TransformAble and Sakai Interface Flexibility

Jutta Treviranus and Colin Clark

Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto

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The Sakai UI Dilemma

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Goal: Consistent User Experience

• Growing number of tools• Growing number of developers

• A consistent identifiable look• Intuitiveness and transparency of

design

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“You say tomato, I say tomato, lets call the whole thing off”

• Sakai is a very diverse community

• We differ greatly in our preferences, needs, habits, concepts, comforts, convictions….

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“Different strokes for different folks…”

• Institutional preferences and branding• Conventions of academic discipline• Cultural differences• Linguistic differences• Differences related to age• Differences related to role and perspective• Different teaching approaches• Different learning approaches• Disability and environmental constraints

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Consistent User Experience vs

Accommodating Differences

• Do we need to choose?

• Or can we have our cake and eat it too?

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Proposal: “Flexible User Interface”

• Swappable styles

• Swappable UI components

• Runtime transformation for unique needs of individual

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Learning outcomes context…

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What have we e-learned?

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What have we re-learned?

(In another context)

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Outcomes of E-learning

• Does not save money

• Does not save instructor time

• Does not shift the Bell curve higher

* Campus Computing Project, Educause, UCLA, Flashlight Implementations, Project 25, What's the Difference?: A

Review of Contemporary Research on the Effectiveness of Distance Learning in Higher Education , NEA Affiliate Capacity Building--Higher Education

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Outcomes of E-learning

• Compresses the Bell curve

• Assists learners who had difficulty with traditional delivery

• Makes academic life easier for students

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Other side of Bell Curve• Fewer high achievers

Why?• Students unprepared for self-directed

learning• We have cultivated “Educational

Bulimics”- binge and purge on facts Thomas Marino

• Require stress or tension to perform

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Determinates of Success

• Action and Interaction– passive vs active learning– Retention: “half the fun is in the chase”– Engagement: “it’s good to feel needed”– Ownership

• Personal relevance• Personalization• Convenience- the customer attitude

– Expectations of technology

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The Right Motivators

• External vs Internal

• Competition vs collaboration and the competition of collaboration

• Private and public rewards

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Beyond No Significant Difference: Each learner learns differently

• The major value added by on-line learning is the ability to personalize learning

• On-line learning gives us the ability to scale the individualized learning experience to a large group of learners

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Causes of Educational Breakdown

• Mismatch of pace• Mismatch of knowledge assumptions• Mismatch of learning approach with teaching

approach• Mismatch of motivators and feedback• Mismatch of sequence or path• Access barriers

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Marginalized Student

• The student who uses an alternative access system• The student who is shy

– Flexible balance between social and private learning

• The student who is learning English– Pace and modality

• The student who is disorganized– Single structured repository

• The student with a disability– Flexible presentation and control

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Disability in Learning Context

• Disability= Mismatch between learner needs and education offered

• Not a personal trait but artifact of relationship between the learner and the learning environment or education delivery

• Accessibility= The ability of the learning environment to adjust to the needs of all learners

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Accessibility =

• Flexibility of education environment, curriculum and delivery

• Availability of adequate alternative-but-equivalent content and activities

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Personalization

• To optimize learning experience for each learner

• Of user interface, content and activity

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Preferences• Presentation style• Depth of content structure• Classification or sorting preferences• Access requirements• Equivalent content requirements• Language• Path (sequential vs overview and then detail)• Content views• Learner scaffolding types (definition, interactive exercises, peer

discussion)• Learning activity

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Session specific preferences

• Learner outcome goals

• Topic exclusions

• Placeholders, annotations and knowledge review

• Facilitating communities of interest

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The Accessibility Context

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Three Approaches to Meeting Accessibility Commitments

1. Single Compliant Resource approach

2. Media rich plus “accessible” alternative approach

3. Transformation based approach

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Problems Identified with Single Compliant Resource

Approach• Rejection of valuable resources that are not compliant • “Accessible for everyone but optimal for no-one”• Time and expertise required of all resource creators• Reluctance to use new or innovative technologies• Design decisions often do not make the experience better

for all users (breaks the “curbcut rule”)

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Problems Identified with “Two Versions” Approach

• “Accessible” version not maintained and becomes outdated

• Unequal access to resource

• People with disabilities not a homogenous group

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The Transformation Approach

• A transformable, flexible resource system

• Dynamically matching resources and resource delivery to needs of each individual

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The Difference

• “Just in case” approaches vs. “Just in time” approach

• Resource compliance vs. system compliance

• Accessible to “everyone” vs. optimized for every individual

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The Open Standards, Interoperability Context…

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Specifications to Support Personalization:

IMS “AccessForAll” specifications• A way to state what you need/prefer as a learner or user (ACCLIP)• A way to match up what you need with the right resources (ACCMD)

Common Specification:• Proposed ISO/IEC standard in Final Draft• DC-Accessibility extension• IEEE LOM binding

• http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility

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Must avoid..

• Stereotypes and assumptions of requirements

• Labeling or classifying users/learners in politically sensitive ways

• Collecting irrelevant private information

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Must Address Critical Interoperability

• Restricted interface choices and flexibility• Each person with a disability is potentially a unique

external system that needs to interoperate• Must respond to a huge array of interfaces, which

change frequently• Essential that these personal access systems can

find information in a consistent place, stated using a consistent vocabulary, structured in a consistent way

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Take advantage of ability to:

• Transform user interface of resource (display and control)

• Re-aggregate learning resources

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Objectives for Specifications

• Address legislative and regulatory requirements• Do not compromise the experience of the student

majority• Do not unduly burden education provider• Facilitate cumulative and collaborative authoring• Respect unique individual requirements (learner-

centric)

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ACCLIP

Accessibility for LIP (Learner information Package) or ACCLIP

– How do I want/need things to be displayed?– How do I want/need things to be controlled?– What content alternatives, equivalents or helpful tools do I

want/need?– In what context?

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ACCMD

• Label primary resource– Can it be transformed (EARL statement)– Does it require hearing, site or text literacy– What are the locations of any known equivalents

• The Alternative equivalents– What primary resource is this for?– What learner preferences or requirements does this

address?

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Personal Preference Statement

• Where do we keep it

• How do we assert it

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Prerequisites

• Flexible architecture• Resource pools• Good authoring practices

– Content and structure independent of presentation

– Function independent of method of control– Well structured (e.g., markup)– Well labeled (e.g., metadata)

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Implications for teaching if it is to be fully implemented

• Create transformable curriculum

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Shift for Educators

• Flexibility of presentation rather than quality of single presentation

• Flexibility of path

• Flexibility of pace

• Modularity rather than completeness

• Harness learning peers

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Shift for Educators

• Cooperative authoring

• Cumulative authoring

• Learner driven construction

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Now given the context what are we doing in Sakai…

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What are the TransformAble Services?

• Three services packaged as Web services and Java libraries:

1. PreferAble2. StyleAble3. SenseAble

• Can be used independently or as a suite to provide accessibility services to a Web app

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PreferAble

• A guided preferences editing tool• Users specify preferences and needs by

answering easy to understand questions• Implements ISO AccessForAll spec• Provides a user interface that can be

embedded in a Web application• Implementers can customize UI to match site

branding & user experience

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PreferAble Architecture

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StyleAble

• Styles and transforms site presentation to meet individual needs and preferences

• Two types of transformations:– Style sheet generation– Document transformations

• Transformations rely on HTML document markup: use good semantic markup

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Style Sheet Generation

• Applies user style preferences to global site appearance

• Screen enhancement:– font face,family, and size– foreground, background, highlight colours– link appearance

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Document Transformations

• Restructures document based on learner needs

• Given a well-formed document, StyleAble can automatically generate:– A table of contents– List of available links– Reduced content density version

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StyleAble Architecture

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SenseAble

• SenseAble is an alternative content matcher and aggregator

• Performs two main functions:1. Matching and ranking adaptations based

on learner preferences

2. Aggregation, assembling, and substitution of resources

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SenseAble

• Aggregator:– replaces and recombines parts of a multi-part

resource based on the best matches found– Examples include:

• Adding captions or audio descriptions to a movie• Adding graphic or textual alternatives

• Matcher:– searches through metadata for alternative

resources within the repository and selects among adaptations based on user's preferences

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SenseAble Architecture

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Demo: TILE and Stretch

• http://inclusivelearning.ca • TILE provides the groundwork for

TransformAble functionality• TILE is a single monolithic application:

authoring tool, repository, and prototype learning environment

• We’re currently in the process of refactoring TILE into separate services

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Integrating TransformAble with Sakai

• Step 1: Enhance Sakai presentation layer to support transformation

• Step 2: Integrate PreferAble & StyleAble into Sakai

• Step 3: Integrate SenseAble with Sakai’s ongoing repository work

• Timeline: March 31, 2007• We need your help and suggestions!

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Staging?

• Pilot institutions

• Pilot applications

• Select services

• Maturity of content repositories within Sakai

• Scaling

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Questions, Suggestions, Volunteers….