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Enhancing Your Course's Accessibility The Easy Way

Register now for session: 
Enhancing Accessibility 1-May 2012
Register now for session: 
Enhancing Accessibility 2 Sep 2012
Track: 
Accessibility
Level: 
Level 2 - Intermediate
Sloan-C Certificate Program Eligibility: 

This online workshop can be counted toward the Sloan-C Certificate.

Workshop Description
Introduction: 

Formerly titled: Accessibility the Easy Way: Enhancing Your Course's Accessibility Without Breaking A Sweat

You want to make your course accessible to as many learners as possible? No sweat! In this workshop we’ll discuss how to create documents in accessible formats, explore productivity tools to promote learner engagement, and discuss how learners with disabilities use assistive technology to navigate online learning environments. We’ll look at Universal Course Design best practices and evaluating the accessibility of online classes with a new assessment tool developed by Macquarie University. You will also be provided with a resource list of open source and freeware applications you can use to build greater access into on-line environments.

Resources Provided: 
  • Presentations, readings, web links, discussion threads and other materials, viewable online for 1 year
  • 1-Hour Live Workshop Orientation - Learn about Moodle 2.2 and BlackBoard Collaborate. Navigate the workshop space
  • 1-Hour Live Panel Discussion - Participation in Live Q&A
  • Viewing of Live Sessions available for 1 year
Learning Objectives: 
  • Learn how to create accessible Power Point and PDF files
  • Discuss best practices techniques for formatting web pages
  • Explore open source and freeware productivity tools that you can use to build greater course access, and promote learner engagement and retention
  • Evaluate a new web-based application developed to assess online course accessibility and usability
Facilitators
Facilitator(s): 

Valerie Haven
Valerie Claire Haven is adjunct faculty and staff at the University of Massachusetts. She teaches graduate courses in accessibility and inclusive learning in online education for both UMass and the University of Southern Maine. Valerie also does consulting on accessibility issues related to technology and pedagogy for technologically-mediated instruction. Her primary interests and work relate to supporting faculty and staff to integrate assistive technology into their courses as easily as possible.
Valerie’s career in assistive technology and on-line learning began in 2001 when she was hired to support the start-up of a new distance-based graduate program at UMass. She is an avid user of all types of assistive technology and develops toolkit suites to support learners with various disabilities and diverse learning styles taking on-line courses. While she is passionate about technology in general, her real interest is in helping teachers and faculty find and select the right technologies to support the learning objectives of their courses. Valerie is also the 2010 recipient of Sloan’s President’s Special Award for Outstanding Achievement by An Individual in the Field of On-line learning.

Pricing and Cancellation Policy

Price: $345 Each
Sloan-C Member price: $195 w/coupon code* (you will enter the coupon code on the payment page of your shopping cart process)
College Pass Member Pricing: No Cost w/coupon code* (you will enter the coupon code on the payment page of your shopping cart process)
*Members receive unlimited discounts with membership and College Pass holders receive 100 (50 or 25) "free" seats in the entire Sloan-C Workshop series.

Cancellation Policy: 

If you register and pay for a Sloan-C workshop and are unable to attend or if Sloan-C reschedules/cancels a workshop, we will be happy to apply your payment to another Sloan-C workshop/seminar at your request. However, no refunds will be given. This offer is good for one year.

Technical Requirements/Minimum System Requirements

Combining the capabilities of industry leaders Wimba and Elluminate, Blackboard Collaborate provides a comprehensive learning platform designed specifically for education. It is helping thousands of higher education, K-12, professional, corporate, and government organizations worldwide deliver a more effective learning experience through online, blended, and mobile learning.

System Requirements:

  • Click here to check the system requirements and support browsers for using Elluminate
  • Click here to find out if your computer has the right Operating System and Java version installed to run Elluminate and to configure your system.

     
http://sloanconsortium.org/sites/default/files/pages/moodle-logo-med.gif


Moodle: Sloan-C uses an open-source LMS called Moodle for the asynchronous component of workshops. Moodle provides a flexible and user-friendly set of asynchronous collaboration and learning tools. As with most open-source technologies, the Moodle software is free, making it a very cost-effective software package for any institution or company, without sacrificing quality. Moodle is a robust environment that is dynamic, interactive, and provides cross-platform learner access through a standard web browser.

System Requirements

Moodle will work in any modern web browser, however, moodle works best in a range of specific browser types (see below). Your browser should also have both cookies and javascript enabled. These are typically enabled by default, but if you think these settings might need enabling, check the documentation for your particular browser for how to do these.

To make best use of what moodle has to offer, it is recommended that users choose a browser that supports moodle's in-line HTML editor. This is a WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editor with an interface much like you would see in most word processing packages.

This in-line HTML editor will only appear if you use one of a specific range of browser types that knows how to start the editor. If you do not use one of these browser types, you can still use moodle just fine, but without the luxury of a WYSIWYG editor. Luckily, there is a supported browser that will work on all major operating system types. The list of supported and not supported browsers is shown below:

Browsers that support the HTML editor Browsers that do not support the HTML editor
Recent versions of: 

Internet Explorer (v5.5 or later) 
Firefox (all versions) 
Mozilla (v1.7 or later) 
SeaMonkey (all versions) 
Netscape (v7 or later) 		 Any versions of: 

Opera 
Safari 
Camino 

 
Register now for session: 
Enhancing Accessibility 1-May 2012
Register now for session: 
Enhancing Accessibility 2 Sep 2012
© 2012, The Sloan Consortium