News & Events

eLearning & Academic Partnerships Receives Excellence in IT Innovation Award

By Stacy Gumula, Project Manager

In December, eLearning & Academic Partnerships was honored at the Information Technology Division's year-in-review event. The award honored the Online Accessibility Web Resources built and implemented by Senior Director Lisa Leach and her team, to improve accessibility on campus.

In order to be nominated for the award, a project must meet certain criteria. Special thanks for the nomination goes to Michael Faris, assistant professor of English, as he nominated eLearning and Academic Partnerships' Online Accessibility Web Resources. These resources include a comprehensive accessibility website, faculty training materials, and information about ALLY, a Blackboard tool for accessibility. ALLY integrates seamlessly into Texas Tech's learning management system, Blackboard Learn.

Within his submission, Faris noted the alignment of these accessibility resources with the university's strategic priority of educating and empowering a diverse student body. Faris said, "These resources help to advance and sustain a campus climate and culture characterized by accessibility and inclusiveness by helping teachers to make their classes (both onsite and online) more accessible to students with diverse abilities." He cited the tool as being well-designed, well-organized, and providing easily usable information for both faculty and students.

Texas Tech's Chief Information Officer Sam Segran explains that he introduced the award in 2017, to recognize Texas Tech areas and departments outside of the central IT division that have demonstrated exemplary use of innovative technology towards supporting Texas Tech's strategic initiatives and to make life better for students, faculty and staff. The event hosts staff and faculty from all over Texas Tech University as they formally highlight and review the IT division's accomplishments and completed projects.

"Throughout the year, there are numerous IT employees on campus who use their excellent IT skills in an innovative way to make life better for the entire Texas Tech community," Segran said. "These staff members reside in both central IT and in various departments at the university. For FY 2019, eLearning and Academic Partnerships was recognized as one of the four recipients of this award."

Accessibility is crucial across the entire campus to continue educating and empowering a diverse student body, part of Texas Tech's strategic plan. Leach leads the team for Online Accessibility at Texas Tech for eLearning as senior director for Instructional Design and Curriculum Development. Her project team honored with the award also includes Chyrel Mayfield, director, Instructional Design and Curriculum Development; Leslie DeBusk, assistant director, Blackboard Support; Terry Knight, instructional designer, Accessibility Services; the entire Curriculum and Design and Blackboard teams; and Kirsten Morris, a former graduate assistant and staff member in Accessibility.

"At Texas Tech University, accessibility matters," Leach said. "The eLearning team is committed to fostering a campus culture around accessibility that includes strategic planning, the use of ALLY, and building university wide buy-in. The resources and services we provide faculty and staff support this commitment."

Justin Louder, associate vice provost for eLearning & Academic Partnerships, emphasized the far-reaching nature of the project.

"The work this team has done directly impacts thousands of Texas Tech students and hundreds of faculty and staff every day," Louder said. "This project is changing the campus culture around accessibility and universal design for learning."

Of particular importance among the resources and services offered by the online accessibility team, is the ALLY tool. ALLY was developed to assist users with creating more accessible content and measuring the accessibility of files uploaded into Blackboard. This helps to provide immediate feedback for faculty and staff uploading materials for students. The tool scans the uploaded content and provides a score based on how accessible it is. The program goes on to provide detailed feedback on how to enhance the score to further support the student and the accessibility of the content. Below is a snapshot of how the gauges appear when content is uploaded.

• Low: File is not accessible and needs immediate attention.
• Medium: File is somewhat accessible and could use improvement.
• High: File is accessible but could be improved.
• Perfect: File is accessible. No improvement needed.

The tool has also been used to enhance accessibility beyond the university audience to include the staff and students enrolled in the completely online TTU K-12 program, for which Louder is also interim superintendent. This state-approved elementary, middle and high school offers a rigorous and innovative online learning experience for students around the globe.

The eLearning & Academic Partnerships division extends special thanks to the IT division for honoring the team and all of the hard work undertaken to make accessibility a priority.

The eLearning accessibility website explains more about accessibility and all of the services available including, video captioning, accessibility evaluations and training. There is also a wealth of information provided on accessibility basics, developing accessible emails, images, videos, PDFs and more.