Capstone Project
The project featured below was made using Articulate Rise. The full project plan, including the analysis, design, and development plans, are also linked below to provide insight and background information into the project's purpose.
Faculty Training on Accessibility Capstone Project
This 45 minute self-paced training was designed to enhance faculty's ability to identify, address, and prevent accessibility issues both in digital and in-person course settings.
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Audience: all faculty members at a local University, not including adjunct
Responsibilities: instructional design (analysis, content acquisition, storyboarding, full build, implementation and evaluation plan), visual design, and course development.
Tool(s) Used: Articulate Rise, Google Docs, Microsoft Forms, Canva
The Project Plan
The Problem and Solution
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At the local University has made a concerted effort to inform faculty and staff of their responsibilities in providing accessible content to their students. While this mentality stemmed from the legal requirements the University has of complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act, the true motivator behind it is because it is the right thing to do for their students. Additionally, the University's Accessibility Services office was receiving an influx of questions, concerns, and requests from faculty about implementing student accommodations. Post-pandemic accommodations also heavily involve mental health issues, and these were proving to be a challenge for both the Accessibility Services office and faculty members.
Despite the University's work, there continued to be a need for a comprehensive training that encompassed all aspects of student accessibility, not just digital accessibility. These difficulties, combined with the lack of training currently available to faculty, were reasons why the local University was interested in developing a training that will address these issues.
My Process​
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To bring this project to life, I leaned on the structure of the ADDIE model to guide me. For the analysis, I met with several subject matter experts (SMEs) to gather information about the accommodation process, the legal requirements per the ADA, and the resources that were already available to faculty but may not be leveraged. Using this knowledge, I created a learning task map and conducted a topic analysis to serve as the foundation for my storyboard as I entered the design and development phases. Throughout the project, I continually consulted with my project supervisor and primary SME to ensure the curated content and resources aligned to the University's needs.
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After gaining approval for the storyboard, I shifted my focus to visual design, building high-fidelity mock-ups of the types of interactions that would be dispersed throughout the training. I consulted with my project supervisor about the level of accessibility for some of the intended interactions, including hot spot interactions and role-play scenarios. Upon receiving approval for the visual design, I smoothly transitioned to the development phase, constructing a prototype to demonstrate the training's interactivity. This paved the way for me to delve into the complete development of the project.
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Once the training was fully developed, I asked audience members and professional instructional designers to evaluate the project and provide feedback so that I could make revisions and recommendations to ensure a smooth implementation after handing the project over.
Learning Task Map
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After consulting with several subject matter experts (SMEs) to gather information about both physical and digital accessibility as well as the accommodation process, I created a learning task map that outlined the entry behaviors of faculty members at the local University and the desired behaviors upon completing the training. Through consulting with the SMEs, it was determined that the training should focus on knowledge acquisition and lower-level Blooms Taxonomy in order to fill in the inconsistent knowledge gaps of faculty. This helped us narrow down to four course goals and topics: faculty's role and responsibility in ensuring course accessibility, the resources and campus offices available for support, inaccessible and accessible print/learning materials, and common digital accessibility errors. This learning task map also helped me later create a sequencing flowchart for all the information and resources that I gathered during the design phase.
Sequencing Flowchart and Development Table​
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Once the design phase was completed, it was time to design the flow of the training through a text-based storyboard. This was a significant step that served as the blueprint for the overall development of the project. In this training, the instructional content progresses from concrete–learning facts and definitions–to more complex material, such as fixing errors in digital and print materials as well as in learning activities. The learning-related sequencing theory will ease faculty into the more challenging concepts through a logical progression of understanding, and the flowchart below showcases how faculty will not only understand the foundations of accessibility but also understand how to avoid creating inaccessible materials and learning environments for their students.
This flowchart shows the initial iteration of the training. After SMEs and members of the project team reviewed the training, it was decided that the learning content needed to be condensed in order to meet the target time constraints for the training. We chose to reduce the content in Section 3 since there are resources and trainings available for faculty that specialize in digital accessibility and course material design. Instead of going into detail about these topics, we chose to touch on it at a high-level and redirect faculty to those specific resources and trainings instead. This iterative process of sharing content and making revisions when necessary was challenging yet rewarding because I was able to receive feedback from instructional design professionals. Collaborating with other professionals and getting a fresh perspective on my work is important to ensure consistency, functionality, and overall flow of the eLearning experience. This also allowed me to swiftly move into storyboarding the training and bringing all the information together visually. An example of the high-level development table I used to plan the training's development can also be seen below.
Sequencing Flowchart
Development Table
Full Development​
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After collecting feedback and making several revisions, it was time to develop the project in full. The project consists of images and resources from the local University (which have been scrubbed due to intellectual property rights) and videos collected from YouTube, and it was developed directly in Articulate Rise.
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Favorite Features:
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Knowledge Checks: Dispersed throughout the training are a variety of knowledge checks. These knowledge checks range from scenario-based questioning, multiple choice, and sorting. These knowledge checks help faculty self-evaluate if they are understanding the learning content and also redirect them should they need more information.
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Accordions and Tabbed Interactions: Accordions and tabbed interactions were used in order to reduce faculty's cognitive load when reading the training content. These interactions are also entirely accessible, so those who require keyboard accessibility and screen readers will be able to successfully complete the training without missing important learning content.
Takeaways and Reflection
Timing is essential: I was given a lot of resources, data, and documents to sift through for my analysis. While it was nice to have an abundance of information, it was also challenging to decipher which information would be most important and valuable for the project. There was also a lot of research that I needed to do independently to support the resources I was given. Though finding the resources and research may not have been challenging, it was time consuming and took longer than I anticipated. The SMEs also had busy schedules, leading to scheduling conflicts. In the future, I would like to potentially offer SMEs and stakeholders other modes of communication apart from just interviewing them via virtual meetings. This project has also helped me understand the importance of prioritizing tasks, such as gathering resources and research.
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Scope changes are inevitable: It was difficult to navigate through the scope changes throughout the development phase because the reasons for changing were out of both mine and my supervisor's control. Some of the information and interactions that I thought were vital to creating an engaging product were actually not fully accessible, so that presented a challenge in itself. The learning curve of working with scope changes throughout the development phase will be an experience I often reflect on in future projects. Since this is likely a challenge I will come across in the future, I will be able to reflect on how the scope change was managed and the communication skills that were necessary in order for the group to come to a consensus.
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Appreciation for the ID process: The process of instructional design involves numerous stages, feedback cycles, and refinements. Even with prior knowledge of the process, diving into actual project development brings a whole new perspective. It's a journey that demands careful attention, a keen sense of detail, and a willingness to work patiently with technology. While certain stages posed greater challenges than others, I thoroughly enjoyed bringing my vision to life and am grateful for the collaborative effort that went into achieving this outcome.