EDUCAUSE | Usability Development

Tune in April 4: Free Web Seminar on the Why and How of Web Accessibility

pkurkowski — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:45:08 -0500

The challenge of web accessibility raises issues of both policy and technology. Join experts in each of these two areas in this free April 4 EDUCAUSE Live! web seminar, The Why and How of Web Accessibility, as presenters Harry Hochheiser, Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Sciences, Towson University, and Tracy Mitrano, Director of IT Policy and Computer Policy and Law Program, Cornell University, discuss this important topic.

Policy guru Tracy Mitrano says: "Developing a web accessibility policy has been one of the greatest but most rewarding challenges I have faced in creating an IT policy framework at Cornell. With the EDUCAUSE Live! audience, I would like to share some of the struggles and stories about that process and what accessibility, education, and the web have come to mean to me as a result."

Technology expert Harry Hochheiser summarizes: "Although the need for accessible web sites is widely accepted, many developers are still uncertain about the costs and limitations associated with designs that account for users with varying skills, capabilities, and computing tools. Fortunately, these problems are solvable: with proper planning and design, web sites can be interactive, engaging, highly functional, and accessible. The combination of accessibility guidelines and automated evaluation tools can help any developer build sites that are more accessible and usable for all users."

Those unable to attend may wish to visit the archives after the event or browse related EDUCAUSE resources on Web Accessibility, Web Administration, Design and Development, Access for Persons with Disabilities, Adaptive and Assistive Technology, Usability Development, and Policy and Law: Campus.

Podcast: An Interview with Jim Murphy, Elon University

gbayne — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 18:18:09 -0500

In this six and a half minute podcast, we feature an interview from the EDUCAUSE 2007 Southeast Regional Conference. I conducted the interview with Jim Murphy, Director of Instructional Design & Development at Elon University. He presented a session entitled, "Elon's Web-Based Summer School: An Online Success Story".

Elon University has developed a successful summer online courses program, popular with both faculty and students. In this interview Jim Murphy describes the challenges faced in establishing and maintaining the program, highlighting the factors that have helped ensure its success.

Making our machines more like us

catherine — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 12:45:51 -0500

It took a long time for cognitivist researchers to accept the importance of emotions in human intelligent activity. And it’s going to take even longer before educational technology grows a culture in which the affective dimension is fully integrated into workplace practice. Not just integrated into HCI or evaluation processes; integrated into every stage of the development cycle. There will be immediate benefits for usability, but the changes will go well beyond usability and beyond raising awareness among developers and instructional technologists of cog.psy. concepts and shorthands such as "EQ". I’m talking about a radical change in mentalities.

Integrating the affective dimension will require a change in the ways we define expertise and the ways that we undertake and manage projects. Most notably, end users (i.e. PEOPLE) will be integrated at the earliest stages of the project lifecycle. But the result will be a dramatic augmentation of our ability to collaborate, and to recognize and capture shared / situated knowledge.

Making our machines more like us will be (by definition) a humanizing process, so perhaps it’s not surprising that the worlds of literature and philosophy were onto the importance of affect and emotion, well in advance of the social cognitivists.

“The 'world' of The Concept of Mind is the world in which people play cricket, cook cakes, make simple decisions, remember their childhood and go to the circus, not the world in which they commit sins, fall in love, say prayers or join the Communist Party.” (Iris Murdoch, 1953)

That’s the problem in a nutshell. Murdoch wrote in a very different context, but her words nevertheless encapsulate the fundamental flaw in the “cold” or cognitivist view of cognition. Conscious, unconscious, or some mixture of the two, emotion has an essential role to play in human intelligence. That should be built into our ICT projects at every level. Although it might not help you play the stock market.

Ref: I. Murdoch (1953), Sartre: Romantic Rationalist. London: Bowes and Bowes.