eLearning Community Event: Accessible tools and inclusive approaches

eLearning Community Event: Accessible tools and inclusive approaches

You are welcome to attend for all or part of the event. Please note that this event will be recorded. You can also join the event via live streaming on YOUTUBE.

10.00-10.40  Hands-on; a review of cutaneous haptics in applied discipline study

Lisa Bowers, (Engineering and Innovation, STEM Faculty)

Multimedia, utilised to enhance students interaction with virtual environments is well-known and understood in education. Haptics are not as well-known to the public or used as widely by students or academics.  The term haptics is derived from the Greek phrase  meaning ‘to come in contact with’, the term is currently used by Computer Scientists to relate to mechanical machine-led touch interactions. Although in recent times haptics are better known to enhance game play or increase tactility in mobile phones, there is an undercurrent of trend using haptics for more formal learning instances to increase students immersion in studying ‘hands-on’ based disciplines e.g. design, applied science, applied maths, engineering.

This presentation will define the term haptics from an historical and modern perspective and offer how haptics has been shown to enhance students immersions and perceptions for applied study.

10.40-11.20   Sonifications: experiences in applying them in an OU context

Karen Vines, (Mathematics and Statistics, STEM Faculty)

Sonification is the depiction of information using non-speech audio thus providing a means of listening to data, literally. As such sonifications have the potential to enhance module materials, and more importantly improve accessibility by providing non-visual representations of plots. In this talk I will discuss a couple of eSTEeM projects which explored this potential in the OU context.

11.20-11.40   Coffee/tea break

11.40-12.15 Inclusive teaching and learning in STEM: Addressing the barriers impeding students with disabilities

Trevor Collins, (Knowledge Media Institute), Chetz Colwell (Senior LTD Manager (Accessibility) WELS/LTIA) and Victoria Pearson (Physical Sciences, STEM)

This session will share practical approaches for embedding and sustaining inclusive teaching and learning to lower the barriers impeding students with disabilities. We will draw on reflections and findings from the Inclusive STEM Practices project, funded by the Office for Students, to evidence and promote inclusive teaching and learning approaches within STEM. This work underlines the importance of a holistic institutional approach to inclusion, which values the role of networks within and across HE institutions that provide active sources of expertise on distinct aspects of equality, diversity and inclusion.

Wednesday 23 January 2019. 10.00-12.15. Ambient Lab, Jennie Lee Building