Requirements
"Encourage different ways for students to interact with each other and with you. These methods may include in-class questions and discussion, group work, and Internet-based communications. Strive to make them accessible to everyone, without accommodation."
Moore & Kearsley (1999) and Gunawardena (1999) have identified five types of interaction for any learning environment. Take care to consider each type of interaction in your instruction:
- Learner with Content – how do we get a learner to engage the content
- Learner with Learners – how do we get learners to interact with other learners (and why)
- Learner with Teacher – how do we allow learners to interact with the teacher/instructor
- Learner with Environment – how does a learning interact with their learning environment
- Learner with Interface – how does a learner’s interaction with the interface support or impede learning
Let’s explore the last two in a little additional detail. These have particular implications for online learning and UDL.
Learner with Environment |
Learner With Interface |
In online courses, this usually refers to a learner’s environment in which the are trying to learn – quite literally, this could be the home or office environment where a learner accesses the learning. If that environment is conducive, then they will experience fewer barriers. If that environment is disruptive, then it will introduce more barriers to learning. Often, it is the responsibility of the learner to mitigate that environment. However, in the design of a course, we can understand that adult learners will have family obligations or children near them, etc., If an instructor schedules a chat for a time when children are used to interacting with their parent, then that individual will be distracted. That distraction doesn’t mean they’re not willing or able to learn – it just means the selected time was a poor fit with their environment. If, however, that same learner has more flexibility in when she can access the course and participate in discussions, then she can set herself up for success in her environment. |
The interface for online learning can support or impede learning. The more a learner has to pay attention to the interface rather than the content, the less cognitive capacity that learner has to devote to the content. If it is not easy to access parts of a class or a user has to click through a lot of places to get to the content, then the interface is impeding learning. If the interface more contextually integrates content, then the interface supports learning. For accessibility, if a user with a screen reader is continually having to tab through frames to figure out where they are in a course, that interface is significantly impeding the learning because that learner is expending his or her cognitive resources almost solely on keeping the layout organized in his or her mind instead of interacting with the content. |