ESRC Seminar Series: Researching the use of assistive technologies by children and young people: interdisciplinary perspectives, March 4th, 2010, De Montfort University
Transforming the process and outcomes of assistive technology research: Reflections on the use of participatory
research methods with disabled university students
Dr Jane Seale
Journey through my talk
1. The LEXDIS Project: Understanding disabled university students experiences of e-learning and technology
2. Defining participatory research methods in the context of the LEXDIS Project
3. Learner voice as a potentially useful conceptual framework that brings with it aspirations and challenges relating to transformation
4. What was transformational about the participatory research process used in the LEXDIS project
5. What was transformational about the outcomes of this participatory research project
6. Implications for Assistive Technology Research
1. The LEXDIS Project: Understanding disabled university students’ experiences of e-learning and technology
The LEXDIS Project
• JISC funded: Learner Experience Phase II
• Mike Wald, Jane Seale, E.A Draffan
• Produce 30 case studies describing disabled learners’ different e-learning experiences
LEXDIS: Objectives
• Explore the e-learning experiences of disabled learners
• Develop user-centred (participatory) methodologies for eliciting the e-learning experiences of disabled students
2. Defining participatory research methods in the context of the LEXDIS Project
Participatory in the context of researching with and about learners:
• Working directly with learners in the evaluation of their learning experiences;
• Early and continual participation of learners in order to produce improved teaching and support practices;
• Engaging learners in the design, conduct and analysis of “research”
• Encouraging learners to own the outcome by setting the goals and sharing in decisions about processes.
Origins of the LEXDIS method
• Participatory Design:
– Assistive Technology & Human Computer Interaction research
– applied in education and healthcare settings
• Participatory research:
– Learning Disabilities
– children and older adults
Defining the LEXDIS Participatory Approach
• Involving disabled learners as consultants and partners and not just as research subjects. Where disabled learners help to identify and (re)frame the research questions; work with the researchers to achieve a collective analysis of the research issues and bring the results to the attention of each of the constituencies that they represent.
• Mapped our approach against a framework offered by Radermacher (2006) which identifies six categories of participant involvement that range from non-involvement to participant-initiated.
Overview of Participatory Phases in LEXDIS Project
• Phase One (May 2007-June 2007): Consultation regarding proposed research questions and research methods;
• Phase Two (September 2007- May 2008): Opportunity to contribute own experiences of using e-learning;
• Phase Three (May 2008- Feb 2009): Opportunity to validate and interpret the results of the study and to contribute to the design, content and dissemination of project deliverables and outcomes.
3. Learner voice as a potentially useful conceptual framework that brings with it aspirations and challenges relating to transformation
Building a conceptual framework: Learner voice and participation• In schools and colleges, there is much student or
learner voice work, which conceptually has strong links to participation:
– listening to and valuing the views that students express regarding their learning experiences; communicating student views to people who are in a position to influence change; treating students as equal partners in the evaluation of teaching and learning, thus empowering them to take a more active role in shaping or changing their education (Fielding 2004, Faux et al. 2006; Walker & Logan 2008 )
Building a conceptual framework: Learner Voice and Transformation
• Learner Voice work requires us to do more than hear, we must commit to listening, where listening is understood as acting upon what is heard and therefore being committed to change.
• Freire (1970) Speaking and listening is a dialogue that is liberating, but also requires faith and belief in people and their power to change.
Aspirations and Challenges
• The aspiration is that participatory methods will reveal the kind of authentic voices that are conducive to “authentic listening” (Fielding and Ruddick 2004) and transformation
• Particularly a “transformation of the familiar” (Batchelor 2008) or a “rupture of the ordinary” (Fielding 2004) that takes us beyond what is already known, to look at things differently
• In other words to use participatory methods is to hope that they will challenge us to go beyond what we already know (e.g. LEXDIS project was not a project about accessibility)
• The challenge is, however, do we know how to look at things differently? Can we avoid what Gilligan (1993) talks of when she talks of “hearing something new, but then quickly assimilating it into the old categories of thinking so that the novelty and message is lost”.
4. What was transformational about the process of the participatory project?
What was transformational about the PR processes?
• Involving participants in the analysis of results
• Involving participants in dissemination
For researchers raises potential issues regarding:
• Who “really” owns the research, and therefore holds the power?
• Sharing the limelight or glory with participants
Involving participants in the analysis of results• Held a focus group to share our initial interpretations of the
data that we had collected and to invite participants to guide us in our analysis.
– Why did we not train up some students to engage in the NVivo coding of interview data with us?
• CHALLENGE 1- How do you present a mass of data in a way that all participants can access and interpret?
• E.g. For dyslexic students need to think about structure and volume of information
• E.g For students with manual dexterity difficulties need to think about handling volumes of paper
Involving participants in the analysis of results • Taking into account the varying abilities and needs of our participants,
we chose to present the results in 6 summarised PowerPoint slides ( a real challenge!) and to give a verbal commentary. The main findings were summarised and presented to the participants as:
– As a group you appear to be resourceful and adaptable learners;
– As a group you appear to have a love-hate relationship with technology;
– As a group you appear to be making informed, yet complex decisions about your use of technology.
• For each of these findings, we asked the group whether they reflected their own personal experiences and views and whether we were misrepresenting the findings or missing something important from the results.
Involving participants in the analysis of results• No-one expressed concern that the findings would falsely
represent the experience of individuals or the group.
– Challenge 2: Is this just acquiescence or a consequence of students simply not being empowered to do anything other than agree with us?
• Participants felt comfortable enough to disagree with one another (see handout-example 1 for DSA assessment example)
• Participants felt comfortable enough to disagree with researchers (see handout-example2 for AT and e-learning hypothesis example)
The pay-off: authenticity
• Valuable information about participants perceptions regarding whether they represented typical disabled learners (see handout-example 3)
• Authenticity to the students voices, which may enhance probability that the results will not be written off as unrepresentative
Involving participants in dissemination
• Involved in designing the website: all aspects including “programming” the database
• Invited by funder to present/speak/showcase the LEXDIS project
• Joint writing of publications.
Involving participants in dissemination: a humbling experience!
The pay off: authenticity
• Students feel they own the project- word spreads fast!
• The project has ended, but we are still being contacted by disabled students who were not in the original project asking if they can add their strategies to the database
• See the website as having real meaning and purpose in terms of informing other students and lecturers
5. What was transformational about the outcomes of this participatory research project?
What was transformational about the outcomes of the PR research
• Disabled Students are highly capable, digitally agile: users, adaptors, designers and evaluators of technologies
• Disabled students find themselves having to make complex decisions about their technology use
Digital agility
• Many of the participants:
– Customise their computers to suit their preferences,
– Swap and change from a range of technologies;
– Are well-informed about the strengths and weaknesses of particular technologies in relation to design, usability, accessibility and impact on learning
– Have developed a range of sophisticated and tailored strategies for using technology to support their learning.
– Use technology with confidence.
– Know what support and training is available to them.
Confidence levels• I’ve had quite a lot of experience with it by now. It’s generally quite easy to use. It doesn’t faze me. (Sarah P, LEXDIS Participant)
• I’m more than happy working on-line. My group hates doing things on-line where as I would prefer to sort everything out by email, but they prefer to have proper meetings. (Chloe, LEXDIS Participant)
• I’d just launch in, - like with Inspiration. No one showed it to me; I just picked up a leaflet in the Assistive Technology service. I thought: “I can do that”, and I did. It was fine. I had no fear of it. (Stacey, LEXDIS Participant)
Strategies• Identified 31 different types of strategies that students were adopting
and devising when using technology to support their learning
• Students described on average about seven strategies each.
• The most common types of strategy adopted by students tended to be related to accessing computers or online information and ways of coping with written work.
• Strategies involved the use of both specialist assistive technologies (e.g. IrisPro, quill mouse, Kurzweil, Inspiration or Dragon Dictate) as well as more generic technologies (e.g. mobile phone, DS40 digital recorder, Google).
• Tellingly, students tended to dismiss some of their strategies as being well known or unimportant when in fact they were indicative of the agile and considered way in which they were approaching the use of technologies;
– for example using free alternatives to standard assistive technologies that may be provided under the Disabled Students Allowance
Digital Decisions
• Some participants make explicit and conscious decisions not to use assistive technologies
– Use marks them out as being different- fear of stigma
– dislike being recommended assistive technologies based on “labels” rather than actual needs or preferences.
– Simply feel they don’t need specialised technologies
Digital Decisions
• Several factors influence students decision-making, including the affordances and properties of technologies.
• Disabled learners have to make decisions about what they can afford spending their time using and doing
– Social networking tools are frequently discounted as “not for learning” because they are distracting and time consuming
– Some students consider that assistive technologies can be time-consuming to learn how to use
– Sometimes participants choose not to access support because they prefer to learn by trial or error or because they feel they do not have the time to undertake training.
Cost-benefit analysis
Can I afford to invest time, in order to save time?
e.g Stephanie:
You said very early on, that I’ve never forgotten “I feel as if I’m doing 2 courses. I’m doing a physio course and a skills technology course – because you were struggling. Do you still feel that?
…when I got all my software in autumn last year, and they said: “You need to have your training on this” – as you quite rightly have said – I did feel like I was doing 2 courses and that was, frankly, too much. I had to stay with my old bad habits because I just didn’t feel I had the time to take out to learn something new to help me. It was a viscous circle, really.
6. Implications for AT research
Seeing things differently: reflecting on the process (1)?
• www.lexdis.org.uk/
• Database of strategies and tools that disabled students use to make e-learning easier
• Can search this database, by selecting difficulties and/or tasks or by entering a keyword in the search box.
• The primary organising feature of the database is NOT disability- this was important to the students
“I wondered whether you'd had any thoughts on including something on mental health difficulties as I can't find this mentioned anywhere?”
Seeing things differently: reflecting on the process (2)
• E-learning and assistive technologies as terms are either meaningless to disabled students or understood differently
• http://www.lexdis.org.uk/technology
Seeing things differently: reflecting on the outcomes (1)
• Challenges to AT culture and wisdom: “Its just a tool”- keeping it real
– Technology is just a tool for me – nothing else – just cos something is on the computer that doesn’t mean I’ll remember it better. Its just the same information, […] It is a tool, but it’s not my way of learning (Reena)
– The thing that I came to do some time ago was there isn’t this thing ‘all or nothing’ – you either have technology or you haven’t. I use my computer. I use my word processing on the computer, but I still draw my mind-maps on paper because it is easier and quicker for me. I am a firm believer in using whatever tool that is appropriate for the job. Sometimes that is the technology, but not always. When you have these situations when you find that technology is taking [it] away – is there another option? You don’t have to use technology for everything. (Andy L)
Seeing things differently: reflecting on the outcomes (2)
• The findings are significant in terms of encouraging us not to view disabled students as helpless, continually requiring support (from people or technology) in order to avoid exclusion from successful learning experiences
• We need to explore further whether or not the decisions made regarding non-use of technology or support are actually empowered ones or not.
Discussion and Questions
• Copies of project reports can be found on our website:
• http://www.lexdis.ecs.soton.ac.uk/
• If you would like me to send you a hard copy, please email me: [email protected]
