OPEN to ALL
Using MERLOT to teach History Research Methods
KENNESAW STATE
UNIVERSITY
Elsa A. Nystrom
Professor of History
Carol Pope
Assistant Director,
Disabled Student Services
Scholarship & Technology
 Scholarly materials on the web
 Enormous quantities
 Easily accessed by most
 Reliable & unreliable
 American Memory - MERLOT.org
 Used by Faculty:
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Live in classrooms
Online classes
Nystrom & Pope
KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY
Kennesaw State University
 Demographics
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Located north of Atlanta
40 years old
3rd largest undergraduate student body
Less than 1/4 live on-campus
Full-time employed commuters
“Married with Children”
Nystrom & Pope
KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY
The Course that Changed
 Local History Research Methods: History
2275
 Required: History & Social Science ED Majors
 Objective;
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Teach students how to research & write an
original paper
Use primary documents (original sources)
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Letters and diaries
Eyewitness accounts
Newspapers and other publications
More
 Outcome; an original paper
Nystrom & Pope
KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY
The Course that Changed
 Students choose appropriate topic for
research
 Logistics
 4 trips to archives to locate primary sources
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Georgia Room - Cobb County Library
The Atlanta History Center
Carter Presidential Library
NARA - Southern Region
Nystrom & Pope
KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY
A Popular Course…
 Students enjoyed the topics & field trips
 But…
 Classes are taught in evenings:
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Many students work full-time
Many have small children requiring sitters
 High cost of fuel & time for the students
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Saturday morning trips still difficult
Distance to facilities - from KSU only
Some students drive over 1 hour to come to KSU
 And then…
Nystrom & Pope
KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY
A Point of Failure
One student enrolled who was legally
blind
 Result;
• Already in progress, the course could not change
• The student had to drop the class
 Decision;
• The course needed to be modified
•
•
For commuting students
For students with disabilities
Nystrom & Pope
KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY
Going Online
 Choices
 Use of MERLOT sites
 Selection of 4 from various historical periods
 Online documents available
 Selected
 http://www.1704.deerfield.history.museum/index.
html
 http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/robinson/
home/indexen.html
 http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/
 http://ccbit.cs.umass.edu/lizzie/
Nystrom & Pope
KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY
A Successful Course!
 Students enjoyed the content
 All 4 sites were heavily used
 Worked extremely well
 Commuting time & expense
 24/7 accessibility
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Working students
Students with families or young children
 But…
Nystrom & Pope
KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY
There’s still a problem…
None of the chosen sites were
accessible for students with disabilities
 What I found:
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Proliferation of online courses & resources
Many sites available for use
Frequently not accessible for disabled students
How little I knew about this problem
I hadn’t solved the problem for any disabled students
Nystrom & Pope
KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY
What Could I Do About It?
 It started with help from Carol Pope who…
 Verified none of the selected sites were ADA
compliant
 Contacted Virginia Center for Digital History

VCDH agreed to make “Valley of the Shadow” site
ADA compliant
 Explained ADA compliance to me
Nystrom & Pope
KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY
What is ADA compliance?
 Section 508 Rehabilitation Act
 Amended by Congress, 1998
 Applies to all Federal agencies
 All web pages must be Section 508 compliant
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Eliminate barriers
Make new opportunities available
Encourage development of new technologies
 Access comparable to the access available to
others - which means what?
Nystrom & Pope
KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY
Issues
 Non-Federal Electronic Media
 Some sites do follow Section 508
 No current government regulation
 An ever-evolving world
 Rapid change
 New technologies
 Development always chasing the need
 Unless you check you will not know
Nystrom & Pope
KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY
Challenges
 A wide variety of impairments
 Visual: low vision or no vision
 Hearing: deaf/hard of hearing
 Manual: varying degrees of physical ability
limiting use of mouse/keyboard
 Cognitive: How the brain takes in the information
to;
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Manipulate
Memorize
Organize
Respond
Nystrom & Pope
KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY
Assistive Technology
 Visually impaired
 Screen Readers
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JAWS, Window Eyes, Hal
 Text Readers
 Display Enlargers
 Hearing impaired
 Voice recognition software
 Closed captioning, or text equivalent of
sound
 Manual & Cognitive
 Dragon, ViaVoice
 Alternative Input Devices
 None are perfect
 Complicated to learn & use
 Much slower access for users
Nystrom & Pope
KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY
Resources
 World Wide Web Consortium
 Published; W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
 http://www.w3.org/WAI/
 Microsoft
 Suggestions provided for creating accessible
documents
 http://www.microsoft.com/enable/
 MAGPIE
 Developed by the National Center for Accessible
Media
 Freely available
 Supports Apple, Microsoft, and W3C
 Your in-house office for disabled students
Nystrom & Pope
KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY
Making It Work
 Faculty
 Verify online resources are accessible
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Contact the Webmaster for information
 Are your online courses or resources…
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Meaningful regardless of color?
Navigable without a mouse?
Fully informational without images?
Screen reader friendly?
Nystrom & Pope
KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY
Electronic Documents
 Provide:
 Text equivalent for all informative non-text
element
 Synchronized equivalent alternatives for
multimedia presentations
 Color information also available without color
 Row & column headers identified for all data
tables
 Pages designed to prevent screen flicker (above
or below 2 - 55 Hz)
 Check accessibility:
 http://www.colostate.edu/Dept/ATRC/tools.htm
Nystrom & Pope
KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY
Web
 Use WebCT “open files in same browser
window option”
 Inform when new frame or window opens
 Text explanation for complicated pages
 Content Compiler; allows creation of
contiguous collection of course notes
 Screen reader friendly captions for video
 Text alternative for audio elements
 Common format, downloadable materials
(PDF, RTF, TXT)
 Easy access for plug-ins or applets from
the page referenced
Nystrom & Pope
KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY
Common Software
 Word
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Format-style organization
Hard page-breaks
Page numbering
Tabs & indents
Word wrap
HTML, PDF, RTF or TXT
equivalents
 PowerPoint
 Create the presentation in
Outline view
 Add metadata
 Check readability (font size)
 High contrast design style
 Set and use “screen tips” for
links
 Accessibility wizard:
http://cita.rehab.uiuc.edu/sof
tware/office/
Nystrom & Pope
KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY
Why Do All This?
 Disability happens
 At birth
 An accident
 A disease
 Disability does not stop the desire to
know & learn
 Disability could affect anyone you
know…
Nystrom & Pope
KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY
Ellen Bomer
Survivor of the 1998 US Embassy Bombing, Nairobi, Kenya
I could not see anything, darkness
completely engulfing me. At this point I was
bargaining with God to let me have at least
one eye. "I could get by with one eye. That
would be OK. Just please don’t let me be
blind!"
http://ellen-bomer.com/main.html
Lenny McHugh
Retinitis Pigmentosa, an eye disease that affects a person's night
vision and peripheral vision. It is a genetic disorder
On six different occasions I was nominated to
receive the Governor's Most Outstanding
Handicap Employee of the Year Award. Up until
the time of my retirement, I was the only
employee to be presented with the Star of
Excellence Award on two occasions. This is the
highest award presented for outstanding service.
I can remember what was said during the first
presentation. The Secretary of Transportation
during the presentation said "Lenny isn't getting
this award because of his disability. He is getting
it in spite of it."
http://www.geocities.com/lenny_mchugh/
Michael Chorost
Winner of the 2006 PEN/USA Book Award for Creative Nonfiction
Dr. Michael Chorost (pronounced “kor-ist”) is an
internationally known authority on cochlear implants and
social issues raised by advances in medical technology.
He was born in New Jersey in 1964 with severe hearing
losses in both ears due to an epidemic of rubella. He
didn’t learn to talk until he got hearing aids at age 31⁄2.
Those enabled him to grow up speaking English more or
less normally, though, and he got a B.A. in English from
Brown and a Ph.D. in humanities computing from the
University of Texas at Austin.
http://www.michaelchorost.com/
Todd Anderson
C5 Quadriplegic, 1998 motor vehicle accident
Four years ago, Anderson, a 40-year-old who
lives in Derby, was on his way to work at
Bombardier Aerospace. He was northbound
on I-235 when his truck hit black ice and rolled
four or five times down an embankment.
The accident left him a C5 quadriplegic,
paralyzed from the chest level down.
He eventually went back to work at Learjet,
but in Web site design and graphic arts rather
than as an electrical engineer in the flight test
facility.
http://www.toddman.com/
Denise
Arthrogryposis
Hi all my name is Denise. I am 25 years
old, and I have a disability called
arthrogryposis. This disability involves all
four of my limbs. Arthrogryposis means
stiffness of the joints and muscles.
I attend college part-time. I am taking
Human Services as my major.
http://www.geocities.com/freakydude1357/mycoolpage.html
Is the Problem Solved?
 Online resource as double-edged sword
 Wide selection of information
 Available 99.9% of the time
 Broad range of views
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Papers done on Lizzie Borden
 No guarantee of accuracy
 Sorting wheat from chaff
 Opportunities for plagiarism
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Using Turnitin
 Hit & miss ADA compliance
 Do your homework
Nystrom & Pope
KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY
Questions?
 For electronic copies:
 Email: mailto:enystrom@kennesaw.edu
 Other web sites:
 http://learnware.uwaterloo.ca/projects/History
 http://guides.library.fullerton.edu/historians_toolbox/in
dex.html
Thank You!
Nystrom & Pope
KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY