Widening Access to Learning – Annual Conference of the Society for Screen‐Based Learning, Bournemouth, April 13–16, 2003

Abstract

The Conference commenced on the Sunday evening with a dinner at the Wessex Hotel. Fred Dinenage (Meridian Television), the after-dinner speaker, demonstrated his talent as such, and reminded delegates of the importance of a good presenter in media production. The next morning, Keynote Speaker Terry Marsh (Digital Media Consultant, Strategy in Digital Media) set out the pedagogical issues that e-learning must address – successful learning is both an art and a science. Terry described the supervisionary with a raft of skills (pedagogical, technological, management and subject expertise); and the superuser, capable of facilitating student learning in the environment created by the super-visionary. The use of digital video is proving successful when carefully integrated with the learning process, but challenges such as access, adequate content and the digital divide still remain. One key issue is to attract the ‘super-visionary’ and engage policy-makers in teaching and learning issues. Bob Auger (Newmerique Digital Media), a major producer of DVD titles both for entertainment and education, proposed the dictum ‘I will ask teacher before trying new technology’. Referring to the CERI project of 2001, he emphasized that ICT works well only if teachers know how to use it. He surveyed the OHANA Learning DVD project in which his team produced 400 titles, 250 of which were shipped to schools in Washington State and Florida. Although the project included the offer of a free DVD player to purchasers, he suggested that 30 free discs per classroom might have encouraged greater take-up. If a new medium is to be adopted in education, it is crucial to offer a wide catalogue of titles. His presentation concluded with a demonstration of the Roland Collection of video programmes on a DVD. The next speaker, Robin Stenham (Development Manager – Curriculum Access Centre for Assistive Technology and Enabling Research at the Open University), spoke on the accessibility of learning materials for students with learning disabilities. The OU has 200 000 students currently enrolled: of these 8700 are disabled, with 1000 having a visual disability and 750 having a hearing disability. The OU is therefore an important test-bed for establishing SENDA compliance in distance learning materials, and Robin described both the ‘reverse-engineering’ of existing materials, and the ‘systems approach’ to the design of new materials using a combination of PDF and rtf formats. Building in accessibility from the start of a project should be more economic than ‘reverse-engineering’ – it has taken nine months to make the material of just one CD-ROM SENDA compliant. (A personal note from the Author: working for SENDA compliance will bring great benefits to many people. However, we should be careful that projects exploring the frontiers of digital media are allowed to go forward and not be abandoned because the end-product would not be SENDA compliant. It may be that the use of a human reader/describer of pictures and diagrams should be recommended in the case of such projects). Julie Struthers (University of Abertay, Dundee) then discussed her research into participation in post-school education in the Angus Glens, north of Dundee. As with many initiatives it was found that retaining prospective students was far harder than attracting them in the first place. The difficulties they faced included spooky premises with scary caretakers, to the promise of a broadband connection via the local police station, closed before the broadband connection was delivered! It was found that face-to-face interaction was a vital supplement to online activity and that substantive training in study skills and use of I.T. was required (by both students and academics). Students found it difficult to return to education and to balance their time between family and study. This experience in the Angus Glens mirrors that of the Open University and all institutions with genuine commitment to widening access to Higher Education would do well to examine the experience of colleagues in Dundee. The conference then split into parallel sessions. Fifteen delegates attended a Masterclass in the use of the Adobe Digital Collection, while the plenary session continued with the next speaker, Joan Leese (Training Director of VET). Joan demonstrated the potential of DVD XF (Extended Functionality) as an increasingly flexible tool for educators, combining broadcast quality video with elements of CD-ROM. As DVD continues to penetrate both the home and educational markets, it has the potential to increase the use of video as a learning medium. Julie Cogill (former Senior Education Officer, BBC) then charted the changes in the use of moving images in schools over the last twenty years. Television has the potential to explain and to motivate and can bring the wider world into the classroom. Both BBC Education and Channel 4 broadcast quality Journal of Audiovisual Media in Medicine, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp. 121–122