While the snow is quickly melting, it may freeze again tonight… and Wake County Public School System has canceled classes. I am no longer sure what day of the week it is with snow days and disruptions! Tonight, I watched another forty-minute Open Ed 2021 session entitled “Using Google Sites to Create Accessible and Mobile Friendly Open Ed Resources for Everyone.” This session title caught my attention. I have been using WordPress for OERs for several years now, although Sabrina and I started with Google Sites. Robert Foster is a web developer at Austin Community College and a member of the OER Task Force. Foster mentioned that students are using mobile devices and mentioned that ~70% of visitors to their OER sites use mobile devices. Foster defined mobile-first or design for mobile as starting the mock-up and design for a mobile device. Foster shared an example of a bad mobile design with too-small buttons, resource-intensive, requires scrolling, bad menus, and only works on high-powered devices. A good design example had a hamburger/mobile menu, low resource requirement, large text, no left/right scrolling, large buttons, and works on low-resolution screens. Foster emphasized that you don’t have to become an expert on each feature… find a platform that makes mobile-friendly sites. Foster also highlighted accessibility because “we all need it at some point and when we do we really need it.” I like that quote! The examples that Foster shared were also unique: a young mother with a newborn trying to use a website with a single hand or a person on a bicycle trying to quickly access information on a phone.
Austin Community College, Foster mentioned, tried several different platforms for the series of OERs they were developing. OpenStax has beautiful resources but required technical skills to create high-quality resources. OER Commons was easy to use but not as customizable as they wanted. Foster explained that the OER task force had considered creating their own sites for OER, but it would be a lot of work. Austin Community College already used Google Sites so they decided to build their OER using Google Sites. Foster also explained that you can use your browser to view a site for mobile devices by clicking on Inspect or Developer options. You can even throttle or simulate low-resource settings. Foster demonstrated some of the capabilities of Google Sites including HTML and CSS options. One limitation of Google Sites was how it displayed tables, so Foster and their team edited the HTML for tables. Foster compared Google Sites versions and the features of the new Sites. Several examples of Google Sites were described, and Foster demonstrated how to include calendars and forms on Sites so that they can be opened in a new tab. Austin Community College has an OER in OER Commons that is used by most students, but Foster noted that some users experienced issues (“friction”). I wonder if the issues experienced by students were navigation-related? Nevertheless, Foster shared some important considerations about Google Sites and reminded me to keep in mind mobile learners! While we are using WordPress currently, I agree that Google Sites are very easy to create. For larger projects, I want to explore QUBES and PubPub.
