Accessibility Issues in Learning Management Systems for Learning Disabled: A Survey Zainab Pirani and M. Sasikumar
Abstract. Learning Management System (LMS) is a major trend in distance education and educational technology and it will continue to grow in response to student needs and requirement. The elastic nature of LMS makes it suitable for almost any type of institutional academic structure. The major challenge faced by Learning Disabled (LD) users is to match their accessibility needs and preference in the existing LMS. The accessibility issues acts as a barrier in the growth of LMS. This paper provides comparative analysis of various LMS available in the market and the problems the LD faced to cope up with the educational technology. Keywords: Learning Management Systems, Learning disabled, Accessibility issues.
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Learning Management System
The basic description of a LMS is that it is a software application that automates the administration, tracking, and reporting of training events [1]. The purpose is to allow students to get complete training and share information in the convenience of their home or school. LMS provides a common platform for both teachers and students [2]. LMS give teachers the opportunity to deliver the entire course which includes the following features:
Zainab Pirani MHSSCOE, Mumbai e-mail:
[email protected] M. Sasikumar CDAC, Mumbai S.M. Thampi et al. (eds.), Recent Advances in Intelligent Informatics, Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing 235, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-01778-5_26, © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
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Providing different tools to run and manage an e-learning course Provide course content in a variety of media – including text and multimedia. Developing all learning activities and materials in a course Various options are provided for discussion forums, file sharing, management of assignments, lesson plans, syllabus, chat, etc. Monitor and manage communication between learners. Record assessment and provide feedback to the students LMS also provides following opportunity to the students community as well: Students can perform their self-evaluations Access chat rooms, discussion forum and whiteboard. Sharing of project ideas with peer groups. Interacting with teachers using synchronous or asynchronous mode. Completing and submitting of various assignments at any point of time. Can check their grade and progress status reports.
1.1
Categories of LMS
Basically, LMS can be classified into three categories based on to the relevant criteria as shown in the fig.1. • Source Code Availability. It focuses on the programming code of the LMS which is further classified into two groups. First one is open source type in which all the files which make up the LMS are free for modifying, which allows customizing the system in the necessary way, for example – Moodle [3], Magic Tutor [4], LAMS [5], Sakai [6] etc. And the second is the commercial type in which the software vendors do not provide the source code and the learning system is distributed on payment basis. As a rule, the price for the LMS includes technical support which makes the software easy to implement and use for non-technicians and non-tech companies, e.g. Blackboard [7], WebCT [ 8]. • Business orientation. It provides the domain usage of LMS. It is further classified into three areas. First one is the education domain which is our domain of interest. It automates the administration of training events. These LMSs are designed for educational purposes only. The second area is the government domain which includes possibilities of educational and corporate LMSs, with a greater focus on security and some other features depending on the certain government structure. The last are focus on (evaluating) employee skills and competencies as well as providing tools for competency training.
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Fig. 1 Classification of LMS
• E-learning standard compliance. This category of LMS is also divided into three domains. The first one is with respect to various international standards like SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) - which is a set of specifications that, when applied to course content, produces small, reusable e-Learning objects [9]. AICC (Aviation Industry CBT [Computer-Based Training] Committee) standards apply to the development, delivery, and evaluation of training courses that are delivered via LMS [10]. IMS (Instructional Management System) specifications promote the adoption of learning and educational technology and allow selection of best of breed products that can be easily integrated with other such products[11]. If the LMS is those standards compliant, we can use the standard packages of those standards inside the LMS instead of (or together with) creating native LMS course content. It can be very useful if we don't want to tie ourselves using one particular LMS. The second division is local standard of a specific region or specific field of learning. The third division is not compliant with any content standards, and native content created in any LMSs is not reusable for other LMSs. This paper is organized as follows: section 2 deals with detailed survey about the LD students and barrier they have to face in their academic life. Accessibility in existing LMS is discussed in 3. The actual evaluation of LMS is discussed in section 4. Finally section 5 concludes the paper.
2
Learning Disability
Learning disabilities (LD) are usually hidden disabilities that affect many individuals who usually have average or above average intelligence, but are unable to
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achieve their potential [12]. It is acquired before, during or soon after birth and affects an individual's ability to learn, all through his/her life. LD, according to National Adult Literacy and Learning Disabilities Center is defined as “a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, or mathematical abilities or of social skills”[13]. It is often referred to as "hidden handicaps" as they are difficult to identify. The kinds and severity of problems vary from individual to individual. They may do well in some areas, but very poorly in others. They may learn what is seen, but not what is heard; they may remember by writing, but not by reciting orally and so on. Some signs that may indicate learning disabilities are listed below [14] [15]: • inconsistent school performance • difficulty remembering today what was learned yesterday, but may know it tomorrow • short attention span (restless, easily distracted) • letter and number reversals (sees "b" for "d" or "p", "6" for "9", "pots" for "stop" or "post") • poor reading (below age and grade level) • frequent confusion about directions and time (right-left, up-down, yesterdaytomorrow) • personal disorganization (difficulty in following simple directions/schedules; has trouble organizing, planning, and making best use of time; frequent loss or misplacement of homework, schoolbooks, or other items) • deficits in study skills, such as test preparation, note taking, and listening comprehension • impulsive and/or inappropriate behavior (poor judgment in social situations, talks and acts before thinking) • failure on written tests but high scores on oral exams (or vice versa) • speech problems (immature language development, trouble expressing ideas, poor word recall) • difficulty understanding and following instructions unless they are broken down to one or two tasks at a time • seems immature and has difficulty making friends • low self-esteem • difficulty interpreting body language, facial expression, or tone of voice • higher dropout rates Some of these problems though can be found in all children at certain stages of their learning development adding to the difficulties in relatives to LD.
2.1
Barrier Encountered by LD Children in Their Academic Life
Children with LD often feel that "I can't do anything right." "I'm no good." "I'm dumb." "Nobody likes me." "Everybody is picking on me" [16]. These feelings cause the individual to feel frustrated, discouraged, alone or angry and have a poor
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self-image. Due to such feelings LD student have lots of trouble to cope with their educational life. LD may also manifest itself in delayed conceptual development, difficulties in expressing ideas and feelings in words, a limited ability to abstract and generalize what they learn, limited attention-span and poor retention ability, slow speech and language development, and an underdeveloped sense of spatial awareness i.e. may have difficulty in taking notes, trouble with spelling, difficulty in organizing thoughts on paper, understanding non-literal language like jokes or idioms [17]. Due to these inabilities these students are often ignored by their teachers and peers. Some LD students also experience major trouble with certain subjects causing the grades to drop drastically over time. Some LD students have difficulty in solving arithmetic problems and grasping math concepts. They may also face problems in understanding concepts related to time such as days, weeks, months, seasons, quarters, etc. Others may exhibits difficulties in recalling known words and may have large gap between written ideas and understanding demonstrated verbally which causes low self esteem and leads to failure in their academic life [18].
3
Accessibility in LMS
Accessibility describes materials that may be accessed by individuals with disabilities. In recent years, articles concerning disability accommodation and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 508 compliance have become more popular[19]. However, the majority of those articles are focused on accommodating students with physical disabilities and do not specifically discuss learning disabilities in detail. LD students face the barriers (discussed in section 2.1) to achieve the same academic level as that of their peers. The kinds and severity of problems vary from student to student. They may do well in some areas, but very poorly in others. They may learn what is seen, but not what is heard; they may remember by writing, but not by reciting orally and so on [20]. Due to these inabilities they avoid going to school or seem to be disinterest in school which leads to failure in their academic life. Other problem that educators face in providing services to LD students in the postsecondary education is the vagueness in the federal regulations. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (1973) requires that public school districts must provide proper services to disabled students in the K-12 environment. However, postsecondary institutions are not covered directly by this requirement. Therefore it was necessary to make lots of modifications in the policies, practices and procedures of ADA and Section 504 to avoid discrimination between primary and post secondary LD students. Students with LD often struggle in a typical classroom setting and are too shy to speak during class time. Many adults with LD choose to avoid social situations because of inaccurate self-assessments of their social competence rather than their actual social abilities. There is no doubt that LMS is a major trend in distance education and educational technology. The use of LMS and its asynchronous nature have provided an independent outlet for these students. Studies have shown that students with LD have an increased willingness to self-disclose online. LMS can be perfect solution to improve the academic
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performance. But LMS consist of various features that could cause accessibility problems for LD students explained below; • Assignments. One way of submitting work is to download the assignment and upload the completed assignment. Friendly and accessible Upload/Download feature needs to be provided. • Blogs. Accessible sorting and filtering options are missing from most blogs. • Chat. Composing entries and reading is difficult simultaneously. Also Scrolling through the messages and selecting or copying desired information is not possible. • Forums. "Filling out Forms" issues are a potential problem along with being able to use sort, filter, and search features. • Quizzes. Navigation between questions is needed. Also timed quizzes are problematic for assistive technology user’s just takes more time to complete a quiz. • Emails. Due to inaccessibility of web based e-mails, most LD students prefer to use their own e-mail clients. Most LMS e-mail features are not accessible. There are many more features which are not yet designed with accessibility in mind. So if we generalized all the features of existing LMS, we have following core drawbacks: • As we know every LD individual is different, teachers and instructional designers should build the course according to their requirements but existing LMS is designed in general without considering the students requirement. • Ever LD student has its own learning style, so LMS should provide some sort of provision for different teaching styles. But there is no such accommodation as such in the existing LMS. • Depending upon the type of LD student, screen content, layout and navigation has to vary. Again these accommodations are totally ignored in the existing LMS. Therefore based on these core issues, the next section actually evaluates LD problems wrt to LMS.
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Evaluation of LMS
The evaluation of LMS is done using following sections: • LMS Selection. This section lists the name of the recommended LMS as well as how many times each one was recommended. We give one point for every recommendation; therefore if the study recommended two LMS then each one takes half point. For our evaluation purpose, we have taken into consideration only open source type of LMS which are as follows : • • • •
Magic Tutor Moodle LAMS Sakai
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Table 1 LMS Selection
LMS Magic Tutor
Frequency 4
Moodle
8
LAMS
6
Sakai
7
From table 1, upon all the LMS – Moodle is the most recommended with 8 out of 10 points. See Figure 2. 10 F r e c q y u e n
8
8
7
6
6
4
4 2 0
Magic Tutor
Moodle
LAMS
Sakai
Fig. 2 LMS Selection
• Criteria. This section is based on our specific needs and requirements. Each criterion is given a weighing factor using scale of 1-5 where 5 is most important from our LD students accessibility point of view and 1 is the least important as shown in the table 2. Table 2 Evaluation Criteria
Sr.No.
Evaluation Criteria
Criteria Weight
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Pedagogical Support Accessibility Compliance Content authoring Migration of existing courses Sections and groups E-portfolio Testing and assessment tools Training materials Gradebook and student tracking
5 4 4 3 2 4 4 4 4
10.
Score
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The evaluation criteria are based on the factors which are of utmost important from the LD students point of view, see figure 3.
Fig. 3 Evaluation Criteria for LD students
• Criteria Rating. In this section, each criterion is compared with LMS and which is further weighted based on the scale factor of 1-5 where 5 is most satisfaction and 1 is no satisfaction. Fig 4. Shows the comparison of expected evaluation criteria present in Magic Tutor.
Fig. 4 Magic Tutor Versus LD Evaluation Criteria
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In case of Magic Tutor, only one criteria matches exactly ie. Sections and groups. Fig. 5 shows the comparison of expected evaluation criteria present in Moodle.
Fig. 5 Moodle Versus LD Evaluation Criteria
In case of Moodle, two criteria are matching exactly ie. Sections and groups and Migration of existing courses
Fig. 6 LAMS Versus LD Evaluation Criteria
In case of LAMS, one criteria is above the evaluation criteria and ie. Sections and groups.
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Fig. 7 Sakai Versus LD Evaluation Criteria
In case of Sakai also, only one criteria matches exactly the evaluation criteria and ie. Sections and groups • Evaluation Results. In this section, we calculate a combined score for each LMS by combining the criteria weight and its rating respectively as shown in the fig 8. Thus from the above figure it is very clear that available open source LMS in the market are not at all matching the accessibility needs or requirements of the LD students. So there is real need for a unique LMS specially to accommodate the requirements of LD students. Evaluation Results C o m b i n e d
S c o r e
40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Criteria Weight
Fig. 8 LMS Evaluation Results
Magic Tutor
Moodle
Lams
Sakai
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Conclusion and Future Work
The LD issues are attracting great attention since nowadays. Many solutions exist and many are evolving. Building an e-learning environment specifically for them is an active research area for academics and Industry. The analysis of accessibility issues in the area of LMS is done. In future we are trying to design an accessible LMS only for LD students.
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