Page last updated 2 July 2008.

In June 2003 I was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship as a result of which I am undertaking a project with the following objectives:

1. To produce a collection of accessible 'learning objects' for Quantitative Methods, covering a range of levels.
2. To use these learning objects with students, both in the context of a VLE, and also as a resource within a general support web site.
3. To disseminate the learning objects across the wider learning and teaching community.
4. To disseminate throughout the HE sector the ease of production of accessible learning objects for all disciplines.

Background

With the advent of the Disabilities Discrimination Act Part IV there is a legislation driven requirement to produce accessible learning materials. The first aim of this project is to produce a bank of small, freestanding, reusable, accessible learning objects for Quantitative Methods, using web-deliverable animated multimedia PowerPoint presentations and short videos. The teaching of Quantitative Methods is particularly suited to this approach, being an area taught within a wide variety of disciplines, e.g. Business, Psychology, Geography, Biology, often by isolated statisticians and non-statisticians who both need support.

The availability of many small learning objects, rather than a complete module, gives lecturers the freedom to choose just one or two, as appropriate, to embed within their own teaching resources. In the context of widening participation, and the transition into HE, this is particularly useful, offering the opportunity for the construction of small freestanding units to provide specific directed learning at a basic level in order to build the learner's confidence.

To access these click on the links below:

Means, the simplest case: view, zip file with everything, just the PowerPoint
Means, with recurring values: view, zip file with everything, just the PowerPoint
Means from frequency tables: zip file with everything, just the PowerPoint

Median, of an odd number of numbers: view, zip file with everything, just the PowerPoint
Median of an even number of numbers: view, zip file with everything, just the PowerPoint

The concept of spread: range, interquartile range, standard deviation - the lot!  view, zip file with everything, just the PowerPoint.
Range: view, zip file with everything, just the PowerPoint
Interquartile range: view, zip file with everything, just the PowerPoint
Standard deviation: view, zip file with everything, just the PowerPoint

Anscombes data sets: view, zip file with everything, just the PowerPoint

Boxplots: view, zip file with everything, just the PowerPoint

Free Workshops

The real benefit and excitement, however, lies in the applicability of the above techniques across all subject areas. There is a huge potential here for producing accessible learning objects with relative ease, building on the existing skills of many lecturing staff (primarily familiarity with PowerPoint). The second aim of my project is therefore to develop the appropriate skills and disseminate this approach as widely as possible, to my colleagues both within the University and elsewhere.

To this end I, and a colleague are available for travelling expenses only, for running hands on workshops on the effective use of PowerPoint on and off the web. For further details contact me at s.tyrrell@coventry.ac.uk.

The Technology

Recent software developments have opened the way for easy development of animated multimedia presentations. The ubiquitous PowerPoint can be used to produce animations with voice over (giving effects similar to Flash but with considerably less effort). The files can be compressed using Impatica producing accessible materials, which can be viewed satisfactorily using a standard 56k modem without the need for any special viewing software.

In addition, products such as Captivate facilitate the production of videos of on-screen demonstrations (incorporating voice overs) making them excellent tools for the development of accessible resources, particularly for focussed software packages (e.g. producing a PivotTable in Excel, and doing statistical tests in SPSS).

The exciting potential of this approach is further enhanced by the facts that (a) it relies primarily on IT skills, such as use of PowerPoint, that are already widespread and (b) it is applicable to virtually all HE disciplines.