Online Education for the 21st Century: Universal Design
(one day)

Online education is the wave of the future for colleges, universities, businesses and secondary schools. But most course offerings contain significant barriers to usability and accessibility for students. This course will explore these barriers and teach participants to create online education that is usable and accessible to all learners, including those with disabilities.

Objectives:
This is a one-day, hands-on, intensive course on the creation of accessible and usable online education. Students will learn about the problems caused by poor online design with concrete examples. They will see how Universal Design approaches can make course offerings accessible to everyone and more usable to all. Students will learn about the ways in which common disabilities effect use of coursework, planning for good course design, and specific techniques for making online courses accessible. These techniques will cover software commonly used for online courses, such as Microsoft PowerPoint, Word and Excel, as well as Adobe Acrobat. The course will also explore the use of appropriate HTML.

Topics:
1. Introduction and overview of the course
2. Issues and barriers in online education
3. Universal Design for online education – accessible and more usable for all
4. Making accessible courses via Microsoft Office tools
5. Making accessible courses via Adobe Acrobat
6. Making accessible courses via HTML

Outcomes (skills learned):

	Explain the barriers common in online education
	Explain how the principles of Universal Design can eliminate barriers and improve usability
	Consider the accessibility needs of people with disabilities as well as improved usability in course design
	Use Microsoft Office tools to build accessible and usable content for online courses
	Use Adobe Acrobat for creation of barrier-free course material
	Use common HTML elements for creation of online course material
	Understand the role of course-management software in the design process