LVAIC Teagle Hybrid Learning Grant Universal Design Workshop Offers Faculty New Framework for the Classroom

January 7, 2019, @ 4:25 PM

As part of the ongoing Teagle Hybrid Learning Grant, LVAIC is hosting a Universal Design workshop on Friday, January 25, 2019 at Lehigh University. This half-day workshop will take place with a keynote and a facilitated session by Thomas J. Tobin, PhD, MSLS, PMP, MOT, CPACC.

In this interactive keynote presentation, we will talk about Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as a way to structure hybrid courses and service interactions for learners at residential colleges. We’ll talk about what UDL is (and isn’t), and how a simple mental shift can help us to reach out to our learners and give them just 20 more minutes for study and interaction in their busy days. How many of your students come to class actually having read the materials and fully prepared? We will talk about concrete strategies that help to increase that number by giving students more, and more flexible, time for study that they didn’t have before.

The colleges in the LVAIC consortium aim to make educational materials, practices, and interactions more inclusive and useful for all learners. This interactive workshop radically reflects on how faculty members and course designers can adopt the Universal Design for Learning framework in order to create learning interactions that provide students with better access to learning, offer learners more time for study and practice in their busy days, and save faculty members time and effort in the bargain.

This workshop uses active-learning techniques and provides take-away resources for participants. By relating UDL to broader access benefits for all learners, this workshop’s activities serve as a model for participants to re-frame accessibility and inclusion conversations.

The goals of this workshop are to ensure attendees will find ways to:

1. reduce the accessibility challenge down to a manageable set of tasks,
2. experiment with access methods in just a few key parts of your course’s interactions,
3. determine where UDL thinking can save you (and your students) time and effort, and
4. talk with your colleagues to help them get started with UDL, too.

More information about this event is available on the LVAIC website.