Month: December 2023

I identified document analysis as a pertinent research approach for my ARP, based on my reading of Bowen (2009).

Why choose the WSG for analysis?

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded by Tim Berners-Lee (creator of the web) in 1994 to ensure the long-term growth of the web. (World Wide Web Consortium 2023). They provide web standards that those developing websites should follow in order to ensure quality.

These include the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, which in line with the 2018 accessibility regulations must be followed by all public sector bodies – including universities. In my role as a learning technologist, understanding and following these guidelines is vital to ensure online learning content at UAL is accessible and inclusive and this has been a large focus of my PgCert coursework.

Therefore when W3C released the draft version of the WSG in 2023 this signalled a big moment for web sustainability as there is now a recognised standard for this and designated guidelines for best practice. While it is not yet a legally binding standard like the accessibility guidelines, it signals the intent for where we need to go next.

Overview of the WSG

• Nearly 100 guidelines for making websites and digital products more sustainable.
• Guidelines are divided into user experience design, web development, hosting infrastructure & systems, and business strategy & product management.
• Guidelines are also categorised by their impact level from low to medium to high.
• They are also categorised by their effort level from low to medium to high.

Strategy for analysis

One parallel I can draw between accessibility guidelines and sustainability guidelines is that both can feel like complex concepts that are difficult to understand and deliver. To help build a foundation of understanding, learning technologists in helping colleagues understand digital accessibility often focus on the easier topics (the more complex ones being things that learning technologists themselves can focus on). For this project I have taken a similar approach, as I think mastering the simpler aspects of web sustainability is a good place to start. Looking at the questionnaire results, UAL learning technologists 64% of respondents fell unconfident about advising other staff members about digital sustainability best practice.

For that reason I manually created a report that included only the low effort actions, as what I want to get from these guidelines are a select number of very easy things someone working in online learning can do now to bring sustainability into their practice.

Once I found all of the low effort actions, which totalled to 37, I needed to read through each them carefully and decide whether they would be feasible actions within the the context of online learning and UAL. So for example, guideline 4.5 “Limit Usage Of Additional Environments” might be a low effort action for someone involved in hosting, infrastructure and systems. However, it isn’t something a learning technologist or lecturer could do to make their online learning practice more sustainable. I therefore needed to read through each of the low effort guidelines to determine whether these could easily adopted within the online learning context at UAL.

The below file includes the analysis of low effort WSG and to what degree each guidelines could be feasible for UAL digital learning.

Findings and conclusions

There were ultimately 10 low effort digital sustainability guidelines that I considered to be feasible for UAL digital learning teams:

1. Take a More Sustainable Approach To Image (and media) Assets: “Of all the data which comprises the largest over-the-wire transfer rates within the average website or application, images are usually those which are responsible due to their quantity and usefulness. As such, doing all you can to reduce their size and unnecessary loading will be beneficial for reducing emissions.” This is especially pertinent for an art and design institution, where our image output and usage may well be higher than average and thus the need to do everything we can to reduce our emissions here. This involved assessing the need for images, considering the quantity, format, and size necessary for implementation, optimising images by resizing and compressing, having a maintenance and usage policy for images.
2. Write With Purpose, In An Accessible, Easy To Understand Format: this point nicely intersects with accessibility principles of writing clearly (without jargon or unnecessarily complicated language), using clear document structure, visual hierarchy, headings, bulleted lists, line spacing, and using defined and consistent terminologies/nomenclatures.
3. Reduce The Impact Of Downloadable Or Physical Documents: Sometimes PDFs are required but not always – can you convey the information through a Moodle page and then encourage students not to print where necessary? If you are using PDFs or other files, remember that most users don’t want documents to force download to their devices (especially on mobile). Be mindful of the file settings on Moodle so that documents open in a tab which is less carbon intensive that downloading and hosting unwanted files on multiple devices.
4. Be Mindful Of Duplicate Data: this is particularly relevant for course back ups. It’s wise to back up a Moodle courses in case something happens and data/content is wiped. However, for sustainability it’s good to have a storage plan for back-ups, ie removing outdated back-ups, storing them on Sharepoint or Moodle not in both places etc.
5. Consider Sustainability In Early Ideation ie by wire framing and prototyping (either online or on paper) Moodle sites rather than building a full blown experience for each idea.
6. Ensure Navigation And Way-finding Is Well-structured because the less time students need to trawl through a Moodle site to find what they’re looking for, the less energy will be used. Sometimes Moodle sites can be used as a sort of “dumping ground” for recordings and other random files without clear structure and design. There are therefore a multitude of benefits in avoiding this approach, with sustainability being one of them.
7. Respect The Visitor’s Attention this can be achieved by allowing them to easily control how (and when) they receive information (ie Moodle forum notifications) as well as avoiding using infinite scroll or related attention-keeping tactics. In previous research with students, infinite scroll has come up as a frustration with using Moodle and results in wasted effort of electricity.
8. Use Recognised Design Patterns: this is similar to the point about navigation, in the sense that interfaces should deploy visual styles (patterns) that are easily recognised and used. So in our Moodle context that might mean having a consistent design or template of Moodle pages for a programme so that students aren’t relearning how to use a Moodle site from unit to unit.
9. Develop A Mobile-first Layout: We don’t currently have the Moodle app rolled out at UAL. However testing our courses in mobile view is important to see if the design is responsive and easy to use, ultimately averting extra time online wasted trying to navigate through a poor mobile experience.
10. Establish If A Digital Product Or Service Is Necessary: Moodle sites are usually non-negotiable, ie every unit will need one etc. But what about digital resources supporting courses? Are there duplications in videos/PDF guides/blog posts? Achieving this one may require working with colleagues to identify overlaps and refine things.

What next?

The next thing will be to use these ten guidelines as a basis for an intervention that will help those involved in digital learning at UAL to incorporate sustainable practices into their work. You can read more about the intervention in this post.

References

Bowen, G.A. (2009) ‘Document analysis as a qualitative research method’, Qualitative Research Journal, 9(2), pp. 27–40. doi:10.3316/qrj0902027. 

World Wide Web Consortium (2023) About Us, W3C. Available at: https://www.w3.org/about/ (Accessed: 18 December 2023). 

World Wide Web Consortium (2023) Web sustainability guidelines (WSG) 1.0. Available at: https://w3c.github.io/sustyweb/ (Accessed: 04 January 2024).

I opened my questionnaire to digital learning staff via the UAL Digital Learning Support channel on MS Teams. It was open for a period of three weeks from 06/11 to 27/11. Overall I had a 36% response rate, as 14 of the 39 members in the chat responded. While I would have liked to have had a larger sample size – at least 50% would have been great – I decided to call it in the interest of time constraints of the project. Additionally, if I can reflect on why I didn’t get a larger response rate, there may have been multiple factors at play: not everyone uses MS Teams, staff absences, disinterest in the topic, lack of incentive to complete the questionnaire, workload.

Ultimately however I do think that 14 responses does still equate to a range of participants and perspectives. I have used Braun and Clarke’s model of reflexive thematic analysis (no date) to understand the questionnaire results.

Reflexive thematic analysis of questionnaire results

Familiarising myself with the dataset

With my data collected, it was time to get familiar with it. Helpfully, Qualtrics has a report builder functionality so I was able to convert the responses of each of the questions into visualisations. This helped me to take in and retain the findings from the survey. It also gave me the sense that overall, we are in a positive position with most (77%) of respondents being somewhat familiar about digital sustainability (although as further analysis showed, definitions of that meant varied) and 92% being interested in training or guidance for best practice in reducing emissions in online course build and design.

The full report I created in order to familiarise myself with the data below.

Coding

While coding is a suggested step in the thematic analysis process, as Braun and Clarke (n.d.) state “These phases do not prescribe a rigid process you must follow”. Therefore due to the concise dataset I have gathered, I don’t believe the coding process, whereby codes are applied to the data in multiple rounds of analysis, is required. Rather working with the themes the data presents is more appropriate for this data.

Themes: generating, developing, reviewing, refining, and naming

• The first stage of this process is to generate initial themes. To do this I’ve copied each of the data visualisations for each question to a Miro board, so that I can move them around and group them depending on theme.
  • Existing strengths + areas of growth: I split the data into these categories, and the majority of the data signalled existing strengths in the community; 79% were familiar with the concept of digital sustainability, more than half were able to suggest guidelines or tools for reducing online carbon emissions, 92% were interested in training or guidance for best practice, and 69% were interested in being further involved in projects around this topic. One area for growth though, was that the majority felt unconfident in sharing sustainable best practice for online learning with fellow staff. This isn’t a negative thing, it presents the need for a resource to help digital learning staff to do this – this is where my intervention can come in.
• I then looked at the free text fields to generate some themes. From analysing this data I discovered that digital sustainability means different things to different people, so I grouped these responses into the following categories of what we talk about when we talk about digital sustainability:
  • Hardware + hosting: This includes hardware procurement and disposal, the internet servers an organisation includes, etc. It is generally under the remit of IT and university leadership. This was mentioned by three respondents.
  • General sustainable best practice for being online: This is general guidance for using devices, browsing the web, managing files on cloud storage, sending emails, etc. This was the most common category the free text field responses fell under.
  • Sustainable design of online learning materials: This is specifically how we design and deliver our courses and online learning materials. No one actually specifically mentioned this, which suggests there is a gap in guidance and understanding around this specifically and also points to the complexity of this topic.
• The last theme I gleaned from the data was around external guidelines, there were three resources suggested:
  • Government Digital Sustainability Alliance: This one was new to me. It seems to be a consortium of a number of government departments and tech companies. There is a blog that details their work but it doesn’t seem have direct application or guidance for our context at UAL.
  • Website carbon calculator: I knew about this and used it to generate reports for the UAL website and Moodle.
  • Wholegrain digital: I also knew about this, it’s connected to the website carbon calculator. It’s a useful and comprehensive overview of the different elements that contribute to online carbon emissions and is a more condensed and accessible version of the Web Sustainability Guidelines. These weren’t mentioned by anyone which isn’t too much of a surprise as they are quite new and quite dense to navigate through. That said, even the wholegrain digital blog is wordy and hard to read end to end for someone engaged on this topic let alone asking other staff to read it.

Conclusions

• Within the digital learning team there is a base level of existing knowledge around digital sustainability. However this is largely with regard to devices and general internet usage. There wasn’t evidence of a large understanding of digital sustainability for content creation.
• However, there is a desire to learn more about this topic and how it connects to their role.
• Online learning staff are hugely involved in training for the wider university with learning technologies. We advise on technical aspects of this, as well as pedagogy for online and digital accessibility. However, advising on digital sustainability is not an area that staff currently feel confident in advising colleagues about.
• The resources that online learning staff know about with regard to digital sustainability are not always relevant to our practice, or they give a basic level of knowledge or too much information. This can make it hard for staff to tangibly apply this to their own practice, or share with others across the college.

Writing up

The write up is constituted by this blog and the accompanying Miro board (screenshot below) which details how I analysed the data.

Additionally I created the below infographic to visualise what I find. Ultimately, the questionnaire signalled to me that we have some promising foundations for growth in the area of digital sustainability. These are: familiarity with the concept, awareness of carbon calculation tools, confidence to share best practice, desire for training/guidance and interest in a UAL approach – and are represented as roots in the infographic. But the digital sustainability cannot flourish with these roots alone, it needs UAL specific guidance and institutional policy in order to become a fully fledged practice.

Next steps

Analysing this data is an important part of informing what comes next in my ARP, that is creating an intervention. From the data I can see that the digital learning community has a baseline knowledge of this topic but wants to do more and needs help with sharing sustainable best practice with colleagues. This data alongside the analysis I have done of the web sustainability guidelines and the gamified approach I saw demonstrated in the UAL Carbon Literacy training [read more in this blog] will lead me to creating my intervention to help develop digital sustainability at UAL.

References

Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (no date) Doing reflexive Thematic Analysis. Available at: https://www.thematicanalysis.net/doing-reflexive-ta/ (Accessed: 23 November 2023). 

Research questions

How aware are UAL digital learning staff members about digital sustainability?

How can knowledge and confidence of this topic be increased to create best practice?

Please see my “context and rationale” blog post for more information on the development of these questions.

Position on the Action Research cycle

In line with my reading of McNiff and Paisey and Paisey’s action research diagram, I have formulated my ARP to involve the following:

Step	My ARP
Step 1: Define the problem and and frame the research questions	Identifying and reading around area of concern: digital sustainability (Read this blog post for more detail). Deciding on the research methods: document analysis, questionnaire and participating in UAL’s Carbon Literacy Training programme. (Read this blog post for more detail).
Step 2: Collect data and decide how practice could be changed	Analysing the Web Sustainability Guidelines (see this blog for the analysis) to see what guidelines could be relevant and implementable for UAL digital learning staff, using reflexive thematic analysis to draw findings from the questionnaire responses (blog post), reflecting on the carbon literacy training module in order to develop my intervention (blog post).
Step 3: Implement the changes	Creation of intervention: an interactive online game that explains the different concepts of digital sustainability in an engaging, friendly, digestible way. It can therefore be used by more than just digital learning technologists. (Blog post)

Unfortunately I will not have time to complete Step 4 (Monitor and evaluate the changes made) and Step 5 (Review and reflect upon the changes) within the timeframe of this ARP. However, this ARP has woken me up to the climate implications of my role and I am dedicated to continuing the cycle after the ARP concludes by joining the UAL Climate Emergency Network.

Action plan/schedule

I used Miro to plan out my project, please visit this Miro board to see the interactive plan or the screenshot of it below.

References

McNiff, J. (2020) ‘Action Research for Professional Development’ [electronic resource]. https://www.jeanmcniff.com/ar-booklet.asp (Accessed 20 November 2023)

Paisey, C. and Paisey, N.J. (2005) ‘Improving accounting education through the use of action research’, Journal of Accounting Education, 23(1), pp. 1–19. doi:10.1016/j.jaccedu.2004.10.001.