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Act. 31.4 Opportunities and challenges

Thursday, 16 Dec 2010, 20:08
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Positive and negative features of mobile learning for disabled students

Positive features:

  1. Access content, information and assistive software with a personalised interface wherever and whenever they choose
  2. Using a device that they are familiar with
  3. It adds value to the learning experience
  4. It allows users to exploit more learning opportunities in broader contexts
  5. Learning is taking place in ways more suited to the learner's needs
  6. Substantial support mechanism by providing an any time, any place assistive technology

Negative features:

  1. Difficulty in transferring onto and off the devices the learning materials or data.
  2. Extra cost if users to input information might need a separate portable keyboard.
  3. Students might need extra time in order to get the proper training to use these devices.
  4. Not all devices have sufficient memory for the size and number of files that might be required from a learning material that might be in a media format.
  5. Additional cost if the user is paying the bill where sms and mms are to be used.

 

Reference:

JISC TechDis (undated) m-Learning and Accessibility [online], http://www.techdis.ac.uk/ index.php?p=9_5 (accessed 16 December 2010).

 

 

 

Tags: mobile learnigne, negative, challenges, positive, opportunities
Permalink 1 comment (latest comment by Timothy Packwood, Friday, 17 Dec 2010, 11:44)
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EK

Activity 4.1 Challenges that are most relevant to my own particular context

Monday, 13 Sept 2010, 21:24
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Edited by Elena Kondyli, Monday, 13 Sept 2010, 21:30

Common to all post-compulsory education

  • There is a clear need to find an effective way to gain access to all different kind of information provided to disabled students (either this is online or not)
  • Disabled students need time to adjust to the new setting and be autonomous in their learning.
  • In turn, teachers, tutors, designes, supporters etc should be informed whether there are disabled students in their class in order to be able to provide them with the necessary support and help if they need it.
  • Reading, writing, watching a video, hearing a recording might be a barrier to some disabled students and other students with learning difficulties.

Learning disabilities affect learning skills such as spelling, reading, writing, speaking, listening and social skills such as memory, attention, organisation, processing speed, reasoning and focus.

Specific to campus-based courses

  • The infrastructure of the buildings should be build with the necessary provisions for disabled students, like a physical access for wheelchair users, thus there is a need to have the same in the lecture rooms and residential areas.
  • Lecture theatres might need hearing loops.
  • When a lesson is fully offered to the students face to face, without recording the lecture, or have short breaks withing the course or offer transcripts to disabled students then it is a problem when you do have disabled students in your class.
  • Many people-students when they see a disabled student they are provocative and prejudiced against them.

Specific to online learning

  • There might be expensive equipment/hardware for disabled students in order to have it to assist them.
  • More time is needed from disabled students in order to acquire the information, process it and produce a result asked from a question.
  • If a website is not accessible or it does not have the necessary navigational buttons then it is a barrier for disabled students (design problem).

Related to particular subjects or contexts

  • Maths.
  • Foreign Languages due to the different accents.
  • Science due to the experiments made and if a student's mobility is limited then the student will not be able to participate.
  • Physical Education in which students with limited mobility will not be able to participate fully.
Tags: specific subjects or contexts, challenges, online learning, disabilities, all-post compulsory education, campus-based courses
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