Digital Madness: Has there been a full moon this week? Server not found! Really!? Murphy’s Law: Revised for the New Digital Age of E-learning.

My blog says: “Server not found!”

What has happened to the server?

What server can’t be found?

The rest of my internet is working!






It seems like my technological nightmare never ends. After a week of digital hell, that has negatively impacted not just my E-learning, but also my stress levels, it seems like I have been thrown yet one more challenge.

Why does this happen just as I go online to edit my blog and get it ready for final presentation? Will these digital problems never end?  

Murphy’s Law: Revised for the New Digital Age of E-learning.

Here is the short list of how I have been impacted in just one week by Murphy’s law, “What can go wrong, will go wrong!"

• Our neighbourhood internet went down, on a night I had scheduled to do E-learning.
•  My computer crashed two days before I was scheduled to do my online presentation.
• The loaner computer had Internet connectivity problems and operating system stability issues.
• The local power went off just as I had scheduled time to try to re-create references that had been lost when my computer crashed. 
• The external web cam I was lent for my presentation seemed to be recognized by the loaner computer, but failed to work within the Adobe Connect environment. 
• My uploaded PPT Adobe Connect presentation was transformed into something out of a nightmare.
• Where is WYSIWYG when you need it? Adobe Connect needs this. 
• Many of my slides had nothing but black lines on them and other slides had serious formatting challenges. Do you know what this slide says? The slide below show an example of what my PPT presentation looked like online in one version.

•  I logged into Adobe Connect as “Test” to test my PPT slides, then I couldn’t log back in as anything other than Test. Was it you Rory who said, you were going to “call a Red Alert because we had an intruder named ‘Test’ on the system?” 
• After I uploaded the presentation I couldn’t re-open it, because on my computer I could only visibly see in the scroll section about 10 presentations that had been previously uploaded by others into the Adobe Connect system, but just my luck those 10 alphabetically organized presentations were ones that had been labelled with a name that starts with a letter near the end of the alphabet. My presentation started with “A” for Accessibility of E-Learning. This wasn’t the same for all students. Michael said he saw presentations in alphabetical order starting with A. I renamed my file Z-Accessibility of E-learning and uploaded it yet again, to be able to open it during the online class. 
• While presenting the uploaded PPT presentation, it took on a mind of its own and started changing slides all my itself. Help?! Runaway presentation alert. Thanks Michael for reloading the presentation several times so I could try to continue to focus on presenting. 
•  I have also had challenges with cell phone systems not working due to cellular connectivity challenges on campus, making group work hard. 

And now...this is the final straw!

• Today just when I planned to edit and polish off my blog project, I can’t get into the blog. Why? The server is down? What?!? The rest of my Internet is working. How many problems can go wrong in one week? 

Does Murphy’s Law of Digital E-Learning ever end?

As I reflect on what I have learned about digital issues in education, here is what I think. On the one hand, E-learning offers inspiring new options that can capitalize on many new Web 2.0 tools and engage students in wonderful new ways of retrieving information and sharing their knowledge. On the other hand, it is not just accessibility issues that can get in the way of students and teachers effectively using these E-learning tools.

The list above illustrates just how many different ways E-learning in a digital age can go wrong. Such digital challenges may interact with accessibility challenges for students with disabilities to make the problems even worse. For example, if a student who uses Kurzweil as a type of AT has a computer crash, it is unlikely that a friend will be able to loan them a computer that has Kurzweil installed. Kurzweil is $1400 and allows a limited number of installations, so reloading it on a computer that does not belong to you is also not a viable option. If campuses have loaner laptops for students, do the laptops have AT loaded?

As I also reflect on the topic of this blog: Digital Technology: Education, Career, and DisAbility, I worry about how so many technological malfunctions will affect the mental health of our students. I know that I had to call upon every psychological and social resource I had in order to cope with so many technological challenges in such a short period of time, especially at a critically sensitive time period. How will students with diagnosed mental health challenges cope with so many unpredictable stressors coming at them at times of academic pressure? The Ministry of College and Universities (2008) reported there have been big increases in the number of students with disabilities on university campuses, especially between the 2003-2004 academic year and the 2007-2008 academic year. In particular, in Ontario, the number of students with psychiatric diagnoses has increased from 1,736 students in 2003-2004 to 3,966 students in 2007-2008. In other words, the number of students with diagnosed psychiatric disabilities has more than doubled in just 4 short years.

Most students benefit from being able to be proactive planners in their educational journey. They also benefit from having accessibility, on all levels, to the academic resources and E-learning systems they are using. When documents and systems are not only inaccessible, but also operate inconsistently or not at all, especially at peak periods of academic pressure, how will this impact student mental health? How will such problems impact students who may already have diagnosed mental health challenges?   

Asuncion, Fichten, and Wolforth , J. (2006) reported that 44% of the Canadian postsecondary students with disabilities that they surveyed had more than one disability. Having multiple disabilities may serve to augment the challenges. The pie chart graphically illustrates the proportions of different disability sub-categories within Ontario universities in 2007-2008 with the corresponding student numbers presented within each slice of the pie.  Underneath each of these 2007-2008 numbers are bracketed numbers which represent the comparison numbers for each disability sub-type from the 2003-2004 academic term, five years earlier. The number of students with disabilities in higher education seems to be growing in all disability sub-categories.

: Disability Sub-Categories as Proportions of Total Number of University Students with Disabilities in 2007-2008 (compared to 2003-2004 numbers shown in brackets) (MTCU, 2008)

         

In a age when there is so much at stake for students to be successful in higher education, having so many possible sources for technological and digital challenges that can interfere with proactive planning may be too much for many students to withstand, not just students with disabilities who may already encounter numerous other accessibility issues. So teachers beware, employing E-learning has potential for inspiring augmented learning outcomes, but it also has potential to create chaos and student stress.

More work is needed to guide educators and policy makers in how to create more stable and accessible learning environments. Students need to know where to turn when they experience technological or accessibility challenges. They also have to have quick turnaround times and accessible back-up options. Obtaining a higher education is important to future career opportunities for students. Ensuring that E-learning is accessible is not only important, it is now written in Ontario law.  More training, support, and research is needed into how to create not just accessible documents and web sites, but also accessible systems that will facilitate stable usability and decrease stress, not augment it.

References:

Asuncion, J., Fichten, C., & Wolforth , J. (2006, November).  College and university students with disabilities speak out on their eLearning experiences. Paper presented at the NEADS National Conference. Ottawa. Retrieved from    www.neads.ca/conference2006/powerpoint/adaptech_en.ppt

Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities. (2008, November). Disabilities statistics at Ontario universities for discussion at IDIA.  Paper presented at the meeting of Inter-University Disability Issues Association, Toronto.