Session 8

Session 8 ADA

Name of evaluator: Alice Pedersen

URL of page being evaluated: http://studyonthebeach.com/csusb/classes/winter2010/etec_674_win_2010/media/eLearningADATestPage.html

Explain your procedure: I read the guidelines to help people with disabilities and concentrated on color, no flashing moving components and ability to read the page easily. Then I looked at the page I copied and pasted below.

List Any Problems Found: Per the guidelines, color presents a problem with ADA. Without having a disability I could not see the yellow very well at all. Also the paragraph at the bottom I could not read, as it was bolded in a like color. So I had to highlight it so I could read the paragraph. Also there were a lot of boxes and grid type writing that I found confusing.

Explain How to Correct These Problems: Instead of using red, green and yellow you could add asterisk so the student would be able to see which items he would be responsible to complete.

The paragraph at the bottom, I would get ride of the boxes and the background and only write in black. It appears that if the student can manipulate the article or paper from a black and white paper to whatever format fits the students needs. You can see with me coping and pasting the article it already changed the page enough that I could easily read it. But the colors went away so there was no way for me to see which items I would need to complete. If I were the student I would more than likely try and complete everything listed even if it were above my skill, in order to get a passing grade.

Session ADA: ADA TEST PAGE

Instructor: Brian Newberry
Email: newberry@csusb.edu
Phone (909) 537-7630

NOTE: This page contains several ADA compliance issues. This page has been constructed specifically to help students learn to recognize ADA compliance problems and learn how to resolve these issues.

Procedure: Technology novices complete all of the Green Coded Items. Intermediate Technology users complete all Green and Yellow coded items. Advanced/Proficient Technology users complete all Green, Yellow and Red coded items.

Matrix of Interactions

Student-Content	Student-Instructor	Student-Student
Textbook Readings	Email	Skype
Lectures	Phone Calls	Email
	Office Hours

Media and Links

Review	Preview	Advanced
Video	Audio	Do your own Google Search

http://studyonthebeach.com/csusb/classes/genericgettingstarted/gettingstartednotfinal.mov

Information

In this session we will discus telecommunications technology, specifically how it relates to media richness and Social Presence theories. In my opinion education is very much about communication, much of what we do, especially in online education is about sharing information, bringing up questions, finding answers, reducing complexity, categorizing information, and bringing it all together in workable models that can be implemented in anyone's practice of education. When we do online learning, such as we are doing here, we are dependent upon the technologies to support our communication. I think of these technologies as windows, and we communicate and perceive each other through these windows, each one with its own varying degree of opacity. This opacity shades and effects our communication and our ability to sense others with home we are working. This impacts how we understand each other’s messages and changes the way we perceive each other too. In many ways these windows impede our ability to project our presence into a communication event and also impede our ability to understand how others perceive us. In part this is because we are used communicating in a face-to-face mode. This is through years of personal practice, and of course thousands of years of human experience, all of which has shaped our expectations, our vocal abilities and our languages to be programmed to serve face-to-face communication. All the communication technologies we use modify our communication abilities in some way and understanding this fact is essential to our ability to choose the best technology for any given activity and for us as users to get the most out of the technologies we use.

Part 2

I wanted to say my office has been working on all of our papers and website to be ADA compliant. When we were first asked to update our page we had a pink/peach background and butterflies on our first page. We also had a girl mopping and stating our site was under work. She was moving around. Since then we have had two new ADA uploaded WebPages. Currently the pages are boring but the information is there for the students to view. We don't change the format form page-to-page trying to keep it consistent for the students.