Accessibility

One of the tasks I undertook when I started employment at SOAS was to review the accessibility guidance provided to staff for their course maintenance. Unfortunately I discovered that there were no instructions or tools to make courses on BLE accessible, aside from the generic information on the SOAS website (https://www.soas.ac.uk/utility/accessibility.html).

I took it upon myself to update the existing minimum standards document for staff to include guidance and useful links they can refer to, to ensure their courses are accessible.

In addition to this, I collated a document ‘Making your course more accessible’, which highlights what to watch out for when using colour, fonts, images and other files as well as some links to useful tools and resources for further reading. The reason why I separated this document from the minimum standards was to ensure that both documents retained their specific focus without burdening the reader with lengthy text.

My investigations to try make the BLE more accessible led me to discover the ATBar, which provided a simple but effective tool that users can utilise to improve the accessibility of a course - for example to increase/decrease font size, change colouring, have text read out, have a dictionary, to name a few options. This resulted in me adding the ATBar block throughout all the courses on the BLE as well as providing documentation on how to use the tool on both the BLE support for staff and student areas.

I reviewed the existing Accessibility Checklist to improve its usability for staff to try to make it more meaningful/relevant to staff. In order to do this, I made a decision to separate out the existing accessibility checklist into two documents. The first became the "Accessibility Checklist for VLE Materials" and this document contained both the original ten point checklist plus, as an appendix, some tips to help people make the changes. A second (new) document became the "Accessibility - Tips and how to" document, which I also included as an appendix to the Checklist. The reason for separating out the checklist into two documents was to help improve clarity of purpose. Previously, if people were looking for hints and tips to make practical changes, they would not necessarily look within the Checklist document ,whereas now it is hoped it would be much easier for people to search and retrieve the document that is relevant to them.

To check whether or not the changes had any affect on the practices of those who maintain and create course content, the BLE team have carried out audits on BLE courses during the summer term to ensure that minimum standards are being adhered to. One of the things I have noticed since the support and guidance have been included in the support pages, is that courses are now moving away from colours and fonts which are hard to read as well as labelling files and images better.

After I had updated the documents and BLE support pages, I had contacted the Disability Services team to highlight the changes made to the BLE, ask for feedback and encourage them to promote the pages to staff. We agreed that students would be asked to provide feedback using the ATBar tool (see email below) but I have yet to receive any feedback. However, what I have done to obtain feedback from students is to arrange with the Disability Services team that I would deliver a short presentation to students, during the ‘Drop-in surgeries they run for students with specific learning difficulties’ in September 2015, to highlight the ATBar and screen reader tools available to them. In addition to this, I would like to include a question in the BLE student survey centred on the ATBar tool to see how many students are using it and what their thoughts are.

By doing the above I hope to better understand the number of students who are utilising the tool and guidance, to see if we need to do more to promote these.

In addition to the above, I carried out three interviews with students with specific learning difficulties to gain a better insight into their experiences of interacting with courses and to allow me to better understand the difficulties they may encounter. The videos can be accessed at the following links:

- Siham Ibnoujoubeir - Visually Impaired student's feedback on using Moodle

- Nadia Ouddane - Dyslexic student's feedback on using Moodle

- Harrison Coyte - Dyslexic student's feedback using Moodle

- Video edited from above to focus specifically on assignments, feedback and Turnitin

By producing the videos I was able to check the courses that they took as well as enquiring if there was sufficient support provided by the course tutor and faculty.

The videos were then shared with the Student Advice and Wellbeing team as well as the local Bloomsbury Colleges. Ideally in the future I would like to have a more formal interview process with professional recording equipment and a follow up case study of the observations.

Previously during BLE training sessions I would show attendees where to locate the guides on the BLE support for staff page which I felt was not an effective way as there is no guarantee that people will remember to read the guides after the session. So what I have started to do is to ensure that the guidance is read is to provide physical printouts of the Minimum Standards and guides to attendees at the BLE training sessions and give them time to read through it. In addition to this I allow staff to ask or discuss the content before starting the practical part of the training session.

Although this targets those staff that attend the BLE training sessions I feel this has been an effective way to ensure that the document is read straight away and understood by attendees. There is still some work that can be done to encourage experienced staff to start implementing the guidance into their courses.

As there are only two of us in the BLE team we are limited to carrying out spot checks of courses. One of the ways in which that we try and audit courses is through utilising the annual work experience student that works within our department. Although this is does not provide an extensive audit of all the courses on the BLE it does however allow us to carry out random spot checks from a number of course from each faculty.

I believe that the faculties can play an important part in assisting with checking courses by auditing their own courses during the off peak periods of the academic year. This is something that I would like to explore in the future to discuss how faculties can take some of the responsibility of monitoring their courses to ensure the minimum standards are being adhered to.

UK Data Protection Act

As mentioned earlier in the portfolio, SOAS has invested in Panopto which is a Lecture capture software system to enable both audio and visual recordings of presented sessions for both academic and non-academic sessions. It is currently still in the rollout phase across the campus, however is available to all staff on request for installation on their machines.

Lecture capture is used to enable greater participation and engagement for the benefit of the student learning experience, but is not intended to reproduce every aspect of the learning and teaching experience.

It would be vital for the success of the uptake of Panopto to ensure that staff members are aware that the implementation of the lecture capture software is not for the purpose of monitoring staff for development or performance management, but purely for the improvement of the student learning experience.

A Panopto working group, which I am a part of, met in December 2014 and identified the need for university policy and guidance as to the use of lecture capture, with support for an opt-out option for those who do not wish to be recorded. Staff involved in recordings will need to be aware that any recordings made will be the Intellectual Property of the university, who will own the copyright.

Recordings may take the form of lectures, publicity, orientation, events or student presentations, which may primarily be accessible through Moodle or SOAS website. The majority of recordings are anticipated to be available for internal viewers only, for example only students and staff who log into the BLE pages and are enrolled on the course, can view the recordings. Of course access to the recordings can be extended by the lecturer or faculty so that it may be viewed by a wider audience.

Although the recordings of lectures are intended as an additional resource to improve students’ academic experience, they are however not intended as an alternative to attending face-to-face sessions. This is particularly relevant for Tier 4 students who will not be able to substitute catching up with lecturing recordings to meet their attendance requirements.

Another area that staff members who use the lecture capture software will need to comply with, is copyrighting to ensure any presented material in the recordings does not breach any copyright legislation. Staff using the lecture capture tool must ensure that any materials recorded by the system do not breach third party copyright. Individuals who use materials in their presentations must determine if the material is subject to any copyright, by taking the following into consideration based on the intended use:

● lawful under statutory exception or

● permitted by licence

Permission must be obtained from the copyright holder if neither of the above applies to the material they intend to use.

An area that also needs to be considered, is the recording of guest speakers, who will have to be informed of the intended use and consent will need to be obtained for any potential recording of their lecture.

Images, sound and video content containing individuals that can be identified can be considered as containing personal data of the individuals concerned. Therefore, in accordance with the UK Data Protection Act 1998, it is necessary to obtain consent from those who are being recorded as well as ensure the recordings are managed within the laws set out by the Act.

In addition to the above where performances are being recorded performers rights will need to be considered, which includes the individual retaining performance rights to the recording. This means that anyone can decline to be captured, or ask for a captured session to be withdrawn or deleted, at any time.

Performer rights is something that is likely to effect the Music faculty most. Although they have not currently started engaging in utilising Panopto, they are one of the faculties that I believe can be convinced to record student performances via Panopto rather than the current method of using digital camcorders.

At the moment, Panopto is yet to be fully implemented hence there is no finalised guidance and policy in place on its usage. However, during the new academic year I will be delivering training sessions to staff on how to use Panopto, which will include ensuring the above keys points mentioned so that staff are fully aware of the laws and practices they should consider before any recording is carried out.

We currently have no opt out forms for staff or students, instead we have consent forms that are available on a dedicated BLE Panopto training page where those intending to record a session are responsible for obtaining lecturer or students to complete the forms. There is no central person or department that is responsible for collating or recording the consent forms, which was something that was discussed at the last Panopto working group and was decided that faculties would have the responsibility of maintaining records of the consent forms.

Due to the size of the BLE team, the E-Learning manager and myself only, it is not feasible to carry out audits on the recordings and therefore I plan to employ a better working relationship with the faculties to ensure they carry out their own audits.

Working as an E-Learning Officer I ensure that data protection is adhered to, for example when a faculty administrator requests the creation of new accounts for external examiners, the login credentials are only sent to the intended user with only a confirmation email being sent to the administrator to notify them of the account creation.

Student submissions are another area which requires both myself and other staff members to abide by data protection laws. For example, I have to assist and advise academics and professional staff on sensitive cases relating to plagiarism so as to ensure that any conversation had is not overheard and meetings are held face to face in the office to protect student confidentiality.

In addition to this, some submissions are used as exemplars and therefore I provide advice to faculty administrators how to anonymise submissions, e.g. removing any identifying content.

Finally, when paper requests come from other universities to check whether or not there is a case for plagiarism, I ensure that the shared paper is anonymised by removing any identifiable information.