REPORT ON FOURTH COMMUNITY POTLUCK

The Inclusive Learning Exchange (TILE) Community Potluck Event, University of Toronto - March 29, 2004

Robert Luke, ATRC

Theme: Pulling it all together

The fourth and final TILE Community Potluck was held at the University of Toronto on 29 March 2004. Community Potlucks have been held each quarter over the year long development cycle. They are intended to get participant input into the design and development of the TILE tools, as well as to show people how and why TILE works. These events have been crucial to the overall participatory design process of the TILE project. The Potlucks have enabled the research and development team to engage with participants and project partners throughout the design cycle, and obtain feedback on functional specifications and other design issues. This iterative and cooperative prototyping of the TILE application has resulted in measurable and meaningful impact on the overall development of TILE.

In attendance at the final Potluck were people from across the University of Toronto faculties, Ryerson University, York University, Canadian Learning Television, and others. All participants shared a concern with inclusive e-learning. The theme for this event was “Pulling it all together,” and it was intended as a capstone to the entire developmental year.

The day got under way with an update and overview of TILE by Jutta Treviranus, director of the ATRC. Jutta posited a new definition of disability as being a mismatch between a learner and the learning environment, and asked participants to think about how e-learning can be used to enable unforeseen educational opportunities to emerge. By allowing learners to engage within educational environments that are adaptable to the particular constraints of disabilities, we are able to open up educational possibilities to wider audiences.

A Community Activity was then conducted with four breakout groups. Each group was given a topic area, and, with the help of an ATRC staff facilitator, asked to use the TILE tool to create a custom learning package. Each group was asked to construct a learning path that included ancillary learning materials that are alternatives to specific content. That is, group members were able to construct learning paths of various multimedia, and add in alternative content – text descriptions of graphics and videos, for example. These kinds of learner supports can enable people who need alternative information displays to see the media of their preference.

The purpose of the group activity was to explore the user interface developed by the TILE programming team, learn how to upload content to the repository and to search the repository for existing resources, to develop a sample module by specifying learning objectives, and associating resources with those objectives, and to publish a learning module to the TILE repository. This activity created a backdrop for discussion of next steps to further develop support for the reuse of learning objects.

Each group’s facilitator kept notes on the groups as part of a field observational approach to ascertaining how well the TILE application worked on the one hand, and where there were gaps in the design and usability on the other. Many useful suggestions were gathered. These were shared in a large group forum comprised of all Potluck participants. This discussion of developmental issues, design flaws and technological tricks was augmented by a thorough discussion of how well the tool worked and where specific improvement was necessary. A discussion about the larger context of designing e-learning with tools like TILE generated very fruitful discussion about many facets of e-learning that currently dominate discussions about the use of new technologies in education more generally. These issues included Intellectual Property (IP) and copyright issues, reusability, collaborative and iterative learning object design, the role of quality assurance and accuracy, as well as instructional design issues and assumptions that play a role in the design and development of meaningful learning objects and activities.

Instructional design and the role of evaluation were recurring themes in the Potluck. There was some discussion about how learning activities can be constructed among learning materials within the TILE interface. Incorporating interaction and activity templates was seen as a potentially effective way to enable instructors (particularly novice e-learning developers) to construct meaningful online learning that can accommodate various abilities. The larger instructional context was thus foregrounded as an important location or reference for those who work on putting online materials together. There was general agreement that a tool like TILE could be of enourmous benefit in meeting the needs of diverse learners, provided that there was adequate user support in conjunction with teaching potential users of TILE what inclusive authoring can mean for students. That is, instructional design and technical support for people using the TILE authoring tool would form a necessary context in which its use could be fully explored.

The discussion ended with many specific recommendations for re-engineering TILE to better suit the needs of instructors. The day was an invaluable for getting input into the functional specifications of TILE. The general discussion was fruitful for enabling a clearer articulation of the TILE goals with the actual software use; this was the first time participants were asked to actually use TILE, an as such the event was very good for getting structured feedback on usability and design issues.

The day ended with a presentation by Jutta to the Learning Object Summit at the National Research Council’s Institute for Information Technology, via interactive Internet webcast. Several TILE Potluck attendees participated in this broadcast. Jutta presented some of the direct results of the day’s action research into the use of inclusive authoring tools.

The implications for learners are great for the TILE application. The final Potluck was another effective step in an iterative development cycle that is responsive to the needs of those who design and develop inclusive online education.