Access, Universal Design and the Sustainability of Teaching Practices: a Powerful Synchronicity of Concepts at a Crucial Conjuncture for Higher Education

Sustainability in Higher Education is usually interpreted as a concept applying solely to operations management and energy policy. Though the applicability of the concept to social justice is immediately tangible, few campuses have found organic and pragmatic ways to extend principles of sustainability to their equity, diversity or inclusion practices, or to convince their community of the need to do so. This study examines the unique experience of North American campus having attempted this progressive osmosis between the two concepts. Access has represented the opportunity for this rethink. As individual, retroactive accommodations become increasingly obsolete when it comes to providing access to learning to large number of students with specific needs entering post-secondary education, sustainability has become an increasingly appealing lens with which to devise a new framework for inclusion seeking systemic change in pedagogical practices. The campus in question implemented a proactive drive for the implementation of Universal Design for Learning from 2011 and this paper presents the analysis of the various and complex ways access and sustainability have become entwined in campus policies. The outcomes are particularly relevant for the Global South in that it may encourage Higher Education institutions in developing countries to avoid the temporary appeal of medical model based measures of inclusion and the precedents set in the Global North over the last two decades, and to focus instead on social model based policies that seek the development of sustainable and inclusive teaching practices from the onset

22. UDL - From Disabilities Office to Mainstream Class: How the Tools of a Minority are Addressing the Aspirations of the Student Body at Large

Confronted by the increasingly changing and varied nature of disabilities in Higher Education (Bowe, 2000; McGuire & Scott, 2002), Disability Service providers across North America are progressively moving away from targeted remedial assistance focusing on the disabilities of students, to a less frontline role involving the sensitization of faculty around strategies that seek to widen access and develop awareness (Sopko, 2008).  Universal Design is hence often the model of choice (Rose, Harbour, Johnston, Daley & Abarbanell, 2006).  It incorporates extensive use of technology and seeks the implementation of winning conditions in the classroom space that reduce or eliminate the need for later remedial work with students (Burgstahler, 2006).  The hypothesis of this paper is that Universal Design, though conceived as a tool for a specific clientele, may quickly transpire to be the model best suited to serve the needs of the student body at large.The paper attempts to demonstrate how the core values underlying the Universal Design approach in fact meet wider educational aspirations of the 21st century.  Not only do its strategies and goals allow wider access to students with Disabilities, but they allow the integration of the ‘millennium learners’, encourage higher student retention, guarantee higher rates of graduation and establish greater equity and respect for diversity.  A model, designed to assist the minority, is quickly becoming a tool that has the capacity to open the class and the lecture hall to the diversity of the emerging and metamorphosing High Education learner, even if his/ her idiosyncrasies are still barely known (Howard, 2004)

A multi-perspective examination of the barriers to field-placement experiences for students with disabilities

In light of the innumerable changes in post-secondary environments that reflect a movement toward inclusive education and a reliance on real-world evaluations in the form of field placements, we report on our findings from a collaborative research project that examines field placement experiences from a variety of perspectives. Our research project, prompted by our own observations of the barriers to equity for field placement students with disabilities at our institution, is an attempt to reflect on our disability service and our teaching and learning practices. We expanded on the traditional focus in the field by creating a multi-dimensional cross-sector collaboration and by including the perspectives of Professional Program Directors, Field Placement Coordinators, and students with disabilities. We found that all stakeholders reported barriers to success in field placement for students with disabilities, saw few solutions, and anticipated the barriers to continue into the world of employment. We discuss these findings in relation to the implications for teaching and learning and for disability service provision in post-secondary institutions

Like fire to water: building bridging collaborations between Disability service providers and course instructors to create user friendly and resource efficient UDL implementation material

This study presents a post-secondary campus` experience with systematic and global promotion of Universal Design for Learning. It analyzes data collected over a 24 months period, relating to course instructors’ responses to the framework, through the lens of the initial hypothesis that successes and failures in adoption might be explained by the existence of variables that act as facilitators or stressors in the eyes of the participants. It is argued that identifying these variables allows campuses to map winning conditions for the rapid adoption of UDL by course instructors, irrespective of institutional context and resources. Importantly the study highlights that the full identification of these factors requires the involvement and collaboration of not simply the disability service provider, but also the Teaching and Learning support unit and the equity and diversity office. The study argues that such a collaboration model is transferable to other institutions