Trent University faculty have incorporated the pillars of UDL into their teaching in myriad ways. The case studies featured in this volume demonstrate how UDL can be applied to courses in a range of fields including biology, nursing, English, cultural studies, and Indigenous studies. Despite their disciplinary diversity, these projects are connected by an investment in applying UDL to the early undergraduate experience and, in many cases, to that of first-year students. One of the concerns faculty have raised about incorporating UDL into their teaching is the time it might take to implement UDL, particularly in large classes (La et al., 2018). We suggest that many of our case studies encourage us to re-think our notion that UDL can’t work in large classes and re-consider some of the creative ways this framework can be deployed. Moreover, this collection features projects that demonstrate how UDL can transcend individual courses to affect student experiences at the departmental or program level. This prompts us to consider how we might implement more structural approaches to UDL across the curriculum.

We begin with a case study of implementing and evaluating oral assignments in a third-year English course by Brent Bellamy. Chapter 1 details a project that emerged from Brent’s interest in incorporating critical storytelling practices into university settings, but also from a desire to provide an alternate means through which his students could convey their learning. His innovative approach offered students an oral modality in a field dominated by written assignments. Significantly, his work not only demonstrates how UDL can deepen student learning, but also how it can improve instructors’ experience of assessing that learning.

The two case studies that follow explore the intriguing interaction between UDL and Indigenous pedagogies within projects connected with Trent University’s Indigenous Course Requirement (ICR). In Chapter 2, David Newhouse and Robin Quantick discuss their use of UDL as they re-designed a first-year course, Foundations of Reconciliation, to accommodate a student population of 1,000 students per term. Newhouse and Quantick detail the process of integrating UDL into this course, exploring their successes but also the challenges they encountered from faculty and students.

Chapter 3, written by Barbara Wall and Amy Shawanda, also explores the experience of engaging UDL in a first-year ICR course, Foundations for Indigenous Environmental Studies and Sciences (IESS). Their project led them to re-imagine large lectures and conventional assessment practices and engage with the possibilities of active learning. Interestingly, both groups of authors highlight the significant overlaps and continuities between Universal Design for Learning and Indigenous Knowledge (IK), showing how both allow for a more holistic concept of student learning and development.

Professor Ann Celestini explores UDL in the context of an undergraduate nursing program. In Chapter 4, Celestini details the process that she and Catherine Thibeault used to re-design a first-year nursing course, Individual as Nurse. The chapter provides a comprehensive look at how they incorporated UDL values into all aspects of course design. Chapter 5 then follows Ann as she worked with a new colleague, Amy Hallaran, to implement UDL and trauma-informed principles in the same course through an unfolding case study. Both chapters include a study with students to understand the impact of these interventions from their perspective. Their work provides an outstanding example of how UDL can be baked into the design of a course and woven throughout all course components and learning experiences.

Our final case study, by Sarah West and Holly Bates, shares their experience implementing “Mind Matters Mini-Sessions” in a large first-year biology class. Noticing that their students were increasingly burdened by stress and anxiety, especially in the context of the post-Covid return to in-person learning, they incorporated wellness sessions into their classroom time on topics such as sleep quality, stress, metacognition, and time management. Chapter 6 demonstrates how UDL can be integrated into a large, content-heavy STEM course in order to promote student wellbeing and examines how these sessions affected students.

When read together, these chapters demonstrate the remarkably diverse ways and contexts in which faculty can grow their teaching practices and enhance student experiences through UDL. Within some projects, the incorporation of UDL is as small as one assessment; in others, its principles are woven throughout the entire course. Some contributors implemented UDL in small classes while others applied UDL to large classes with hundreds of students. The course types also ranged significantly as our contributors integrated  UDL  into the required courses of professional programs, humanities electives, and STEM classes. These experiences bring into focus how incredibly adaptable this pedagogical framework is to various educational contexts and needs.

There are, however, several common threads that unite their stories and provide insight into how we might incorporate UDL into our own teaching. First, none of the authors began using UDL in their teaching as experts in this pedagogical framework. Rather, they came to UDL through a general interest in enhancing their teaching practices and the learning experiences of their students. The appeal of UDL for these contributors lay in the vast breadth of the framework wherein faculty could draw on strategies that best aligned with their existing pedagogical approaches and that met their unique instructional requirements. While some faculty took on this framework in its entirety, applying it to all aspects of their courses, many started by making one or two changes to their courses in significant yet manageable ways. Changing our teaching approaches can be overwhelming; however, these chapters encourage us to think about the small adjustments we might start with that broaden our own pedagogical horizons and create more fulfilling learning experiences for students.

Second, these projects demonstrate that UDL integrates in nuanced and meaningful ways with other contemporary pedagogical frameworks or knowledge. For example, as we see in Chapter 5, UDL shares many common values with the six pillars of trauma-informed care and pedagogy (Thompson & Carello, 2022). Trauma-informed principles similarly support multiple means of engagement, expression, and designing learning experiences with all students in mind. Like UDL, trauma-informed pedagogy begins with the assumption that any number of students may have experienced trauma, and that classroom policies and practices should be designed to accommodate these students without requiring personal disclosures.

Similarly, Chapters 2 and 3 reveal the overlaps between UDL and Indigenous Knowledge (IK). Both concepts understand learning as a complex, multi-faceted experience that requires instructors to think broadly and creatively in cultivating classrooms that are inclusive of and responsive to a variety of student experiences and learning styles. Both UDL and IK take a holistic view of student development and believe that the key to breaking down barriers is appreciating students as whole individuals who bring different perspectives to learning encounters. These chapters therefore demonstrate the overlaps and synthesis of UDL with other valuable pedagogical frameworks.

Finally, these projects demonstrate how faculty can enhance their teaching by not only modifying their classroom practices, but by studying the impacts of those interventions on students’ learning experiences. Taken together, these projects contribute to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) by employing systematic reflections on the process of implementing new frameworks and engaging with students to learn about their experiences and opinions. Taking this extra step brings our teaching practices full circle as we implement an intervention, interrogate the efficacy of that intervention, and reflect on our process and future actions. The projects featured in these chapters are informed by student surveys, focus groups, oral assignments, written work, and artwork; as such, they demonstrate the various ways in which we can investigate the impact of our teaching and how students think and feel about our pedagogical choices.

The Wickerson Foundation Fund for Education Leadership and Universal Design was developed as an attempt to promote pedagogical change from the bottom up. By giving faculty grants to revise individual courses and assessments, the Foundation hoped to build capacity for and understanding of UDL practices at Trent. While these grants worked at the micro-level, they were also connected to a larger goal of building role-models and champions, of investing in faculty who could help their colleagues see the possibilities of engaging UDL in their own disciplines and courses. The faculty authors in this book took careful steps toward realizing this vision by imagining the many ways in which UDL could be incorporated into their teaching. We hope that as you read through our faculty projects, you develop an appreciation of just some of the ways in which you might harness and apply UDL principles in your own classroom policies and pedagogical practices.