Digital agility and digital decision-making: Conceptualising digital inclusion in the context of disabled learners in higher education

As part of a final dissemination phase of the LEXDIS project which explored the e-learning experiences of disabled students at unviersity, I have just submitted a paper to the journal, Studies in Higher Education. Here is the abstract:

Digital inclusion in higher education has tended to be understood solely in terms of access and accessibility. This view of digital inclusion is over-simplified and does little to further our understanding of the role that technology plays in the learning experiences of disabled students in higher education. In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework for exploring digital inclusion in higher education that attempts to broaden the way in which digital inclusion in higher education is understood. The conceptual framework draws on work in the non higher education sector and encompasses two strands: one that focuses on technology, personal and contextual factors, and one that focuses on resources and choices. This framework will be used to present and discuss the results of a study which aimed to explore the e-learning experiences of disabled students at one higher education institution. The discussion will focus particularly on concepts of digital agility and digital decision-making and will consider the potential implications for the empowerment of disabled students.

For more information about the LEXDIS research project see: http://www.lexdis.org/project/ The results of the project have been used to design and implement a database driven website that is populated with student provided information about how they use technologies to support their learning, and can be searched for information about how to support students and successful strategies for using technology. See: http://www.lexdis.org/

The ideas presented in this paper support the arguments that Len Barton made (see http://janekseale.blogspot.com/2009/04/beware-of-inclusion-advocates-bearing.html) about inclusion being complex.

This paper also has relevance to the new TLRP digital inclusion forum that I am convening in which I am hoping to stimulating debate about how we define or conceptualise digital inclusion, see http://www.tlrp.org/tel/digital_inclusion/

Beware of inclusion advocates bearing gifts of simplicity

On March 27th the inclusion research cluster (a group to which I belong) at the School of Education in the University of Southampton organised a one-day conference on Inclusion Research. The majority of the day was given over to our PhD students who gave presentations on their research. I was there to support two of my students, Jane Lapraik and George Roberts. Jane spoke of her plans to research the strategies that dyslexic learners at university use to revise for unseen exams. George gave an overview of his research into the role that a community IT centre plays in the lives of adult and continuing learners.

The day was kick started by a powerful talk from Professor Len Barton, an influential and key figure in inclusion research- and someone who I had always wanted to hear speak. Below are my notes from his powerful and engaging talk (not complete in the sense of representing a full picture of what Len said) Although Len is talking primarily about schools, I believe that many parallels can be drawn in the contexts in which I work: universities, adults with learning disabilties and digital inclusion. In the context of a digital inclusion forum I am convening for the TLRP research programme, I was particularly struck by two challenges that Len raised: the challenge to accept that digital inclusion is more complex than simply providing a box of technology (access) and the challenge to reconceptualise digital inclusion as a process as much as an outcome.

Len started off by saying: " Beware of those who bear gifts of simplicity"- inclusion is complex, it involves more than resource issues and there are no quick fixes.

Inclusion is underpinned by an informed conviction that something is wrong and needs urgent serious intervention and challenge.

Focusing exclusively on a school or a child is unhelpful if we view education in a social vacuum.

Good intentions, charity, ad-hoc interventions are inadequate to address the profundity of discrimination, therefore inclusion needs to be understood as a political issue. Inclusion is about the nature of decision-making: who is in, who is out, who gets what, how, why and what are the consequences?

Inclusion is political because it raises the important question, inclusion into what?

Inclusion requires a creative partnership between government, schools, and parents; but we need to be clearer about what schools cannot be expected to do- they cannot meet the challenges of inclusion alone.

If we are going to argue for inclusion, then we need zero tolerance to all forms of exclusion. We need "up in your face" activity against all forms of exclusion- this is not negative, it is essential for change.

Exlcusion does not have a single dimension, it is multi-faceted.

There is no such thing as an inclusive school; there are schools that show evidence of inclusive practice, but in those same schools exclusionary practice will exist. Inclusion and exclusion co-exists together.

we need transformative change- that involves more than attitudes, it is systemic.

Beware advocates that maintain inclusion is about placement or resources, it is about equity.

Beware advocates that emphasise exciting prospects without recognising that it is difficult.

Beware advocates who emphasise the importance of indiviudals without seeking to connect that to the wider social context.

Inclusion is not just about participationl, it is about continued participation.

Inclsuive education is not an end in itself, it is a means to and end.

Legislation is not sufficient, but it is a necessary factor in the process of change.

Change is challenging, it requires creative, persistent hard work.

Being inclsuive involves giving priority to challenging and important questions e.g What does inclusive education mean to participants in different contexts? What does change mean and involve? What constitutes exclusion in particular contexts?

In exploring voice we need to focus on context, content and purpose, consequences of indiviudals and society.

Researchers need a critical self awareness- it is essential that we consider the extent to which research itself can be part of barriers to inclusion.

Digital Inclusion in Higher Education: Half the story

On Tuesday 11th March I attended the Sir James Mathews lecture at the University of Southampton. This is an annual lecture, organised by the School of Education and this year the guest speaker was Sheila Riddell from Edinburgh University. Sheila has undertaken a range of studies exploring the experiences of disabled students in higher education and her work has been influential in terms of underpinning the developmentof inclusive teaching in higher education. See her home page here.

In her talk Sheila charted the progress of inclusion in a range of educational sectors and outlined some challenges that still need to be addressed. When she discussed Higher Education, she argued that most if not all the work has been focused on supporting disabled learners once they have gained access to university and that compararively little was being done to encourage and support disabled learners to gain access to universities. This had real resonance for me in terms of digital inclusion.

Thinking of the role of technologies and e-learning in higher education, much of the rhetoric around inclusion has focused on disabled learners who are already accessing or participating in higher education but who are at risk of being excluded from certain learning experiences due to the way learning technology (e-learning) is used or designed. I am unaware of any examples where a university or college has deliberately and proactively sought to use technology to enable disabled learners to access higher education who otherwise might not have done so. Can you think of any examples in higher education where technology has been at the heart of the design of a new programme, course, activity or opportunity aimed specifically at benefiting disabled learners and/or attracting them into higher education?

My concern is that if we are not able to find such examples or develop our own examples then all the talk of technology being a powerful tool for inclusion is pretty hollow. The discourse around the development of accessible e-learning and use of assistive technologies is essentially a discourse focused on avoiding exclusion rather than promoting inclusion and I think we need to change this.

Understanding e-inclusion in the context of disabled learners in Higher Education

On March 6th I gave a seminar for Kings College, London entitled: "Understanding e-inclusion in the context of disabled learners in Higher Education" Slides available here. The seminar is part of an e-inclusion seminar series organised by Chris Abbott designed to underpin the setting up of a new Masters in E-Inclusion, due to start in September. The main objectives of my talk were to:

•Examine different perceptions of inclusion use these to identify and critique common conceptions of e-inclusion (inclusive e-learning)
•Use early results from a current research project (LEXDIS) to present case studies of disabled university students and use these to illustrate and discuss the complex relationship between disabled learners, technologies and their educational experiences
•Discuss implications for developing and strengthening our theorisation of e-inclusion in higher education contexts.

Understanding Inclusive E-Learning

Definitions and conceptualisations of inclusive e-learning tend to be pretty loose and vague in the Higher Education research literature. However the associated discourse has been largely influenced by discourses and arguments surrounding web accessibility, "Digital Divide", social exclusion and barriers to learning. Whilst these discourses have certainly influenced practice and raised awareness, they have tended to simplify matters: Learners either have access or they don't; something is accessible or it is not; a learners is excluded or included. Inclusive e-learning is more complex than these binary or dichotomous relationships suggest. For this reason, I am increasingly drawn to the arguments of Neil Selwyn who talks about the digital divide being not solely about access to technology but about equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. He argues that some people are making digital decisions – whether to use technology or not – even though access is available to them. In effect, they are making empowered choices. Neil's work is mainly in the school and adult community learning sector and I have been keen to explore the applicability of his ideas to Higher Education- particularly the idea that disabled learners are making Digital Decisions.

Digital Decisions

Using a prelimary analysis of case studies from the LEXDIS I explored in my talk the extent to which the participants in the study were making empowered choices- digital decisions. The digital decisions that the LEXDIS participants appeared to be making fell into three main categories:

1. Shall I use technology at all, if so what for?
2. Which technologies shall I use?
–Choosing between different kinds of assistive technologies
–Choosing between technologies for learning and technologies for socialising or playing
3.Is the time it takes to learn to use Assistive Technologies going to save me time in the long run
–Investing time in the sort term to save time in the long term?

Digital Agility

These digital decisions appear to be underpinned by what could be called digital agility. The majority of the participants in the study were confident and competent technology users, who have been using technology for many years at home, at work and at "schoool". Their digital agility means that they were able to develop successful strategies for using technology to support their learning needs; they were willing to take risks and try new things out or problem-solve when things didn't work but resilient enough that if the testing and experimentation did not prove immediately beneficial, it was not taken as a major set-back.

Complex Relationships

Despite the evidence for digital agility, early results from LEXDIS suggest that disabled learners have quite a complex relationship with technologies. Whilst many felt that technology added value to some aspects of their learning experience, they also felt that it "took" away value in other areas. Some participants felt it important to stress that while technology had a role to play in their learning or their lives, it was not as important as the role played by people. Others acknowledged that technology played an important role, but still maintained that they could cope without technology. Finally some learners expressed a desire to use technology, but also a reluctance to seek to make this happen.

Implications for theorising about e-inclusion

I concluded my talk by arguing that it would probably be helpful for us to move away from understanding e-inclusion solely in terms of access and barriers, because this only explains the relationship disabled learners have with people and systems who install or remove barriers. We need theories and concepts that can handle the observed complexities and i) explain relationships disabled learners have with people, systems AND technology ii) expand our understanding of digital decisions and relationships to digital agility. For me, a key aspect of developing a theorisation of e-inclusion in the context of higher education is the exploration of concepts of resilience and risk taking.

A footnote: technology use emphasises our humanity not our differences

On 7th March, I met up with Martyn Cooper from the Open University to discuss a paper we are working on. He was telling me about a book proposal he is working on. The central premise of the book is that the manufacture and use of technology (tools) is often set forward as a defining characteristic of humanity. So the fact that some people use additional or different tools to achieve various tasks, overcoming the impact of their disabilities, should emphasise their humanity, not mark them out as different. This struck me as immensely relevant to the LEXDIS project. I had been slightly puzzled by the complex and contradictory statements that some participants had made about the role of technology in their lives. They would talk about loving technology, how not having it would be like losing an arm, but in the same breath talk about how technology slowed them down in some respects and how they would live or cope without technology if they didn't have it. I wonder if what some of the participants were trying to articulate is the sense that they did not want their technology use to mark them out as different. As some participants said, technology is just a tool- one of many tools that we as humans use in our everyday lives. Whilst technology use might define humans collectively, it doesn't define us individually in terms identity and how we see ourselves as learners.

Participatory approaches to inclusion related staff development

On January 22nd I gave a talk at a "good practice lunch" organised by the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit at the University of Southampton. See Link to Slides

The purpose of my talk was to give an overview of a university funded learning and teaching development Project that I have been working on for the past year. The aims of the project called PAIRS (Participatory Approaches to Inclusion Related Staff Development) are to:

1. Capture “student voices” regarding their learning experiences within the School of Education: Use these “voices” to explore whether and how our School of Education programmes (undergraduate and postgraduate) include or exclude students with a wide range of learning needs from experiencing positive or high quality learning opportunities.
2. Involve students in the analysis and exploration of these “student voices”: Develop a collaborative partnership whereby students help to develop materials and methods that can be used to help staff in the work towards meeting learning needs and reducing barriers to inclusion.

The motivation for the project was derived from the University Disability Equality Scheme in which one action listed in the plan was to: involve students in the design and delivery of staff development and CPD opportunities in relation to developing inclusive teaching practices .

The underlying principles for involving students as users/evaluators in this project have their origins in two related fields: Participatory Design (Boyd-Graber et al 2006; Davies et al. 2004;Newell et al. 2007; Seale et al. 2002) and Participatory Research (Burke et al. 2003; French & Swain 2004; Gilbert, 2004). Drawing from these fields, for the purposes of this project, I have defined student participation as reflecting the principle of "Nothing About Me, Without Me" and involving:

• Working directly with students in the evaluation of their learning experiences and development of staff development materials;
• Seeking student input throughout the evaluation project;
• Early and continual participation of intended users (students) to produce improved teaching practices;
• Engaging participants in the design, conduct and analysis of “research” with the construction of non-hierarchical research relations;
• Encouraging participants to own the outcome by setting the goals and sharing in decisions about processes.

In addition, the methods used in the PAIRS project are influenced in part by the methods used in the ESCALATE funded "Hearing the student voice" project.

For the PAIRS project, there were two different types or phases of participation. In Phase One the students were asked to contribute descriptions of their learning experiences and how their learning needs had/or had not been met. Students were able to choose the method or media for their contributions, which included:

• Write or audio-record a one-two page letter to an “imaginary” friend
• Write a diary describing learning experiences on course, over the period of a “typical” week;
• Write a reflective journal that describes a “critical incident”
• Produce a piece of creative writing or art (e.g. poem, picture, sculpture, song)
• Alternatively, opt to be interviewed face-to-face, by phone or by webcam

In Phase two students formed an advisory group that worked together to decide how we will use the information about student learning experiences to design staff development initiatives in the School. Some preliminary data from the project is outlined in the Online Slides

My initial reflections on the relative success of the project in encouraging meaningful participation by students are:

• Some students were motivated to take part because they had a "bee in their bonnet" about particular issues (good and bad)
• Some students were motivated to take part because they were curious about the methods and wanted to learn more about them, sometimes with a view to using them in their own research or practice
• Some students were motivated to take part because they wanted to have a "voice".

The project was participatory in that students could choose the methods by which they contributed their voice and their experiences ( and this has similarities to the methods being used by two of the current NCRM Nodes in their research activities: Qualti and Real Life Methods) and advise on how to disseminate the information gained on the project to teaching staff. These are two standard practices in participatory research.

The students were also asked to help analyse the data obtained from phase one. This is a less standard practice. Involving users in data analysis is extremely rare and considered quite difficult to do (Richardson, 2000). Certainly in this PAIRS project, the success was limited. This is essentially because little effort was put into helping the students learn how to code and interpret reams of qualitative data (which is the task they were asked to do). Some students coped very well with this minimal guidance, others struggled. The result was that I as project facilitator found myself conducting a meta-analyses of the students analyses in order to try and synthesise findings for students and suggest a way forward in terms of coming to a consensus about what the important findings were. In hindsight, there is a signficant chance that I may have steered the students in a particular direction and that my greater expertise introduced an imbalance into the relationship between myself and the participants, that violated in part the principles of participatory research.

My conclusion then is that the methods used in PAIRS were generally successful in revealing useful, rich and in-depth information about the student learning experience. They are time-consuming and require more commitment on the part of the evaluator in terms of communicating and working with participants. More effort needs to be put into developing successful methods for helping participants gain the skills required to engage in the analysis stages of research and evaluation projects.

I would welcome your comments on the applicability and value of the methods used in this project to your own inclusion related activities.

REFERENCES

Boyd-Graber et al (2006) Participatory Design with proxies: developing a Desktop PDA system to support people with Aphasia. In proceedings of CHI 2006, Montreal Canada.
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~kmoffatt/boyd-graber-2006-chi.pdf

Burke, A et al. (2003) Setting up participatory research: a discussion of the initial stages, British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 31, 65-69

Davies, R., Marcella, S., McGrenere, J., Purves, B. (2004). The ethnographically informed participatory design of a PDA application to support communication. Proceedings of ACM ASSETS 2004, 153-160 http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~joanna/papers/ASSETS2004_Davies.pdf

French, S. & Swain, J. (2004), "Researching Together: A Participatory Approach," in Physiotherapy: A Psychosocial Approach, 3rd edn, S. French & J. Sim, eds., Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford.

Gilbert, T (2004) Involving people with learning disability in research: issues and possibilities, Health and Social Care in the Community,12,4, 298-308

Newell, A et al. (2007) Methodologies for involving older adults in the design process. In proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Universal Access in HCI: http://www.springerlink.com/content/53t5026735v65721/fulltext.pdf

Richardson, m (2000) How we live: participatory research with six people with learning difficulties Journal of Advanced Nursing 32 (6), 1383–1395.

Seale, J., McCreadie, C., Turner-Smith, A and Tinker, A (2002) Older People as Partners in Assistive Technology Research: The use of focus groups in the design process. Technology and Disability, 14,1,21-29