Inclusion in an Electronic Classroom

Disability Group: LEARNING DISABILITY

ID 2007

Summary of problems observed in each of the various protocols and the corresponding sources of these problems for this participant.

This participant did not encounter any major accessibility problems with Top Class or Mallard.

Course Inf.

Item 2 (Login).

The login was already completed. Hence the researcher did not assign a rank to this item.

Item 23 (Complete the Quiz).

The participant did not complete this item because it could not be accessed. This was a courseware problem and was not influenced in any way or form by specific characteristics of the individual.

Item 12 (Post a message to the chat room).

This item was problematic for the participant and since the researcher was unable to provide instructions, the item was skipped.

Problems with the Item and Recommendation for Improvement:

It was not obvious to the participant where the message should be written and how it should be posted. With trial and error, the message was written in the chat panel, which is where it should be. The participant and researcher were however unable to figure out how to post the message. Hence, while it might be obvious to someone with experience that all you needed to do at this point is to press the "Enter" button to submit, this is not so obvious to the novice. Some instructions indicating that one should write their message in the chat panel and then press "enter" to submit would resolve this problem.

Web-CT

Item 14 (Submit a file using the "Assignment Drop-box" which is linked from the Tools page).

Problems experienced with this module have been described previously for 2009 (problems with courseware and not a problem that stems from the characteristic of the individual).

WCB

Item 24 (Visit the courseware developer’s Web site linked from the Home page).

This item tested the participant’s awareness and ability to scan the entire page for the information required. The web site was located at the bottom of the screen. Difficulties with this item might have been experienced for the following reasons:

Participant did not pay close attention to the name of the courseware developers and hence did not recognize that "WEB COURSE IN A BOX" was the site that they were being asked to locate.

The site was located at the bottom of the screen away from their main centre of focus and away from all the other active links on the screen. Hence the link to the courseware developer’s web site was located outside of the boundaries of active focus and could have been seen as extraneous information that sometimes tend to be ignore by the eyes.

Virtual U

Item 1 (Login).

The researcher logged in for participant without realizing it. Hence this item was not ranked.

Item 6 (Send email to the Instructor).

Problems experienced with this item are a result of problems with the software (see previous description for other participants).

Summary of Overall problems experienced by this subject

Some of the problems encountered by this subject were a direct result of the courseware and not the individual. These include: problems accessing the quiz (Course Info); problems with the use of ambiguous and confusing terminology; problems with the illogical presentation of steps to be completed (Web-CT); problems with the location of links outside of the boundaries of central focus (WCB); problems with the connection of the email (Virtual-U).
Other problems experienced were a result of specific participant’s characteristics and include: lack of experience with chat-room which resulted in problems associated with knowing where and how to post messages; participant’s lack of attention to details concerning the courseware developer site.