There has been growing but sporadic interest around Universal Design for Learning across the post-secondary sector in most jurisdictions over the last decade. This, in itself is encouraging and there is no doubt that the notion that inclusion must be achieved through proactive inclusive design rather than through retrofitting and accommodations is finally gaining in popularity and visibility. UDL work, however, has long entertained an ambivalent and complex relationship with the rest of the scholarship on technology, blended learning and online learning. While the overlap between the UDL literature and these other bodies of practice is prima facie obvious and rich, in the field it has been somewhat difficult strategically to get buy-in for UDL from the practitioners and researchers traditionally involved in technology rich pedagogy. The COVID pandemic and the pivot to online teaching and learning have shaken this status quo and offered unprecedented opportunities to demonstrate and showcase the relevance of UDL when it comes to systemically addressing learner diversity in online and blended pedagogy. The pandemic, however, has also further muddied the waters, and disrupted many of the relationships between stakeholders in academia. The disruption has been such that it becomes challenging at times to foresee what lessons have been learnt from the pandemic and what new practices are likely to emerge from the COVID crisis. The presentation will examine what the future of UDL implementation within the growth of online and blended learning might look like in this disrupted and quickly changing landscape. It will invite participants to engage in lucid assessments of the opportunities and challenges the post-pandemic era gives rise to in this area.

1. Addressingthe needs of diverselearners in onlineand
blended learning withUniversalDesignfor Learning in the
post-pandemicAcademy:opportunities,new alliances,
hurdles, shifting ground, U turns, quicksands,and other
surprisesof the journey.
TINEL Conference Keynote
December 8th, 2021 – York, UK

2. Royal Roads University acknowledges that the campus is
located on the traditional lands of the Xwsepsum (Esquimalt)
and Lekwungen (Songhees) ancestors and families who have
lived here for thousands
of years.
This land has been part of the fabric of the life of Indigenous
communities long before Hatley Castle was built, and it will
be long into the future. It is with gratitude that we now learn
and work here, where the past, present and future of
Indigenous and
non-Indigenous students, faculty and
staff come together.
Hay'sxw'qa si'em!
ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF
TRADITIONAL LANDS

3. Objectives of the Session
• Explore the pre-existing relationship that exists between the scholarship on UDL and the
literature on e-learning.
• Examine what changes the COVID pandemic has brought to this relationship.
• Identify the challenges that have arisen, within the COVID pivot to online learning, in relation
to inclusion and accessibility.
• Examine the key role UDL can play in addressing these challenges and in supporting the
development of fully inclusive online and blended learning
• Identify strategic and organizational challenges to keep an eye on

4. Format of Workshop
• It is always difficult to be fully interactive when online. It can also be
challenging to be entirely UDL in short presentations.
• I have nevertheless tried to incorporate as many inclusive features as
possible:
• Use of interactive activities with Menti.com. Will not switch screens in the
interest of time but will talk to the results of the polls.
• Will also be monitoring the conference hashtag through the session and for
the rest of the day (@Ffovet)

5. Format of Workshop (contd.)
• We will also have approximately 10 minutes at the end of the session for
questions. You can also use the chat function throughout and the facilitators
will inform me during the talk when questions pop up.
• Happy to engage with all participants one on one beyond the session via
email or social media.
• The slides of the presentation will be available on SlideShare immediately
after the workshop (and appear on my LinkedIn and Twitter accounts). I will
integrate the Menti slides for your use.

6. Personal lens and methodological stance
• Unique positioning as a scholar: have been both an Accessibility Services manager
and a faculty member
• Was involved in large scale UDL implementation from 2011 to 2016 across a campus
– experienced this process in its full complexity
• Have also been Academic Lead/ Program Head at UPEI and RRU, and have needed to
guide contract faculty around inclusive teaching and the use of UDL.
• Act as a UDL consultant with colleges and universities in Canada.
• My research and scholarship also focuses on UDL
• I will be drawing from these multiple and varied perspectives

7. Encouraging growth of the UDL model
• Growing but sporadic interest around Universal Design for Learning across the post-
secondary sector in most jurisdictions over the last decade.
• Particular early hubs of activity in Norway, Ireland, Belgium, Canada and the US
• Encouraging energy
• No doubt that the notion that inclusion must be achieved through proactive inclusive
design rather than through retrofitting and accommodations is finally gaining in
popularity and visibility
• Accommodation and retrofitting models are cracking at the seams. Represents and
approach to equity and access to earning that remain grounded in deficit model
views of diverse learners.
• Accommodation and retrofitting model is also expensive and unsustainable.
• Differentiation is problematic in higher education – as the only viable alternative
• This conjuncture offers UDL a strong role as optimal framework for inclusion in the
tertiary sector and for the implementation of recent EDI policies.

8. UDL’s ambivalent relationship with the scholarship on
online and blended learning
• UDL work, however, has long entertained an ambivalent and complex relationship with the rest of the
scholarship on technology, blended learning and online learning.
• Overlap between the UDL literature and these other bodies of practice is prima facie obvious & rich, but in
the field it has been difficult strategically to get buy-in for UDL from practitioners and researchers traditionally
involved in technology rich pedagogy.
• Accessibility, Inclusion and Learner Diversity have often been dismissed by e-learning scholars and
practitioners.
• Perhaps too much euphoria around the potential of technology as tool to emancipate marginalized learners
and to amplify their voices?
• Took the emergence of critical digital pedagogy before the field accepted the double edged potential of
technology: as both liberator and tool of stigmatization
• The result is that a fair body of literature on e-learning, until recently, ignores accessibility and learner
diversity altogether.
• No natural allegiance between UDL advocates and e-learning researchers (journals, conferences, research
collaborations, etc.)

9. And then came COVID…

10. Interactive activity - How has the COVID pandemic
changed attitudes towards inclusion and UDL?
• We will use Menti to quickly poll you as participants.
• I will generate the Menti code synchronously as otherwise it resets if not used
immediately
• Visit www.menti.com and use the code that will be generated during the session
• Do you feel that the COVID crisis has:
• (1) improved awareness of accessibility and inclusion, and made UDL more appealing
• (2) made accessibility and inclusion more challenging, and has been detrimental the
buy-in for UDL

12. Some of the benefits emerging worldwide
from the COVID pandemic pivot
• The COVID pandemic and the pivot to online teaching and learning have shaken
status quo
• This has offered unprecedented opportunities to demonstrate and showcase the
relevance of UDL when it comes to systemically addressing learner diversity in online
and blended pedagogy.
• Much more awareness about diversity and accessibility
• More open discourse about these needs and their urgency in online learning
environment
• To an extent more student voices being heard
• Instructors globally acknowledging and embracing their role as designers of the
learning experience.
• Unprecedented landscape, as this is a ‘hat’ faculty are generally reluctant to accept.

13. So… does this mean things are looking up
for UDL in blended and online learning?

14. Not so fast!
• The pandemic, however, has also further muddied the waters, and disrupted many of the
relationships between stakeholders in academia.
• Instructors are having to make design decisions on their own, often overnight, with few
precedents as to what is accessible or not in terms of classroom practices.
• Instructors are increasingly working from home with few opportunities for mentorship,
dialogue, and modelling around inclusion.
• The relationship between accessibility services personnel and instructors has never been so
distant, slim, almost elusive.
• Accessibility services personnel themselves are often these days confronted with innovative
practices they have never had the opportunity to assess for accessibility.; lack of precedents
and pressing need for overnight advice.
• Waves of panic in public opinion have led to knee jerk reactions for fear of the ‘floodgate
argument’: e.g. cameras compulsorily on, virtual exam proctoring, etc. These decisions have
had little to do with pedagogy or inclusion.
• Dangerous emergence of the ‘undue hardship’ clause in North America, allowing campuses
to temporarily ignore their legal responsibilities with regards to Human Rights legislation.

15. New areas of friction
• UDL implementation had reached a stage in many institutions where interesting and
challenging case studies were emerging, requiring a subtle and nuance UDL
response.
• There has been, for example increasing concerns about what UDL might look like in
the science lab, in the visual art studio, in the language lab, in the outdoor
classroom, in the field placement, and in the graduate classroom.
• The rapid shift to online and blended learning has further muddied the waters by
requiring an overnight remodelling of these pedagogical spaces for online delivery,
before UDL scholars and practitioners had time to develop UDL best practices in
these areas.
• The complexity of the task ahead has taken centre stage within this increased
disruption; few pragmatic precedents exist.

16. Not just about accessibility
• Inclusion - and UDL – is not just about impairment. It seeks to address the needs of
all diverse learners.
• Sadly the COVID pandemic has been the setting for numerous push backs in terms of
equity, and for the progressive erosion of many basic rights.
• Despite the strength of the #MeToo movement, of the Black Lives Matter
movement, and of the Truth and Reconciliation momentum, racialized, culturally
diverse, Indigenous, and female students have been further marginalized during the
pandemic.
• Loss of services, loss of voice, decreased visibility, increased hardship in meeting
outcomes, penalization in online assessment, decreased funding.
• The use of UDL in online and blended learning must go much further than just secure
accessibility for students with impairment. It must demonstrate its ability and use as
a framework to ensure the engagement of all diverse learners.

17. Final Assessment: A window of opportunity
• There is a key role for UDL to play in the post-pandemic reflection around the online &
blended learning and inclusion.
• Some important lessons can be drawn from the pandemic pivot but these lessons will not be
learnt/ integrated without a conscious and intentional analytical recap taking place.
• What did we learn about online accessibility? What did we learn about the design of these
online experiences? Where did we go wrong? Where might UDL be useful as a framework.
• UDL can represent a simple, user-friendly, common-sense, and progressive pathway towards
designing fully inclusive online experiences. In that sense UDL has a key role to play.
• The pandemic has offered opportunities for awareness. We have to be weary, however, of
organizations’ and practitioners’ natural tendency to return to status quo, in a pendulum
movement, and to avoid change altogether – even after a period of forced disruption.
• A lot of innovative, creative, and transformative practices developed and tried out online
during the pandemic are not inherently accessible and inclusive: constructivism, social
constructivism, critical pedagogy, active learning, etc.
• UDL allows us to find the ‘happy place’ – the overlap between these pedagogical approaches
and the central need to be accessible and fully inclusive

18. Remaining strategic challenges around
UDL implementation across organizations
• It would also be naïve to assume that just because one feels UDL has a central role to
play in the development of inclusive and accessible e-learning in the post-pandemic
landscape, its implementation will be easy and matter of fact.
• There is currently a lack of focus on the complexity of the process of pedagogical
change in itself.
• There is also a striking paucity of research around the organizational dimension of
UDL implementation and its scaling up.
• This is concerning as many communities of practice or individual explorations of UDL
by instructors are unsustainable.
• Burn out is a very frequent phenomenon among UDL advocates

19. Strategic and organizational challenges
• More widely, management of change around UDL implementation must be
examined as an organizational process of management of change.
• UDL implementation is extremely complex in the tertiary sector.
• As a sector this is a field that is multilayered, complex, and highly political.
• A suitable lens must be developed to fully capture this complexity and plan
proactively for it.
• It’s not just because one is able to evidence the pertinence and relevance of UDL in
the development of fully inclusive e-learning that its implementation is going to
become a reality.
• Beyond the pedagogical reality and its objectives, we need to acknowledge the
political and administrative reality of campuses and their conflicting needs and
objectives.

20. Navigating a delicate landscape
• There is a need for a coordinated approach at the blue print stage: Who has ownership over the
momentum?
• What are this stakeholder’s existing relationships with other key units?
• Accessibility services are not the natural stakeholder to lead implementation – ambivalence of
preaching a model that clashes with one’s own funding model.
• Are instructional designers more suited drivers of the implementation? Teaching and learning
units?
• Danger in preaching to the converts – any implementation strategy must seek to reach the most
reticent instructors/ stakeholders.
• Need to acknowledge that inclusion goes beyond impairment and concerns racialized students,
first generation students, Indigenous students, socio-economically challenges learners, members
of the LGBTQ2S+ community, etc.
• Needs to create osmosis and involved a variety of supporting student affairs personnel and
instructors.
• Need to examine the hierarchical barriers to effective communication between these
stakeholders.
• Many of the staff members who support these students are reluctant to trigger a reflection
around inclusive pedagogy – hierarchical reticence to disrupt and engage with instructors

21. Need for an ecological lens on UDL
implementation across institutions
• The tertiary sector is complex, multi-layered, made up of people of widely differing training
and theoretical background, and is highly politicized
• An ecological lens will be essential in carrying out an ecological mapping and addressing the
uniqueness of each landscape.
• An ecological lens will be capable of acknowledging the complexity of this landscape
• It allows for the proactive strategic planning of systemic UDL implementation across large
organizations
• The following slides is an illustration from an article I have published on this topic. I will read
out the examples of ecological variables that come into action in the UDL implementation
process which are mentioned in the illustration (institutional culture and history, red tape
and admin heaviness/ willingness to streamline, support from senior administration/
embedding of UDL in mission statement, multiple competing stakeholders, collaboration with
natural stakeholders, administrative strategic planning, credibility with student body, size and
resources, external variables affecting all parts of the campus).

22. Need for an ecological lens on UDL
implementation across institutions

23. References & Resources
Black, R. D., Weinberg, L. A., & Brodwin, M. G. (2015). Universal design for learning and instruction:
Perspectives of students with disabilities in higher education. Exceptionality Education International, 25(2), 1-
16
Boothe, K., Lohmann, M., Donnell, K., & Hall, D. (2018) Applying the Principles of Universal Design for Learning
(UDL) in the College Classroom. Journal of Special Education Apprenticeship, 7(3).
Burgstahler, S.E. (2015) Universal Design in Higher Education: From Principles to Practice. Harvard Education
Press, MA
Dalton, E. M., Lyner-Cleophas, M., Ferguson, B. T., & McKenzie, J. (2019). Inclusion, universal design and
universal design for learning in higher education: South Africa and the United States. African Journal of
Disability, 8, 519
Dean, T., Lee-Post, A., & Hapke, H. (2017). Universal design for learning in teaching large lecture classes.
Journal of Marketing Education, 39(1), 5-16
Fovet, F. (2021a) Developing an Ecological Approach to Strategic UDL Implementation in Higher Education.
Journal of Education and Learning, 10(4).
Fovet, F. (2021b) Anger and Thirst for Change among Students with Disabilities in Higher Education: Exploring
Universal Design for Learning as a Tool for Transformative Action. In C-M. Reneau and M.A. Villarreal (Eds.)
Handbook of Research on Leading Higher Education Transformation with Social Justice, Equity, and Inclusion.
IGI Global.
Fovet, F. (202c1) UDL in Higher Education: a Global Overview of the Landscape and its Challenges. In F. Fovet
(Ed) Handbook of Research on Applying Universal Design for Learning Across Disciplines: Concepts, Case
Studies, and Practical Implementation. IGI Global

24. References & Resources (contd.)
Fovet, F. (Ed.) (2021) Handbook of Research on Applying Universal Design for Learning Across Disciplines:
Concepts, Case Studies, and Practical Implementation. IGI Global
Fovet, F. (2020) Universal Design for Learning as a Tool for Inclusion in the Higher Education Classroom: Tips for
the Next Decade of Implementation. Education Journal. Special Issue: Effective Teaching Practices for Addressing
Diverse Students’ Needs for Academic Success in Universities, 9(6), 163-172.
http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/journal/paperinfo?journalid=196&doi=10.11648/j.edu.20200906.13
Griful-Freixenet, J., Struyven, K., Verstichele, M., & Andries, C. (2017) Higher education students with disabilities
speaking out: perceived barriers and opportunities of the Universal Design for Learning framework. Disability &
Society, 32, 10
James, K. (2018) Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as a Structure for Culturally Responsive Practice. Northwest
Journal of Teacher Education, 13(1), Article 4.
Kennette, L., & Wilson, N. (2019) Universal Design for Learning: What is it and how do I implement it?
Transformative Dialogues: Teaching & Learning, 12(1)
Nieminen, J.H., & Pesonen, H.V. (2020) Taking Universal Design back to its roots: Perspectives on accessibility and
identity in Undergraduate Mathematics. Education Sciences, 10(1). 2020, 10(1), 12
Novak, K. & Bracken, S. (Eds.) Transforming Higher Education through Universal Design for Learning: An
International Perspective. Routledge

25. Questions

26. Contact details
• Frederic Fovet (PhD.)
• Associate Professor, School of Education and Technology, Royal Roads
University
• Frederic.fovet@royalroads.ca
• @Ffovet
• www.implementudl.com