From RSCWMWiki

Introduction

This section will help you identify where you can obtain free resources and identify small changes that can be made to either a new build or existing building. Below, you will find help and advice and resources for staff development, as well as useful web links.

Disability Equality Duty

Creating the right environment to work, teach and learn in requires more than a new building. Taking into account how the learner wants to learn is key to success. The Disability Equality Duty states that all public sector organisations have to consider the impact of their work on disabled people, and take action to tackle disability inequality.

Having in place a Disability Equality Duty action plan helps you take account of the current situation and how things can be improved. Many adult learners who experience difficulties are reluctant to declare a difficulty, so having in place an action plan which identifies ways in which learners can access resources or equipment, give feedback and how learners like to learn can help to improve student retention and their overall experience.

Take a look at the Direct.Gov website for details of the Disability Equality Duty

How We Like to Learn

If you are creating a new learning environment, the JISC publication, "In their own words" has been produced to help you. This highlights new ways which learners like to learn and access resources. These include new technologies such as MP3 players and digital voice recorders. The guide offers practical advice and support on new ways of learning, this could be through the use of Web 2.0 technologies or through mobile learning. The guide states that "E-Learning is widely perceived as a learner-friendly mode of learning, offering alternative, self-paced and personalised ways of studying". But do we have any idea how learners themselves think or feel about e-learning, or what "choice" and "personalisation" mean to them?

The guide has many interesting video clips, podcasts and case studies outlining how learners like to learn. The guide can be accessed here

Staff Development

Awareness raising to help staff become more confident with accessibility issues for E-learning need not be time consuming. The JISC TechDis service have created a series of guides called Accessibility Essentials. These guides will help staff to create content in different format that are more accessible to learners.

Take a look at the guides:

Accessibility Essentials Making Electronic Documents more Readable
Accessibility Essentials Writing Electronic Documents in Word
Accessibility Essentials Creating Accessiblepresentations
Accessibility Essentials Creating Accessible PDFS

Also, the JISC TechDIS Staff Packs are an excellent way to be able to deliver pick and mix training.

The series has several topics including E-Assessment, What Microsoft does for Accessibility?, Checking the Accessibility of E-Resources. These are ideal for in-house training sessions and come with:

Background materials.
Related icebreaker activity.
PowerPoint presentation with full speaker notes.
Printable activities sheets.
Background Information sheets where relevant.

These can be found at Staff Packs

Making The Learner Independant

Making learners independent in their day-to-day learning is just as important as the design of the classroom they're working in. Making small changes to a network or allowing the learner to be able to access software programs through a USB Pen could make all the difference.

Jason Curtis the RSC WM Learning Technologist has written a wiki article on Making IT More Accessible, which highlights changes that can be made without having to spend large amounts of money. Jason looks at the issues of Security, Roaming and Mandatory Profiles. This can be found at Making IT.Accessible

The Access Apps USB sticks have been a great success with learning providers across the UK. Access Apps allows learners to access open source software programs, which means that they can use them free of charge, without concern about licensing issues. Access Apps has programs that will help with magnification, reading, typing and accessing the Internet. You can download a full collection of apps from RSC Scotland’s website or you can create a pick a mix version for individual learners. Download Access Apps