Good evening to everyone attending and anyone who views retrospectively.
Firstly, I will introduce myself, my name is Rob Carter and for a living I work as a digital learning Specialist. My remit is to take digital learning projects from conception to delivery. Meaning I have to undertake a lot of roles from instructional designer to videographer, soundman, graphic designer animator and the person who puts it all together at the end and places it somewhere that the learners can access it ultimately trying create an experience that meets the learning outcomes required.
This puts me in a position where I am involved in every part of the design and development process and make decisions based on what circumstances exist for learners.
This conference presentation is entitled
Digital Design for Inclusive Learning (Video Transcript)
This case study is presented from the perspective of Instructional Designers and Digital Learning Developers who are responsible producing for the end product of eLearning and digital training initiatives. Ultimately creating what the learners see and do.
Each of the design approach decisions described relates to the broader issues faced by learning designers when looking to create equitable learning solutions that mitigate the issues of access and limited digital literacy.
The case study presents a real instructional design project. Undertaken to provide digital learning revision resources to Trainee Civil Enforcement Officers (Traffic Wardens). Who in order to perform their role must pass a standard exam. To acheive a WAMITAB qualification which is required by client boroughs who use outsourced service providers to deliver parking enforcement.
Within the case study the learners are faced with a range of circumstances that impede the ability to make full provision of learning opportunities. Specifically, limited online access a lack of study time and suitable study locations and low levels of digital literacy. All of which are recognised as impediments to learning and universal contributors to the educational digital divide.
As a design team we have been tasked to find a solution to this for commercial reasons, however how we design out these mitigations has a wider remit. Our learners and these circumstances are reflective of the wider issues around digital learning opportunities, the digital divide and economic growth.
In the 4th industrial revolution a lack of digital literacy and access Impedes an individuals, economic growth and social mobility and impacts the growth of the wider common wealth.
The 2018 G20 report on bridging the digital divide concluded that:
“The digital divide is a manifestation of global inequalities. Those with greater capabilities can afford opportunities to gain the necessary skills to better leverage state and private sponsored investment, Conversely, impoverished communities with limited capabilities have fewer opportunities to gain the skills needed to advance within the rapidly transforming digital economy” (Chetty K, Aneja U, Vidisha V, Gcora N, and Josie J, 2018)
So from both a practical business and ethical perspective creating digital learning equity is a mutual imperative……. And in the words of Benjamin Franklin:
“an investment in knowledge pays the best interest”
To introduce the salient discussion topics, I am going to structure the conversation within the framework of a typical instructional design approach. Introducing each mitigating issue in the order in which it is encountered within a design project, how it is responded to and the result of that design decision further on in the design process.
In order to understand how a design process evolves and where issues are presented and solutions decided upon it is important to understand the workflow framework on which it is structured.
So ……. This is the ADDIE design approach, the approach taken to digital design in this case study and a common approach to digital and instructional design projects.
So to quickly run through what this acronym stands for
A is for Analysis, this is the opening and most important stage of the Learning design. This is where the what who and how of the whole learning experience is considered. This is where we establish our desired learning outcomes and the metrics by which we will evaluate them. Who are the learners, what do they know what do they need to know, what are their circumstances? How and where will they undertake the learning.
D Stands for Design where assessment instruments, interactive exercises, content and things such as media selection are decided and how do we organise and display the content information to facilitate the sense making process of learners.
D the second D is for Development this is the stage where we actually start creating content, shoot video, design graphics and the interface display.
I is for Implementation the stage that we do the necessary heuristics, testing that any learning applications are functional that content and controls work. This gives us the opportunity to make the tweaks and do the necessary snagging before it gets released to the learning cohort.
E means Evaluation where we start to look at user usage and trends and measure if the metrics we identified in the analysis stage of the design are what we expected and if not what can be changed or improved to meet them.
So starting with the case study Analysis stage. The learning outcome metric is quite clear in this instance for trainee CEOS to pass the Wamitab exam. The need for constant WAMITAB resits, with a 60% first attempt failure rate and instances of continuing failure, leading to the need to re-recruit, creating a cost to the business.
The format of the course means Students have 5 full classroom days, which are intensive and largely governed by endless PowerPoint lectures. The course requires quite a substantial amount of extra self-study beyond the classroom, 3 hours a day is the additional study time recommended by the course trainers. The supporting training materials are currently a large printed training manual which mirrors the PowerPoint and trainer classroom input.
Among the cohorts of students our HR data shows that a high proportion are from non UK backgrounds, many are recent Immigrants who have English as a second language. In conversation with tutors many stated that they lived in houses of multiple occupation and that study space and time was limited and crowded environments impacted on the quality of study time. a reliance on public transport to the training venue which lies on the periphery of north London meant that many trainees journey times were between 2 and 3 hours each way!
To summarise this aggregation of barriers to being able to fully benefit from the training experience. Our learners have limited study time and lack of quality study spaces. This Is also compounded by many learning in a second language.
Switching to digital delivery and providing standard eLearning that can be accessed via the organisations LMS from learners own PCs or Laptops presents another set of issues to add to those already identified.
We cannot just make the assumption that students have sufficient access to hardware or reliable internet access, coupled with this, classroom observation indicates that there are very mixed levels of digital literacy, defined as “the ability to both understand and use digitised information” (Gilster 1997)
D Moving on to our design phase what we have deduced from our analysis is that any eLearning approach needs to take into consideration the realities of student internet access. The one device that is ubiquitous among students is a smart phone. This means that the first decision, is that our learning design will be mobile first. All the content, graphics, interactions etc from the perspective of it being viewed on a smartphone.
In terms of content approach, a proven presentation method for this type of learning intervention is microlearning, Keeping content short and focused, allowing learners to complete a module in a few minutes. Sticking to a single concept or learning goal in each “unit” of content, whether that content is a text to be read, a short video, a Quiz, or something else.
The final design decision is how to tackle low digital literacy and here, I looked here at work done by the Microsoft group in India. Who were developing software for non IT users, some of there ideas translated, such as 1 click lineal architecture and optimal visual representations and the development of clean design user interfaces (Nielsen, J. 2003) that employed icon-based interface functions that familiarised users with interactive visual motifs that were consistent across activities, Such as if it is a quiz use a big question mark. This assists users with low digital literacy by improving functional comprehension and digital confidence.
D Development, for development we are looking at tools that are cost effective and lend themselves to mobile first approaches, We also want tools that have additional apps to allow for offline use. Allowing the downloading of modules that can be taken where there is no network access, on a tube train for instance. For this we are using Gomo. A popular responsive design tool that is available with hosting. Which provides a learning records store from which we can extract store student usage data.
I For the Implementation, our plan is to start to roll this out to trainee cohorts later this year, we will take time in the classroom to prepare them by having digital awareness sessions. so digital revision tool usage guidance will become an integral part of the classroom session.
E Evaluation So far our evidence, although gained informally through observation and conversation, seems very compelling and substantial enough to undertake the project. we are starting to survey students with a small pulse surveys to ascertain their circumstances more clearly, our choice of software also allows us to use its data which it can record from both on and offline usage, any offline usage will be recorded when the device is next connected to a network. This allows us to see the device used time spent and a host of drill down usage data. Both student surveys and initial usage data will allow us to look at iterative releases and refinements, and of course we can see if the first- time pass rates of the WAMITAB exam rise.
So What is the take away from this.
That at every level (especially instructional and digital designers) we can do our bit to try and reduce barriers to opportunities for learners, by employing equitable digital learning strategies and design models.
Mobile first approaches. Mobile phones are the most readily available technology that can receive and display multimodal content and allow for participatory interaction this means the most obvious choice for learning delivery as they are within the means of learners from lower socio-economic disadvantages technology (at least 90% of working age people in the UK own a smart phone.) the number of smartphone users in the world is 3.5 Billion, which translates to 45.12% of the world's population owning a smartphone.
This is a project in a well-resourced corporate organisation, however the principals of design and the usage of low cost production software …under 900 pounds mean that it is a low cost, learner centric and economically expedient approach.
Adopting clean simple user experience design can potentially help to tackle digital literacy gaps.