The Experience of Learning, and What I hope to Contribute to Learning Experiences
Sakai and Learning Experiences logo
A couple of weeks ago I started a new project that I am completely stoked about.
Learning Experiences has retained the services of Knapp Strategic/Accessiversity on a long-term basis to help Sakai and Tsugi with Accessibility and Quality Assurance.
In a nutshell, I will be embedded as a member of the Learning Experiences/Sakai QA team, and starting with working my way through their current QA Onboarding process, I will be evaluating every aspect of the organization from an accessibility experience perspective.
Of course, the expectation is that I will become a contributing member of the QA team, hopefully sooner than later, and I can begin testing scripts, finding bugs, etc. in addition to continuing to serve as an ongoing resource for accessibility issues.
And so here’s the really exciting part. If I am able to figure this out, which I fully intend on doing, I will be charting a path for more people like me, individuals who are blind/visually impaired, to follow in my footsteps and themselves become QA testers for Learning Experiences/Sakai.
Now, before I go on to explain why this is so important and is such an exciting project for Accessiversity to be involved with, let me pause a moment to provide some additional context and introduce you to some of the key players…
Sakai, and Tsugi, and LearnXP – oh my!
Sakai is a free, community sourced, educational software platform designed to support teaching, research, and collaboration. Systems of this type are also known as Course Management Systems (CMS), Learning Management Systems (LMS), or Virtual Learning Environments (VLE).
The Sakai community oversees, directs, manages, and advances Sakai together. Coordinated by the Apereo Foundation, the community works together to create a cutting-edge learning environment. Educators who work directly with teaching and learning drive Sakai’s open-source development and innovation. Member institutions work together through a community-driven process, the logic being that Sakai adopters, who know the most about their own needs, will be in the best position to enhance Sakai or work with commercial affiliates to create integrations, develop new tools, or introduce new digital learning environment functionality. Commercial affiliates like Longsight, EDF, Learning Experiences, and Unicon develop, host and support Sakai.
Similarly, Tsugi is open-source software that makes it practical to quickly build and deploy learning sites, tools, and content that is seamlessly integrated into Learning Management Systems using the latest interoperability standards.
Learning Experiences is a business devoted to adding value to the Apereo communities and encouraging the use of open source and open content in education. LearnXP provides a standards-based learning app store for Learning Management Systems. Their products can be used in any learning system that supports industry standards like Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI).
Dr. Chuck
The mysterious figure behind the curtain, the wizard, so to speak at the center of all of this activity, the metaphorical glue holding everything together, is a guy named Charles Severance who is better known by his nickname Dr. Chuck. Now he’ll be the first one to tell you that he’s not a wizard and not at the center and not the glue, that he’s “more like the ‘Wizard of Oz’ in that I seem to be everywhere, I seem to be important, and appear on the surface to be ‘great and powerful’ – but behind the curtain I am not that special except that I tell folks that they already have greatness within them – they just need to find it.”
Dr. Chuck is equal parts educator, tech ninja and evangelist. His laid back, almost Zen like demeanor shrouds a more eccentric personality who it turns out prefers to teach, code, and live with the pedal to the metal, literally zipping to and from his endless string of school and work meetings in classic muscle cars, alternating between a Ford Mustang and a Pontiac Grand Prix GXP with a V8 under the hood. I first got to know him through his day job as a Clinical Professor with the University of Michigan School of Information where he currently teaches twenty-one popular MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and three specializations to students worldwide on the Coursera, edX, and FutureLearn platforms. A long-time advocate of open educational resources to empower teachers, Dr. Chuck is a subject matter expert when it comes to Learning Management Systems and was instrumental in getting the prominent LMS players like Coursera, Canvas, D2L, Blackboard, et all to adopt interoperability across their platforms. In fact, legend has it that he got the logos of all of the aforementioned Learning Management Systems tattooed on his arm as part of some side-bet to seal the deal and secure their respective commitments to work together on adopting interoperability.
In addition, Dr. Chuck served as the Chief Architect of the Sakai Project, and through his company, Learning Experiences, he continues to support its important work through substantial staff and financial investments, including this latest experiment to embed me with their team to help out with their accessibility and QA needs.
Great Minds Think Alike
Yes, I realize how absurd it would be for me to compare myself to Dr. Chuck, who by any measure, knows more about teaching online, and learning management systems, and educational innovation than just about every other person on the planet.
But it’s not advanced degrees and sophisticated computer code that defines Dr. Chuck’s brilliance, it’s the recognition that even the smartest people don’t have all of the answers, this idea that there is always more knowledge out there to acquire, other things that we can work on to improve, different perspectives for us to consider.
In essence, it’s this interdependency between learning and experience, the symbolic Yin and Yang that together make education possible, one is not nearly as effective without the other.
Its ultimately why Dr. Chuck approached me about this immersive experience, because he understood that first-hand exposure to the systems, tools, and processes would be the best way for me to evaluate the overall accessibility of the organization. And as Dr. Chuck put it, “Learning Experiences and Sakai aren’t only interested in creating an accessible platform, we want to promote an accessible community.
The Bold Experiment
While the first part of the plan is for me to help Learning Experiences and Sakai with Accessibility and QA, Dr. Chuck and I have a secondary agenda of finding and mentoring other blind/visually impaired individuals to work on QA and accessibility, and then eventually to even help out with development.
If this part sounds familiar, it’s because this is also one of Accessiversity’s long-term goals, to eventually establish a more permanent lab environment where we would bring other individuals with disabilities on as lab associates and build their skills through working on progressively more complex client projects until we are ultimately able to develop them into entry-level QA analysts that we would look to place with local tech employers in need of testers to help out with their ongoing accessibility and QA needs.
That’s the beauty of this particular project, by having me serve as the guinea pig, we’ll be able to see if we can make this all work for Learning Experiences and Sakai while also having our little experiment serve as a “proof of concept” for the proposed Accessiversity model.
I say “little experiment”, but in reality, this new project will be a giant experiment, and that’s what makes it so exciting.
“Once Chris finds his way through our on-boarding process and figures out how to work in our community - we will work at how we can find, engage, and pay more people with limited vision to achieve our community goals,” Dr. Chuck explained to the Sakai community in a recent email, going on to add, “It is a bold idea - we are starting small with big dreams.”
Without question, there will be a huge learning curve. I realize this, and Dr. Chuck knows this too.
But when it comes to accessibility and usability, Dr. Chuck and I are on the same page, we have both embraced our roles as guinea pigs. Every project is an experiment, every issue is an opportunity to learn and improve on what we have done before.
Two weeks in, and it’s just about what you would expect for this point in my initiation.
I’ve sat in on multiple virtual meetings, trying to soak up as much information as I can while getting to know as many people as possible. I find myself having to adapt to using several new technologies, some of which are more accessible than others, Jira, Slack and Etherpad, and yet another new web conferencing tool, an open source solution called BigBlueButton. And all the while, I’m trying to familiarize myself with the Sakai platform and learn the ins and outs of the QA process. And oh by the way, I’m needing to figure out how I can contribute and add value during this early phase of the experiment, availing myself to perform basic accessibility testing on certain features or tools as needed, a temporary work around until I can fully get up to speed and work through the team’s established QA processes.
Like I explained to Dr. Chuck in my text to him a few days in, “I/we definitely have our work cut out for us, but I am excited about the challenge and undeterred”.
Such is the life of an accessibility tester/consultant.
It’s being faced with seemingly insurmountable odds and still figuring out a way to persevere. It’s accepting failure and celebrating successes. It’s hitting walls and blazing new trails.
It’s this experience of learning, that’s what I ultimately hope to contribute to this project.