Paco Iniesto’s presentation of his #PhD research at the 5th GO-GN Seminar in Kraków, April 10th-11th, 2016.

1. The current state of accessibility of MOOCs: What
are the next steps?
Francisco Iniesto
Supervisors : Patrick McAndrew, Shailey Minocha and Tim Coughlan
The Open University
GO-GN Seminar
10-11 April 2016, Krakow, Poland

2. 1. Who am I?
2. Rationale. Study context
3. Methodology and Hypotheses
4. Studies
5. Conclusions

3. WHO AM I?
• Computer Engineer at UAM. Extensive experience in IT consulting and software
development using Agile techniques
• Mst. in Languages and Computer Systems. Specialized in teaching, learning, collaboration
and adaptation at UNED. Master's thesis: Accessibility and standardization in the cycle of
creation educational materials.
• Part time PhD research student at UNED : Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential
services for people with special needs. (Covadonga Rodrigo & Timothy Read)
• Full time PhD research student at the Open University and in the Institute of Educational
Technology (IET), under the program Leverhulme Open World Learning (OWL):
researching accessibility and Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs). (Patrick
McAndrew, Shailey Minocha & Tim Coughlan)
• Member of the Global OER Graduate Network, a worldwide network of PhD researchers
and their supervisors in the field of Open Educational Resources (OERs), MOOCs and open
learning.
• Collaborator on research projects: OpenScout, research chair “Technology and
Accessibility” UNED – Vodafone Foundation and OLA!.

4. RATIONALE. STUDY CONTEXT

5. Indeed, the Porto Declaration on European
MOOCs highlights:
“Importantly, we stress that MOOCs must
not be seen as the outcome or exemplar of
online education. Rather they need to be
understood in a wider context as there is a
long history of research on open and
online education and a variety of
approaches and tools to provide quality
learning opportunities to all.”
It is this aspect of providing ‘opportunities
to all’ that can only be achieved if
MOOCs are accessible to all.
RATIONALE. STUDY CONTEXT

6. 2554
2966
3462
3830
4283 4224
4808
6294 6104
7469 7670 7847
7469 7397
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
8000
9000
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
UNED Disabled Student Registrations
34 50
185
139
320
405
462
647
709 728
804
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
UOC Disabled Student Registrations

7. 2013
UB 682 27,70%
UAB 337 13,69%
UPC 158 6,42%
UPF 120 4,87%
UdL 56 2,27%
UdG 103 4,18%
URV 146 5,93%
UOC 804 32,66%
URL 39 1,58%
UVic-UCC 10 0,41%
UIC 5 0,20%
UAO 2 0,08%
Total 2.462 100%
Students distributed by disability at UNED 20152016
Students with disabilities
registered in Catalonia, 2013
3874
1380
357
572
27
658
141
182
36
38
29
18
52
6
27
Physical
Mental
Hearing
Visual
Physical, Visual, hearing, mental
Physical, Mental
Physical, Hearing
Physical, Visual
Physical, Hearing, Mental
Physical, Visual, Mental
Physical, Visual, Hearing
Hearing, Mental
Visual, Mental
Visual, Hearing, Mental
Visual, Hearing

8. RATIONALE. STUDY CONTEXT
Context: lll for people with special needs
OU’s Equality and Diversity Annual Report states: “More than 21,000 disabled students are
now registered, representing just over 12% of the OU student body. This is double the
proportion of three years ago and far in excess of the performance indicator in the
University’s equality objectives”.
Distance education in general attracts more disabled students than traditional education,
and this trend is emphasised further in open education:
• 12% of students of the Open University in the UK (OU) are disabled
• (8% in the rest of UK universities)
• 16 % of the users of open resources published by the OU (via iTunesU, YouTube and
OpenLearn) declared a disability

9. RATIONALE. STUDY CONTEXT
Context: ICT + Disabilities:
• The possibilities that ICT offer
people with disabilities to improve
their wellbeing and the possibility of
their insertion into the work
market.
• The fact to make digital people with
special needs increases the work
rate in this collective.
• 100% consider that the
incorporation of ICT into the
workplace has increased their work
possibilities.
Context: Accessible MOOC Learning:
Benefits such as:
• Openness
• Low cost
• Ubiquity (Time, space and
rhythm)
• Acquiring knowledge
• Social learning: Connectivism
• Achieving new competences
• Develop professionally

10. ACCESSIBILITY ISSUES IN MOOCs
MOOC platforms:
• Web based eLearning engines
• Scheduling academic curriculum
• Synchronous and asynchronous
communication
Interface elements:
• Logging in, logging out
• Navigating in courses and content
• Multi layered structures
eLearning materials:
• Specific technology.
Barriers :
• The interface elements
• The manner in which users interact with
these objects
• Components which do not always share
a consistency of interface logic:
• Posting in a forum
• Making up elements in tests
or timed quizzes
• Embedded videos
• Variety of document formats
Effective eLearning environment :
• Learner’s abilities
• Learning goals
• Where learning takes place
• Which specific devices the learner uses

11. HOW SHOULD THE MODEL FOR AN ACCESSIBLE MOOC
PLATFORM BE?
The minimum required level of
accessibility :
 Guarantee access to the
content by means of the
platforms.
 Produce the content
accessible in itself.
 Evaluate the access conditions.
 The technological platform.
 The content of the MOOC must
be the same for all of the
students.
 The students must be able to
access the content using assistive
technologies.
 It is necessary to offer alternative
textual descriptions for
multimedia content.
 Assistance must be provided.

12. RATIONALE. STUDY CONTEXT
Group of papers Reference Description
Assessment with users
Sanchez-Gordon &
Luján-Mora, 2013
Five Coursera courses for evaluating the accessibility of the
Coursera platform and the contents of these courses, with a
particular focus on learners in their old age
Al-mouh, Al-khalifa &
Al-khalifa, 2014
Ten Coursera courses of different disciplines for their suitability
for blind or partially sighted learners; none of the courses
reached the minimum level of accessibility
Bohnsack & Puh, 2014 Five MOOC platforms for blind users: Udacity, Coursera, edX,
OpenCourseWorld, Iversity. Except for edX, all the other
platforms had severe accessibility problems.
Student data
Rizzardini, Chang,
Gütl & Amado-
Salvatierra, 2013
MOOC that incorporated accessibility features to benefit a true
open online education for the wider population. The MOOC at
Galileo University was designed to provide equity access
Liyanagunawardena &
Williams, 2016
Pre-course survey for 10 courses on the FutureLearn platform
to show evidence that learners in their old age are already
participating in MOOCs
MOOC framework
Sanchez-Gordon &
Luján-Mora, 2014
Two categories of web accessibility requirements: for personal
and for non-personal disabilities. Both MOOC's platforms and
contents must meet web accessibility requirements
Sanchez-Gordon &
Luján-Mora, 2015
Three-layer architecture to extend the Open edX platform to
enhance the accessibility
Rodríguez-Ascaso &
Boticario, 2015
MOOC framework consisting of services, standards and quality
procedures related to accessibility

13. RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The educational context.
How MOOCs can help people with disabilities to improve their knowledge and
skills?
Accessibility state.
How could the accessibility in MOOCs be improved?
Adaptation and delivery.
How could MOOCs resources be adapted to meet the accessibility needs of the
end-users?

14. HYPOTHESES
1. Accessible MOOCs -> to people with disabilities who are those ones that
most barriers encounter when accessing educational environments.
2. Tool to assess and know the status of the accessibility of MOOC courses and
their platforms can provide indicators of the main problems found in them.
3. These indicators may be useful to adapt the educational content to the end
user.
4. To derive recommendations for accessible MOOCs, and develop guidance on
how MOOCs can be more accessible

15. METHODS
•Methodologically -> the study will be mixed-methods.
•Interviews
•Questionnaires
•Usability and accessibility test
•Technical accessibility evaluation-> evaluation instrument

16. STUDIES
Q1 Study 2(b, c)
Study 3 a
Study 4 a
Q2 Study 1
Study 2 (a, b)
Study 3 (a, b)
Study 4 b
Study 5
Q3 Study 2 (a, b, c)
Study 3 a
Study 4 b
Study 5

17. Study 1. Understanding accessibility policies
• Accessibility policies in the
major MOOC platforms
• Typology of information
quality
Accessibility
statement
Country Language Type For profit
Coursera X USA, English Network Commercial
edX X USA, English Network Non-profit
Udacity USA, English Network Commercial
Canvas X USA, English Network Commercial
Lagunita
Stanford Online
USA, English University
Khan Academy USA, English Network Non-Profit
NovoEd X USA, English Network Commercial
Peer to Peer University USA, English Network
Non-Profit
FutureLearn X UK, English Network Non-Profit
The University of Edimburg X UK, English University
Open2Study X Australia, English Network
Commercial
Iversity Germany, GermanEnglish Network Commercial
OpenCourseWorld Germany, GermanEnglish Network
Uned Coma Spain, Spanish University
Miriadax Spain, SpanishPortuguese Network Commercial
UPV [X] Spain, Spanish University
Telescopio Guatemala, Spanish Network Non-Profit
Uab iMOOC Portugal, Portuguese University
Eco Learning X European project Network Non-Profit
Feedback!

18. STUDIES
Study 2 (a, b, c). The opinion of stakeholders
• Three periods of interviews. Semi-structured interviews, 45 minutes, blocks
related to the research questions
• MOOC platform providers, course providers and MOOC experts.
• WIP, 3 interviews done at the moment, 5 interviews confirmed, 4
waiting for confirmation
• End-users.
• MOOC platform providers, course providers and MOOC experts.
• Thematic analysis
• Human Research Ethics Committee process Feedback!

19. STUDIES
Study 3 (a, b). Large-scale data from users
• Data from past courses in FutureLearn
• Questionnaire (survey) in a MOOC course.
• Start of course survey -> educational expectations.
• End of curse survey -> accessibility evaluation.
• Carry out this study within a MOOC -> related to accessibility and usability.
Feedback!

20. STUDIES
Study 4 (a, b). The user interaction. Usability and accessibility studies
• Accessibility and usability tests in the laboratories to users with and
without disabilities to interact with MOOCs.
• Data from FutureLearn related to user interaction on MOOCs.
• “steps” include all the interactions users perform inside a course such
as visualizing a video-lesson
Feedback!

21. STUDIES
Study 5 (a, b, c). Data using the evaluation instrument
• Iterative method of trial and error. The evaluation instrument is developed
by iterative steps that will improve the instrument.
• First iteration will be focused primary in the use of automatic tools,
tutored by an expert from the IET in order to avoid biases.
• Second iteration of this instrument -> vector of characteristics, it will
be reviewed by several international accessibility experts.
• Third iteration -> the final vector of characteristics.
Feedback!

22. FEEDBACK BETWEEN STUDIES
Evaluation instrumentData from questionnaires
Providers Interviews
Users Interviews Providers Interviews
Data from Futurelearn
A&U studies

23. CONCLUSIONS
Based on accessibility assessments and empirical investigations with
stakeholder-groups:
 To derive recommendations for accessible MOOCs
 To develop guidance on how MOOCs can be more accessible
 To provide the foundation for supporting those with disabilities to
follow a route to open learning that meets their particular needs.

24. The current state of accessibility of MOOCs: What are the next steps?
Francisco Iniesto
Supervisors : Patrick McAndrew, Shailey Minocha and Tim Coughlan
francisco.iniesto@open.ac.uk