Suggestions for best way to turn this into an interactive resource
Nov 01, 2021
Hi everyone, I've been approached by the Supported Learning/Special Educational Needs team at my college and asked if I can convert this fact-sheet into a more interactive resource which teachers can use as a quick reference guide to ideas and good habits about accessibility in the classroom. I'd like to have a finished product that can either be embedded in a tab in a Teams classroom, or on a website, or both. I'd love some suggestions about which tool within the Articulate suite you would go to. My first thought was to use the glossary tool within Engage 360, partly because I've been using that already recently, but not for exactly this kind of content. Or maybe the Scenario tool, based on the "difficulty alleviated" column in the document?
How would you all interpret this task? Would love to hear some suggestions.
3 Replies
Hi Julian,
This is such great content for teachers on how they can better support accessibility!
There are so many exciting directions you could go with this. For instance, if you wanted to keep the content ordered by assistive technology strategy, then a Rise 360 course could be a great way to present this information (and more) in a streamlined and polished way. Or if you wanted to focus on helping a teacher determine how best to accommodate a specific student's needs, you could use Storyline 360 to give them an opening screen where they select the difficulties they need to help alleviate, and then on the following screens you could share just the assistive technology strategies that would work for that student.
As I was thinking about this challenge, though, there were two pieces of information I thought could narrow down your choices more.
First, knowing how specifically teachers want to use this information can give you a better sense of what way to present it. For example, the best way to share this content for someone who wants to learn more about different assistive technologies available is probably different than for someone who needs to alleviate specific difficulties and isn't sure where to start.
Second, knowing what your audience (in this case, the teachers) need that the current document isn't providing could give you some good ideas as well. In some situations a simple job aid like this one can actually be the best solution, in which case you could just polish the experience by making some tweaks to the visuals and copy. But if there are things this document doesn't do that your teachers really need it to, you can use those additional needs to guide what form the new version should take.
Hi Bianca, thanks very much for your reply. I've spoken in more detail to the team who designed this material. Now I know that what they want to do is create a team in MS Teams which all teachers will be invited to join. In the team, there will be channels for different aspects of learning support. This one is going to be in a channel called Assistive Technology. The idea is that teachers use this as a go-to in order to find all info and resources about accessibility, learning support, etc. So what I need is a quick reference guide that teachers can dip in and out of. For this reason, I don't think a course made in Rise is the answer here.
What I've done so far is draft three different versions using templates in Engage. I made one using the Accordion, one with Glossary, and one with Tabs. You can click on each link to see what they look like. Remember, they're just drafts! I find Engage much easier to work in than Storyline, so that's been a big advantage, but I'm still not convinced that any of these is the best way to go. I've been trying to address both of the issues that you mentioned above -that some teachers will want to read about the different AT, while others will want to find a solution to a specific learning difficulty. To do this, I've added an index section at the beginning which lists all the learning difficulties specified on the Word doc, and hyperlinks to the relevant step. I would have preferred to do this with a table, but unfortunately I don't think it's possible to insert a table in Engage, so I had to improvise. Is there a better way to approach this?
Finally, I take your point about the existing document already doing a perfectly good job. It could be that the team just think that teachers are likely to be more attracted and engaged with an interactive version.
Hey Julian! What a great project to work on! You mentioned that since this will serve as a quick reference guide, that Rise is not an option. I just wanted to chime in and share some creative ways the community members are using Rise 360 to make things outside of the normal everyday course. Plus, Rise 360 works on every device and is super easy to use. Here are some examples if you want to take a look:
I hope that gives you some new ideas. And as Bianca mentioned, sometimes a simple job aid can actually be the best solution.