What’s the alternative?

Widening participation by making VLE-based distance learning available to those without internet access

Centre for Open Learning of Mathematics, Science, Computing and Technology (COLMSCT) Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).

Val HancockCOLMSCT Associate Teaching Fellowvyh3@tutor.open.ac.uk

The OU Associate Lecturer (AL)

Student

Student in prison

Action ResearchResearch• Student interviews• Prison education staff interviews• Prison Tutors forum

Action• Prison Tutor Support wiki• Trial• Tutor pack• Alternative materials

Research• Statistics• Tutor questionnaires• Student questionnaires

Student interviews (formal)

We’ve got an intranet with Moodle. Can we load the course

website on it?

Can my brother access the forum and tell me what’s being discussed so that I

can reply?

I print things off at home and bring it in

for the students

I wanted to do a Computing degree but I

have to do Sociology instead because you don’t need internet access for

that

I didn’t know you could submit assignments by

email, I thought you needed to go to the

website

Not having internet access slows you down. You have to get a book from the library which they might have to get in

for you.

Prison education staff interviews (informal)

Prison Tutors Forum

There was an e-activity at the begining of the course which required students to

engage in online discussions on their rain gauge experiment, I got around this one by

anonomising examples of the messages post to the TGF and printing it off for my

student to use for his assignment

Just wonder what colleagues do in this

situation?I hopefully can and will see the students

F2F but what about all the online stuff?

When it comes to changing TMAs, accepting paper instead of eTMAs and so on, how much authority

does the AL and/or the course team have? At what point do these alterations need permission from

elsewhere in the university?

I think it is too much to expect either the prison

Education Officer or myself to provide hard

copies of everything they need

Are you allowed to take CDs or USB sticks into the secure unit? This is often a problem in prisons and so in the past I've had to resort to printing

off things that would be easier to transfer digitally

(assignments, CMAs etc). If you can create a CD-R with

all the course website material on it makes life

much easier.

I'm not clear on who provides the student with TMA questions when they are only available online (I sent a hardcopy of TMA01 just in

case)

Alternative approaches

Course news Alert prison education staff by email, phone or post

Web referencesOffline versions of web pages emailed or on CDPrinted pages

Internet searchesMediated search by OU library, tutor or prison staffAlternative sources e.g. books, DVD encyclopedias

Videos & podcastsOffline versions emailed or on CDTranscripts emailed or on CD

Collaborative toolsOffline tutor group (or dummy) forum/wiki/blogOffline responses

Download assignmentEmail as attachmentPrint and post

Computer Marked Assignments

Post paper OCR form

Assignment submissionEmail to electronic submission systemPaper submission

Course website Download to prison intranet running generic Moodle

Course Component Alternative approach

Homing pigeon

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/homing-pigeon-faster-internet-africa/story?id=8550501

Tutor Pack

• Getting started• TMA00• M150 course website• General support• Useful forums• Useful sites

General Advice

TMA01•Question 1 (i) (b)•Question 1 (i) (f)

TMA02•Question 2 (v)•Question 3 (i)•Question 3 (iii)

Specific Advice

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Score

1 2 3 4 5 6Assignment

Assignment Marks

Offender Learners

Entire cohort

Statistics9 students registered• 2 withdrew before the course started• 1 did not complete the course• 6 passed the course

EDO FrameworkCategorise activities requiring internet access

Essentialstudents will fail the course if the activity cannot be carried out

Desirablestudents can pass the course if the activity cannot be carried out but their overall grade is likely to be affected

Optionalmany students outside prison will not engage with the activity

Discussion

• What are your experiences of problems due to lack of internet access?

• How did you overcome these problems?• What do we mean by ‘accessibility’?• Is the EDO framework useful?• Is this a learning design issue?

Further information• Alternative approaches to online activities for prisoners

and others without access to the Internet (COLMSCT project): http://www.open.ac.uk/colmsct/activities/details/detail.php?itemId=474c44f736651&themeId=48a9748015077

• An Objective Evaluation of Online Forum Usage Amongst Prison Tutors in a Distance Learning Environment (EISTA 2009 conference paper):http://www.iiis.org/CDs2008/CD2009SCI/EISTA2009/Abstract.asp?myurl=E362EX.pdf

• Val Hancock: vyh3@tutor.open.ac.uk