Assuming learners can “figure out” any ICT

Learners from diverse backgrounds enter post-secondary institutions with more digital competencies and greater access to technology than ever before. Many institutions encourage educators to embrace new information communication technology (ICT) in their teaching and learning environments to “keep up with” the skills and interests of an increasingly digitally “savvy” student body.

However, not all learners are able to meaningfully engage with all forms of ICT. In his book Academic Ableism, Jay Dolmage teases out historic conflations of literacy and illiteracy with ability and disability. (Jay T Dolmage, 2017) In our contemporary academic context, he challenges readers to pause and question the universal relevance of multimodalities and multiliteracies to all learners.

Dolamge further cautions against adopting an ethos that uncritically accommodates “savvy” learners’ need to live on technology’s bleeding edge, challenging all learners to “figure out” how to learn on the edge with them. This ethos privileges a certain kind of learner while creating the conditions for other learners to request academic accommodations (or privately negotiate with the educator if they aren’t registered for accommodations) to work around technology-integrated learning assessments, communities and environments that disable them.

Ableist Assessment Requirements Privilege Some Learners While Disabling Others.

Educators can inadvertently create disabling assessment requirements by:

• Specifying novel ICT
  Trying out a new tool might be a fun challenge for some learners but it can add stress, time and unknown digital accessibility hurdles for others.
• Requiring the use of a specific ICT
  Is there really only one ICT that learners could use to effectively demonstrate learning? If you are open to learners using other ICT have you explicitly communicated your flexibility?
• Putting limits on how a learner can operate an ICT.
  High-stakes, timed assessments that use lockdown browsers, restrict backtracking, or limit learners’ use of right-click might be inconvenient for some but it can be utterly disabling for others if it limits the use of their assistive technology, or blocks them from using success strategies in an uncompromising digital assessment environment.

An institutional learning culture that privileges the people who can “figure out” any ICT fosters a hierarchy of both power and academic success relative to “savviness.” At the same time, it casts shadows and aspersions over learners who may be abundantly capable in other ICT environments but are disabled by one specified environment, or one specified task within an otherwise operable environment.

Questions to Consider at the Assessment Design Stage

• Is it important to the expected learning outcomes that a learner “figure out” a specific technology?
• Must they work unassisted in the ICT environment? Do they know that they can seek assistance to operate the technology?
• Is the ICT environment a meaningful, accessible environment for all learners in the course?
• Are assessment requirements flexible enough for learners to choose ICT that is meaningful and accessible to them?
• Is the specified ICT fully or only partially operable via assistive technology?
• If an environment is not fully operable to some learners, have you offered an option with an equitable learning experience to the class, not just the one learner who you know uses assistive tech?

Offering assessment options that allow learners to best demonstrate their learning should be paramount over requiring learners to work independently to demonstrate knowledge AND proficiency in a specific ICT environment.

Note: Educators designing assessments around a domain-specific ICT (for example R for a quantitative research methods course) need to be aware of operability issues or other accessibility issues that students with disabilities may encounter. If accessibility issues with a specific ICT are slowing a learner’s progress or hampering their learning, that needs to be problem-solved with the learner (possibly with the assistance of accessibility services, or the ICT vendor, or faculty tech support) in time for the learner to succeed in the course and without causing undue stress to the learner.