Floe Collaborations
Introduction
The Floe Project collaborates with a wide variety of partners to assist them in their open education projects. The Floe Project has helped partners improve access to content and expand inclusion through practical resources, accessibility and inclusion audits, and assistance in implementation of digital curb cuts.
Partnerships and Collaborations
The NROC Project
Floe has been working with the NROC Project to address unique accessibility design challenges related to math learning content. In March 2019, through Floe, the IDRC will be attending the annual NROC Members Meeting to host a panel on designing and thinking inclusively in open education.
Center for Creative Leadership
Floe is working with the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) to create a web application that identifies and nurtures personal leadership values. By working with CCL's designers and developers, Floe helping improve usability for a spectrum of learning differences.
Together with CCL, the IDRC will help host a workshop on inclusive design in April 2019.
Edify
Edify is a company developing education technology which has been contracted by The NROC Project to develop and maintain EdReady - a learning management system. The design of EdReady was done by Blue Marble. In 2015, a WebSavvy web accessibility audit was performed on the student and instructor portals on EdReady which identified a number of deficiencies related to WCAG 2.0 compliance. The IDRC, through the Floe Project, was asked by NROC in late 2015 to collaborate directly with Edify to build up capacity within Edify staff, and improve the accessibility and inclusiveness of the EdReady front end. One particular issue identified during the meetings was the usage of modal dialogs. To address the design and accessibility concerns related to modal interactions, the Modal Dialogs guide was written for the Inclusive Learning Design Handbook.
See: Edify Collaboration
Lumen Learning
The Floe Project assisted Lumen Learning by performing an analysis of some of the interactive assessments and learning tools within their platform. Floe provided Lumen short-term and long-term recommendations to help improve accessibility and inclusion. From this partnership, Floe created the "(Inclusive) Web Games and Simulations" entry in the Inclusive Learning Design Handbook as a resource to help other organizations.
See: Lumen Learning Analysis of Utility Simulation
Digital Promise
Digital Promise is creating the "Learner Positioning System" which aims to help curriculum developers and educators identify strategies and address factors to improve learning experiences. In this on-going collaboration, Floe is assisting Digital Promise in identifying areas to improve accessibility, usability, and inclusion.
Pressbooks and Rebus
Floe is involved in the Pressbooks open source community providing insights and resources related to accessibility and inclusion. Floe's previous research into authoring and feedback tools will play an important part in the authoring and creation of open textbooks through Rebus and Pressbooks.
Hypothes.is
Floe is collaborating with Hypothes.is by providing technical and design knowledge related to web accessibility and usability. Two community meetings were held to analyze the Hypothes.is web annotation tool, and practical feedback was given to improve screen reader and keyboard access.
PhET
Interactive games can provide rich learning experiences for students - but for some, these games are not accessible. Designing an educational game which can be enjoyed by a broad spectrum of users can be a challenge. The Floe Project has been collaborating with content partners to create more inclusive and accessible interactive content. This has resulted in a more accessible version of the PhET simulation John Travoltage, innovations in multi-modal access and descriptions, and sonification of STEM interactives. The knowledge gained from this collaboration has helped contribute new content to the Floe Inclusive Learning Design Handbook.
Floe has also been assisting PhET's partners, like ETS Group and Macmillan Learning, in creating accessible and inclusive interactives.
PhET and Georgia Tech Sonification Labs
Floe has been collaborating with Georgia Tech and PhET to create reusable sonification tools to enhance rich learning experiences. Floe has also been providing sound design feedback for several sonification prototypes, including the Build an Atom simulation.