I’ve have just finished reading a book at the British Cycling team and their meteoric rise over the past 10 years. As a keen cyclist the book provides a number of insights into how the team operated. There is one section in particular that raised a number of questions.

Sir Chris Hoy started to compete in an event called the Keirin several years ago when the Kilo event was removed from the Olympics. For those of you who have caught a bit of track cycling on the TV it’s the one where they all ride behind a motorbike at increasingly high speeds. The cycling aficionados amongst you will know that Keirin originates from Japan and is remains hugely popular. Kieran riders earn vast sums and enjoy celebrity status due to the massive amounts that are bet on the outcome of races. Increasingly overseas riders saw the money on offer and wanted to compete in Japan, to date without a great deal of success. Before any overseas rider can compete in a Japanese event they have to undertake a rigorous 2 week training camp, where one of the tasks involves taking a bike to pieces without dropping a tool and re-assembling it in a set order.

At the end of the 2 week course there is a test. Pass the test and you can ride in events, fail and you can’t. Simple.

It was the test aspect of the course that interested me the most. One of the cyclists commented on the monotony of the course and the sheer basic nature of the course content…but…he remained ‘switched on’ at all times as if you didn’t pass the test you couldn’t ride. The rider attended all of the sessions, took everything on board, put up with the monotony to ensure that he was ready for the test. He took the test, passed and rode in events.

Reading this particular chapter really made me think of all the courses where the qualification is vital to future success and progress but the learning experience is often disappointing for those involved. I’ve spoken to my friends who have attended courses that have not been challenging and focused purely on getting the badge. I’ve also got my own experience to share. Over 5 years ago I took my PRINCE 2 exams; the first 2 days pretty much consisted of highlighting pages from the course book. I was somewhat disillusioned by this and in the revision periods at the end of the day I actually tried to gain a deeper understanding of what the course was about. It was only at the first multiple choice exam that I realised what I was being prepared for. Each of the sections I had highlighted had been linked to potential answers in the multiple choice exam. Once this was passed the whole teaching style changed as we approached an open book written exam. I’d not thought about this course until after I’d finished reading the Keirin chapter and it all came back to me!

I might be missing something here but after spending the last 15 years working in e-learning and new media it is still far more common to have a conversation about accessibility when talking to a client about a website than a piece of e-learning. Website design has made great strides in supporting usbaility standards, although it still has work to do. With all the different platforms, browsers and technologies it is difficult to achieve complete standards compliance but it does appear to be a common theme in the web design areas. Within e-learning its just doesn’t seem to have the same importance at the moment.

We have worked with e-learning teams where we have created levels of content to provide as much access as possible. NCSL is a fine example of an organisation that has a really clear set of guidelines for developers that includes their position on accesible content. These guidelines help everyone involved are opened up for developers to suggest improvements and also to challenge.

I’m sure that accesibility is a consideration for lots of learning providers, developers and trainers but it doesn’t seem to have the same weight within e-learning. A simple google search saw these results for the term accesiibility e-learning (7,280,000 results) website accessibility (64,500,000) - quite a difference. There are clearly a number of practitioners and researchers carrying out a great deal of work in this area and my google search is hardly a thorough piece of research but I did find the numbers interesting. I’ve got lots of friends and colleagues in the industry who are looking at accessibility but does the industry really discuss what’s needed?

Has the time come for the e-learning industry to look a set of standards relating to accessibility for e-learning design could help? A set of design standards and good practice might also bring some balance to the tender process where so much of the evaluation process is based on price. I know that lots of e-learning practitioners are carrying out great work in this area but isn’t time we all come together?

Thoughts?

During my web searches I found several interesting links and articles:

http://www.skillsforaccess.org.uk/

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearningpedagogy.aspx

http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue51/ball-rvw/