Introduction to Universal Design for Learning (UDL): A teacher’s perspective

Event Date & Time

Event Description

Accessibility has become a central aspect of education in Canada. Students are more diverse than ever before, and more students with disabilities reach and succeed in higher education. This pushes educators to teach in a more broadly accessible manner while maintaining the same high quality learning outcomes. In the last several years, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has emerged as a prominent and important pedagogical framework for the inclusion of accessible learning at all levels of education. UDL fundamentally asks, “Is the design of my course accessible?” Rather than setting course curricula first and then adding teaching methods to accommodate specific learning needs, designing a course through UDL focuses on embedding different options of representation, expression and engagement to make course content and delivery more accessible to a diversity of student learning abilities and styles.

In this workshop, we will examine what is UDL, its principles and how it works. We will briefly look at the context in which UDL was created, and how it became a central perspective in education. I will share an example of a course design with the UDL lens and discuss the different impacts on the students and teacher experience. Finally, you will have the opportunity to look directly at some of the challenges you may have in the classroom around accessibility and discuss in teams how the UDL lens could help with these challenges and improve the accessibility of your course design.

At the end of this UDL workshop, you will be able to:
– Explain how the main theoretical elements of UDL can enhance accessible course design.
– Apply the UDL framework in practical ways when reviewing your course design.
– Situate UDL with other pedagogical frameworks and build synergies between methods.

Facilitator:

Antoine Coulombe – Instructor, School of Social Work