Initial reflections and summary of sessions from Day 3 of the ALT Annual Conference, Manchester, 3-5 September 2024. Humanising the approach to learning technology has come through as a theme this year. Starting with Chris Friend’s keynote, followed by discussions about learners’ personalisation and spaces of learning in breakout sessions, and on the final day the opening panel and sessions on embedding a human-centred approach to accessibility.
Today I also attended the introduction of four new specialist interest groups for ALT and I encourage you to explore these in more detail and get involved. I also talked about the CMALT peer-reviewed portfolio-based professional accreditation, sharing my experience as a long-standing assessor alongside Julie Voce and Puiyin Wong. Unfortunately I had to leave before the CMALT Awards showcase, so I will be watching all the award winner videos online. I’m also delighted that the programme team for the online MSc Disability Studies, Rights and Inclusion at the University of Leeds won the ALT Award for Case Studies in Ethical Use of Educational Technology.
Lived experiences needed in design processes
The opening panel session for the day brought lived experience into discussion of how technology, education and disability interplay. With digital accessibility a prevalent theme each year at the ALT Conference, this year’s sessions explored how accessibility, design, artificial intelligence (AI) and institutional policy are considered and supported by learning technologists and learning designers. The panel was chaired by Alice Chapman and comprised: Fawn Hunkins-Bedford, Neurodiversity Network Ambassador, University of Arden; Piers Wilkinson, Senior Policy and Campaign Lead, Diversity and Ability; Lucy Woodcock, Senior Accessibility Consultant, AbilityNet; Hector Minto, Lead Technology Evangelist, Microsoft. There is a recording of the full session available on the ALT YouTube channel and my recommendation would be to watch the full discussion as I cannot cover all points or arguments half as well as articulated by the panellists.
Working in partnership with learners
I’ve taken learner participation in decision-making as one of the panel themes for exploration as I think it is often overlooked in terms of the role of digital education specialists to bring together a range of voices. There was consensus that when working on disability and inclusion, we must be bringing in those with lived experiences into the room and, crucially, setting up the environment for them to contribute. Wilkinson explicitly called out that involvement shouldn’t be on a single person’s presence in a group, as multiple perspectives are needed. I particularly valued the suggestion “don’t have your chair as the most senior person in the room” as this empowers the group to challenge and ask questions of leadership. Through this questioning and constructive critical approach there is an opportunity to identify different ways forward and challenge preconceptions and hidden agendas.
Minto argued that institutional drivers of legal compliance and legal risk need challenging and instead reframing to consider accessibility everyone’s responsibility, to move forward a culture of inclusivity across an organisation. This setting of expectation about how accessibility will be approached requires a clear leadership vision and strategies (with actions and measurable outcomes). In relation to a culture of accessibility, Woodcock suggested “consistent accessibility across platforms” also needs to be considered, as well as institutions and educators being quick to recognise blockers and adapt to resolve them. However, what resonated with me the most is the emphasis Minto placed on designing for accessibility right at the beginning. This applies to both physical and digital environments. All too often the excuse of cost is used to not make adjustments for accessibility, but Minto’s point is that trying to correct issues after they have been built (online or physical) is always going to be higher. Embedding accessibility in the design process right from the beginning is how to reduce the cost (and from our work at Leeds adopting such an approach, we also increased the positive impact of accessibility through a deeper understanding of what was needed).
I also want to draw attention to the point that Hunkins-Beckford makes about “humanising the approach” and the biggest challenge disabled people face relating to culture. Whilst there is more awareness in education about neuro diversity and more opportunities for disabled students, there remains significant barriers. Some of these stem from medical models of disability which put a burden of proof on disabled students, particularly with non-visible disabilities.
“Neurodiversity isn’t fully understood, there’s still a medical model applied to it. A diagnosis doesn’t include what you need to know. There’s a prescriptive way to applying reasonable adjustments.”
Fawn Hunkins-Beckford on structural perceptions of disability that are not human-centred but applying templated responses.
Online education for wider audiences
This leads educational institutions to situations of inflexibility. Hunkins-Beckford gives the example of insisting on presentation as assessments, but without being transparent about the marking criteria or relationship to learning outcomes. When challenged, educators gave the response that these are skills needed for the workplace and the real world. Hunkins-Beckford’s poignant response is “the real world is that many of us [disabled people] can’t work, even though we’re qualified.” Plenty to think about here and clearly more action to be taken.
Mike Innes, Parkinsons UK, offered a refreshing non-HE presentation on the use of online education in the charity sector. Innes is absolutely right to call out the charity sector as part of the online learning landscape. The scale that’s afforded through online education, adaptability to individual needs and learning design to support ongoing development are key to professional learning and non-HE/FE sectors. Innes’s approach to building a new team brought new skills and design practices into the organisation and a recruitment panel that included representation from the Parkinsons community. Innes’s team’s courses range from 15 minutes to 10 hours, with most learning being micro-learning closer to the shorter duration by being direct and succinct to meet the target learners needs. The deliberate design of some resources to be watched together as groups of colleagues is a valuable way to bridge the online and practice spaces, supporting reflective practice. The development of learning is in partnership with individuals with lived experience of Parkinsons, which is a great demonstration of the ideas shared in this morning’s panel.
Jennifer McWatt, University of Strathclyde presented a case study of how in-house course development as a growth area in supporting university professional services. McWatt reflected on the differences working with professional services teams, rather than academics, thinking about what would be best for collaboration and facilitating the design process. Fundamentals of good course design, focusing on aims and outcomes can’t be overlooked, and this also helps to set the scope of course development as a project (as well as direction for the learning design).
“When you have content experts, you can sometimes have kitchen-sink syndrome [as in you throw everything at it but the kitchen-sink]… it’s important to narrow down the aims and objectives.”
Jennifer McWatt on managing course design scope (quote of the day).
Addressing the feedback-action lag
The use of the Jisc Digital Experience Insights survey at the University of Birmingham was shared by Matt Turner, Alexandra Davenport, Haimat Abdulai and Gabi Witthaus. With over 10,000 free text responses, there was a question of how to process this information and how responses are interpreted. For example, artificial intelligence tools covered both generative AI and accessibility tools. There is also a question of time-based validity, as Turner explained, with a time lag between the period of time students are asked to report on, the point they complete the survey, when the survey is analysed and then when it is fed into institutional interpretation and action. To speed up the analysis, Davenport outlined the intention to use AI in the qualitative analysis, but with a crucial role for person-based thematic analysis, with tagging and peer collaboration to train the AI model. I’d be in interested in how this could apply across a range of student feedback interventions with evaluation data cut in different ways for different actors to respond to.
Accessibility by design
The final session of the conference for me was with my team presenting the design-led approach to inclusivity and accessibility for the online MSc Disability Studies, Rights and Inclusion (co-written and presented by Tahiya Brewin, Emma Dibb and Matt Jevons). The academic programme team brought in very strong inclusive learning principles which provided a framework for the learning designers to work in partnership. From a technical accessibility perspective, we included disabled user testing at the very early stages of programme development. However, the key learning from this was that technical compliance is not enough. Subtle changes to the user interface, navigation and language had significant impacts on the experience for disabled users (and all learners), for example linking to accessible alternatives before a less-accessible interactive/tool avoids learners having to attempt to use something before accessing the alternative. A concrete example of the relationship between learning design and accessibility was balancing the discipline pedagogy of readings, against navigating multiple platforms to access readings (and accessibility issues of this). The programme team addressed this by providing guidance to support the selection of readings and keeping optionality open for learners to focus on readings specific to their interests. These subtleties required an understanding of how disabled users used technology to engage with the platforms and learning, showing through live user testing that compliance to standards was not enough. A human approach to accessibility is what is needed.
Summary
The conference themes were cultivating collaboration; reviewing, reflecting, re-imagining; Inviting improvement. Learning technologists, learning designers and others involved in digital education have roles that are essentially defined by these themes. Roles that are about bringing people together to learn from a range of perspectives, to adopt reflective practice and be open to rethinking approaches, and purposefully inviting feedback and improvement. Learning technologists are in roles that are not about technology in isolation, and never have been. The clue is in the job title.
Learning is about people and therefore perhaps it is unsurprising that the theme of humanising digital education has emerged from this year’s conference. Whilst this concept should be part of daily practice, it’s only when it is explicitly talked about and demonstrated by others that it’s possible to reflect on what you are actually doing in your own role to adopt a human-centred approach.
Acknowledgement
My attendance at ALT Conference was funded by the University of Leeds in my role as Head of Online Learning, Digital Education Service.
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