Webinar Two - Dream Big
by Joanna Schimizzi 1 year, 3 months agoDuring Webinar Two, we had our first Implementation Session where you worked together to examine your own landscape for Accessibility in OER.
Please click reply to this original prompt to share your thoughts and consider later replying to others.
If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER?
What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER?
1. Make all course content and research materials fully accessible to everyone through the use of accible OER.
2. Personally, I'd like to update the accessibility activities I share with faculty during the UDL Academy I offer. I will hear what the other people in my group plan to do during our group meeting later.
Breanne,
What kind of accessiblity activities do you find to be the most helpful or useful for faculty at these academies? The MCC group is working on an OER Accessibility Rubric to help faculty evaluate the accessibility of the OER they are evaluating for use in courses. We know our rubric will not likely be comprehensive, but we also know we can highlight several really important areas to assess. We'd love some feedback on which elements seem most pressing when it comes to accessibility.
Hi Yolanda. Since the academy is for faculty, I don't collect their accessibility activities and I give them options, so they choose which activities (if any) to complete. So I'm not sure which are most helpful for useful for faculty since they have options. Since the academy is about UDL (not OER), I'm not familiar with what should be evaluated specifically related to OER. The accessibility activities I use are related to using the accessibility checkers in Word/Powerpoint (correcting a bad document/slides example), creating and editing autocaptions in YouTube, and creating alt text for a series of images.
Breanne,
I am intrigued by you UDL academy. Is is something offered to all faculty or is it for management level positions only?
Carolyn Eberly
Hi Carolyn. It is offered to all faculty, but they register in advance.
Ok, thanks for responding. This is a really good idea I will bring to our team.
Carolyn
My big dream for accessibility in OER is to have our campus with equitable access.
Making our LMS accessible and integrating OER in course design.
1. Create caption videos or lecture transcriptions specific to our dental program content. Many studnts struggle with reading comprehension. This would be a fantastic support.
2.Our group plans to get more clarification about expectations for this project. Once we have that we can hopefully engage further with accessibility.
The caption videos and lecture transcriptions are a great idea Michelle. I do the lecture videos as well and should probably do the transcriptions even though I do not have any students with disabilities at this time, but may in the future.
I enjoyed our two groups getting together today and collaborating and how well both our projects fit together.
LouAnn
With unlimited resources, I would want more experts to help faculty design accessible materials. I will be working on making PPTs for a new textbook more accessible.
If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER?
I think my big dream would be that everything would be OER. No more publishers unless it was OER. From there ensure that all OER was accessible, for everyone, on any device (big or small). You could change fonts, brightness, etc.
What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER?
I think the most actionable is to reach out to all of the current resources that we offer on our campus to see what there all is to assist faculty in ensuring their course content is accessible. I am sure there are things that I don’t know we subscribe to.
I completely identify with your big dream, George. In particular, I get so frustrated when students do not have access to information that should be available to everyone. OER can be frustrating in its own way sometimes, but at least it is free for students.
George
I wanted to reply to you today because the dream of OER- no more publishers unless OER would truly alter our educational system, in my opinion, for the best! Publishers have become a stronghold that is too big and creates a divide insteead of providing more access. I hope that our steps and participation in this summer's workshop is a step that become bigger and bigger over time.
In the end let's put more technology into the use of OER than in publications that can only be purschased by a select few.
Thanks for your comment and dreaming big!
George,
I recently met two OER librarians at the Texas Library Association Annual Conference. The activities of both these librarians is to get access to the list of all current course materials from the bookstore and to locate OER alternatives for those courses. They then reach out to faculty to make those offers. Students can also do a search for OER in their course area.
Gabby Hernandez is the OER Librarian at UT-Rio Grande Valley. Information is provided for students and faculty at the associated libguide: https://www.utrgv.edu/textbook-affordability-project/students/index.htm.
Tessy Torres is the OER Librarian at UT-El Paso. Tessy provides information for faculty and an interest form for faculty to reach out if they are interested in support in transitioning from traditional textbooks to OER: https://www.utep.edu/library/oer/index.html.
I really like your dream. I think the time has come to do away with the old ways of doing things and embrace the technology and resources we now have available to make sure its all OER.
1. As a team we are wanting to focus on accessibility across campus. How can we provide buy-in for faculty and ready to go resources.
2. Developing an accessibility task force.
1. Complete overhaul of PDF materials.
2.Getting faculty to understand accesibility more.
I would love to have clear notations when searching for OER that resource is fully accessible (or any issues with accessibility, similar to CC-BY tags).
Become more familar with our library's OER lib guide and tell others about it!
1. I'd like to leverage resources in a way that helps to promote faculty buy-in across our campus, while also providing students more access to things they need.
2. We more so spoke to what it looks like to engage faculty and staff on our campus, regarding what accessibility is, what it means for students, and how we can provide resources for easier consideration and implementation.
Katelyn,
Our team also spoke about getting buy-in across our campus. Many faculty see accessibility as "one more thing to do." Same with OER - they are not willing to take time to locate new materials to meet their learning outcomes and then revise their classes. I understand, though. It is time-consuming and we do not have any incentive to do so.
We want to "light a fire" at our college and get faculty excited about OER. We just need the magic answer on how to do it.
Jacque
1. My big dream for accessibility in OER would be a formalized process for departments/stakeholders to select high-quality OER and then implement it in the most accessible, inclusive, and functional way possible for all learners. Additionally, I would like to see student input on the OER as well as a college-wide investigation into OER, rather than just the more forward-thinking departments embracing it and others failing to investigate it at all.
2. The part of our discussion about facilitating faculty inquiry groups to provide more alternative methods of submitting assignments/demonstrating competency through multiple means of action and expression in a wider range of courses is the most actionable at this time.
This is a great idea! We also talked about multiple means of assessment and how to reach students with varying learning styles, strengths, and needs.
Yolanda Gonzalez, McLennan Community College
You raise such important points with regard to capturing student voice with regard to OER and the necessity of college-wide investigation and a campus-wide formalized process. In our group discussions, we have been capturing some of the same thoughts with regard to our university.
It would be lovely to have a formalized process. This is actually what we need. And it is always important to include student voices in a campus-wide formalized process.
1. If you had unlimited time, money, resources, and support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER?
2. What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER?
To make OER more known within our faculty.
My big dream is to have more campus resources and personnel to support our faculty with respect to OER and accessibility. Currently, a helpful resource would be a dedicated video storage and captioning system for the university. One aspect of our group's discussion that is most actionable is the suggestion that we develop a best practices accessibility guide for our faculty and staff.
These are such important points! I also wish that my insitution had the support staff to support OER and accessibility in all of our courses...especially with regard to video captioning!
These are both big goals and necessary ones in order to further OER and accessibility efforts. We're facing a similar issue in terms of video storage and captioning. Video storage--especially for OER--seems to be particularly tricky due to the need for it to be accessible for those wishing to revise or remix. In terms of captioning, we were fortunate to get a grant that has enabled us to work with 3Play Media, a captioning service; however, there are lingering questions once those grant funds run out. Good luck with your endeavors!
1. To have a system that could autogenerate all the accessibility resources needed for any accommodation imaginable.
2. To clearly define all the expectations that comes with "Accessibility in OER"
Charles, I'm wondering how AI could help us with accessibility in the future. The accessibility tools in Microsoft provide a build-as-you-go accessibility checker, but wouldn't it be great if there was a tool that could take old materials and help guide a faculty member through the remediation of older content? We have a lot of slide deck reuse. I once told a faculty member that I knew they were using an old slide deck as their starting point on a lecture. They responded, how did you know? That 4:3 ratio isn't in our new 16:9 template.
That reminds me. Perhaps making an accessible branded PowerPoint template is another goal! At least one very old template that some faculty have used has one layout, so it encourages lots and lots of textboxes...
Thanks for sharing Charles, you've inspired some new goals!
Shannon
Charles and Shannon,
I love the idea of leveraging AI to help make the first goal/dream of "a system that could autogenerate all the accessibility resources needed for any accommodation imaginable" a reality. I would take this a step farther by not only having the support of AI to do so, but by having all humans aware and knowledgeable of all accessibility needs so that AI could support with that proactively rather than as an accommodation. Wouldn't it be wonderful if making all things accessible was just a part of all of our behaviors?
Thanks for the great ideas!
Claire
Is one aspect ratio better than another for accessibilty purposes?
That every document, video, PowerPoint, flow chart, infographic, etc. would be fully understandable for everyone who tries to use it.
I think creating very concrete steps for faculty to follow is actionable, especially with the collaboration in our group.
1. If I had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, my dream for Accessibility in OER would be for any instructors at our college who wished to develop an OER or design an OER would be able to do so with adequate compensation for their time and work and our Academic Services department could offer in depth training on UDL and accessibility so instructors felt comfortable taking the steps to adapt or revise their OER materials to increase access and eliminate learning barriers for everyone.
2. There is a movement for Affordable Learning and OER course design at our college, but our group had a lot of questions about accessibility in course design where we are: how to define it, what the expectations are, how to encourage it, hold people accountable and how to measure it. We spent more time asking questions at this point that finding something actionable. We would lile more clarification about how to move forward in this workshop.
Lisa, I like your question about how to "hold people accountable" for using and creating OER. There is little accountability on campuses for encouraging faculty to implement it. For many who I have interacted with, it is an extra step to find or do that is not worth the effort. The students then suffer for it due to not having quality, freely available resources to use.
If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER? All Faculty would have the appropriate training and knowledge to make all materisal OER and accessible.
What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER? We agreed to design an asynchronous and face to face training for faculty.
1. Automated accessibility editor / formatter so that subject matter experts can focus on content quality and equity (vs. stressing about headings and other accessible formatting)
2. We left feeling good about a common experience we have related to OER development (the desire to have accessibility built in the front-end vs. after it's completed - proactive vs. reactive). The hope is that experience gives us a solid path to create an actionable item.
1. Create the necessary infrastructure to facilitate the use and implementation of OER across education.
2. Creation of linked Library Guides that bring together OER, accessibility, and UDL.
If you had unlimited time, money, resources, and support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER?
Faculty, students, staff, and administration embrace accessibility and OER standards in the classroom, teaching/learning experience, and curriculum design. It would be a part of our strategic plan; all course designs would include accessible OER content and be designed using UDL guidelines; there would be unlimited technology and instructional design support, and there would be collaboration amongst colleagues, colleges, and departments.
What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER? - incorporating UDL standards in our department's course design and keeping accessibility and OER standards at the forefront.
1. If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER?
To have all of our teaching resources available in text, audio, and video. To make the dream even bigger, have a permanent in-house publishing and production company to help us create and revise, and disseminate our materials in all the open source file formats: pdf, ePub, mp3, mp4, etc.
2. What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER?
To keep working on our specific projects in groups and with the support of other specialists and professionals.
1. Big Dream is to implement the contents of our learning on a server that faculty and students can access to understand from these two prespectives how it can transform our learning platforms.
2. One part of our group's discussion that can become an action is to actively work on how to make images accesible in OER courses.
1) With unlimited resources we would expand our Accessibility Resource Center to hire experts who can work with faculty and provide resources to improve the accessibility options for students
2) Creating an accessibility resource document with resources and tools that can be implemented by faculty in their courses (hopefully it can be mandated by admin like for syllabus guidelines)
1. Develop the necessary infrastructure to facilitate the development and implementation across the college (and higher education).
2. Develop a comprehensive Library Guide that brings together Accessibility, OER, and UDL.
That is a great idea! I can't wait to see your Library Guide.
Hello from Kristen Cook at McLennan Community College in Waco, Texas.
If I had unlimited time (hah!), money, resources, and support, my big dream for accessibility in OER is for students to have the format they need from their OER at no charge and that faculty would have release time to develop OER for their courses.
One part of our group's discussion that is most actionable is to locate existing accessibility standards in place on our campus to inform our work. A policy was added to our Procedures and Policy Manual, as well as a manual, but I have not heard the latest on whether the manual was approved officially after its final draft.
Release time is huge! We've offered stipends to faculty in the past to develop or adopt OER but they really prefer release time.
Kristen,
Adequate compensation for the time it takes to develop OER and make it accessible to all is a big concern for our team. Our Art History courses require audio, imagery, and video, which demand alt text, vivid descriptions, and transcripts in order to make the content available to everyone. At the end of the process, I often emerge from the depths of the design hole with minimal visible changes in content for the standard viewer.
Compensation for the development of OERS and attending training sessions are an ongoing conversation at our institution. While we have a long-term plan, we had to get a little creative to support our immediate needs. There is so much work to be done and I would love to have an unlimited budget to achieve these goals (pay faculty, hire contractors, purchase software licenses, hire IDS, etc)!
Compensation for the development of OERS and attending training sessions are an ongoing conversation at our institution. While we have a long-term plan, we had to get a little creative to support our immediate needs. There is so much work to be done and I would love to have an unlimited budget to achieve these goals (pay faculty, hire contractors, purchase software licenses, hire IDS, etc)!
My "big dream" for accessibility in OER is that it becomes a guiding/foundational design aspect of OER creation. In terms of our university, we would have adequate resources to support faculty creating OER so that they would feel supported and affirmed in their work vs. feeling overwhelmed and hesitant that they are able to meet the demand.
Our group discussed many aspects of accessibility in OER. From my standpoint and the hat that I wear on our team, I feel that gathering together external and internal resources surrounding design of UDL-based OER would be actionable. Having signposts to support faculty--both people at the university to talk to and work through questions with--as well as opportunities to grow knowledge through readings, webinars, etc.
If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, I would ensure that each OER would be accessible for all to use (being proactive rather than reactive).
The most actionable part for our group is to create a one-pager cover page focused on Accessibility in OER for relevant stakeholders at our university (faculty, instructional designers, etc.) to use.
1. That the entire Univesity would adopt accessibility and OER practices as best practices in building courses.
2. Our department engages with accessiblity in our courses.
If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources, and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER?
To be able to expand our faculty, staff, and students' knowledge of accessibility and OER to increase the use of accessible materials and OER in all educational opportunities. Increase the tools available for making all educational environments we offer accessible for all.
What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER?
Moving forward with a plan to connect my area (instructional design team) with the library to build awareness of accessibility and OER on our campus.
Hi April,
I believe you mentioned in our group chat using LibGuides as one tool for connecting ID with the Library for awareness building. Our group is excited to figure out out how to build one that comes out of the two Libraries on our campus and incorporates content that addresses all the disciplines. I'm curious, what other ideas you may have for collaboration? ID (really more instructional support/ed tech and less design) sits in the Library with me so I am always looking for ways leverage resources from both to get the attention of our faculty. I've been using our Intranet and tips in our weekly faculty publication, but want to do more.
1. My big dream would be to have an unlimited library (free of advertising Google) with complete, searchable texts.
2. As our group is divided between the History and Library departments, it seems that our most actionable engagement should be about building a library for learners to access online, rather than having to research the shelves of quiet buildings - although I long for the days of quiet libraries myself.
Michael,
I really love your ideas for "My Big Dream" Once implemented that would be totally awesome.
If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER? - providing a magic template that faculty could drop their content in and it would automatically format everything for full accessibility.
What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER? - starting the conversation on our campus with training. Apparently, there is very little guidance for our faculty concerning accessibility, and certainly no push for faculty to design with accessibility in mind.
I would love a magic template :). I am also thinking that we could lead a faculty learning community on campus on making documents/courses more accessible.
FLC idea seems wonderful.
FLC idea seems wonderful.
My dream would be that Accessibility in OER would be understood, considered, implemented, and monitored as strictly other expectations within the syllabi “requirements inserts”. My responsibility is to learn more and be sure that I follow protocols to ensure that my syllabi is more accessible and inclusive.
My group talked a lot about gaining a stronger understanding of the individual and collective knowledge of UDL and OER within our department (e.g., resources and terminology). My responsibility is to continue to build my knowledge and practice in these areas.
1. That accessibility would always be considered and designed for from the beginnning
2. That we can put together a starter guide for designing OER with accessibility in mind to share with colleagues
Get rid of the expensive casebooks currently being used in our doctrinal courses and make all powerpoint presentations currently being used by faculty accessible.
I think the most actionable piece from our discussion is raising faculty awareness about the need for accessible OER.
Big dream ... that a basic document - say a word document - would automatically be created into accessible videos, podcasts, slides etc. so everyone automatically has access to the format they prefer or need.
I think our group would agree when I say we dream big so making our project 'small but beautiful' (my words not theirs) will be our challenge. But I think we're up for it!!
If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources, and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER?
If I had unlimited resources and time, I would wish for:
A team with an accessibility focus, to address both our instructor-created content backlog, and help address accessibility in all our content.
Incentives for faculty to create OER content as an alternative to publisher-provided content in the graduate health sciences.
To provide release time for technology and instructional design staff for greater training on accessibility and OER topics. This could include participation in programming or certification from the International Association of Accessibility Professionals)
What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER?
Promoting accessibility and UDL in program/school curriculum taskforces.
I agree with your wish list, and I think the biggest incentive to offer faculty to create OER would be course release time. They would benefit as well from training on accessibility, just as technology and ID staff would. These are great suggestions.
1. If we had unlimited money, we would have a college Pressbooks account so that we could have more faculty publish OER books.
2. The most likely area we will be able to put into action is have professional development events discussing OER and Accessibility.
1. Develop supplementary materials (primary source readings, map activities, study guides) that students can easily access and utilize to ensure their success on upcoming assessments.
2. OER accessibility/design
1. Create a platform where all educational materials are fully accessible to everyone, built-in tools and features to accommodate a wide range of disabilities, such as text-to-speech, closed captioning, sign language interpretation.
2. Creating an accessibility resource document
If I had unlimited resources, my biggest dream for Accessiblity in OER would be the globalization aspect of it. To make OER accessible to learners from diverse linguistic backgrounds, I would love to see investment in comprehensive translation. This may mean getting translators to convert OER into different languages and ensuring that we maintain cultural sensitivity and accessibility.
The most actionable for my team to engage in with Accessibility in OER is to provide professional development to faculty in all disciplines so that they can see the relevance and application of this domain in their own worlds.
Shinta, I really love your big dream that you've said here. Language barriers and geographic biases are huge problems throughout all of higher education, and OER could become a way to break down some of those boundaries and increase the visibility of researchers around the world.
1. I would create teams of students, faculty, and accessibility experts to review every single OER for accessibility, and to set up a workflow so future OERs can be reviewed as well.
2. We are still in the discussion phase, but we would like to take steps to make OERs created by our own faculty and students accessible, whether by taking a deep dive to evaluate a few specific OERs, doing a general scan of many OERs, or setting up a workflow/training for faculty to evaluate their own OERs.
If time, money, and resources were unlimited, I would think dreams can come true! J In reality though I would love it if we could come together and incorporate a culture that is rooted in understanding UDL and accessibility, and where we are able to meet the needs of all learners. Part of our group conversation consisted with the idea of becoming those “expert learners” where we can assist faculty and staff with best practices, streamline communication, and training.
1. That all course materials were in OER
2. We need to figure out what materials are available and how they are currently used on our campus
1. to make all content in all courses 100% accessible
2. We have started the process, but in a crazy and non-structured way - more out of necessity and not intent. We need to wrangle in and decide on the phases, and then decide the best way to tackle each step of each phase.
1) To have all our courses in OER and be able to save students funds for books that could be used elsewhere.
2) I was ot able to attend the meeting due to being sick, but I have enjoyed reading the other responses to this question.
1. Would love to have a team or staff member purely devoted to accessibility in OER that could verify all our OER meet accessibility standards, could work with faculty, and could create multiple formats of each OER so they meet the needs of all our students.
2. I missed the discussion, but I hope we can create a resource like an infograhic or rubric that will be helpful to our faculty creating and remixing OER.
If I had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources, and unlimited support, I would offer faculty, staff, and students a robust digital, accessible OER library, and support services. In my dream world, I would offer faculty stipends to create accessible OERS (program specific are hard to come by), OER training sessions for faculty and staff that cover topics how on to find, evaluate, and create accessible OERs. I would love to have an interactive tool kit that would offer faculty virtual experiences in the OER bank! In addition, I would also offer full OER programs across campus.
One part of my group's discussion that I feel is most actionable for us to engage with regarding accessibility in OER, is to obtain a grant that will offer a few faculty stipends to develop OER resources that are program specific and accessible (closed caption videos, screen reader documents, and virtual experiences). It is a small step forward but one that we can take immediately.
1. Equitable accessibility for my community.
2. Include a feedback process ar resources are being developed.(M.Elston)
Susan,
Thank you for letting me join your team. Equitable access for the community would be a great thing if we had all of the resources. The team's idea about a feedback process is a great place to start.
That's part of the Dream Big, equitable accessibility.
1. If I had unlimited time, money, resources, and support, I would like all faculty to have training on accessibility and OER so that classes to be developed or revised going forward use OER in an accessible way. For newer classes, I would also like to see (funding for) revisions to be made to make them fit the OER and accessibility standards we decide upon.
2. I think reaching out to Accessibility Services at our school to see what the state of accessibility protocols and procedures actually is would be the most actionable of the things we talked about.
I think my big dream for OER would be that it would be everywhere. I would love to see it implemented across the board at our institution to eliminate the need for things like textbooks altogether. Much of the "general education" content is available in OER, but some of the more advanced or specialized content isn't out there yet. It would be great to have some of that material available. We certainly could do that with unlimited resources.
As for what is most actionable, I think our group should be able to come up with a plan to implement a better video-hosting and storage solution. Our school is using a few different things righ now, so getting everyone on board using the same solution would be spectacular. We'd also need the platform to have some automatic speech-to-text options to create captions for the videos, since we need to be more consistent in that area.
If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER?
My dream would be for accessibility to play a bigger role in providing resources across the board, with more experts and support for faculty who all buy-in. I also would like faculty to participate in active creation of OER.
What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER?
Developing "launching point" strategies that allow faculty to feel more comfortable transitioning to OER. Eventually bring in other departments, with additional resources, and make this a holistic project.
If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER?
I would want every OER content item created with accessibility as a primary concern from the very start... and I would also like to see more widespread adoption of OER across higher education.
What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER?
Our team members are well positioned across the university in various departments that have a stake in accessibility & OER, so I can see us actually being able to build something that could actually help people at our institution move towards broader adoption of accessible OER.
If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER? I wish our campus could hire an accessibility specialist who works with faculty. I wish video recordings and things on the internet that are OER, were already accessible (captions, alt text, headings, etc). I'd want an easy way for faculty to caption lectures and materials. I wish someone made an automatic accessibility machine that could make things accessible if you uploaded something into it.
What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER? Our group felt like we needed more learning so that we could help faculty. So we need training.
1. If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER?
To finish the OER project we are currently working on in a fully accessible and user-friendly format, with different pathways for students to engage with the content and show their learning so that instructors can customize for their students.
2. What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER?
It was helpful to be reminded that we don't have to do everything all at once - we can take small steps toward increasing the accessibility of a particular kind of media or activity that we are already using.
If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER?
What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER
1. With no limitations, I would hire an additional librarian whose primary duty would be serving as an OER librarian / Liaison to all subject areas. Currently, our small staff of librarians each has a small percentage of their duties assigned for collection development and working with assigned departments on providing resources (including, but not exclusive to OERs). Having one dediciated position would allow more focus and ultimatley more discovery. Right now the staff is spread thin with all the other duties (e.g. reference, collection development, workshops, circulation, LIVE Chat, etc.)
2. Our group is made up of 3 history instructors and 2 librarians. We can focus immediately on our history library guides (resources guides history and specific courses). We need to evaluate accessibility to the resources on the guides and make improvements. We can also discover OERs and add them to the guides. This can then serve as a pilot and lead to us formulating a larger strategic plan for working with history and all areas on identifying more OERs and other resources (non OERs) and proactively making accessibitily a priority from the beginning.
1. A ChatGPT for accessibility?
2. I feel that a practical workshop that can outline 5-7 basic steps to make a course more accessible would be very helpful. For me personally, it would have been nice to have had a user friendly guide to help me start making my classes more accessible.
I would like to create different textbooks, worksheets, games and other material that can be totally accessible to students and other Italian instructors across the US. Material should be accessible to everyone with different needs, so I would like to get the collaboration from different people and institution (for example, material should be available in ASL, Braille, etc).
I think we discussed about collaboration. It is fundamental to find collaboration amongst teachers but also things like SDAC.
My big dream would be to have sufficient support and resources to educate all members of the university community (faculty, staff, students) on the importance of accessibility in education and actionable steps to achieve it.
One actionable item would be to offer drop-in office hours to faculty interested in working on making their course more accessible.
1. The biggest issue with Accessibility in OER is getting professors to use OER in the first place. So, my efforts would go toward universal adoption of OER. Then the low-hanging fruit of making OER as compliant as possible with screen readers, etc., close captioning of media... After that would like to see multi-dimensional projects - add interactive elements and such to straight text to make the subject matter connect to a greater number of different learning styles.
2. Having a resource for faculty about accessibility in OER so they can use it as a guide when remixing.
Tracey, I think it's a great idea to get some resources for faculty together to help guide them!
1. My big dream for Accessibility in OER would be that all schools would have a dedicated system to access OERs and a devoted staff that would be paid to help support these OERs.
2. Make sure that the Library’s History research guide is update to date with OERs that instructors feel are beneficial to their students.
I think, if I had no limitations for accessibility and OER, I would develop large scale adaptable education pathways with personalized curricula for each individual learner. The program would be a life-long companion for a learner, supporting them in any topic that they may wish to explore, superficially or in the depth necessary for doctoral level research. Learners would be entirely in control of the support mechanisms provided and would have video, audio, text, AR, VR, braille, etc. delivery options and would have knowledge bases as commonplace as the periodic table of elements and as niche as female troubadours in 16th century France. This OER would make Wikipedia or the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy look tame, pedestrian. It would grow with the learner and anticipate evolutions in technology without letting technology get in the way of usability. It would develop from the feedback of users and learn from the needs of individuals to apply improvements at scale.
Okay. I will keep that shining bubble of a dream in my mind while I drift back down to earth and think about something a little more feasible for our institution. I think that our team has some great ideas. Dr. Angela Dunn has been daydreaming about practical ways to bring OER into her institutions for years, and now that we are lucky enough to have her with us at Siena Heights University, she’s suggested that we develop a training to help instructors evaluate OERs for accessibility and suitability for their educational purposes. With collaboration and support from others outside of our team, this feels very realistic for our institution and would have value beyond SHU as well.
I say, SHARE the shining bubble of a day dream as often as possible! It will happen! =) I love being part of an incredibly talented team!
I imagine that OER would be used for all courses offered by the college
Helping Faculty be more aware of the OER and providing support to develop courses that are OER through workshops and induividual sessions.
1. My big dream would be to develop a process by which all courses are evaluated for accessibility and work with professors to help them understand the small and big steps they could take to ensure accessibility.
2. We talked about creating a list of activities that would help guide faculty.
Hi Julia,
Your dream is similar to mine. I would like to not only provide guidance to faculty, but paid or incentivized mandatory training. I know of one community college that gives first year professors Friday off from teaching classes, with the requirement that they take training/professional development courses. Stipends and rewards for accessible courses (based in a set of criteria) would be nice too. There is just too much content produced at an instituion for a handful of staff to make everything accessible.
1. Ultimately I would like all courses and course content to be focused on accessibility and specifically UDL. I would like paid training for all faculty around accessibility, UDL, and OER. My hope would be to have a culture shift where access and OER are the "norm" not the rare exception. I often joke that I would love faculty to be so accommodating/using UDL that they "put me out of a job" in Accessibility Services.
2. Now that the semester is somewhat winding down our group should be able to have more time to discuss our engagement--I am looking forward to this!
If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER?
Hire sufficient support to support faculty and students in making accessible material and using it effectively, sharing the load and deepening the expertise we can call on.
What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER?
I think we can apply principles of digital accessibility pretty easily (making them a habit will be a bit of a lift, at least for me!). I'm excited to think about UDL in OER and beyond.
My big dream is to better broadcast what we already do for OER and accessibility for students and faculty. We have a great number of resourcesnad experts, but limited access processes to actually share it in a meaningful way. Students, faculty, and most staff do not know what these terms actually mean for them.
Integration of OER in our LMS and sharing of resources in a meaningful manner to campus. Strategically targeting specific departments and groups to better promote the valuable resources.
Yes, I agree about needing to better broadcast what we're already doing!
How could we better integrate OER in our LMS? What are some of the issues with doing this?
MTSU Online already does this but it is limited to those courses we have worked with in the past four years. Because our reach is limited only to online faculty and developers, the issues of silos on campus and lack of advocacy from other key departments llimits what we can do. It has to come from those divisions that 1) it is already being done, 2) here are your experts, use them, and 3) accessibility is not only in face to face courses.
1. Provide support and resources for all faculty/departments to convert accessible OER for all courses.
2. Create a course in Blackboard for Faculty on OER, Accessibility and UDL. Make the LibGuides for Accessibility and OER linked and more prominent/available for Faculty to access. Determine a badge or incentive for Faculty to take course.
1. All faculty on campus, including adjuncts, would have accessible course materials for all students.
2. Create a task force with representation from all colleges on campus. This group will help our team understand the needs of each college and help us educate all faculty on the importance of accessible content.
If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER?
A team of employees to conduct a thorugh accessibility review of every page, assignment, quiz, discussion, and announcement in every canvas course space and required OER textbook
License agreements for only accessible content like journal articles and streaming media from our library subscription vendors
What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER?
We are fortunate to have an upcoming project, developing an open textbook for our COLL-101 students, that would lend itself well to implementing what we are learning in this course to ensure that OER is accessible.
Yes, Jaqueline! 100%
Greetings,
If I had unlimited time, money, resources, and support, my biggest dream would be to implement OER resources in all my courses. In regards to time, creating an OER course take a lot of time and patience; if I have one-on-one support in locating the OER resources that will align with the course description, then the time that it takes for me to find OER resources will be reduced. With this assistant, I will focus on building the course and aligning it with student learning outcomes and the competencies that students gain during the course. Concerning money, this will enable me to adopt and adapt OER resources that are not free. As we all know, OER is not necessarily free. My biggest dream is to implement OER in 80% of my courses if all these can be achieved.
My goals extend beyond the accessibility of OER produced on campus. If I had unlimited time, money, resources and support, and given what I know about the results of accessibility committees in the past who did not have access to all of the resources they needed, I would like to see my institution implement:
A Web Accessibility Center that not only is a place that helps convert course materials that have barriers to access into accessible ones for students with need, but also partners with other offices on campus to design, develop and train faculty and staff in how to produce accessible online content, and accessible face-to-face learning. Training could be tailored to what an office needed their staff and faculty to know. For example, if they are a marketing office, it would be training in accessible formatting in Adobe’s applications, such as InDesign and Acrobat. Information technology departments and marketing and communication personnel who develop web pages would take training in formatting web pages for accessibility.
Ideally, I would like to see accessibility training required for everyone at the university. Incentives to attend and put forth best effort could be given. This could be time away from teaching and/or stipends for successfully completing various accessibility courses. With enough accessibility staff, faculty who wanted a reward that could count toward promotion and tenure, could have their course and/or Pressbook evaluated for accessibility. Those who meet a set of criteria at 85% or higher could receive an award. I would also give students the ability to nominate professors and courses/Pressbooks that they found to be accessible to them. At OSU, the WAC would give Unity awards for this. Once an online course or Pressbook met the criteria for accessibility at 85% or greater, the course would be exported/archived for others to use in the future, given a department allows for master courses.
I would also caption all video produced in the LMS, and through other offices on campus, like marketing and communications.
Q: What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER?
I feel we could develop training on how to create accessible Pressbook pages and media, covering basics, for our faculty and staff authors. We really need someone with a math and science background to learn MathML and/or LaTex to help with formatting scientific formulas and notation within Pressbooks. We currently have a Chemistry professor who does not know MathML nor LaTex and we asked him to create his content in Microsoft Word and use the built in Equation Editor in order to make it as accessible as possible. I asked him to hold onto the original Word document in case we are ever asked by someone who uses a screen reader for an accessible version.
This is do important, Heather! Access goes beyond the classroom, but there is so much that needs to happen in the classroom that it often feels like we never get past that and into the other key areas of the institution. Great point.
1. Make all our classes accessible and have open resources to save students money.
2. We made courses in our department accessible and I have one course that uses an open resource for the textbook.
1. Our big dream for OER was focused on the development of a consistent process for identifying, evaluating and implementing high quality OER materials that are accessible and engaging. The process would ensure that all courses using OER materials would meet established standards, but it would also allow for integration of various pedagogical approaches (OER, Accessibility, UDL, Backwards Course Design) in a collaborative process focused on student access and student learning.
2. The most actionable item that we discussed was focused on first, increasing the options for action and expression in our own courses and then supporting other faculty through the same process.
1. All OER produced by our organization would be as accessible as it could absolutely be. Have an office for OER inside the office of inclusive excellence with a director and full strategic plans.
2. The creation of an OER accessiblity training course.
With unlimited time and resources, my big dream would to be able to convert our current OER into multiple modalities that provide everyone the opportunity to experience and benefit from our open content.
The most actionable part of our group’s discussion is to provide better and more descriptive alternative text for images used within our art history courses.
If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER? I would like for instructional design teams to have the time and space to create instructional resources that are accessible instead of always having to triage or be reactive.
What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER? Since our work takes place primarily in Canvas, our group would like to focus on OER resources that will enhance accessibility for our students in our current courses.
1. Pie in the sky OER/Accessibility: at my institution, an all-faculty intensive instructional refinement retreat during which faculty can take a close (and maybe uncomfortable?) look at their current teaching materials and practices, assess them for accessibility, and make changes. We often provide support for faculty to do something new. But how often do we ask faculty to really look at and understand what might not be ideal for their learners? Alternatively, we often provide information about "how to make things better," but finding the time to *actually make things better can be tough. For my pie-in-the-sky dream here, both facilitators and faculty and staff would be compensated for this effort. It would be a collaborative effort, one supported by many, many library and eLearning staff (which would mean by institution would hire more librarians and eLearning staff!!!)
2. We have several options - what will be difficult is choosing just one!
Emilie: We have been having that exact conversation on our team as well! We had a rather intensive workshop week at the end of the academic year, but it provided more guidance than time to implement and we have begun thinking about how that might look different next time around.
I like your idea of an "intensive instructional refinement retreat during which faculty can take a close (and maybe uncomfortable?) look at their current teaching materials and practices, assess them for accessibility, and make changes". Thanks for sharing!
If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER? Create accessible OER content for our undergraduate and graduate programs.
What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER? Reviewing existing OER to make sure they meet UDL and accessibility standards.
1. If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER?
I would create a portal for assessing OER content for accessibility needs, which then automatically converts the content to accessibilty according to the needs required for the course.
2. What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER?
To provide access to effective course design steps to increase accessibility.
Genuine change for an online university in creating and supporting accessibility in OER would involve a comprehensive approach that includes:
Commitment from leadership: Leadership at the university must commit to creating a culture of accessibility and equity, and make accessibility a priority in all aspects of the institution.
Accessibility policies and guidelines: The university should have clear policies and guidelines in place that outline expectations for creating and delivering accessible OER.
Training and support: Faculty, instructional designers, and other stakeholders should receive training and support to help them create and deliver accessible OER.
Accessible infrastructure: The online learning environment should be designed with accessibility in mind, and online platforms and tools should be accessible to all students.
Collaboration and partnerships: The university should collaborate with disability support services, librarians, IT support, and other stakeholders to ensure that all aspects of accessibility are considered and addressed.
Accessibility audits: The university should conduct regular accessibility audits of OER materials to ensure that they meet accessibility standards and guidelines.
Inclusivity: The university should foster a culture of inclusivity and promote the use of diverse and inclusive materials in OER.
These are all areas where I see UMGC succeeding and making important strides. Unlimited funding (per the prompt) would be amazing in bringing current and future projects to completion. 😊
Phyllis
I like these ideas, Phyllis. I could see them serving as a groundwork for a rubric of sorts to evaluate an OER Institutional Policy for efficacy
If our school had unlimited resources, my big dream would be to be equipped with multiple content authoring tools that make it easier to create and share open educational resources that support accessibility. Additionally, we would also be given time, training, and collaboration opportunities to create, update, and maintain the OER resources.
One part of our group discussion that is most actionable would be to collaborate more closely with our instructional design specialists to ensure that OER materials meet accessibility guidelines and to make suggestions on multimedia integration that applies UDL principles.
I would love to hire a team of people to help those that contribute to OER to create materials that are accessible as well as consumable - in a variety of modes/media.
I would like to consider ways to raise awareness of accessibilty and OER on campus as well as learn ways (or resources) to create more accessible deritvatives of OER resources.
With unlimited time, money, resources, and support, my big dream for Accessibility in OER would be to incorporate accessibility in new OER materials from their creation and to be able to retrofit all existing OER materials to make them completely accessible.
I think the most actionable item is to learn more about the accessibility standards existing on our campus currently. We need to know where we are starting from in order map our route to increase accessibility for our students.
1. Make every learning resource in the world free!
2. Exploring OER textbooks.
Build an accessible OER platform that is WCAG conformant and create training to support the platform.
Create an OER out of Lab content
1. Have all existing learning content be made fully accessible and usable for all students.
2. Creating a coverpage/checklist now that can help faculty evaluate and ensure all OER learning content meets accessiblilty standards can help us begin working towards a proactive approach instead of reactive.
That accessibility would be considered, introduced and implemented from the very outset of the pedagogical design process.
We dream big but focus on the small and manageable. This will be our challenge.
That accessibility would be considered, introduced and implemented from the very outset of the pedagogical design process.
We dream big but focus on the small and manageable. This will be our challenge.
1. My big dream would be quality open-access textbooks that had fully adaptive learning capabilities for all students (integrated text to speech, font size modification, interactive call outs, etc.)
2. One part is us developing a kind of map of OER resources in our departments/schools and educating more of our colleagues about those resources.
This is an ongoing process at my campus, too. We are making some headway, and I am optimistic about future outcomes.
That's encouraging Yolanda! It's definitely a long process
1. All courses at our institution be converted to OER. Our faculty and staff have the unlimited resources & time to accomplish this goal.
2. Create a combined accessibility, UDL, OER libguide (we have a great start)
If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER?
OER in all courses!
What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER?
Articulating a process for implementing OER in courses is practical and useful for our context.
1. With unlimited resources, I would like to get the OER that I have adopted for my course fully adapted for accesibility/.
2. Our group discussed that a lot of what we are learning is quite overwhelming at this beginning stage of our various OER projects, each one of us has different things that are actionable, for me, it's getting subtitling included in videos that I have produced for my students.
1. If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER?
Making all course materials accessible OERs for my college.
2. What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER?
We are creating an accessible OER for our Anatomy and Physiology Courses!
1. I would deploy accessible OER in at least 50% of the courses offered at my institution.
2. We are working on a rubric that can be used by faculty to check the accessibility of their OER resources. While this is a small project, I think it can have a big positive impact for our student body.
Yolanda Gonzalez, McLennan Community College
1. I would make ALL of my resources OER so that I don't have to use platforms or other costly equipment from publishers.
2. The most actionable part for me personally is to make sure my own classes are as accessible as possible, and to advocate for adoption and creation of OER resources in the campus community.
Hi Jessica,
I really appreciated your big dream of all resources being OER and knowing your own limitations on where to start. It can seem overwhelming, so starting with one course and one process is key. This summer, think about one type of activity and check/update those. Maybe images all having alt text or videos/podcasts all being captioned. Then move to the next, pdfs or documents, maybe. with practice it gets easier and as you creating or updating other courses, you will now be thinking about it and only pick videos that are captioned or add the alt text as you are uploading the images. You've got this!!
1. I would love accessibility to become the norm rather than an add on feature. This should be the default.
2. We can start small and grow big! Our department is a place to start. We had the Disability Services department on campus present this information once in the past 17 years I have been working at my institution. And it was a dump of information with no action on our part. It would be great to create working sessions where faculty can engage with tools regularly to become more fluent with accessbility features.
Working sessions definitely pull people in more effectively than info-dumps! :) That's part of what I'd like to see happen in my institutional setting as well!
1. With unlimited time and money, I would make all of the resource at our university accessible meaning for all individuals with disability and no cost.
2. Educating out co-workers on this topic.
A resource that can provide accessibility and translation services for all documents simultaneously. So, it would be able to read documents in English and also translate them to Spanish or French at the same time if needed. Rather than the documents having to already be in the language. Our group is mainly interested in looking at how we can provide tools that can span multiple subject areas an provide accessibilty
If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER?
To make all course content and materials for all programs accessible to all through OERs. Better design of materials provided to all faculty.
What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER?
First, to begin with educating all staff on what OER is through training activity.
If I had unlimited time, money, resources, and support, I would make sure that all educational resources in the world had the most up to date UDL and accessibility technologies and the most up to date OER materials. If things got updated, then these resources would get updated at the same time.
I think it is actionable for us to continue to improve our instiutions technological and OER features.
If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER? To have all resources in one place for faculty and staff to use. For all documents to accessible from the start.
What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER? Making faculty aware of the resources available.
1. That all educators would have knowledge and understanding of what Accessibility in OER is, why it's so important and how to apply it.
2. Creating a resource around Accessibility in oER that can be shared with other teacher educators.
If I had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources, and unlimited support, my big dream for accessibility in Open Educational Resources (OER) would be to create a truly inclusive and universally accessible educational environment for all learners. I would make it easy for instructors to identify areas for improvement in accessibility by purchasing or creating programs that assist with identifying opportunities for improvement and then fixing the areas in question.
Creating and updating our courses with UDL and accessibility in mind.
If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER?
In an ideal situation, OER should be available at all institutions. Publishing companies would focus solely on publishing OER works, and would consider different business models that address the equity of students.
What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER?
Our group is focusing on building teams of faculty and other stakeholders to review and produce high-quality OER material across the college. Involving other stakeholders is a very actionable piece of the work.
if I had unlimited time, resources and support, I would create an office on campus that would train and keep the campus accoudntable for accessibility, but in a holistic way!
I think to engage with folks better since so many of us are doing little parts, but trying not to recreate the work!
If you had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited resources and unlimited support, what would be your big dream for Accessibility in OER?
I would love to be able have an accessiblity clearinghouse with consultants available that coudl work with OER creators to ensure all accessbility needs were being met. Of course - it would be free to the creator!
What is one part of your group's discussion that you feel is most actionable for you to engage with Accessibility in OER?
Using the different types of accessibility tools.
I typed something up the day this question was posed -- but I think my dream has shifted over the last few weeks. I really think that given unlimited time and resources, I would want both a robust accessibility review panel and a robust peer-review and feedback process for all our faculty OER products, preferably building both processes together in tandem.
I think we can begin building an accessibility panel now, with Alamo Colleges employees whose jobs intersect with disability and access concerns -- that's the actionable thing -- what I wish is that we could create an attractive reimbursement system so that we could bring in disability studies scholars like Jay Dolmage or Margaret Price.
My big dream is to create a department which can look at all the OER created and check if they are accessible or what we need to change to make it accessible.
Create a faculty learning community to share the resources we have from this sessions.
1. that accessibility would be baked in for everyone instead of seen as an add on for many.
2. To update and build upon a research guide that we have for OER.
1. All OER and all Accessible. Captions on all videos. Text easily readable.
2. Providing guidance for faculty to help them make sure that all materials created/used in class be accessible.
Of course, to have the support to create my own personal OER courses. Especially with dynamic test questions. Our group has such passion for OER that I know OER adoptions will grow.
1. A unified standard with clear implementation regardless of the platform. A universal "checker" would also be nice.
2. Creating a self checklist for faculty to use for assessing their accessibility in their online courses.
I'm excited about looking into your UDL training. I found a resource online on ResearchGate. Thanks for giving me the motivation to expand our training!