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Georgia Tech Research on Accessible Distance Education (GRADE) is a research project at the Georgia Tech Center for Assistive Technology and Environmental Access (CATEA). Provides actual modules showing how courses that present challenges due to their nature (engineering, mathematics) or inclusion of rich media can be designed to increase accessibility.

This article addresses barriers to the accessibility of information from state health department websites (rapidly becoming go-to resources for people and practitioners) across 4 dimensions: readability, disability access, non-English translation and privacy / security. The authors state, "These results raise fundamental issues of justice and equality in public health...In the meantime, inaccessible websites hurt the underprivileged and make it difficult to justify the investment in technology that has occurred in state governments...." I thought there was something for everyone in our cohort here.

Here is the very large report following ten years of studying online education. I think it probably has been or will be cited in other postings in this bibliography, but I thought it would be good to post the whole thing here. It's is very comprehensive but also easy to access. Enjoy!

Tenth annual report on the status of online learning in U.S. higher education. The survey is based on the response from more than 2,800 colleges and universities and addresses the status of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), the increasing importance of a long-term teaching strategy, ther percentage of students learning online, does it take more time and effort for faculty, is online comparable to F2F learning, faculty acceptance to online learning, and barriers to the adoption of online learning.

This 2002 essay by Wilson and Peterson may be a bit dated, but it is one of the few broadly reflective essays I found on the anthropology of online communities. It is not a "how to" for online teaching, but I think an occasionally more critical, reflective piece can be very useful both for understanding our place in broader social processes related to online learning and in piercing through some of the enthusiastic corporate-talk through which these technologies are presented by our universities. I have included the abstract below. The URL is to the JSTOR site, which you probably need to access through your Emory account. I was not sure how to add a link here that would get you in directly, and that is something I need to follow up on with Leah. Abstract: Information and communication technologies based on the Internet have enabled the emergence of new sorts of communities and communicative practices-phenomena worthy of the attention of anthropological researchers. De- spite early assessments of the revolutionary nature of the Internet and the enormous transformations it would bring about, the changes have been less dramatic and more embedded in existing practices and power relations of everyday life. This review ex- plores researchers' questions, approaches, and insights within anthropology and some relevant related fields, and it seeks to identify promising new directions for study. The general conclusion is that the technologies comprising the Internet, and all the text and media that exist within it, are in themselves cultural products. Anthropology is thus well suited to the further investigation of these new, and not so new, phenomena.

Since 1948 we have helped millions of students who are blind, dyslexic or have other learning disabilities achieve confidence and independence in the classroom and in life. More about our mission We work with our partners to raise awareness of learning differences.

When I was a graduate student, I volunteered with this organization (formerly known as Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic). I read fiction books and textbooks, recording in a booth on my own or with a director. Volunteers completed training to learn how to cue the audio reader to turn book pages, to transition between text and pictures or figures, and to indicate punctuations (ellipsis, quotations, subscript/superscripts, etc.). The experience helped me to improve the use of my voice in communicating to learners and the ways to chunk the information appropriate for visually impaired and dyslexic learners. As Learning Ally, the organization now offers professional development for teachers to help them with utilizing the wide range of audiobooks in their collection.

The article discusses the online virtual library, Pop Culture Universe: Icons, Idols, Ideas that provides unique historical perspective of culture and events over the last century in the U.S. As stated, high school students, teachers, and school librarians can access content which is taken from over 400 print reference titles published by the Greenwood Publishing Group. Reportedly, the content presents a comprehensive look at American entertainment through movies, TV shows, music, and awards.

MERLOT is a CoI revolving around technology and learning objects. It is a repository of learning objects that can be accessed and used. The objects are grouped according to subject / content, and they are peer-reviewed. This is an excellent resource with something for everyone. (My personal favorite object - the "eye simulator," which demonstrates the actions of the 6 extrinsic muscles of the eye and lets you "paralyze" muscles specifically to examine the effect on eye movement - completely cool!) There is also a wealth of other information on their site (sorry - within their community :) Best of all - all the resources at MERLOT are free.

This article addresses practical concerns about online discussions. It stresses the importance of having good discussion questions that are clearly linked to the learning objectives. There are also some good assessment tips.

I like the title, but I couldn't access it -- sign in required??

Yes, Peggy, the article comes from one of the main databases through the Emory Library.

Teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) to immigrants and refugees who are visually impaired or blind involves complex challenges such as working with mainstream ESL programs that have low expectations of people with disabilities, coping with inaccessible intake tools and training materials, locating and recruiting students from immigrant and refugee populations that do not always believe people with disabilities can become literate and productive citizens, locating and recruiting appropriately trained volunteer tutors, and matching students with tutors.

This is a short article focused on the 2014 Horizon Report and the context of connections. Published in Nursing Education Perspectives journal in their Emerging Technologies section.

Kristy, this is awesome find. The term Connected Age may be one of the next buzz words of our lives. I've added a couple of additional tags so that searching becomes meaningful. Using "nursing" as a tag is perfect because there are about 8 SON faculty who have access to this group. (This cohort and last)

This is a great research guide designed to help faculty who wish to incorporate UDL into their classes. See especially the UDL syllabus rubric page (listed under the tab "UDL Course Changes"

Yes, yes, I know, the title suggests that this webtext is only relevant for a few people, perhaps only Jane and myself. However, if you browse this webtext - it is indeed not an article, but like all work published in Kairos, a multimedia artifact or well, a webtext - you will find a lot of important insights on student-professor-staff interactions in an online environment. The webtext highlights, for example, the importance of the lack of physical cues in an online class, a facet of online instruction that may necessitate a higher awareness of the effect our formulations, terms, and even typed characters can have in any written communication such as blog posts, emails, chats, and messages. We thus learn quite a bit about communicative techniques and etiquette in an online class (and in a virtual environment more generally). Another webtext in the same Kairos issue reflects upon teaching graduate students how to teach online: http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/20.1/praxis/bourelle-et-al/pedagogycourse.html. Leah, this webtext might be interesting for you - but it should be interesting for others as well because it also addresses questions about assignments and exercises in online classes. By the way, Kairos is an important open-access online journal that has existed since 1996. It publishes scholarship that "examines digital and multimodal composing practices, promoting work that enacts its scholarly argument through rhetorical and innovative uses of new media." ("The Kairos Style Guide", n.d.)