Universal Design Colab 2.0: Reaching all, teaching all

Project summary

The main purpose of the project Universal Design Colab 2.0: Reaching all, teaching all, is to further develop the capacity of educators, students and administrators at HVL to use the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as a pedagogical framework to promote engagement, motivation and achievement for all. The current project builds on and further develops our recently completed project Universal Design Assessment Collaboratory (UD Assess Colab) that was implemented at the section for Global Health and Rehabilitation at HVL in 2023/2024. The UD Assess Colab project introduced the principles of universal design in assessment (UDA) to faculty and educators, and collaboratively created resources about the use of universal design in assessment. We also redesigned the assessment criteria of some of the courses of our international online master program Healthy Ageing and Rehabilitation to incorporate the principles of UDA.

The main goals of our new project Universal Design Colab 2.0: Reaching all, teaching all (UDColab 2.0) are to: 1. Further develop the knowledge and capacity of educators, students and administrators to use the principles of universal design for learning (UDL) as a pedagogical framework to create stimulating and inclusive learning-, teaching- and working environments for all. 2. To co-create a webpage with curated materials on the implementation of UDL in higher education in collaboration with other universities.

Method

The project implementation will include two main activities called Universal Design collaboratories (UD Colabs) where the project team, invited guests and faculty will co-create the project's knowledge products using agile methodology adopted from the software design and adapted to the goals of the project. The agile methodology is a project management approach that is participatory and enables a flexible and collaborative design, delivery and testing of products. In addition, we will use the participatory approach to co-create the project's knowledge products together with team members and stakeholders, and learn from each other in the process of co-creation. Each of the two collaboratories will produce one main knowledge product including an example of a completely universally designed university course, including curricula, teaching materials, assignments and assessment (exam) and a webpage with curated materials on best practice on universal design for learning.