Universal Design for Learning
Across Campus
Across Campus
Over the years, we’ve had a robust conversation about why accessibility is a noble goal for colleges and colleges (Ableser & More, 2018). Despite our common challenges of fragmented service silos, unclear compliance definitions, limited human and financial resources, and lack of guidance from campus leadership beyond meeting legal mandates, we would be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t think that making content accessible to the broadest possible audience is the right thing to do.
We would also be hard pressed to find many people who are expert in exactly how to make accessibility a reality across campus. Sure, we have laws in place, as well as industry standards and working groups and advocacy efforts. But still, at the end of the day, we also have lawsuits, and our dark secret is that almost none of us feels, deep down, that our institutions are yet fully compliant with the basic legal requirements, let alone ready to say publicly that we are accessible institutions.
Campus leaders seem—almost uniformly—to think about instructors and course offerings when they think about accessibility and inclusive design (Borghans & Golsteyn, 2015): how can professors make classes more accessible? When presidents and provosts think of other aspects, they invariably add the institution’s web site in terms of video captioning and image alt-tagging (Brown, 2018). This low-hanging fruit encompasses only the maintenance tasks performed by the most powerful accessibility players on campus: the staff.
IT, library, and academic support units are in the best position to influence how all college constituents experience systems, processes, content, and tools (Burgstahler & Vinten-Johansen, 2017). We should adopt universal design for learning (UDL) as we design interfaces, procure and purchase staff tools, and support inclusive-design initiatives on our campuses (Bowery & Houston, 2017). We have great language to use in conversations about accessibility (Moriarty, 2018), lofty goals about providing access to education for everyone (Thompson, Jenkins, & Campbell, 2018), and strategy-level milestones to target. But how do we actually do it?
The colleges that are furthest along in their accessibility efforts tend to have staff leaders who share certain practices. They typically chop off the end of the word “accessibility,” focusing their efforts on expanding access, regardless of the ability profiles of their learners. They shift their goals away from making content accessible and look instead at making interactions easier to engage in (Cullen, 2018). And they have largely moved beyond the mental model of universal design (UD) in the physical environment, which is static, bounded, and predictable—instead designing interactions according to UDL, which sees interactions as dynamic, open, and emergent (DeSilva, Nemeroff, & Lopez, 2017).
That’s all advanced-level accessibility, though. What most of us are after are starting points. Rather than starting with CAST’s neuroscience-based three brain networks and multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression, a more manageable starting point is “plus one” thinking (Tobin, 2019b). For now, think of the interactions that your student-support operation offers to people, and think of how they might interact in just one more way than happens now.
This interactive webinar will take the format of a guided-practice collaboration, with the first 10 minutes reserved for open idea gathering and experience documentation, the next 40 minutes formatted as information sharing among the facilitator and participants, and the final 25 minutes will be for planning and take-aways.
This webinar will provide multiple ways to keep participants engaged (solo, collaborative, and interactive), multiple ways to present information (slide visuals, video sharing, text-chat, spoken audio), and multiple ways to join the conversation and show skills (video, text chat, self-guided reflection). We will use active-learning techniques and provide use-them-now resources for participants. Especially by relating UDL to broader access benefits for all learners, this session’s activities serve as a model for participants to re-frame accessibility and inclusion conversations.
References
Ableser, J. & Moore, C. (2018, September 10). Universal design for learning and digital accessibility: Compatible partners or a conflicted marriage? EDUCAUSE Review. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2018/9/universal-design-for-learning-and-digital-accessibility-compatible-partners-or-a-conflicted-marriage.
Borghans, L. & Golsteyn, B. H. H. (2015). Susceptibility to default training options across the population. Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) Discussion Paper 9180. http://ftp.iza.org/dp9180.pdf.
Bowery, R. & Houston, L. (2017, December 4). Reaching All Learners by Leveraging Universal Design for Learning in Online Courses. EDUCAUSE Review. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2017/12/reaching-all-learners-by-leveraging-universal-design-for-learning-in-online-courses.
Brown, W. (2018). The Chief Information Officer in Higher Education, 2018 Report. EDUCAUSE Center for Analysis and Research (ECAR) Research Reports. https://library.educause.edu/resources/2018/12/the-chief-information-officer-in-higher-education-2018-report.
Burgstahler, S., & Vinten-Johansen, C. (2017). Seven steps toward IT accessibility compliance. EDUCAUSE Review. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2017/9/seven-steps-toward-it-accessibility-compliance.
Cullen, S. (2018). Accessibility: A shared campus responsibility best accomplished with executive support. EDUCAUSE Review. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2018/1/accessibility-a-shared-campus-responsibility-best-accomplished-with-executive-support.
DeSilva, E., Nemeroff, A., & Lopez, P. (2017, December 4). Igniting a universal design mindset on campus. EDUCAUSE Review. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2017/12/igniting-a-universal-design-mindset-on-campus.
Moriarty, S. (2018). Building a culture of accessibility in higher education. EDUCAUSE Review. https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2018/7/building-a-culture-of-accessibility-in-higher-education.
Thompson, J., Wrye, T., Jenkins, M., & Campbell, C. (2018). Accessibility at the enterprise level: Searching for a cohesive voice within a fractured ecosystem. EDUCAUSE Review. https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2018/8/accessibility-at-the-enterprise-level-searching-for-a-cohesive-voice-within-a-fractured-ecosystem.
Tobin, T. J. (2019b). Universal design for learning: Three aces up our IT sleeves. EDUCAUSE Review. https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2019/2/universal-design-for-learning-three-aces-up-our-it-sleeves.