For sustainable and equitable education in a flexible online distance classroom, design of learning resources should start with understanding needs, wants, and context of each member of a classroom community. So, teaching staff and students can relate to each other in this shared educational experience.

Designing for one-size-fits-all might not bring about meaningful learning and foster connection for students who could be time-starved, reside outside of main centres, studying while working, caretaking or with disabilities. In a face-to-face classroom, teaching staff more often than not tend to adapt, transform, and innovate resources to account for student diversities. The same tendency should be possible in an online classroom. So, the relevance of these resources to learning outcomes are not devalued by students due to a perceived lack of understanding of their circumstances or conditions.

To support digital access and equity, it has been recommended to “include human-centred design [HCD] in the construction of culturally sensitive, accessible, flexible learning” (Gomez, et al., 2022, p. 27). The bridging design prototype (BDP) approach is an HCD method that transforms teachers into designers (Gomez, 2020). It could enable teaching staff to design their own novel resources for flexible online distance classrooms. For the reason that “everybody who works in education is a designer, though they may be working in different design spaces, each requiring different specificities of expertise, background knowledge, tools, and practices.” (Weiner, et al., 2020, p.781)

The six BDP principles (figure 1) could guide/help teachers individually or in small teams to:
• Carry out careful analysis of relevant data to inform resource design.
• Develop resources with features familiar to all members of a classroom community to enhance adoption.
• Determine when novel features should be included as part of a resource design, and plan for extra support if needed.
• Inform feature design based on a good understanding of the prior knowledge and the context realities of students and teachers alike, including those with diverse cognitive, physical, and socio-cultural capabilities.

The diagram (figure 1) provides a step-by-step guide showing how the BDP principles are organised and interact with each other during the human-centred design process of a classroom resource.

Principle “bringing a multidisciplinary thinking team approach” to learn about your online classroom community and context. Gather information (via secondary or primary sources) about your student cohort, teaching staff and yourself, as well as your programme including context and technologies. For example, in the preschool classroom, early childhood teachers apply methods (e.g., observation) to learn about each child, and connect these learnings to theoretical concepts, which in turn inform the design of learning activities and spaces.

Principle “achieving similar mental models” to stimulate empathy and solidarity. Use what you’ve learned through data gathering to become more in-tune with your online classroom community. To continue with the preschool example, the more a teacher understands needs, wants, and context of every child who is part of this educational experience, the easier it is to decide how to develop suitable resources. Are these to be comprised of familiar features only or a combination of familiar and novel features?

Principle “understanding prior knowledge and familiar interactions” to foster student engagement. You are now equipped to develop resources based on understanding that comes from identifying technologies every student or staff member are familiar with, study skills or behaviours they have already mastered, and the kinds of social interactions around learning that they prefer. When a teacher is designing a learning station in the preschool classroom, a particular child or small group of children are often in their mind. Suitable resources are selected according to age, developmental stage, diversity in capabilities so each child can carry out the activity.

Principle “making activities simpler” to promote the completion of assignments. Use the information gathered on common needs and capabilities (physical, cognitive and social) to design activities with features/skills that your students can operate/use. Ask yourself questions such as “what do I have in common with my students?” One example: do my students and I use similar technologies? Could I design a meaningful activity with a resource/technology common to all of us to save time and energy? Another example: are there any students whose writing skills need extra support? Identify who they are as early as possible so you can pre-empt who might have trouble with activities requiring strong writing skills.

Principle “broadening participation in the design process” of a resource so you can share the responsibility with your students. If someone shows signs of not being able to undertake an activity with such resource, investigate how to adapt it to their diverse capabilities or specific context. But, if this is not possible to achieve, invite students and staff to propose their own solutions.

Finally, principle “enabling participation in the design process” so students and staff can co-create their own educational experience. If the above five principles are applied, this last principle is enabled. A flexible online distance classroom designed with these six BDP principles might make students and teaching staff more relatable to each other, as well as prevent implementation of resources unsuitable to distance students across all sectors.

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References

Gomez, G., Jones, H., & Birt, J. (2022). Accessible content and digital equity. In C. Campbell, C. Porter, D. Logan-Fleming, & H. Jones (Eds.), Scanning the Ed  Tech Horizon: The 2021-2022 Contextualising Horizon Report (pp. 26-29). ASCILITE. https://ascilite.org/get-involved/contextualising-horizon/

Gomez, G. (2022). The bridging design prototype approach: Strengthening the role of design as a strategic resource in small organisations. In E. Erturk & B. Otinpong (Eds.), CITRENZ 2022: Proceedings of the 13th Annual Conference of Computing and Information Technology Education and Research in New Zealand (pp. 37-47). https://citrenz.org.nz/citrenz/2022-proceedings/

Gomez, G. (2020). Bridging design prototypes & autonomous design. In R. Marques Leitão, L.-A. Noel, & L. Murphy (Eds.), Proceedings of Pivot 2020: Designing a world of many centers (pp. 166-181). Design Research Society https://doi.org/doi:10.21606/pluriversal.2020.032

Weiner, S., Warr, M., & Mishra, P. (2020). Fostering System-Level Perspective Taking when Designing for Change in Educational Systems. TechTrends, 64(5), 779-788. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-020-00529-w

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Author: Gloria Gomez

Dr Gloria Gomez undertakes applied design research in novel educational practice with Bridging Design Prototypes, and research through teaching and supervision in social design, inclusive design, and medical education. She is co-founder at OceanBrowser which are developers of OB3, honorary senior lecturer at the Save Sight Institute, University of Sydney, and 2023 – 2024 FLANZ executive committee member. Learn more at http://www.gloriagomez.com

Today’s students—especially those engaged in blended and online learning—face many external pressures that impact their studies. Many students work one or more jobs, often full time, to keep up with the current cost-of-living crisis and housing crisis. Others have families and caretaking duties that require their time and attention. Flexible, blended, and online learning makes a high-quality education accessible to these students. That’s a good thing.

But too often, online learning asks students to park themselves in front of a computer with a fast and stable internet connection, working through screen after screen of content on a learning management system. Many rural students, however, don’t have consistent access to fast and stable internet. And natural disasters like Cyclone Gabrielle—which, in the future, will only increase in quantity and scale due to climate change—can disrupt the accessibility of online learning for students anywhere. Plus, many students simply don’t have time to sit for hours at the computer because they need to watch the kids or make a meal or run errands on the other side of town. Simply put, it’s not enough to put a course on the internet and say that it’s now accessible to all. Accessibility is more complex than that. 

That’s where podcasting comes in. But people disagree about what a podcast is. Does a podcast need an RSS feed? Or can streaming audio also be a podcast? What about video podcasts? As these technologies continue to change, so too will definitions of podcasting. Given the aforementioned challenges that students currently face, this blog post focuses specifically on the affordances of audio podcasting, an intimate medium that makes audio recordings available with or without an active internet connection. 

Audio podcasting, as a pedagogical tool, can improve accessibility for flexible and online learning. When educational content is packaged as an audio podcast, students can download that podcast to their mobile device and access it anywhere, any time. This means they can listen while they’re commuting to work, doing the washing, or exercising. And even if students don’t have a mobile phone or don’t like learning on their phone, they can access podcast content through the same computer and internet connection that they use to engage with other course content. Podcasting, in short, improves accessibility. 

Crucially, however, any medium for online and flexible education must also be accessible to students with disabilities. Too often, online course content lacks alt-text for images, transcripts for video lectures, slides designed with colorblind awareness, and so on. Podcasting is no different. To be accessible, pedagogical podcasts should have written transcripts for students with hearing disabilities. They should also have content warnings for any audio that students may find unsettling, especially students who have experienced trauma. These podcasting strategies create an inclusive and accessible pedagogical environment for flexible and online learners. 

Despite these benefits, podcasting does not work in every educational environment. Not all course content is suited to audio-only delivery. In many courses, students need to see charts, graphs, images, and other visual content to enrich their learning experience. This makes sense. But lecturers in visual-heavy courses might still consider what elements of their course could be taught via audio. Perhaps some theoretical background. Or historical context. Or an interesting anecdote. In every course, there’s probably some content that could benefit from being delivered orally and consumed aurally. 

The most common concern that educators express about using audio podcasting to teach is this: how much do students actually learn when listening to a podcast while doing something else? Many consumers indicate that they listen to podcasts to learn something new, but audio podcasting can seem like a passive—even distracted—mode of learning. The reality, however, is more complicated. Podcasting allows students to easily pause, rewind, and replay content. And an increasing number of podcasting platforms are making space for dialogue among listeners and the podcasters themselves. Podcasting is more interactive than it seems. 

It’s also important to encourage students to find a note-taking strategy that works for them when listening to podcasts. Some will want to have a notes application open, so they can jot down important ideas. Others will prefer to leave audio messages for themselves after listening to each episode, and some will prefer simply to listen to episodes multiple times as they prepare for their assessments. Of course, many students won’t take notes at all. But frankly, there are plenty of students who don’t take notes during lectures or when they’re reading course content. And heck, some students don’t attend lectures or even watch them online. In terms of student engagement, then, podcasting is hardly different from these other pedagogical forms. 

Ultimately, podcasting can be a fruitful tool for augmenting the accessibility of courses, especially in flexible and online learning environments. And I encourage you to give it a try!

If you’re unsure about how to begin creating your own pedagogical podcast, you can download a 1-page “How to Guide” from my website. You can also learn more by subscribing to my podcast about podcasting: Pod Uni. The latest episode features an interview with media whiz and podcast host Lucy Blakiston from Shit You Should Care About! 

Collin Bjork is a Senior Lecturer in Science Communication and Podcasting at Massey University in Aotearoa New Zealand. He uses rhetorical theory to examine the mutually informing relationship among media, power, discourse, and democracy. His research has been published in Philosophy and Rhetoric, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, College Composition and Communication, Convergence, and Computers and Composition. He is currently working on a project that traces the complicated relationship between true crime podcasting and civic dialogue. In addition to Pod Uni, he also co-produces the academic podcast Global Rhetorics.