Group Admins
Description
Session Description
Due to the high amount of MOOC offerings, the need for specific recommender sites to help learners to find courses which fit their interest seems indisputable. There exist several MOOC aggregator sites (Shah, 2018), where learners can add feedback about the MOOCs they are participating in and receive recommendations (e.g. CourseTalk or Class Central). Learners are the best to provide compliments and criticisms of course designs (Järkestig Berggren et al., 2016). However, there is still a critical point ignored in the MOOC recommender systems while dealing with inclusive design. There is a lack of detailed information regarding accessibility to ensure that disabled learners can access the platform and educational resources. Research needs to scrutinise the learning design of MOOCs, information architecture, usability and the interaction itself, to understand if it is having a negative impact on the levels of learners’ participation.
YourMOOC4all is a MOOCs aggregator website, where learners can evaluate inclusive design aspects of the MOOCs they are participating in. The website recommends learners to find MOOCs of their interest and that fit their requirements. YourMOOC4all is a programmed prototype able to harvest information from more than 700 MOOCs for testing purposes (Iniesto et al., 2019).
Following Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles YourMOOC4all is designed to develop expert learners. If learners are developed as experts, they may be considering both the MOOC elements as well as the relationships between MOOCs. To be successful, expert learners need to be able to recognise the tools and resources that help them to learn (strategic), organise tools and resources to facilitate their learning (resourceful) and evaluate the design of MOOCs they take (motivate) (CAST, 2017). The system user feedback is organised from a wide range of participants into a coherent and actionable structure. The evaluation process crowd-sourced by the learners, answering a form created following the framework proposed by UDL (CAST, 2018). This aspect allows sharing opinions, suggestions, embracing open practices. The system has been designed with the following aims:
1. Provide information to MOOC developers and recommendations to learners seeking accessible MOOCs.
2. Support learner evaluation of inclusive instructional design aspects of MOOCs using the UDL framework and retrieve recommendations, helping learners to locate MOOCs that fit their needs.
In the evaluation process, learners can answer open-ended questions, enriching the qualitative content of the feedback for MOOC providers and offering valuable information to other learners. The YourMOOC4all design captures quantitative information through the ratings and qualitative information from comments to triangulate the data. The project and associated development research promote a better understanding of the accessibility barriers MOOCs have and establishes a fluent communication with MOOC providers, providing recommendations to assist them in improving accessibility.
This presentation will describe YourMOOC4all and the process of adapting the UDL framework for the evaluation of MOOCs, explaining the complexities to develop and refine the indicators related to the UDL checklist. For that purpose examples to allow a participative discussion with the audience will be included.
References
CAST. (2017). Top 5 UDL tips for fostering expert learners.
CAST. (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2. Wakefield, MA
Iniesto, F., Rodrigo, C., & Hillaire, G. (2019). Applying UDL Principles in an Inclusive Design Project Based on MOOCs Reviews. Universal access through inclusive instructional design: International perspectives on UDL. New York: Routledge, pp. 197–207.
Järkestig Berggren, U., Rowan, D., Bergbäck, E., & Blomberg, B. (2016). Disabled students’ experiences of higher education in Sweden, the Czech Republic, and the United States–a comparative institutional analysis. Disability & Society, 31(3), 339-356.
Shah, D. (2018). By the numbers: MOOCs in 2017. Class Central Report
