Categories:
Inclusion and diversity may seem like contemporary concepts thanks to the significant advances in neuroscience and the increased visibility of the wide range of conditions a person can have. However, they have always been known and addressed to varying degrees by the skills of teachers, often leaving students who couldn’t meet the minimum standards as collateral victims.
Now, with technological advancements, we have the opportunity to address diversity from an inclusive perspective that overcomes the barriers posed by the teaching-learning process through tools that facilitate and adapt content. But how can we do this in a digital world?
Resources for All the Senses
The physical context is the most powerful teaching method. Experience reinforces learning by combining a multisensory situation: smells, tactile sensations, thoughts, tastes, sounds, and environment. However, adapting this to the vast variety of learning modes, especially for individuals with significant sensory or motor conditions, is challenging and costly.
Therefore, it’s necessary to have multi-format resources, something common with digital objects but not so much when governed by academic rigor and veracity. Nonetheless, these digital objects must fit into a digital context that facilitates access, which is why accessibility is key.
Accessibility is not just about finding things easily or having aids to deliver information; it’s primarily about having an ecosystem that eliminates existing and future barriers so that learning happens smoothly.
Thus, a solution that offers flexibility to adapt to various information access systems available to students is necessary, regardless of whether they use a mobile, tablet, or personal computer. It should also have a user-friendly design that makes it easy to navigate and find what one is looking for, and once found, the viewer should have the necessary aids to deliver the information to the users.
Finally, it should be capable of integrating the widest possible diversity of multi-format resources effectively, orderly, and attractively.
The Key to Functional Design
Now that we have a flexible and adaptable environment that meets the users’ needs and provides resources in multiple formats, it’s not enough to have good ingredients to cook a good dish; you need to know how to use them.
Therefore, Universal Design for Learning is necessary. It not only involves adapting, but also equipping and organizing resources coherently in various access formats so that the student has diverse stimuli that promote learning. These resources should be organized coherently for students to refer to them when required.
To achieve this, digital learning contexts must offer tools and be flexible enough to provide a canvas for digital objects, multi-format resources, and effective developments.
The Result: Efficient Training
Finally, now that we have the right resources and an effective workflow, it’s crucial that the execution of this training is efficient.
Traditional reactive teaching models offer a single, horizontal learning path without attention to individual needs. However, the consolidation of active methodologies and the digital learning environment will provide two essential elements:
- The ability to execute training actively, where each challenge or project can be approached in multiple ways, allowing each student to choose the one that best suits them.
- The ability to promote collaborative and social activities, where capacities and potentials are synergized, resulting in outcomes greater than the sum of individual talents.
Therefore, various tools that enable student communication are necessary, something highly enhanced in today’s digital society, as well as a digital ecosystem that facilitates active methodologies.
ODILO, The Unlimited Learning Ecosystem
In this context, ODILO stands as a platform offering an unlimited digital learning ecosystem due to its flexibility and adaptability, providing educators with the necessary plasticity to deliver messages effectively, with appropriate resources, and an efficient experience.
The ODILO solution is compatible with any adapted browsing application across multiple devices, whether in native apps on mobile phones or tablets, or personal computers with other access systems.
This allows individuals with visual, auditory, and/or motor conditions to use their existing access systems without needing a new one, greatly facilitating information access. Additionally, ODILO’s native players adapt to users’ needs through voice navigation, viewing options, etc.
Moreover, ODILO’s authoring tool provides not only an integrative environment for all types of digital objects (gamified, animated, audiovisual, etc.) and a template system adapted to active methodologies but also integrated AI assistance that gives educators or instructional designers an incremental advantage:
- Tailoring content to the needs and application context, bypassing all possible barriers.
- Adapting the message to the conditions of the recipients, such as easy reading, increasing comprehension.
- Structuring dynamic and progressive sessions that help students follow the class, enhancing effectiveness.
For all these reasons, ODILO is a unique, frictionless solution that promotes the inclusion of all its users, facilitating access to information, promoting freedom, and democratizing education. With the potential to educate and train, regardless of the mode, it offers an unlimited digital learning ecosystem to maximize everyone’s potential.