Re: FW: EOWG: Agenda & material for this week

Dear All

May I suggest that we give consideration to the work on developing
curriculum guidelines that were part of the  EU funded project Design for
All@eInclusion. We developed guidelines for a Masters level programme in
Design for All which included a module called Accessible Web Design.
Details are now published at http://www.dfaei.org/curricula.html and
available to be used under Creative Commons with attribution.

The development of the guidelines involved partners of EDeAN with
representatives from 23 EU countries. Middlesex Uni led the work package
and education and training. As well as working closely with our partners I
ensured that we took account of the European Qualifications Framework (EQF)
that came into effect from 2010. This is intended to harmonise
qualifications in order to support mobility of labour (implicitly it
acknowledges substantial differences in academic practice in Europe). See
http://ec.europa.eu/education/pub/pdf/general/*eqf*/broch_en.pdf

In effect three things are important: the content, the level it is taught
at, and the national educational context. The EQF and UK higher education
practice is to use 'learning outcomes' - a measurable description of what
the student should achieve, to define the learning. These were 'new' to
most of our EU partners but are coming into more common use in academic
circles.
Learning outcomes are deliberately somewhat abstracted - and leave the
educator scope to determine the actual materials and delivery method used.
One advantage of this abstraction is that methods of delivery and
assessment can be varied to improve accessibility of learning, and
including distance learning.
However the language is formalised and directly relates to the level of
knowledge and skills - at lower levels the student just needs to know facts
while at the higher levels the student is expected to demonstrate problem
solving and discovering new knowledge at the frontiers of current
knowledge.

I'll skip the full background of this three year project, the point is that
it would be advisable for any curriculum development to harmonise with
existing mainstream further and higher education processes and practices.
The Guidelines represent at important stage in the process of developing
and validating new courses and we told our EU reviewers that we would like
to see new courses developed through Europe and worldwide!

In relation to work based learning and professional development, one of our
project partners also developed a Universal Design curriculum which was
taken forward as a CEN workshop agreement.

I would be happy to bring forward further information to EOWG about both
sets of guidelines.
Regards
Suzette









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> On 18/01/2012 14:30, "Shawn Henry" <shawn@w3.org> wrote:
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> >  EOWG,
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> >The agenda for this week is updated at: http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/#agenda
> >
> >Also, remember Actions for all EOWG in January listed under
> >http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/#announcements
> >And your action items in Tracker, sorted by person at
> >http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/track/actions/open?sort=owner
> >
> >Talk to you Friday (and I guess Saturday early morning for Andrew <grin>).
> >
> >~Shawn
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