20-Minute Mentors

Tired of Making Retroactive Accommodations? Use UDL for Inclusion!

Learn how to use Universal Design for Learning to plan for learner variability, reduce retroactive accommodations, offer meaningful choice, and create more inclusive college courses. 

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Tired of Making Retroactive Accommodations? Use UDL for Inclusion!

Many instructors want to create inclusive learning experiences but struggle to meet the needs of students with different backgrounds, abilities, and ways of learning. When courses are designed around assumptions about how students should engage, process information, participate, and demonstrate knowledge, some learners face unnecessary barriers. Relying on accommodations after challenges arise can also make it harder to ensure every student has an equitable opportunity to succeed.

In this 20-Minute Mentor, you’ll learn how to apply Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles to proactively design more flexible, inclusive courses. Explore practical ways to offer meaningful choices in student engagement, content presentation, and assessments while aligning those choices with intended learning outcomes. You’ll also identify potential biases in your teaching practices and discover strategies to reduce barriers, support learner variability, and help more students succeed.

After viewing this Magna 20-Minute Mentor, participants will be able to: 

  • Explain why learner variability is predictable and how proactive course design can reduce the need for retroactive accommodations
  • Describe the roles of engagement, representation, and action and expression within the UDL framework
  • Use intended learning outcomes to identify where students can be given meaningful choices in how they engage with content or demonstrate learning
  • Identify personal or institutional biases that may shape assumptions about acceptable ways to read, process information, participate, collaborate, or complete academic work
  • Apply UDL considerations to common teaching practices involving student motivation, presentation of new material, feedback, and final products

TOPICS COVERED 

  • Understand learner variability
  • Apply the UDL principle of ‘designing to the edges’ rather than designing for an average learner
  • Use clearly articulated learning outcomes
  • Explore the CAST UDL framework and its three core areas
  • Recognize how UDL 3.0 addresses bias and prompts instructors to examine assumptions
  • Build student buy-in through authentic choices, diverse materials, autonomy, and a classroom culture in which mistakes are part of learning
  • Represent new material in multiple formats
  • Use action-oriented feedback, descriptive rubrics, peer feedback, and growth-minded practices
  • Offer multiple tools and media for final assignments
 

AUDIENCE

This program will benefit:

  • College and university faculty
  • Adjunct and part-time instructors
  • Teaching center and faculty development professionals
  • Instructional designers and learning experience designers
  • Accessibility and disability-support professionals
  • Academic leaders supporting inclusive teaching initiatives
  • Online, hybrid, and face-to-face instructors\
  • Graduate teaching assistants and new faculty

Product Code: PM26GA

Campus Access License

With the purchase of the optional Campus Access License, registrants are granted a license to download the program contents to a password-protected network, server, or website for additional staff use. You will receive information on downloading the contents of the program within 3-5 business days after payment has been received by Magna.

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*On-demand access begins on date of purchase.

If you are not completely satisfied with your purchase, you may cancel the order within 30 days of purchase and receive a full refund.

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20-Minute Mentors

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