Funded Research

Diversity in an Environment for Accessible Learning

By Shohreh Hadian, Camosun College

Background

Executive Summary (PDF 48 KB)

Full Report (PDF 1.5 MB)

With the recent increase in the popularity of Web-based instruction, it has become important to be aware of the barriers online users face in virtual environments. As technologies emerge to deliver Web-based instruction, it is also important to educate both courseware developers and educators of solutions they can apply to make sure that diversity is one of the parameters that need to be included in the design of Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS). LCMSs are software for delivering and tracking content and they range from systems for managing training/educational records to software for distributing courses over the Internet and offering features for online collaboration. In this context, access with diversity in mind is a key issue for web content developers and users.

Objectives

The objectives of this project are to address the diversity issues in Web-based teaching and learning. It is understood that in order to make the LCMS tools more accessible to a wider audience, diversity to optimally deliver content needs to be considered.

Description

The report is comprised of the main document and three additional appendices: The main document presents an overview of the project with a simple test case implementation of a website with intentional programming using Markup Macro Processor language (MMP). Appendix 1 outlines the System Design architecture, Appendix 2 describes the details on the Markup Macro Processor Language (MMP) and Appendix 3 contains the Profile Module Summary.

Findings

The preliminary findings in the current research support the use of MMP in web content development by enabling multi-versioning of web content. The software was designed and implemented as a macro processor and an interpreter to enable the author to insert intensions into the HTML code.