OER Resource: Universal Design for Learning: A Guide for Faculty
OER Resource for Faculty
The following is an overview of Universal Design for Learning: A UDL and Accessibility Guide for Faculty by Andrew Stracuzzi. This guide is intended to support faculty in implementing the principles of UDL within their teaching practices at Fanshawe College.
Rather than reproduce the content in this guide, you’re encouraged to explore this resource and apply any techniques you may find helpful in designing your own online courses.
If you would like to discuss any of the strategies in these resources, please reach out to your eLearning Curriculum Coordinator.
Resource Overview
UDL is a powerful approach that allows you to make sure the greatest range of students can access and engage in learning – not just certain students. Thus, Universal Design for Learning: a Faculty Guide intends to provide educators with strategies and resources to support greater accessibility and inclusion in higher education at Fanshawe College.
This guide is built upon the teaching philosophy that even taking one small step (that is, making a single pointed change in your course) to provide an additional method of access, option for assessment, or strategy for engagement is going to make a positive impact upon the learning experience and move your course towards greater inclusivity and accessibility. This is similar to the “plus one” approach commonly used by UDL practitioners and advocates (for example, see this video by Thomas J. Tobin: UDL plus-one). The broad idea is to not get overwhelmed at the work of applying UDL principles – the UDL approach and this book are not meant to serve as a checklist of all the “must-do” tasks for your course. Instead, they are meant to provide a framework and a helpful set of guidelines for the ongoing, reflective, personal, and iterative work of course design and of teaching.
Resource Overview
This book is designed to be used in a modular fashion – that is, you may find only certain chapters or sections of it applicable to the UDL work you are engaged in at any particular time. In a broad overview, the following topics are covered:
- Chapter 1: Introduction to Universal Design for Learning will provide the research foundations of UDL, an explanation for each of the three principles of UDL, and some guidelines for approaching course design (or redesign) from a UDL perspective.
- Chapter 2: Assessment and UDL will dig more deeply into using the UDL principles to design flexible and rigorous assessments.
- Chapter 3: UDL & Best Practices for Technology-Enabled Learning will examine web accessibility to reduce barriers to learning and provide additional technical guidance and information specific to the Fanshawe technology ecosystem.
In addition, there are a series of appendixes to help you navigate the basics of creating accessible documents, including MS PowerPoint, MS Word, and Adobe PDFs.
References
This section was reproduced from the following:
Universal Design for Learning Copyright © 2023 by Andrew Stracuzzi is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. This edition has been adapted from Universal Design for Learning: One Small Step, originally published by Sara Dzaman, Derek Fenlon, Julie Maier, and Toni Marchione from the University of Saskatchewan, with additional content adapted from the Accessibility Handbook for Teaching and Learning by Briana Fraser and Luke McKnight from Langara College.
