TAMUC - IHE Accessibility in OER Implementation Guide
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?
To learn more about accessibility and how it applies to OER. To discover different tools that can help evaluate OER for accessibility.
Part Two: Introductory probing questions:
- What does accessibility look like in our organization? How do we measure accessibility?
Our university has several offices on campus that assist with Accessibility. There is the student disability resources office that works directly with students to find accommodations for their classes and campus experience. We also have an Accessibility Coordinator who oversees the accessibility of the tools and electronic information resources to ensure that they are accessible and focus on collecting VPATS.
I am not sure how we measure accessibility, there is an accessibility checker in the Learning Management System that can be used to assess courses.
- What does OER look like in our organization? How do we measure access to OER?
Our institution is an emerging OER institution. We have some departments that use OER heavily and require OER for course materials in all of their courses. Other departments use OER in certain courses. We currently measure access to OER by the number of courses that indicate use in the schedule of classes.
Part Three: Clarifying questions for accessibility:
- What is the organizational structure that supports accessibility?
Faculty are responsible for ensuring course materials are accessible, and the Center for IT Excellence and Office of Academic Technology double-check accessibility in the Learning Management System. We also have a campus accessibility officer. - Who generates most of the accessibility structures/conversation in our organization?
Campus Accessibility Officer, Office of Academic Technology, Office of Student Disability Services - Where do most educators get support with accessibility?
Office of Academic Technology and Library training workshops. - What content areas might have the largest gaps in access to accessibility?
Math (issues with reading formulas), issues with courses that have lab components (agriculture, engineering, etc.), and course content in LMS that links to external sites.
Part Four: Clarifying questions for OER:
- What is our organizational structure that supports curricular resources?
Office of Academic Technology, and the Library - What is our organizational structure that supports OER?
the Library, College of Innovation and Design, Office of Academic Technology - Who generates most of the curricular resources in our organization?
Academic Departments - Where do most educators get support with curricular resources?
Office of Academic Technology, the Library, and professional development works - What content areas might have the largest gaps in access to curricular resources/OER?
The Sciences, Agriculture, and Math
Part Five: Clarifying Questions for Faculty Learning and Engagement:
- What Professional Learning (PL) structures have the best participation rates for our educators?
- What PL structures have the best "production" rates for our educators?
- What incentive do we have to offer people for participating in learning and engagement?
- Who are the educators that would be most creative with accessibility and OER?
- Who are the educators that would benefit the most from accessibility and OER?
Part Six: Final Probing questions:
- What is our current goal for Accessibility in OER and why is that our goal?
To have a broader conversation on campus about ensuring that the OER that is selected or created is accessible to as much of the population as possible. We do basic accessibility checks, but this workshop series has opened our eyes to things we can do more effectively. - Who have we not yet included while thinking about this work?
Office of Student Disability Services, Center for IT Excellence - What barriers remain when considering this work?
Buy-in and ensuring that there is a broader conversation on campus about the importance of accessibility. - What would genuine change look like for our organization for this work?
Conversations at all levels of the campus organization about OER, implementing OER, accessibility, and student value.
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 on 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.
Create an instructional handbook on evaluating and creating accessible OER. - What other partners might support this work?
College of Innovation and Design, Library, Office of Academic Technology, Center for IT Excellence, Faculty, Administration - What is your desired timeframe for this work?
Summer- research, design, and assemble handbook
Fall - finish draft 1 handbook and ask for feedback from departmental reviewers
Mid-Fall - Finalize based on feedback and upload to OER Commons - How will you include diverse voices and experiences in this work?
Ensure that we make this accessible to people with a range of accessibility needs, and work with the Office of Disability Services to incorporate their suggestions. - 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.
How do we encourage the adoption of this across all of our different stakeholder groups? - (Save for during May 25th's session.) What feedback did you receive from another team during the May 25th Implementation Session?
To create a pocket guide that we can hand out to instructors.
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 have not changed our goal, but we are going to make this a broader conversation on Campus. - What does your team want to celebrate?
Learning new resources that we can pass along to those we work with and assist with course development. - What did your team accomplish? If you have links to resources, please include them here.
We created a rubric for evaluating accessibility, an OER Accessibility Checklist, and an outline for our handbook. - What are your team’s next steps?
Start building the OER Accessibility Design Handbook.