As diversity of student enrollment increases, postsecondary institutionsmust address the inclusiveness of physical and virtual learning environments.Doing so requires engaging faculty in a conversation about their online pedagogyand course design. This study employs Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as ameans for faculty to reflect on and solve instructional problems in their courses. Itfollows a sequential, exploratory, quasi-experimental, mixed-methods approach.Instructor-focused, in-depth interviews capture the experience of instructors asthey reflect on their personal history that led them to teaching. They identified aportion of one of their online courses to improve and selected modificationsinspired by the UDL framework. They also reflect on the subsequent interactionswith their students with a focus on changes they have observed in relation to themodified portion of their course. The student-focused portion of the studyexamines the effect these modifications have on student outcomes throughquantitative and qualitative analysis of their responses to a survey. The student-provided data were compared across control and treatment sections for eachcourse. This study demonstrates how the UDL framework and guidelines can beused as a tool for qualitative research in addition to its traditional role as aprescriptive model. The synthesis of all data from the study providespostsecondary educators with an empirical account of UDL’s utility and attemptsto address barriers to adoption
