How do you engage faculty in adopting Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles? This presentation will focus on creating a process for developing UDL courses and accessibility resources through partnerships within the college. Participants will identify new strategies to engage institutional stakeholders in supporting universal design and accessibility initiatives.
Supporting faculty who are creating courses that utilize principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) requires a holistic support model be implemented within an institution. Attendees will be introduced to a multiphase support model that has been implemented at a large community college. The support model includes the professional development of the instructional design team, creation of resources for faculty and staff, and consistent collaboration with partners within the college. Attendees will have access to a worksheet to guide and record their efforts during this session.
After a brief presentation about the support models used at our institution, attendees will have an opportunity to reflect on support models used within their own institutions for UDL and accessibility initiatives. This includes a discussion on the understanding of UDL and accessibility among the instructional design team, current UDL and accessibility resources that are available to faculty and staff, and current partnerships within the college.
Attendees will participate in small group discussions to brainstorm about training opportunities for their institution’s instructional design team to ensure a clear understanding of UDL principles. These opportunities may include, but are not limited to, workshops, conferences, teach-back team meetings, or training webinars. Next, attendees will engage in a think-pair-share as they consider existing resources at their institutions related to UDL and accessibility that faculty members and staff can already access. These resources may include books, written or video tutorials, software, technology, and other tools available to support faculty and staff. During sharing, attendees will be asked to note how well these resources are being utilized. Additionally, attendees will identify current strategies used by their institutions to engage faculty, staff, students, and administration in UDL and accessibility initiatives such as partnerships among offices, professional development courses, events, workshops, articles, or videos that may be available. These existing resources and strategies will be examined for their effectiveness and impact on student learning.
To support the discussion on support models, the speakers will elaborate on the support model that is used at their community college. This model has three phases and involves developing the instructional design team, strengthening partnerships within the college, and ensuring the availability of sufficient UDL and accessibility resources.
The first phase focuses on developing the instructional design team on UDL principles and accessibility to ensure the team has a unified approach in thinking about these practices. As part of this phase, the community college's instructional team outlined areas of UDL and accessibility that required additional clarification and training. This training included effectively using accessibility checkers, adding alternative text to images and tables, captioning of videos, and using screen readers and other assistive technologies.
In the second phase, the instructional design team partnered with the Office for Students with Disabilities to understand the unique needs of our student population and to ensure faculty are equipped with resources when providing accommodations to students. The team also collaborated with the Office of Information Technology to evaluate and adopt accessibility tools that could support faculty.
The final phase was to prepare resources to share with faculty and to communicate the availability of these resources. The resources included written and video tutorials, as well as redesigning professional development courses related to UDL and accessibility. One professional development course relevant to this effort is the Universal Design and Accessibility course. As part of this course, faculty reflect on how they can apply UDL principles to their courses and how to ensure the accessibility of all course content, including documents and videos.
The impact of this phased work has led to an increased understanding of the difference between UDL and accessibility for both faculty and staff. Additionally, participation in our professional development courses, especially our Universal Design and Accessibility course, has increased. Furthermore, the college has reinstituted an accessibility and advisory group that oversees accessibility standards and resources for students and employees. Finally, this work has led to the development of a website that contains accessibility resources for faculty and staff across the college.
The final part of this session will involve a collaborative discussion on identifying new strategies to engage institutional partners within the college with UDL initiatives and developing a plan for implementing these strategies in order to improve the student learning experience.