Universal Design for Learning: Curricular Access for All Students

Catalog description

The challenge and opportunity of individual differences confront every teacher, administrator, and curriculum designer. To meet that challenge and to capitalize on that opportunity, educators are typically equipped with media and materials that are one size fits all and that have been designed primarily for a narrow and illusive group of learners. In this course, we will explore an alternative approach universal design for learning (UDL)that creates curricula, informs instructional methods, and upholds learning environments that are designed to achieve success for a much wider range of student abilities and disabilities. To do that, the UDL approach takes advantage of advances in two fields: (1) the cognitive neuroscience of learning and individual differences and (2) the universal design of educational technologies and multimedia. This course will explore recent advances in both of these fields as they relate to content area instruction through appropriate readings and through media construction exercises designed to prepare and support participants to optimize the challenge of individual differences through universal design for learning.