{"id":778,"date":"2005-06-01T01:11:00","date_gmt":"2005-06-01T01:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/cite\/2016\/02\/09\/developing-an-online-accessible-science-course-for-all-learners\/"},"modified":"2016-06-01T20:13:20","modified_gmt":"2016-06-01T20:13:20","slug":"developing-an-online-accessible-science-course-for-all-learners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citejournal.org\/volume-5\/issue-3-05\/science\/developing-an-online-accessible-science-course-for-all-learners","title":{"rendered":"Developing an Online Accessible Science Course for All Learners"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The American with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 was a landmark legislative initiative that outlined the protection of individuals with disabilities. Title III of the ADA directs that public facilities make reasonable efforts to control discrimination and support accessibility policies, practices, and procedures (Council for Exceptional Children, 1994). The 1997 amendment of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (U.S. Congress, 1999) stipulates that students with disabilities are to be educated in the general education curriculum. Institutions of Higher Education are not immune from these policies. In addition, common actions like course development and teaching must include considerations and compliance with the ADA and IDEA guidelines. These guidelines have also extended to the realm of computer technology in recent years (e.g., Chalfen & Farb, 1996; Mendle, 1995) especially as they pertain to online delivery of instruction. The U. S. Access Board (2001), a governing body charged with helping U.S. federal agencies reach Web accessibility, announced a set of guidelines that comply with Section 508 of the 1998 Rehabilitation Act. The result was that all federal agencies had to alter and or develop Web sites that were accessible to those with disabilities. Web page authors can also integrate the same guidelines into generic Web sites, as well as online courses offered at universities (e.g., Robertson, 2002; Robertson & Harris, 2003).<\/p>\n
Traditional modes of science instruction have included lecture and presentation by instructors, and different methods and accommodations have been made to include people with disabilities as learners (e.g., Munk, Bruckett, Call, Stoehrmann, & Radandt, 1998; Stefanich, 2001). In recent years online instruction has quickly risen in popularity among universities and colleges as one mode of instruction (Kiefer-O\u2019Donnell & Spooner, 2002). Even though the use of online instruction has progressed quickly, online learning accommodations for people with disabilities has lagged behind other curricular issues (Gardner & Wissick, 2002). The purposes of this paper are to exam online Internet content of an Earth and environmental science (EES) course and determine if the format and design of the Internet content is appropriate for students with visual disabilities. The course used external Web sites on the Internet as the main source of content; thus, the study focused on the impact of an online course design on a specific community of learners and suggests how instructors at all levels might need to revise curriculum that uses the Internet for content to meet the learning needs of some marginalized learners.<\/p>\n
Literature Review<\/p>\n
Science Education<\/p>\n
National reform documents in science (e.g., National Science Education Standards<\/i> [National Research Council, 1996] and Benchmarks for Scientific Literacy<\/i> [American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993]) stressed the need to develop scientific literacy in all<\/i> students. In order to achieve this goal of \u201cscience for all,\u201d the science documents suggested that the teaching and learning of science should be achieved using an inquiry approach that includes hands-on experiences. In addition, a distillation of these and other curricular documents suggested, among other items, that there should be more emphasis on understanding science concepts, learning science in the context of active and extended inquiry, and integrating cooperative learning. Gardner, Mason, and Matyas (1989) stated that teachers should use more hands-on\/minds-on experiences to increase the speed, ease, variety, and efficacy of learner engagements for underserved and underrepresented students. Some special educators have identified science as a content area to be a particularly well-suited area for students with disabilities due to the hands-on and interactive nature of teaching and learning (e.g., Mastropieri & Scruggs, 1992a). Mastropieri and Scruggs (1992b) also reviewed the literature and found that many science curricula for students with disabilities share in common problem solving, thinking, and scientific processes.<\/p>\n
Although these documents promote \u201cscience for all,\u201d some have criticized exactly what that means. For example, Holahan and McFarland (1994) defined \u2018all\u2019 as \u201coperationally meaning 90% or more\u201d and determined that the remaining 10% were students with disabilities. In terms of curriculum design and instructional implementation, the national documents offer no guidance or description for the needs of students with disabilities. Cawley, Foley, and Miller (2003) suggested that curriculum developers use principles of \u201cuniversal design\u201d to comply with national standards for student with disabilities. There seems to be a gap between what national science documents recommend as effective teaching and the availability of curricula for students with disabilities to learn science.<\/p>\n
Online Aspects of Teaching<\/p>\n
Although there have been suggestions and approaches for making content more accessible for students with disabilities in traditional settings, there are fewer examples when applied to the online environment (e.g., Gardner & Wissick, 2002). The meaning, implementation, and application of content take on a different perspective. In order to adhere to the principles set out in national science reforms documents, online science instruction needs to include interactive graphics, simulations, collaboration, and diagrams to enhance topical and conceptual learning. However, because of the complexity of information on some Internet sites, accessibility becomes an issue (Wong, 1997). For example, science virtual dissections or simulations cannot be \u201ctranslated\u201d and students with disabilities cannot realize the experience of \u2018participating\u2019 in science, because these students cannot feel, see, hear, or direct science content without the use of very expensive tools.<\/p>\n
The Trace Research and Development Center at the University of Wisconsin at Madison produced the Unified Web Site Accessibility Guidelines (Vanderheiden & Chisholm, 1998). These guidelines were transferred to the Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C, 2005). Using the 1999 Unified Web Site Accessibility Guidelines, the W3C produced HTML Author Guidelines — version 1.0. Since then a newer version of the guidelines has been introduced (W3C, 2005). According to the guidelines, measures for improving accessibility fall into the following categories: (a) structure\u2014HTML documents should use markup to convey meaning and less for format and layout pages; (b) navigation\u2014authors should support keyboard-only navigation and methods to facilitate orientation; and (c) alternative content\u2014authors should always provide alternative ways to access information presented with images, sounds, applets, and scripts (Chisholm & Vanderheiden, 1999b). These recommendations have been categorized as Priority 1, 2, and 3 errors.\u00a0 Priority\u00a01 errors involve issues that make it impossible for one or more groups to access information about the Web site.\u00a0 These issues must be addressed to consider the Web site minimally accessible.\u00a0 Priority 2 errors make it difficult for users to access Web site content.\u00a0 Priority 3 errors may be addressed by Web developers and make it somewhat difficult for readers to access information in the Web page.<\/p>\n
The W3C’s commitment to lead the Web to its full potential includes promoting a high degree of usability for people with disabilities.\u00a0 The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the W3C produced the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 <\/i>(Chisholm & Vanderheiden, 1999a) to promote content accessibility. The guidelines did not discourage content developers from using images, video, and other multimedia tools, but rather explained how to make multimedia content more accessible to a wider audience. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0<\/i> document is organized around two general themes and 14 guidelines and principles of accessible design. The themes are (a) ensuring graceful transformation and (b) making content understandable and navigable.<\/p>\n
Developmental Research<\/p>\n
The online EES course was developed with the intent of maximizing available online and multimedia content for the students. This approach necessitated a circular nature of curriculum revision that included research, data collection, interpretation, and modification. The process of curriculum development outlined in developmental research involves the integration of curriculum research and design. Gravemeijer (1994) characterized this process as \u201ceducational development,\u201d which is guided by theory and also produces theory. \u201cIn general, curricula are developed to change education, to introduce new content or new goals, or to teach the existing curriculum according to new insights\u201d (p. 445).<\/p>\n
Although most strategies for instructional design and curriculum development are grounded in an empiricist framework, developmental research gains its validity by recognizing ongoing and changing views of altering current ways of doing. For example, Freudenthal (1991) discussed the use of thought experiments in physics as a means by which instructors could envision proper teaching, based not on prior experimental results but through rational thinking. In developmental research, the evolutionary aspect of the process is highlighted because it reflects a nonempiricist approach that does not focus on results. This bricolage concept reflects the practical aspect of adapting curricular means to the goals of a community of practice. These goals can reflect the practical and contextual nature of teaching and learning in different environments.<\/p>\n
The online environment is a contextual setting in which alteration is needed so that proper instruction occurs. In addition, when dealing with disability issues of instruction, the ways in which teachers use the Internet must be studied in hopes of finding appropriate models of instruction.<\/p>\n
Development research exemplifies the theoretical goal of content dissemination for teaching and learning in the online context while considering students with disabilities. Content should be accessible and available for all groups or communities of people and inherently developed for such access. The course development must reflect the communities of practice of the teachers and the students while attending to the process of curricular revision. In addition, communities of individuals define what is curriculum, how curriculum is implemented, and who benefits from curriculum.<\/p>\n
The purpose of this paper was not to explore the design of online content or the effect on students with disabilities, but to examine the development of a course that uses external Internet Web sites to supply the bulk of the course content. Even though the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0<\/i> focus on design of specific pages, they can also be used to help evaluate a course that includes online content from external Internet Web sites. Little research has been done to date that addresses the issue of online teaching and learning as it pertains to curriculum development in regards to accessibility issues. The research questions that guided this study were as follows:<\/p>\n Methods<\/p>\n As previously mentioned, the purpose of this study was to examine the degree to which the content of an online EES course that uses external Internet Web sites is accessible to certain communities of practice (i.e., students with disabilities). Specifically, the external Web sites from different Internet domains in the course were evaluated by software that identifies types of presentational and design errors. These errors are then categorized by severity and \u201cease of fit.\u201d<\/p>\n Course Description<\/p>\n Beginning in 2003, all North Carolina high school graduates had to complete a course in Earth and Environmental Sciences. Based on the number of students graduating each year (~60,000), a total of approximately 800 teachers in 400 high schools are needed to teach the mandated new courses. There exists a gap in the number of qualified teachers needed to teach these courses in the high schools. One solution was to offer a graduate level EES course so that teachers could become certified in this area. It was decided that an EES course should be designed and delivered via distance education technology (online) so that more preservice and in-service teachers could more easily take the course. This online course allowed for the retooling and development of secondary science teachers. Although the course management software (Blackboard) for delivering this online course was accessible and complied with ADA guidelines, there was no indication that the content developed for the class was accessible to people with disabilities.<\/p>\n The purpose of the EES course was to prepare and retrain secondary science teachers in the content of EES. In order to accomplish this purpose, external Web sites were chosen to provide content that had moving images, dynamic and colorful diagrams, tables with data, and simulations. These Web sites more accurately displayed and reflected the type of teaching as outlined in the National Science Education Standards<\/i> (NSES; National Research Council, 1996), which states that science should be engaging, involve hands-on and minds-on activities, and be applicable to a students\u2019 life. The course content, outline, and presentation followed the North Carolina Standard Course of Study and all of its themes and subthemes. The seven themes (the lithosphere, tectonic processes, origin and evolution of the Earth, hydrosphere, atmosphere, solar system, and environmental stewardship) were presented over 21 classes, and the course content was divided into these allotted classes based upon the teaching experience of a university geologist. Veal, Kubasko, & Fullagar (2002) reported the effectiveness and description of the online course. In summary, each class contained a written section summarizing and relating subthemes for the major themes. Within the summaries, teachers were referred to external Web sites (using pop-up windows) that provided most of the content information.<\/p>\n Web Site Labeling<\/p>\n The Web sites were labeled based upon their generic designation and domain registry. For example, the Web sites from universities or university-sponsored programs were designated .edu. In some cases the designation was not apparent. Many of the Web sites originating outside the US did not follow the American convention. For example, http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/education\/rocks\/rockcycle.shtml<\/a> is sponsored by the British Broadcasting Company and was labeled as .com. In another example, the Exploritorium site in San Francisco was labeled .org even though the URL contained .edu. The Canadian and British universities had URLs that did not indicate that they were .edu sites, but were still labeled as .edu.<\/p>\n Web Site Inclusion and Alteration<\/p>\n There were 342 external Internet Web sites used for the 2002 summer course. The external Web sites in many cases were chosen because they provided animation and\/or demonstrated the content in alternative ways other than just text. The Web sites were separated into four domains. The education and government sites were by far the most abundant resource for information on the EES themes. The Web sites chosen for this course went through an examination process that included initial discovery; review by a geologist, a marine scientist, a science educator, and one geology and four science education graduate students; and evaluation by the first two cohorts of teachers who took the EES course in previous summers. As part of a class assignment, teachers who completed the course prior to 2002 evaluated some of the Web sites for their effectiveness in teaching and learning. Feedback from these teachers and their assignments allowed the course developers to keep existing Web sites or locate new Web sites to use in future course offerings.<\/p>\n Evaluation Process<\/p>\n Each Web site was evaluated using Bobby 3.2<\/a> by the Center for Applied Special Technology, 2001 version, which is no longer available online.\u00a0 Bobby was a software tool that was used to analyze Web pages for the accessibility to people with disabilities. It accomplished this by comparing the coding in the selected Web page with the coding standards developed by the WAI.\u00a0 Once Bobby had completed its analysis it created a detailed report that was used to identify and correct accessibility errors on the Web page.\u00a0 These reports were extensive and provided a measure of the extent to which a Web site was accessible for people with disabilities.\u00a0 The type of accessibility error (e.g., images without alternative text, links without alternative text, and pages not usable without frame), the severity of the error (e.g., Priority 1, Priority 2, Priority 3), and the ease with which the error can be fixed (e.g., easy, moderate, hard) were provided in a summary report.\u00a0 By correcting these errors, tools such as Web page readers can then be used by persons with disabilities to help them read and correctly interpret the content of a Web page.\u00a0 Scores for each external Web site used in the course were tabulated by severity and analyzed based upon the Web site\u2019s domain. There were many accessibility issues that Bobby 3.2<\/a> could not detect. For example, Bobby could not determine programmatically if the Web site was following accessibility principles and could only list the potential risks of any technology that was used. Currently, there is a newer version of Bobby software entitled WebXACT that is now distributed by the Watchfire Corporation. \u201cWebXACT is a free online service that lets you test single pages of web content for quality<\/strong>, accessibility<\/strong>, and privacy<\/strong> issues\u201d (Watchfire, 2005). This software has the same basic functions as the version used for this study, and can be used for Web sites currently.<\/p>\n Results<\/p>\n A total of 342 science Web sites were evaluated for this study using Bobby 3.2. Of the total, 29 Web sites were not found due to URL changes during the time between the course offering and the analysis, resulting in 313 sites being used in the evaluation. Results from this evaluation process provided a measure of the extent to which a Web site was accessible for people with disabilities. Reports generated form the analysis of each Web site were tabulated and summarized.<\/p>\n Research Question 1: Accessibility of Internet Domains<\/p>\n Table 1 represents the percent and number of Web sites approved by the Bobby analysis for each Internet domain. The .com domain, which usually has private entities with little or no federal funding, had the most unapproved Web sites at 82%. This was followed by the .edu and .org Web site domains with 78% and 63% unapproved Web sites, respectively. Only the .gov domain had fewer than 50% unapproved Web sites. Still, any number of unapproved Web sites should not be used if students with certain disabilities took a course that used so many external Web sites.<\/p>\n Table 1\n
\n<\/b>Percent and Number of Approved and Unapproved Web Sites by Internet Domain<\/i><\/p>\n\n