Communal Constructivism and its Potential for Inclusion of Students with Visual Impairment

Ronan McGuirk and Alexis Donnelly, Department of Computer Science, Trinity College, Dublin

Abstract

A new learning style, Communal Constructivism, is an approach to learning in which students not only construct their own knowledge (Constructivism) through interaction with their environment (social Constructivism) but also are actively involved in constructing knowledge for their own learning community. The different human computer interface used by visually impaired students using ICTs, gives rise to teaching and learning challenges than can be more readily addressed in a context inspired by communal constructivism. Communal constructivism appears to offer a more effective way of integrating students with visual impairments into mainstream education than the traditional teacher dominated class. This paper reports our initial findings from case studies of two ECDL courses and of a M.Sc. in IT in Education course based on a philosophy of communal constructivism. Structured interviews were employed in all case studies, while the first author, who himself has a visual impairment, also acted as participant-observer in the MSc. course of the third case study. Preliminary findings indicate that communal constructivism is particularly welcoming and accommodating of difference, both in educational content and learning style The communal constructivist philosophy of the M.Sc. course allowed important information regarding barriers & learning styles to be collected, presented, discussed and assimilated with a direct, immediate effect on participants, both students and staff.

Introduction

The participation of visually impaired students in further and higher education has increased significantly in recent years. Public policy seeks to increase this participation. The White Paper on lifelong learning (DES 2000) recommends

People with disabilities should be targeted by every Adult Education programme so that they may avail of integrated mainstream options on an equal basis.

In addition, a report commissioned by the Information Society Commission; Comparative International Research on Best Practice and Innovation in Learning (ISC, 2000) contains a recommendation to

Actively promote the use of ICTs to benefit people with disabilities A focus should be on access to mainstream education for the disabled.

The increasing participation of visually impaired students has been facilitated to a great extent by improvements in accessibility of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) and especially by advances in web accessibility. However, the increasing use of ICTs in education poses a number of challenges for inclusion. In particular, the use of screen readers means that visually impaired students are using a different human computer interface to other students. The use of a different human computer interface by visually impaired students places an additional learning burden on these students. These students use a screen-reader, an additional program that converts text from the computer screen into synthetic speech. It is very difficult for the student with a visual impairment to gain an appreciation of the layout of various elements on the screen. This makes using a mouse for input impossible. The impact of the different interface can have profound impacts on learning style, availability of educational materials and teaching approaches.

A traditional teacher-dominated classroom environment does not provide an ideal setting to accommodate the communication style and differing material of the visually impaired student. For instance, a visually impaired student will find it difficult to listen to a teacher and to a screen-reader at the same time. The teacher will not normally know how to operate a computer application without the use of a mouse nor will a teacher generally know the specific technical features of a screen-reader. These challenges to integration, in the context of an ECDL class, given in a traditional teacher-dominated style, were seen as so difficult that it has been suggested

There must be specific ECDL classes solely for those with visual impairments. Ideally sighted people cannot be mixed in with the visually impaired (Balfe, et al, 2001).

These practical problems in the use of ICTs in a learning environment make the objective of mainstream integration difficult to achieve. Communal constructivism (Holmes et al, 2001) is an educational theory in which students are not simply the passive recipients of information but actively create knowledge with each other through techniques such as peer tutoring and project-based learning. The students, through collaboration, create knowledge as artefacts that will be used in future classes and dynamically impact both the delivery and content of the current course.

Through its approaches of learning how to learn, teacher as facilitator, learning via artefacts from previous students, learning through peer tutoring, and making effective use of ICTs for collaboration and publication, communal constructivism offers new approaches to the effective inclusion of visually impaired students. Communal constructivism as an alternative to the teacher-dominated approach, offers a way out of the difficulties described above. The experiences of visually impaired students using ICTs in further and higher education have been examined in a number of case studies to understand the teaching, learning and technical barriers that arise. One of the case studies is of a course based on communal constructivism, which indicates how these barriers might be overcome. In this paper we report on our initial exploration of these issues in the context of the case studies together with some preliminary findings. In the following section we briefly describe some of the interface technology commonly used by people with visual impairments. This provides some explanatory, background material for the case study reports and discussion that follow in Section 3. Our preliminary findings are discussed in Section 4 and we conclude the paper with some remarks on future work in Section 5.

Some Technical Background

A computer user with a visual impairment typically uses a screen-enlarging programme (in the case of a milder impairment) or a “screen-reader” when the impairment is more severe. The screen-reader takes text printed to the computer screen and feeds it to a synthetic speech system where it comes out in audio form in a (somewhat monotonous) synthetic voice. The computer output is thus aural rather than visual. The user receives information from the machine passively and builds up a mental picture of the screen contents from the sound stream. A sighted user can acquire this information quickly in a single glance. This mode of perception can be more active with the sighted user hunting around the screen for a specific item of information. A screen-reader user however, must wait until the sought after item appears in the sound stream, while constructing a mental image of the screen contents from the passing sound stream. This places a significant cognitive load on the screen-reader user whose ears are fully occupied. An associated difficulty is that the synthetic voice is rather monotonous demanding high concentration and alertness. This level of concentration cannot be maintained for long periods; however experienced users of screen-readers typically use an extremely fast speech rate that is unintelligible to novices or by comparison with everyday human speech. A side effect of screen-reader use is that it is difficult to listen to a conversation or other speech at the same time.

A separate interface difference is the use of the computer keyboard for input, using navigational shortcut keys, rather than the mouse to control the PC applications. This arises because operation of a mouse is impossible if one cannot see the computer screen and the position of the mouse cursor upon it. Computer programmes written with some operations by mouse only are in this respect inaccessible to users who are visually impaired. This was a common occurrence in the early days of many computer programmes with graphical user interfaces. More recent legal imperatives mean that it is now possible to operate Microsoft Windows and several popular applications solely from the keyboard. It has been the received wisdom of screen-reader users that shortcut keys are the only practical way to operate a computer. Without these navigational shortcut keys a blind person would simply not be able to use a computer (Balfe, et al, 2001). This use of shortcut keys rather than a mouse means that in effect, visually impaired students also use a different input interface to sighted students.

The different user interface described above has significant implications for the learning of a student with a visual impairment: use of a screen-reader in class imposes a high cognitive load and may preclude full aural attention; electronic learning materials must be accessible; alternatives to purely graphical communication and interfaces must be available. With a preliminary awareness of these access issues we now report on our case studies.

Case Studies

Two European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) courses and a MSc. in IT in Education (MITE) were selected for case study work. Although the topics covered in these courses, and their academic levels differ significantly, the issues faced by visually impaired students in participating in a class using ICTs are quite similar. The MITE case study is of particular interest since it is based on the communal constructivism philosophy and appears to offer significant potential for accommodation of diversity. The ECDL courses in contrast had a traditional teacher-dominated approach that appeared less flexible.

The first case study is of an ECDL course where the class consisted of seven sighted students and three having a visual impairment. The course was selected to study the challenges faced in successfully integrating students with a visual impairment in a traditional teacher-dominated class. The learning experiences of the visually impaired students and their methods of coping with the integration difficulties were examined.

The second case study is of a specialised course for visually impaired students one that was established a year later, in the same College, arising from the experiences of the visually impaired students in the first case study. Although the theory of communal constructivism was not explicitly used in the delivery of this course, the methods used to develop it have analogues in communal constructivism. The actual delivery and operation of the second course were still teacher-dominated. The establishment of the second course with one of the visually impaired students from the first course as tutor does however exemplify the communal constructivism concepts of peer tutoring, student experience influencing future courses, the use of artefacts from previous students.

The third case study is based on participant-observation by the first author, who is himself visually impaired, of an M.Sc. in Information Technology in Education at Trinity College, Dublin. This course is founded explicitly on the principles of communal constructivism. The students on this course are predominantly teachers themselves who are involved at some level in using ICTs in the classroom. They work co-operatively in project teams to create electronic artefacts that later become objects of study by other students (possibly in later courses). There are traditional lectures as well but these tend to be more lively and discursive than undergraduate lectures. There tends to be a significant degree of learner/student input in this process. We now present the case studies in more detail including initial findings and comment upon inclusiveness and aspects related to communal constructivism.

ECDL Courses

The first case study was an ECDL course that was attended by ten students, three of whom were visually impaired. In interviews, two of the visually impaired students described the following learning challenges.

The course materials and the class tutor assumed that students would interact with the computer operating system and applications with a mouse. The use of a mouse however, is essentially visual. It is necessary to see the location of the mouse pointer and its relative screen location compared to the desired screen object to be selected. This task proved extremely difficult with a screen reader. The visually impaired students needed to use shortcut keys to operate the operating system and computer applications.
The course tutor was not familiar with the keyboard shortcuts. In addition, the standard course materials being used by the tutor expected the use of the mouse and were of little assistance to the tutor in looking for keyboard alternatives.
The standard course materials were inaccessible.
The classes included paper handouts that could not be read by the visually impaired students.
Using a screen reader is not as intuitive as reading a screen is for a sighted student. Learning how to configure and operate the screen reader to a sufficient level of expertise to complete the ECDL modules was a significant amount of effort.
The visually impaired students were listening to the screen reader over headphones in order to avoid disrupting the class with the sound of synthetic speech. It proved difficult for the students to listen to the tutor and the screen reader at the same time.
The appearance of the computer screen was self-evident to the sighted student. Understanding the screen layout was a challenge for the visually impaired students. Screen readers can read the contents of the screen but the synthetic speech reading of the screen is serial in nature and it proved difficult to gain an overview of the screen appearance. It took time for the teacher to explain the PC hardware to visually impaired students. For instance, a sighted student could easily see the power button, diskette drive etc but this took longer familiarisation for visually impaired students. Sighted students could tell at a glance if they were on the same screen as the teacher but this took more time for visually impaired students to discover. In addition the screen layout, position of screen objects etc. needed much more explanation to the visually impaired students.

These observations are similar to findings of a previous Irish study into the experiences of visually impaired students on an integrated ECDL course (Balfe, et al, 2001). The three visually impaired students needed to put in extra effort and work together as a project team. In addition, they needed to compile and collect accessible learning materials. These tasks were essential for success of this group and exemplify some of the activities that would be encouraged and supported in courses founded on communal constructivism. Despite the difficulties, the three visually impaired students on the course were successful in obtaining the ECDL qualification.

Specialised ECDL Course for Students with Visual Impairment

One of the visually impaired students on the course also had an IT Teaching Diploma. The student felt that a specialised ECDL course, using a keyboard-only input interface, would be a better approach for students with visual impairments. Accordingly, a specialised course was established in September 2000 with this former student as the course tutor. This course is now in its second year and has proved very successful. The course tutor has compiled and collected suitable audio materials and documents that aid in learning the seven ECDL modules.

In the case of the specialised ECDL course, the experiences of the tutor in learning with these interfaces and the collection of suitable learning materials are key factors in the success of the course. In this case some features of communal constructivism are apparent: student acting as teacher and use of previous research outputs as objects of study. However, in neither cases were communal constructivist principles being consciously applied – the group were unaware of the term.

MITE Course

The M.Sc. in IT in Education (MITE) course is a two-year, part-time Masters programme in the area of Information Technology in Education. The students on this course are predominantly teachers themselves who are involved at some level in using ICTs in the classroom. They work co-operatively in project teams to create electronic artefacts that later become objects of study by other students (possibly in later years). There are traditional lectures as well but these tend to be more lively and discursive than undergraduate lectures where the lecturer is the only contributor. The first author took part in all lectures and classroom work and undertook many of the course assignments as a participant-observer for data collection purposes. A diary was kept on all accessibility issues. The attitudes of other students and the course director were ascertained through semi-structured interviews.

Course Design and Delivery

The course was designed to facilitate learning from other students. Through group work and informal discussions over coffee and between lectures, a lot of learning took place. This was particularly useful to the first author in installing and configuring software, locating specific websites and using search engines to maximum effect. In giving class feedback and in-group work the accessibility aspects of topics were discussed and the screen reader access technology was demonstrated. This proved useful to the other students since the understanding of accessibility issues is a key requirement of the course. Project-based learning on the MITE course was an ideal forum for the first author to gain an understanding of the operation of new applications. In the initial presentation of such applications, it proved very difficult to follow with a screen-reader but afterwards, in group work together with other students, it proved successful.

It was also possible to change delivery of the course dynamically. For example, following feedback on the lack of accessibility of certain features of graphics in PowerPoint, a new technical approach was devised by a lecturer (the second author), using style sheets and accessible HTML. This enabled the first author, without previous access to the material, to describe the contents of a diagram in the lecturer’s presentation to the class. This use of access technology in action was commented on by a number of students as a very forceful example of the usefulness and relevance of enabling technology and the importance of accessible design. Thus, not only did this change to the presentation screen benefit the visually impaired student, but also it was a useful learning point for the whole class. The presentation exploited a means of providing a parallel textual description of a diagram. The electronic presentation file was provided to the first author at the start of the class when paper handouts were given.

Interviews - Impact of a Vision Impaired Student on the Class

Four students and the course director were interviewed on their experiences and impressions of the impact of the presence in the class of a student with a visual impairment as a participant-observer. After an initial introduction a semi-structured interview was undertaken using the following six questions:

During this course have you learned more about the way you learn?
Are you more aware of other people’s learning?
Do you feel that my presence has prompted you to think of other types of learning?
Would this understanding have an impact on your practice?
Does that affect the way you think about the communication of information?
Has this influenced the way you think of disability?
Have you any other highlight or comment on the year?

Recordings were taken and transcripts made. Themes that arose were identified. The impact of the presence of a vision-impaired student in the class was seen overwhelmingly as positive. This may have been somewhat influenced by the possibility that the self-selecting nature of students who volunteered for interview may have had positive views. The fact that the interviews were carried out by the vision-impaired student may have deterred interviewees from expressing reservations but this is difficult to quantify. The following were the main themes that arose from the interviews:

Encouragement of Good Practice

The course director and three of the students commented that the presence of a vision-impaired student in the class encourages good practices that benefit all students and not just the vision-impaired student. For example, the course director ensured that course notes were kept up to date on the web. Most of the students felt that having a vision-impaired student on the course acted as an encouragement for the provision of web-based notes instead of paper handouts. Having the notes on the web allowed lecturers to depart from the simple presentation of material and get more involved in classroom discussion.

Good practice extended to visiting lecturers whose awareness of the presence of a vision impaired student on the course encouraged them to explain all their presentation materials, leading to a richer experience for all students.

Support for a Variety of Learning Styles

A number of interviewees saw that the support for a variety of learning styles as embodied by communal constructivism is a way to meet the needs of students with disabilities. One student expressed the view that the real advantage provided by ICTs in education is the opportunity to offer a variety of learning styles to students. One student expressed the view that until now, he had understood the use of ICT in education was about data visualisation and ‘learn by doing’ through simulation systems. The presence of a vision impaired student in the class extended his view to incorporate non-visual use of ICT in a learning environment.

Existence and Relevance of Enabling Technologies

Although the MITE course lectures contained presentations on the existence and relevance of enabling technologies, two students commented that the actual use of a screen reader by a student on the course brought home in a very practical way the implications for accessible ICT systems. One student said she had been unaware of the existence of screen readers until she was on the course and that having a student in the class who uses a screen reader demonstrated its relevance. Two other students felt that the presence of a student with a visual impairment had shown that enabling technologies could be used as a way of including students in the learning environment. Having witnessed a screen reader in use, they understood that including students with vision impairments might not be so difficult.

Impact on Future Practice

All students and the course director said that their experiences of the course and of having a vision-impaired student in the class would impact on future practice. All students have already made attempts to ensure that their own artefacts are accessible or have accessible versions. One has re-designed his artefact to be entirely frame-free. Another student has already delivered a project to his class of secondary school students with the requirement of making a web site accessible and the intention of testing this with screen reading software that can be downloaded from the web. Two interviewees whose work environment is concerned with the delivery of e-learning material, expressed concerns at the difficulty in trying to produce ranges of course content that can deliver the same material in different ways to meet a range of learning styles. In this context they viewed the additional requirements of a vision-impaired student as compounding an already challenging task.

Enriched Discussion of Accessibility Issues

The presence of the student with a visual impairment on the course and the obvious difficulties he encountered led to quite detailed discussions on web accessibility. These points were not covered in relevant lecture material, examples (in addition to the immediately preceding point) include:

“It’s the Environment that Disables”

One student commented that it is the environment that is disabling, not the individual and that a well-designed accessible environment would give equal access to learning to students with disabilities.

“Accessible is not Visually Appealing”

Two students commented that accessible sites are not visually appealing. They felt that something needed to be done to make accessibility more attractive. They felt that the visual opportunities of graphics software such as Macromedia Flash seemed unavailable to accessible sites.

“Inadequate Audting Tools”

Three students expressed the opinion that making accessible sites is difficult. One said he would really like a button in the web-authoring tool that could be clicked to deliver an accessible version. One apologised that he had intended to make all his pages accessible but felt that pressure of time and the perceived difficulty in complying with accessibility principles meant that he would not achieve a fully accessible artefact. He expressed the view that a better authoring tool environment that automatically generates accessible HTML is very desirable.

“Two Versions is a lot of Work”

Two students expressed concern at the prospect of having to generate an accessible site as a separate artefact to a standard site. Not only would this double the work at generating a site, it would also be a challenge to keep the two versions of the site up to date together.

Preliminary Findings

Preliminary case analysis indicates that communal constructivism offers significant potential for the inclusion of students with visual impairments. The use of different interfaces means that visually impaired students need to learn extra material associated with those interfaces. The different interfaces also mean that the learning style of these students is different. The most convenient way to acquire the necessary skills and information in the ECDL case studies was to build on the experiences of other visually impaired users. This was difficult in the traditional teacher-dominated type of class as shown by the first case study with the mixed ECDL course. Nevertheless, a few hard working pioneers succeeded in obtaining the ECDL by significant additional group effort.

The specialised ECDL course of the second case study, which grew out of the experiences of the tutor when a student on the integrated course, independently adopted many of the approaches of Communal Constructivism in its development steps (student acting as teacher and use of previous research outputs as objects of study). However, the course was designed only for students with a visual impairment. Were a sighted student to participate, he might experience difficulties similar to the minority group in the first case study. The awareness-raising potential of this course, beyond the immediate group adversely affected appears limited.

The preliminary feedback from this third case study indicates that it was easier for a student with a visual impairment to benefit from and contribute to the MITE course. The underlying philosophy of communal constructivism meant that his experiences of accessibility barriers could become a legitimate object of study for the entire class. The presence of a student with a visual impairment enriched discussion of accessibility issues in a way that presentations by non-affected participants did not. The awareness-raising effect on those not personally affected was greater. There were also several examples of students and lecturers acting upon these lessons to improve the (electronic) learning environment for all. The project-based group learning offered opportunities to learn or teach topics where the initial classroom presentations were not accessible. A crude summary of our findings so far, based on the three case studies appears in Table 1 below. One column is devoted to each case study. The first two rows attempt to characterise the course based on the diversity of the students and the underlying course philosophy. The last three rows attempt to assess the success of the courses based on openness to diversity of the student body, academic success of students and awareness-raising potential among non-affected groups. On these criteria, communal constructivism appears to offer significant potential for inclusion.

**Table 1. Summary of Interim Case Study Based Findings**
	Case Study 1 Mixed ECDL	Case Study 2 VI-only ECDL	Case Study 2 MITE Course
Student Diversity	Mixed	VI only	Mixed
Course Philosophy	Traditional Teacher-dominated	Traditional Teacher-dominated	Communal Constructivism
Openness to Student Diversity	Limited, VI students welcomed but success depended on significant additional group effort.	No	Yes
Success of Students with Impairments	Positive, all acquired ECDL qualification but at the expense of significant extra effort.	Positive, continued success for all students with standard effort.	Positive, but final assessment is awaited; coursework undertaken so far has been successfully completed.
Wider Awareness-raising Potential	Limited, but not fully assessed as yet.	None	Very significant

Communal constructivism is particularly welcoming and accommodating of difference, both in educational content and learning style. Not only did this educational approach accommodate the learning style and materials of a visually impaired student in a M.Sc. class, but it also spread this knowledge to the sighted members of the class. We stress that these findings are preliminary and questions and feedback would be encouraged and appreciated.

Conclusions and Recommendations

In order to complete our investigations, we envisage further work on the following items:

More detailed analysis of the experiences of ECDL students will be undertaken through semi-structured interviews.
Some assessment of the awareness-raising potential of the mixed ECDL course on accessibility issues outside the adversely affected minority.
The possible impact on interviewees of questions being posed by a visually impaired individual may be examined to see if this may have had an impact on responses.
A set of recommendations or guidelines concerning the inclusion of students with visual impairment. There may well be two sets of such guidelines: one for courses based on communal constructivism and the other for more traditionally delivered courses. The former set of guidelines may be easily extended to cover a broader range of impairments other than visual impairment.
A set of recommendations for ECDL courses covering both delivery modes, groups with various impairments and additional accessibility related syllabus material.

Our research in progress to date indicates that the educational philosophy of communal constructivism has significant potential for the inclusion of students with visual impairment. We have found evidence of openness to diversity, treating the experiences of exclusion as a legitimate object of study, rapid and flexible response to barriers when identified and indications of impact on future practice of students and lecturers. Given a choice between a traditional course and one based on communal constructivism, we are confident what our advice to a student with a visual impairment would be.

We would like to acknowledge with thanks the contribution made by individuals in our case studies. In particular we are grateful to the students of the MITE course and to the course director, Dr. Bryn Holmes for their interest and assistance to us.

References

Balfe, L., Kealy, C., O’Connell, C., and J. Roddy, (2000), European Computer Driving

Licence for the Visually Impaired, BSc Thesis Report, TCD 2001

DES, (2000), Learning for Life: White Paper on Adult Education. Department of Education and Science Government Stationary Office: Dublin 2000

Holmes, B., Tangney, B., Fitzgibbon, A., Savage, T., and S. Meehan (2001), Communal Constructivism: students constructing learning for as well as with others. Proceedings of SITE, 2001, Florida, US

ISC, (2000). Comparative International Research on Best Practice and Innovation in Learning, The Centre for Research in I.T. in Education (CRITE), A Report Commissioned by The Lifelong Learning Group of The Information Society Commission