Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Introduction

Online learning has become a core part of the learning experience for many college students around the world. During the Covid-19 pandemic, many classroom activities were forced online. Although many students enjoy being online, there is a large cohort of students who did not enjoy the process and the learning tools that were available to them were unsuitable for their complex needs.

When looking at the statistics of students who have one or more learning difficulties, the concept of isolation and hope of independent learning becomes a little more difficult. Students who are aware of their learning difficulties are only one fraction of the picture as many other students may not be aware that a learning difficulty is impacting their learning and many only find out later in life as is often the case.

Despite the efforts of many people, many of the existing solutions that exist for online education often fall short of providing any sort of custom learning experience for the student. This typically happens as many of the online learning environments place a large emphasis on the tooling process for the educators who will be using the platform and less on how the content is going to be delivered to the students. Where this technology becomes an issue is when students who do not fully grasp the content are faced with an additional situation of navigating through all the content while trying to understand the basics of the subject. This is then often coupled with additional stressors such as the environment the learner is in and any additional learning disabilities change their learning experience.

This book is designed to provide a detailed understanding of the issues many learners face and how customized online learning tools can aid their education experience.

1.2 Learning disabilities and difficulties

Learning disabilities/difficulties come in many different shapes and forms, and often a learner with one may have another one. As more people seek a diagnosis, learners have found out earlier in their education journey. However, some may never find out, but find the specific tools or learning strategies helpful. This is a non-exhaustive list of some of the typical difficulties a learner could be dealing with when they are in a classroom environment. Some in this list are not difficulties, merely a difference in how the person behaves or perceives the classroom environment.

Autism - The learner may work in their personal environment better, and have issues with the regulation of emotions and the process of understanding facial expressions in other people. This can often become difficult in some environments such as a group-based setting, where the learner may not understand the intentions or wants of other learners in the group. Background sounds and classroom textures impact how the learner will feel.

Anxiety - Although separate, they are often co-occurring. A learner with anxiety may be always concerned if they are progressing, whether are they learning what is relevant, and become stressed about deadlines and outcomes.

ADD/ADHD - The learner can have issues with the process of concentration. Building up the momentum required for a task can be a very overwhelming process and the learner often finds themselves unable to focus on a task even if they wish to.

Dyslexia - The learner can commonly have issues with the spelling of words and often easily mixes up words. The process of writing can be a challenge, and the learner typically has issues with the quality of their writing.

Dyspraxia / Fine motor skills - The learner will have issues with sustained use of fine motor skills such as writing text.

Dyscalculia - The learner can have issues with numbers. This can pose an issue when working on individual math problems and trying to remember numbers during the process.

Dysgraphia - The learner can have issues turning their thoughts into written text. Spelling and grammar rules also fall into this. They can also have issues turning their ideas into text.

Dysphasia/Aphasia - The learner can have issues with spoken language. This can be seen in cases where a learner is presented with a lecture in person or a video recording of a person speaking through tasks or topics.

Depression - The learner may be suffering from depression as an ongoing difficulty during their daily life, or may currently be passing through a depression. Depression can have a far-reaching impact on the student’s daily motivation, ability to focus, and outlook on the workload for the rest of the semester.

Visual processing - The learner may have issues with how items are presented and telling the difference between items such as shapes. Learners also have issues with patterns and the ordering of words.

Auditory processing - The learner may have issues with spoken instructions. This can be seen in settings where the learner is required to follow spoken instructions from an educator or a recording of a lecturer speaking.

Language processing - the learner has issues with language in spoken form or written form. The vocabulary, syntax, and semantics of language may be an issue for them.

Non-verbal learning difficulties - Issues decoding the human side of communication such as intention or facial cues.

Visual perceptual/visual motor deficit - Lose their place while learning and have hand-eye coordination issues. They also may have issues tracking objects or text in a book. The process of jumping from one item to another may cause an issue for them.

The main takeaway from the list of learning difficulties a learner may have is that each different learner can have one or multiple different difficulties at the same time. In addition, this is not only how they perceive things, the learner may also have issues with the cognitive side of tasks such as remembering, recalling, and the formulation of tasks or ideas in written and spoken forms.

These difficulties are what form the basis for this book and formulate the core question we pose with this book: How can we accommodate our learners through technology to enhance their learning experience?

1.3 Online Learning Domain

How technology is used to deliver online learning content to students has drastically changed in the last number of years. Three main areas need to be considered for online learning:

  1. The learning platform - Such as Moodle, Blackboard or Brightspace. These online learning platforms provide a structured content delivery to students.

  2. Mobile applications - Often many students find themselves in situations where they do not have access to their laptop or desktop and rely on mobile applications.

  3. The content - How the content is given to the learner such as video-based formats, PowerPoint files, or PDF files.

In addition to the platform, who is also teaching often becomes another consideration. Often students rely on content that is most accessible to them at that moment. In older days, a focus was placed on the official documentation as a source of reference for a Project, now many online video solutions provide a details walkthrough of how specific components can be built and delivered to users and are often packaged with additional source files for reference.

1.4 Technology crossroads (What we can pull in)

With the additional advent of cloud computing and the large push towards AI Many different solutions have been developed to aid the learner in planning and completing assignments, from thesis structures to generating custom code, a new landscape of plagiarism becomes an issue for educators.

Rather than pushing these technologies away, we can embrace them to create a new digital learning experience for our students.

  1. Web browser extensions
  2. API integration
  3. AI/LLM integration
  4. Self-hosted application solutions

A new area working in the browser What level of integration can be achieved? What level of technology the users are accustomed to?

Tools for both the educator and the student (dashboards for the educator)

1.5 Who this book is for

First and foremost this book is for web developers who have a basic understanding of HTML, JavaScript, and the process of hosting a web application. To ensure everyone is up to speed, the basics of application hosting for the examples shown in this book will also be covered.

1.6 What you need

Each of the examples in this book is designed to be a standalone implementation that can easily be integrated into any environment with minimum effort. To replicate these examples, the Google Chrome web browser is recommended. Node.js version 20.2 is recommended for the examples.

1.7 How this book is structured

This book is designed to break down the core elements of a learner's life in a college environment. Each chapter in this book begins with an area that can be addressed through technology and then follows on to outline what type of learning difficulties can be impacted by this area.

After this, each chapter provides detailed working examples of the solutions that can be employed in the learner's online environment to help them. Although a summary of these difficulties is provided, it is important to remember that many students have more than one co-existing learning difficulty and they are not mutually exclusive.

Each of the code examples provided navigates through a given solution. However, this is not always the optimal method of delivery for everyone. At the end of each chapter, a complete code listing for the described code is provided for easy integration into your solutions.

1.8 Chapter overview

This section provides a brief breakdown of each of the chapters of this book.

Chapter 1: Introduction - This chapter introduced the areas of difficulty many learners face and highlighted the need for customized solutions.

Chapter 2: Getting started - As we are using several different tools and environments, this chapter describes how to set up a development environment along with debugging tips.

Chapter 3: Visual schedule extension - We begin by creating a custom JavaScript-based Chrome extension to allow the learner to visually track their timetable and weekly commitments.