My Own Experience in Online Literacy Education

Teaching and working in Online Literacy Instruction (OLI) means confronting the affordances and constraints of platforms and environments users and participants will engage with in their learning. For example, certain learning management systems will require the use of their embedded video player (like Kaltura in Canvas) compared to more open-sources or open-access platforms such as Open edX (but even then, there can be difficulties with iframes and other embedded elements regarding accessibility). Additionally, confronting the affordances and constraints of a platform or environment does not mean that OLI developers and creators have to be bound to inaccessible or non-inclusive environments. It just means that we have to get creative with our decision making to ensure that we are providing an inclusive and accessible learning environment for all learners. 

As an example, I am using an experience I had in co-creating the Miami Writing Institute (MWI), an asynchronous OLI project centered around confronting commonly held myths about writing. The MWI was originally developed for alumni of Miami University, but in designing the course, we wanted to also think beyond alumni (and also think beyond micro-credentialing as a form of alumni engagement or developing a list of tips and tricks that we were originally asked to produce). 

In the development process of the MWI we were originally told we had to partner with an office in the university who was using Articulate Rise to create content, which would then be embedded in Open edX for users/participants to access (this was later shifted to Canvas which would require an additional essay to unpack the issues we confronted with the switch). The original process of development was our team would design content in GoogleDocs, send it to the office, they would insert it into Articulate Rise, and then we would comment on the draft. After some back and forth (and some difficult conversations), we eventually decided to design the lessons in Articulate Rise ourselves since the back and forth and designing outside of the environment was proving to be a challenge (especially in translating our desires with specific blocks provided by Articulate Rise, blocks like matching statements, scenarios, and quotes/images). When we were allowed to design the content ourselves, we found that the platform itself was inaccessible in many ways. From Articulate Rise’s own website we discovered that the different blocks and elements we were incorporating throughout the modules would be inaccessible to screen readers (see Figure 1). Therefore, we had to have conversations about how to ensure the content from these different blocks was also presented in multiple ways (beyond just the blocks) that would be accessible to all users. 

Figure 1: Inaccessible Block List from Articulate Rise 

An additional insight from designing the MWI came through user testing the course. We had incorporated multimodal elements in the modules (a few videos, a podcast, infographics, and interactive elements), but the majority of the MWI was alphabetic text. While the alphabetic text is accessible to screen readers, we found that many users commented on the massive amount of text they were being asked to engage with. They asked for more multimodal content, and asked for the experience of the MWI to not resemble a remediated school context in a shiny platform (I am paraphrasing and synthesizing multiple comments here). So we went back to the drawing board and made changes to the MWI, incorporating more multimodal elements in the modules, making the learning more engaging and inclusive to users. 

The experience with being locked into a platform with inaccessible blocks and also confronting the lack of inclusivity in initial designs of the MWI meant that in my own OLI experiences outside of designing the MWI, I have had to ask questions about accessibility and inclusivity. These questions include identifying and locating resources like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 from the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative to ensure that the content I am creating is accessible to all learners, but also in doing research about how certain platform blocks/elements may not be accessible. Interactive elements like sorting blocks can increase engagement for users; however, these elements should not be incorporated if they are not accessible to all users. Additionally, in considering the ways I present information in OLI spaces, I need to confront my overuse of alphabetic text and incorporate additional modalities of instruction, such as videos, images, audio/podcasts, among others (all with accessible praxis in mind too). To think creatively about OLI means looking at my own previous work with a critical eye; to critique the work I have done to ensure I ask more informed questions moving forward.