Q&A: Making Sense of Universal Design for Learning
The concept applies to more than just disability issues. A new book helps contextualize the growing educational approach and offers a road map to adoption even skeptics will appreciate.
Questions of accessibility, broadly defined, are everywhere in higher ed. Administrators want to widen opportunities for potential students, and instructors want learners to have all available tools to succeed.
The universal design for learning (UDL) framework posits a set of solutions to those questions — and it’s gaining steam at institutions nationwide. In Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education (West Virginia University Press), UDL proponents Thomas J. Tobin and Kirsten T. Behling examine the history of the framework and unpack its implications in the context of broader societal and technological change. The book’s last section points to real-world applications of UDL currently under way, as well as resources and guidelines for readers who feel inspired to undertake similar efforts.
“Inside Digital Learning” asked Tobin, faculty associate on the Learning Design, Development, & Innovation (LDDI) team in the Division of Continuing Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Behling, who co-founded the disability services in higher education graduate certificate program at Suffolk University and serves as director of student accessibility services at Tufts University, to reflect on their experiences entering the UDL world and helping bring others along
Read more: New book offers guide to evolution of universal design for learning (UDL) concept