Marino Institute of Education
Background
Marino Institute of Education (MIE) is a teaching, learning and research community committed to promoting inclusion and excellence in education. MIE has a long and proud involvement with education, specifically initial teacher education (ITE), dating back over 100 years.
MIE’s association with Trinity began in 1976, when the first intake of lay students registered for the Bachelor in Education (B.Ed.) course. In July 2011, our relationship was further strengthened with the formalisation of an agreement which places MIE under the joint trusteeship of the Congregation of Christian Brothers European Province and Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin.
In the last decade, the academic mission and scope of MIE’s activity has been re-envisioned to encompass a deeper understanding of education in and beyond the classroom, to incorporate the continuum of teacher education and the education of specialist education practitioners at early years, primary and further education levels. This is allied with a commitment to education studies encompassing non-traditional education settings and the wider education environment in a pluralist context.
We had been discussing UDL and accessibility in general terms and were aware of our requirements to provide accessible content to users, but nothing had been done at a wholesale, wider Institutional level. There were pockets of good practice, and the Disability Officer had implemented some useful tools to students with declared additional needs. However, a more strategic vision was required.
Challenges
The online pivot in 2020 highlighted the many accessibility challenges in MIE at the time, where access to tech was but a first step towards using technology in accessible ways. Lack of a consistent approach to use of our VLE was also an issue – many students found the VLE difficult to navigate.
The types of documents uploaded to our VLE were wide, varied and inconsistent. PDFs were the norm, and naming conventions were not used on documentation. Images were uploaded on a needs basis, with no alt tags or naming conventions and often not resized either.
Before partnering with Brickfield Education Labs, students found content difficult to navigate and could not download content to their own machines easily.
Alison Egan, Marino Institute of Education
Staff were concerned their content should be in a format appropriate for those with additional needs, but were not sure how to implement such requirements.
Solution
A colleague in the Registrar’s Office had been advised about the document conversion tool and sought our advice as to tender and review of available and appropriate tools in the marketplace. We spoke to various suppliers. We also met Brickfield Education Labs at an educational technology conference (EdTech) and saw their wider UDL implementation tool – we had to have it. We went to tender, Brickfield Education Labs were successful, and we started the implementation process.
The first step was to integrate Brickfield Accessibility Toolkit as part of our Moodle instance – that was easy as Brickfield are also Moodle suppliers so knew how to integrate the other plugins, to ensure the tool worked quickly in our VLE. Phase I was implementation of the document conversion tools, phase II focused on training staff and students how to use the document converter. Phase III was linked into the wider Institutional Digital Strategy and UDL committee requirements to ensure staff could use the full suite of Brickfield tools in the VLE. This Phase III is still ongoing and will complete in 24/25.
Staff were invited to click on the document conversion tool to ‘see what happened’. Our internal instructional designer invited people to attend face to face sessions on use of the tool, and staff demonstrated to their peers how they were using the tool in their own Moodle modules. Students were informed about the tool via email and posters around campus, and tried the tool out themselves on the VLE.
Students have been asked for feedback as part of a wider MIE quality review about the ‘ease of use’ of the accessibility tool, and have commented that they can use the tool themselves, without having to declare their additional needs, if they don’t want to.
Students commented that they can use the tool themselves, without having to declare their additional needs.
Staff have used the tools to convert larger documents to MP3 format, so they can listen to them on their commute to/from work.
By implementing the Brickfield tool in the first year – lecturers and students had to ensure they had uploaded their original content in a format that could be read by the accessibility conversion tools. The file format conversion tool has negated issues such as difficulty of navigation and downloading of content for students.
Some staff signed up for the Brickfield academy content on a voluntary basis. As we are a small college, a personal face to face individual session with other users was found to be more expedient to ensure effective implementation of the various Brickfield tools.
Outcomes
Students love that they don’t have to declare their needs and have commented on the ‘ease of use’ of the tool, how easy it is to find on their module, and that it has forced staff to be consistent in how they upload content to their VLE.
Staff love it as ‘it just works’ and they don’t have to worry that they’re meeting the needs of the full student population – the tool ensures they’re doing it, seamlessly. The disability office loves it as it means they don’t have to worry about content on the VLE as much as other accessibility requirements around campus.
The next steps are to ensure wider adoption of the ‘accessibility checker’ in each module – at the moment this is still optional, and we need the UDL Committee and a college-wide implementation for this second phase of implementation of the Brickfield Accessibility Toolkit.
We plan to expand the use of Brickfield’s training to ensure all staff get a consistent training experience, rather than the piecemeal ‘just in time’ training that has been implemented by the instructional design team to date. However, it has still been a success and a tool we cannot do without.
We’ve learnt that it should be implemented by any Moodle user and we should have done it years ago.
If we had known how easy it was, we would have done it sooner. We cannot be without it – ever.
Alison Egan, Marino Institute of Education
Recommendations
Please talk to us, we can share our stories with each other and learn from each other., or Just Do IT!!
You won’t regret it – and the success for the students pays for itself.
Alison Egan, Marino Institute of Education
More information?
Are you looking for an Accessibility Audit and Remediation, Content Alternate Formats or Accessibility Training? Contact us or request a demo to see the full power of the Brickfield Accessibility Toolkit in action.
