Value Added - The Barrier Free Campus.

This presentation was given by Drs Fahriye and Zehra Altinay, twin professors from Cyprus. They were talking from their experiences in this field.

They started off by highlighting the situation by showing a picture of various fish on the Barrier Reef. The idea is that all of these fish irrespective of their size or habits are interdependent in order for their survival and the university campus should seek to provide a similar environment, where all students irrespective of their abilities and disabilities should be able to thrive together.

Dr Fahriye said that Universities should strive to provide equal access and opportunities for all students. They want to increase the potential of everyone and consider the construction of knowledge and the transferable skills and human life skills in a digital society.

They pointed out that the signs of an educated person are knowledge and thinking skills along with technological and leadership skills. They used a quote from Helen Keller "The best educated person is the person who understands life best."

Effectiveness was the next theme. Effectiveness means the adaptability to change, the flexibility in ourselves, how we approach problem solving and improve our self esteem and finally questioning skills. The learning environment needs to foster these skills too and include them in the creation of courses. Both the person and the system needs to be adaptable to change.

The learning environment needs to address the multiple themes of imparting knowledge and having a transparency in learning and teaching as well as trust in the management and encouraging creativity.

They use a fish bone diagram to solve the problem so they can see what effect each action has on the process. They talked about the tools which are available to set the quality standards these include human, methodology, machines, equipment and finally environment. To achieve quality they need to use infrastructure and technology, student voice (What are their expectations and demands.), accessibility and usability of facilities and lastly campus activities which promote the needs of all students.

All of the points in the last paragraph combine together if used correctly to create a barrier free campus.

Following on they looked at the indicators of a barrier free campus. They talked about awareness of disability and support of various forms that are available for disabled students. If we meet all of the requirements in the slide then we are operating a barrier free campus and we are operating a win-win policy.

They summarised that quality requires appropriate conditions, student expectations, program implementations and measurable outcomes and actions.

They rounded up by telling us a little of their experiences and work. This was a very interesting talk but unfortunately there were some problems with the audio which distorted voices from time to time. I apologise for any errors or omissions which may occurred in this report.