Adult Learning & Digital Accessibility Capstone

Gamified Professional Development · Adult Learning · Accessibility · Evaluation

The Challenge

At my campus, teachers were increasingly expected to use digital tools and online course content, but many had not received formal training in accessibility features that support students with disabilities.

That created a practical knowledge gap: teachers were using digital learning tools, but they did not always know how to make that content accessible or how to use the accessibility features already available to them.

The Audience

The learning experience was designed for adult high school teachers in a public-school setting.

Because the learners brought different levels of experience with technology and accessibility, the training needed to be practical, relevant, and focused on skills they could apply immediately.

The Solution

I designed a four-hour professional-development experience that combined direct instruction, hands-on technology practice, collaboration, and a gamified educational escape room.

The experience introduced accessibility concepts and tools, including screen readers, captions, speech-to-text, translation tools, color and contrast, plain language, and heading structure.

Rather than relying only on presentation-based instruction, the escape-room format allowed learners to apply what they had learned while solving problems collaboratively.

Design Approach

Adult Learning
The experience was designed around a clear workplace need and emphasized relevance, application, and problem-solving rather than passive content delivery.

Gamification
The escape-room structure created a reason for learners to interact with the content, practice skills, and work together toward a meaningful goal.

Application-Centered Practice
Learners worked directly with accessibility tools and concepts during the experience instead of only reading or hearing about them.

Alignment
Instruction, practice activities, and assessment were built around the same accessibility knowledge and skills so that the evaluation measured the content learners had actually practiced.

Development & Tools

The experience was developed using Canvas LMS as the learning environment, with additional assessment and interaction tools including Socrative.

Activities incorporated accessibility tools and features such as screen readers, speech-to-text, captions, Microsoft Translator, and other digital supports used in online learning.

Evaluation

I used a pretest/posttest action-research design to evaluate whether the intervention improved participants’ knowledge of digital accessibility.

A total of 27 participants were scheduled, and 20 completed both the pretest and posttest.

The assessment included 20 multiple-choice questions aligned to the accessibility content covered in the training.

Results

Every participant who completed both assessments improved.

Average performance increased from 35% on the pretest to 78% on the posttest, an increase of 42 percentage points.

85% of participants reached the Proficient or Mastery range following the intervention.

These results showed that the combination of direct instruction, hands-on practice, collaboration, and gamification was associated with substantial improvement in participants’ accessibility knowledge.

What I Took From the Project

This project reinforced something that still shapes how I approach instructional design: people learn better when they understand why the content matters, have a chance to use it, and receive an opportunity to apply it in a realistic context.

It also strengthened my interest in digital accessibility, adult learning, and using evaluation data to improve learning experiences.

Tools & Methods

Canvas LMS · Socrative · Adult Learning · Gamification · Digital Accessibility · Pre/Post Assessment · Action Research · Evaluation · Collaborative Learning