Examples from the Classroom - Teaching that Incorporates the UDL Framework and Inclusive Practices with Technology

Session Materials

Brief Abstract

As an IT accessibility specialist, within an Academic Technology Services group, I am thrilled to encounter faculty incorporating UDL and inclusive practices with technology into their teaching in ways that students find helpful. In this session, I share examples from our faculty to inspire others to adapt and adopt.

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Susan May, Amherst College

I enjoy working in Information Technology providing support for assistive technology and digital accessibility. I am in my second year working as an IT Accessibility Specialist at Amherst College. Before that, I worked in the Amherst College IT Support Services group for several years. During my more than 20 years of work at Harvard, UMass, and since 2011, at Amherst College, I have acquired wide-ranging expertise in many areas of IT for higher education including digital accessibility. I have a BA in English from McGill University and an MA in Communication from The Ohio State University and came to work in IT through the route of working with digital video and enjoying technical training and writing.

Additional Authors

Extended Abstract

Overview

At our higher ed institution, which is a small liberal arts college, we have many faculty members using cutting-edge technology and innovative pedagogical methodologies. Our group, IT Academic Technology Services, supports faculty in their use of digital tools and integrating them into their pedagogy. We have compiled faculty members’ digital pedagogy practices, and our support work, in a series of articles as part of an “Academic Technology in Action” website project. One aspect of this projects highlights that faculty are integrating inclusive practices with technology in many different ways to meet the learning needs of the college’s diverse student body. Through the application of the Universal Design for Learning principles, these pedagogy practices aim to lower the barriers to education and foster greater engagement. We share these examples as a resource for others to consider ideas to adapt and adopt.

Structure of the Session:

This lightning session will share real world examples from the classroom, grouped thematically, and chosen from among the fifteen articles we have compiled where faculty have gone beyond the requirement of meeting accommodations, and prioritized approaches that benefit all learners. In some cases, faculty are discussing important topics related to disabilities in their courses. I will provide an overview then share the examples from our faculty and the takeaways to inspire others to adapt and adopt. The web content resources provided will include concise descriptions of the examples and the website that highlights them.

Real World Examples - Putting the UDL Framework and Inclusive Practices with Technology into Practice

Concrete examples from the classroom will highlight teaching and inclusive practices with technology that:

  • Address self-regulation - Examples that use an accessible learning management system for assessment, where the quizzes or testing are low-stakes, open-book, longer timed or untimed, utilize digital tools such as Auralia for ear training, and flexible in the number of attempts allowed, helps to allay anxiety for the students. This intentional pedagogical approach also creates transparency in terms of class expectations and benefits all the learners.

  • Build critical analysis skills - Examples from several courses show that an asynchronous online forum, using an accessible learning management system can help provide an accessible discussion experience for all students, especially for students who find in-class discussions challenging. Referring back to the forum posts as part of class discussion is a great way to engage students who otherwise may not get an equal voice during class.

  • Increase student engagement - During remote learning due to the pandemic,  STEM and humanities faculty members used Otter.ai to create transcripts of  class Zoom sessions and provided these to students throughout the semester. This proved to be a simple method to let students review what was discussed in class, without having to record and upload videos of each meeting.

  • Develop linguistic and cultural proficiency - In a language course, students created visual representations of information gathered from conversations with partners in other countries with native speakers. Since infographics are inherently not digitally accessible, students learned to provide alternate text-based and accessible versions of the information. This helped students deepen their grasp of digital literacy and develop an accessibility mindset, seeing themselves as capable creators of accessible/inclusive documents.

  • Support executive function through assignment design and effective use of options for accessibility - faculty members incorporate the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and inclusive practices with technology into their teaching and ground these practices in dialogue with students. Thoughtful use of options included consideration for students with disabilities, with digital and physical accessibility given careful consideration. 

  • Foster mutual respect - Faculty use NameCoach as an opportunity to reflect on how nuanced pronunciation of a name can take years to learn. 

  • Encourage collaborative learning and allow for multimodal assignments - One faculty member’s wiki project, using the college’s accessible learning management system, and another’s Perusall digital annotation activities, provide students with opportunities to demonstrate learning, including critical reading skills, in multimodal ways. By allowing students to present their project through writing or visuals or digital media, the faculty members can best reach all learners and account for variability in learning. In this year’s instance of one of the courses, one student also explored utlizing generative AI in their responses and the class as a whole could learn from and discuss the process.
    With Perusall digital annotation, students can use multiple means of communication, visual and/or auditory, to cognitively process the assigned reading, and participate in peer discussions.

  • Develop an accessibility mindset - In a course titled on disability media, students gain hands-on experience in making visual media accessible to people with visual disabilities. Using audio description as an accessibility technique, students add narrative audio tracks to video to make it more accessible to people with visual disabilities.

  • Practice reflection and self-assessment - For students completing their courses in learning a language, they are asked to develop digital portfolios using Google sites. Through this process they reflect on their language learning journey and assess their own work. The students take simple steps to ensure that the sites will be accessible to all users, including people with disabilities. The Google Sites platform has many built-in accessibility features, and the students compose and add alternate text or alt-text for images.

Relevance to the higher-education community

Many instructors may wonder how to put the UDL framework and guidelines into practice, how to select among digital tools such as knowing which tools are accessible, and how to incorporate inclusive practices with technology into their teaching methods. We provide real world examples from STEM, humanities, languages, and music classrooms with inclusive practices with technology that have replicability. Some of the practices start as single or small scale projects that could be scaled to be applied more broadly in a department or discipline. 

Takeaways

  • Concrete examples mapped to the UDL framework 

    • Detail how specific examples of inclusive practices map to the UDL framework and relate to representation and recognition networks, action and expression and strategic networks, and engagement and affective networks. 

  • How to assess the usefulness of digital tools and platforms using evidence based demonstration of effectiveness

    • From course evaluations they receive from the students, faculty note that students will mention specific tools used and inclusive practices 

    • Direct dialogue with students 

    • Evaluating students’ growth in their skills and work submitted and if students are meeting the learning goals for the courses and how the tools/platforms contribute to that. 

    • Discussing the tools with other faculty where multiple faculty are involved.

  • Reflection questions to use to develop one’s practices

    • Which tools are accessible and how to select among tools 

    • Where are there opportunities to incorporate UDL and inclusive practices

Interactivity

Polling will be used at times during the session and reflection questions offered to aid participants to build or grow their own inclusive practices with technology. 

Resources Provided

This session offers web content based resources for the audience to take away with concise descriptions of real-world examples from the classroom mapped to the UDL framework in order to inspire, adapt, and adopt to incorporate Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and inclusive practices with technology into one’s own teaching, training, or support work. Reflection questions will be provided to guide attendees to answer for themselves how to put the UDL framework and guidelines into practice with inclusive use of technology. We also will share a link to the Academic Technology in Action website.