How to Make Online Learning Accessible for Students with Learning Challenges
- 2015-07-09
- edSurge
There is very little empirical research on online learning for students with learning disabilities (LD), leaving educators with many questions but no consensus about how best to serve such students in an online environment.
Members of the National Association of State Directors of Special Education cannot agree on how to ensure that online learning is accessible to the broadest spectrum of learners, and whether the lack of the proper environment represents a denial of a student’s legal right to a free and appropriate education.
We’d better figure these things out. A recent ruling by the United States Department of Justice charged that edX, one of the largest provider of MOOCs in the world, is “not accessible to would-be students who were blind, deaf or had other physical disabilities.” They are working to address this ruling.
We know that students with learning disabilities may learn best in a human-mediated environment that takes into account their highly specific individual learning profile. The very best special educators adapt to a student’s learning style on the fly–a capability that computers haven’t yet acquired. So it would seem logical to question whether online education is even appropriate for students with LD.
Yet I believe that a well-designed learning platform that includes multiple learning modalities could very well be superior to in-person education for someone with an LD. Based on my 30 years of experience working with students who learn differently, here are six precepts for how one could build an online learning platform that works for students with LDs: