The attraction to distance education among the disabled population is likely similar to those of the typical learner - distance education fulfils a desire to pursue flexible professional development and/or accreditation. People with disabilities are benefiting from great strides in innovation, including technologies associated with distance education. With ongoing improvements in adaptive technologies, there are more tools that enhance learning for the disabled. In countries such as the United States and Canada, educational institutions may apply for special needs funding to procure goods and improve services for students with special needs.

In fact, an instructor at The Rochester Institute of Technology used computer conferencing and email over a decade ago. Norman Coombs commented that these technologies "permitted a blind teacher to communicate written material with seeing students and have also facilitated his interactions with the hearing impaired without requiring the services of an interpreter".

Assistive technologies such as voice synthesisers, voice recognition devices, compact high-resolution screens and EZ Access Protocols are enabling people with disabilities to communicate and access information. By following Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, web developers are adhering to universal design principles and contributing to a growing body of online resources for people with disabilities.

Despite increasing awareness about technology issues, disabled learners continue to battle many accessibility challenges that the majority of learners do not. In the paper "Issues in Accessing Distance Education Technologies for Individuals with Disabilities", the authors identify three main issues:

• direct accessibility of hardware and software;

• accessibility of content presentation and use; and

• education of those who use the technology.

The findings from a research study on students with disabilities in distance education conducted by Susan Moisey at Athabasca University (Canada) leads her to conclude that "there is little doubt that distance education can enhance access to students with disabilities and that disability-specific support services can enhance success".

Source and further references:
www.developmentgateway.org/e-learning

COL has launched an online database of learning content that provides software to Commonwealth countries free of charge. Institutions or governments can establish a shared repository by accessing free open source software from COL's Learning Object Repository (LOR).

A number of online databases of learning content - or Learning Object Repositories - have been created around the world including CAREO, MERLOT and EdNA. COL has worked with eduSource and CANARIE (a not-for-profit corporation for advanced Internet development supported by its members, project partners and the Canadian Government) to develop the necessary tools, standards and protocols. The partners invested more than CDN $8 million in this venture. The software produced by this consortium has been made available in COL's Learning Object Repository under a free open source software license.

Vancouver-based 3waynet Inc. developed complementary open source software that, when used together, could provide a fully functioning repository. In co-operation with COL, 3waynet created all the programming "connective tissue" to make these systems work together and provide an easy-to-use web page to access content.

The system includes the ability to add information about the learning material ("learning objects") with "meta tags". These are IMS-compatible (IMS Schema 1.2.2) and the system is able to "federate-search" other repositories when the user is looking for learning materials. Installed on a local or shared server, this will enable course developers to locate learning materials along with the necessary copyright information from multiple continents.

COL is hosting the software and is collaborating with the African Virtual University, headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, that will upload and make available open source courseware that Commonwealth countries can access free of charge. COL anticipates partnering with other groups as awareness of the LOR grows. For more details, go to www.col.org/lor  or contact Paul West, Knowledge Manager and Education Specialist at pwest@col.org

The "blogosphere" is a continuously expanding, global forum for virtual discussion, debate and knowledge sharing. There were approximately 2.4 to 2.9 million active weblogs as of June 2003, according to the online source, ClickZ Stats. No doubt this has grown significantly since then. Weblogs have become a vehicle to ruminate on a wide range of subjects, from e-learning to politics.

Weblogs have many upsides including scalability and flexibility. They are relatively easy to create and maintain, as they do not require the writer to have advanced web publishing skills or a web administrator on hand. Similar to hard-copy diaries, weblog entries, often posted through e-mail, are chronological but are archived in reverse date order. Depending on the type of platform used, writers may also publish links to their papers, post photographs, provide audio content and include hyperlinks to other interesting resources on the Web. There are numerous commercial platforms for creating weblogs, including: Tblog, Blogger, Typepad, and Squarespace. The same companies will also host weblogs either free or for a subscription fee.

Weblogs can be powerful tools for promoting and developing literacy, as well as basic publishing skills. The weblog is often a beehive of activity as entries made by one writer may in turn be read and responded to by dozens of others. Classroom weblogs are being used for collaborative group learning. For example, one group of learners pose questions while another group provide feedback. Aside from teaching reading and writing skills, blogging assists learners to construct new knowledge through self-expression and interaction with their peers.

Weblogs are also perceived as an enabler for assembling and archiving knowledge within the community of practice. Despite being a relatively new communication and collaboration tool, weblogs are winning over decision makers and practitioners in the education world. In 2003, Harvard University created the Blogs at Harvard Initiative in order to digitise and integrate different departments and schools within the institution.

Source and further references:
www.developmentgateway.org

The learning management system (LMS) is the online environment in which students can read study material, share information with other students, chat online with classmates and submit assignments. These programmes, such as WebCT and ATutor, have a fairly standard suite of tools. The more expensive ones have a number of bells and whistles, many of which institutions don't really use.

The course material that is used within a learning management system is normally created by coarse authoring or assembly tools. One may create course material in a tool as simple as Microsoft Word, Netscape Composer or Microsoft FrontPage. The contents may also be created in a learning content management system (LCMS). The more modern learning management systems incorporate both LCMS and LMS in the same programme. For example, both ATutor and WebCT are both LMSs and LCMSs.

Since the LMS will be changed from time to time by the institution, depending on the costs and features of the products available to it, it is better to assemble the course material outside an LMS or LCMS. The content is then uploaded to a learning object repository (LOR), which stores all the individual pieces of the courseware (learning objects).

When time comes to deploy the learning objects in a formal course, the institution or person offering the programme may, at that stage, decide which LMS they wish to use, download the objects from the learning object repository and import them into the LMS. There may be a need for further formatting to ensure that the learning objects appear in good shape in the LMS.

Once the course material has been placed into the LMS, the participants are registered on the system. The registration of these participants on the LMS should not be confused with their registration in the student administration of a university. The university's student administration system takes into account many other aspects that a LMS does not need to worry about, such as the accounts payable and long-term academic record. In the interests of integration, it would be ideal to have the institution's learning management system sharing information with the institution's student administration system. The programmes to make this happen usually have to be written specifically for the institution and depend on the software that is used on both sides (LMS and student administration system).

Most LMSs have the ability to provide assessment of students by way of multiplechoice questions and submission of assignments. If more advanced testing is required, more specifically designed assessment engines might be required to supplement the ability of the LMS.