculty learning and engagement:
What Professional Learning (PL) structures have the best participation rates for our educators?
Professional development courses offered by our campus - especially PD day.
What PL structures have the best "production" rates for our educators?
Varies by department/subject area.
What incentive do we have to offer people for participating in learning and engagement?
Offering training via MCC's Professional Development/PD Day offerings provides the most incentive as all faculty/staff are required to complete a set number of hours each academic year. Also, we'd like to be able to offer stipends for participating in certain learning and engagement activities in the future.
Who are the educators that would be most creative with accessibility and OER?
With the right training, all educators at MCC would be creative with accessibility and OER.
Who are the educators that would benefit the most from accessibility and OER?
All educational departments on campus would benefit from accessibility and OER as accessible course materials are necessary in all disciplines and OER resources promote equity in the classroom.
Part Six: Final Probing questions:
What is our current goal for Accessibility in OER and why is that our goal?
We want to expand the use of OER across campus. This is a priority for our campus administration, and we have been sent to spread the word! As we work to expand OER use, the accessibility of OER resources is an important consideration. To ensure MCC students receive the greatest benefit from OER, we need to help faculty select and/or modify content so that it is accessible to the greatest number of learners.
Who have we not yet included while thinking about this work?
We would like to include students in this work. How can we responsibly involve them in the process of ensuring course materials are accessible? We are considering contacting the Accommodations office and the Institutional Research and Effectiveness office for feedback and ideas.
What barriers remain when considering this work?
Time, money, knowledge gaps, and outreach
What would genuine change look like for our organization for this work?
Genuine change would include PD courses on assessing accessibility in OER content. Also, faculty would work closely with Instructional degin to improve the accessibility of course materials. Finally, institutional support would be provided for those who are interested in OER and/or accessibility training.
Section Two: Team Focus (Finish before May 25th to share during Implementation Session Two)
Identifying and Describing a Problem of Practice
The following questions should help your team ensure that you are focusing your collaboration.
What is your Team’s specific goal for this series? You may consider using AEM Quality Indicators for Creating Accessible Materials to help add to or narrow your work.
Using McLennan Community College's existing accessibility policy (the Digital Accessibility Policy and corresponding Digital Accessibility Procedure Manual are located on the college's website) as a basis, along with the accessibility guidelines from AEM via SLIDE, our group will be creating an OER Accessibility Rubric to equip faculty to evaluate the accessibility of OER resources being considered for use in their courses.
What other partners might support this work?
The rest of our OER cohort and the Instructional Design and Innovation staff will review our materials prior to us presenting the information to the MCC faculty. In addition, getting some general feedback from the college's accommodations office will be important.
What is your desired timeframe for this work?
- Our OER cohort will need to have this instructional resource ready for a fall Professional Development class.
How will you include diverse voices and experiences in this work?
- Due to the privacy issues related to soliciting feedback from students with accessible design needs, our group will seek out general information from the accommodations office and existing research or narratives from reputable organizations, such as W3C (they have narratives included in a publication entitled "How People with Disabilities Use the Web") and WebAIM (they have conducted surveys of various types of users on web accessibility at their Projects page).
Please create a Focus Question that explains your goal and provides specific topics that you would like feedback on. This is what you will share in your breakout groups for feedback.
Keeping in mind our goal of creating an "OER Accessibility Rubric" designed to help faculty evaluate the accessibility of OER course content being considered for use in their classrooms, what do you think are the highest priority areas to address? In other words, must the OER content include to be considered "accessible" and therefore adoptable by the instructor?
What feedback did you receive from another team during the May 25th Implementation Session?
UNC Charlotte is considering the same question - where can they get the most "bang for their buck" when it comes to training faculty on making courses/course content more accessible? They suggested that lecture/presentation content - i.e. PowerPoint slides - is one area where improving accessibility can help many students. We also discussed video captioning and physical notetakers vs. app based notetaking in the classroom.
Section Three: Team Work Time and Next Steps (Complete by the end of Implementation Session Three)
Sharing and Next Steps
What was your redefined goal for this series?
We refined our goal of developing a rubric for faculty on evaluating OER for accessibility by incorporating MCC's new Digital Accessibility Policy and corresponding Digital Accessibility Procedure Manual into our content, along with the accessibility guidelines from AEM via SLIDE.
What does your team want to celebrate?
Our work during this training has been productive. We are creating a useful resource for our campus and the OER Commons community, and by implementing these resources, we will help to promote accessible OER content on our campus. In addition, our group has learned UDL and accessible design practices that will impact our creation of other content in the context of our roles at MCC.
What did your team accomplish? If you have links to resources, please include them here.
Our rubric is under construction. When it is completed, it will be published here: MCC OER Accessibility Rubric
- What are your team’s next steps?
We are going to complete the rubric, publish it to OER Commons, and present it to our campus as a Professional Development offering. We will also combine this rubric with an OER evaluation rubric that is in process.