[Athen] course inventory assessment

[KRISTA L. GREEAR]

Hi Heidi,

The process I used to evaluate these materials was at the “grass-roots” level. I emailed each professor, explaining who I was and what I was looking for (keeping the email to about 4 sentences or less). I ended the email by saying “IF you use a learning management systems like Blackboard, Moodle, Canvas, could you please add me to the site as an observer?” This provided an educational opportunity for those who have never heard of text conversion. Of course, this filled up my inbox and took a lot of time to respond to those who needed more information. But I was granted access to several dozen LMS sites within a matter of days. A couple of professors even came to see me to learn more about accessibility (a pleasant surprise)!

The next step was to download all the articles  and evaluate them. My team opened each document, looked for some key accessibility features (quality selectable text, headings, pictures/graphs, crooked pages, etc…). This info was recorded in a spreadsheet and each document evaluation took roughly 10-15 seconds. I liken our evaluation process to hiring managers who look at dozens of resumes. The average person in that role spends 30 seconds or less per resume, looking for the keywords or most important highlights before making a decision regarding if the candidate is a good fit. Within a couple of seconds, my team can identify the top accessibility concerns. From there, I determine which documents need to be fixed and delegate assignments to a team member.

Is this evaluation process replicable quarter after quarter? No. Each quarter I work with more students and have more intensive projects. But this project gave me a great start to have conversations with professors, instructional technologists and other necessary partners on campus, to work on a campus-wide solution.

And to answer your last question, at the UW, Social Work courses are notorious for having hundreds of articles per course. Humanities classes generally have more articles than STEM courses.

Krista

From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Heidi Scher
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2014 5:24 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network
Subject: Re: [Athen] course inventory assessment

Krista,

Great information you shared! Any additional details you could share regarding your review process would be greatly appreciated.

I've been considering doing such a review here at the University of Arkansas. We've developed a very strong relationship with our Global Campus. But we know that many more instructors are using digital means for students to access "articles". I would like to include in my review those which are in "Global Campus" and those which are supplemental to campus courses.

Did you happen to review to see what courses had a higher percentage of such documents?

Again, thanks for sharing!

Heidi

+++++++++++++++
Heidi Scher, M.S., CRC
Associate Director --- Center for Educational Access
University of Arkansas --- ARKU 104 --- Fayetteville, AR 72701
479.575.3104 ph --- 479.575.7445 fax --- 479.575.3646 tdd
+++++++++++++++

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+++++++++++++++
Heidi Scher, M.S., CRC
Associate Director
Center for Educational Access
University of Arkansas
ARKU 104
Fayetteville, AR 72701
479.575.3104
479.575.7445 fax
479.575.3646 tdd
+++++++++++++++

On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 6:52 PM, KRISTA L. GREEAR <greeark at uw.edu<mailto:greeark at uw.edu>> wrote:
Great question. I provide the accessible files to the faculty along with a short explanation of why they are the recipient of such a prize. Whether they utilize them or not, it's hard to know for sure.

I can't really answer your other question as I work specifically with alternate format requests. The next time DRS visits DO-IT we can provide a more comprehensive list.

And one part of the project I failed to provide is that 73% of the files I evaluated were PDF, 17% were word docs and the remaining were powerpoints (rough percentages).

Krista Greear
Access Text & Technology Manager
Disability Resources for Students
(206) 543-8924<tel:%28206%29%20543-8924>
disability.wa.edu<http://disability.wa.edu>
________________________________
From: athen-list [athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu>] on behalf of Sheryl Burgstahler [sherylb at uw.edu<mailto:sherylb at uw.edu>]
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2014 5:05 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network
Subject: Re: [Athen] course inventory assessment
Krista,

These numbers are very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

When you create documents in accessible format for students in a class, does the professor then use the accessible versions in the future?

Another question, what are the typical accommodations you provide for a student who has

  *   a visual impairment?
  *   a hearing impairment?
  *   a learning disability?
  *   other disabilities?
Thanks.
Sheryl

------------------------------------------------------------
Sheryl Burgstahler, Ph.D.
Director, UW Accessible Technology & DO-IT, UW-IT
Affiliate Professor, Education
University of Washington, Box 354842
Seattle, WA 98195
206-543-0622<tel:206-543-0622>          FAX 206-221-4171<tel:206-221-4171>
http://staff.washington.edu/sherylb
sherylb at uw.edu<mailto:sherylb at uw.edu>


On Apr 15, 2014, at 11:17 AM, KRISTA L. GREEAR wrote:


I don't have any solutions to offer but I do want to throw out some numbers and see if there are others who are feeling the weight of content conversion for files distributed through LMS.

At the UW, we use Canvas, Catalyst (UW home grown LMS), Moodle in spots and Blackboard very infrequently. Most of the reading materials distributed through LMSs are articles or chapters of books or snippets of other texts. I refer to all of these files as "articles" for simplicity. Profs frequently post links to their lecture presentations, which are not required reading per se, but are more of a reference for those who wish to review the material.

On to the good stuff -- During Winter quarter (10 weeks long), I had access to 26 different LMS sites because my students needed alt format, mainly files that would work with text-to-speech engines.

Kinds of classes: B EDUC, EDTEP,  ENVIR, ENV H, GEN ST, GEOG, HSMGMT, LAW, LSJ, NSG, PHYS, SOC, SOC W

Average # of articles per class:         42 articles
Average # of pages per class:           775 pages

Total # of articles for 26 LMS sites:  1,092 articles
Total # of pages for 26 LMS sites:    20,054 pages

20,000+ pages! That is simply unbelievable  I hope there are some presentations about partnering with faculty regarding LMS content/online content at ATHEN. In the meantime, if anyone has ideas for "low-hanging fruit" regarding accessible content distributed through LMSs, I would appreciate it. This quarter we have 65+ classes using LMSs. Sigh.

Best,
Krista

Krista Greear
Accessible Text and Technology Manager
Disability Resources for Students
Univeristy of Washignton






-----Original Message-----
From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu>] On Behalf Of Greg Kraus
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 1:37 PM
To: ATHEN
Subject: [Athen] course inventory assessment

Hi All,

Has anyone developed a guide or document to help faculty members assess how much and what types of content they have in their course so they can know what type of work might need to be done to make their course accessible? I was thinking something along the lines of inventorying how many electronic documents you have, and then breaking that down into Word files vs. PDF files, then maybe even breaking things like PDF down to scanned articles, "newsletter" type documents, and converted Word docs. There could be other categories like multimedia, third party web sites, and e-books.

Thanks.

Greg
--
Greg Kraus
University IT Accessibility Coordinator
NC State University
919.513.4087<tel:919.513.4087>
gdkraus at ncsu.edu<mailto:gdkraus at ncsu.edu>
http://go.ncsu.edu/itaccess
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