In our classrooms and service areas, we spend a lot of time making adjustments for individual learners: one change, one time, for one person. If our aim is truly to lower student barriers to learning, interaction, and belonging, we should advocate for ways to design inclusion into the everyday practices of our academic colleagues, so that fewer learners need our accommodations and individual adjustments in the first place. 

Recent events—severe weather, learner displacement, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the upcoming Title II accessibility deadline—have opened broad conversations about how best to reach, teach, and assess students in meaningful ways when their access to communal spaces is challenged. 

In this year's COF Teaching & Learning Keynote event, you’ll learn how to talk with your academic colleagues about the principles of Universal Design for learning (UDL) in language that helps them to see why inclusive design, writ broadly for the institution, has benefits for students beyond just their ability profiles (CAST, 2014), and how it helps to address pressing concerns that instructors and leaders have long struggled with.

We will explore diversity, equity, and inclusion in their most inclusive form: instead of relying solely on providing accommodation services to learners with disabilities—often a last-minute, ad-hoc, reactive process—adopting UDL as part of an institution’s culture of course design, teaching practices, and support services allows all learners to benefit, regardless of their place on the ability spectrum (Tobin & Behling, 2018). 

For a full bio, please see speaker page below.

3 Ways to Join! Thomas Tobin will be delivering a virtual webinar talk. COF Community members are invited to register to engage in one of these 3 ways:

• Watch Webinar from Home, or
• Watch Webinar at a Group Streaming Party Hosted at Emmanuel College, or
• Watch Webinar at a Group Streaming Party + Networking Lunch Noon - 1pm