Using UDL to create inclusive provisions for International Students in Higher Education. Presentation at ACE2018, Tokyo 2018

1. Using Universal Design for Learning to
create inclusive classrooms for
International Students in Canadian Higher
Education
Frederic Fovet, Faculty of Education,
University of Prince Edward Island
Asia Conference on Education 2018, Tokyo

2. Personal introduction
• Personal background is important here as this is a phenomenological
exploration of my various professional roles within this arena.
• Currently Assistant Professor in Education at UPEI
• Previously Director of the Office for Students with Disabilities at McGill
for 4 years
• Continue to act as consultant to colleges and universities on matters of
accessibility and Universal Design for Learning
• Regularly called in to plan the strategic adoption and development of
UDL on campuses
• For the last three years have been Academic Lead on an MEd that is
almost entirely composed of International Students.
• Have been able to transfer most of my UDL expertise from the context
of Disability to the International classroom.

3. Context: What is UDL?
• Universal Design for Learning is a sustainable, environment focus
framework to manage Diversity in the classroom, which shifts the
focus away from the deficit model by bringing to the forefront the
notion of user-friendly design (instruction and assessment). It
translates the Social Model of Disability into classroom practices.
• How does it do that? By offering to the instructor three
dimensions within which to reflect on eliminating barriers and
widening access: multiple means of representation, multiple
means of action and expression, and multiple mean of
engagement.

5. The growing interest for UDL in Higher Ed
• Although when UDL was first formulated and coined by CAST, the focus was
on impairment (particularly neuro-diversity), UDL lends itself well to the
management of diversity generally.
• I have found it easy, as a practitioner working with a majority of International
Students, to use similar methods and to carry out similar reflections on my
practice than I was when I was working in Disability.
• The main appeal of UDL is the shift it operates from the deficit model to a
proactive design mindset. The situation is the same when it comes to
International Students and the deficit model is routinely used in HE to
describe the challenges faced by instructors.
• This places the burden back on the instructor to design accessibly

6. How can UDL be useful for the inclusion
of International Students?
• The article submitted to the Proceedings will go into great detail as to how a
UDL reflection on our practices in the HE classroom benefits the inclusion of
International Students.
• Here for the benefit of time, I’ll highlight just one example for each dimension
of the UDL reflection.
• Multiple means of representation
• Multiple means of action and expression
• Multiple means of engagement

7. Multiple Means of representation
• Using the LMS to provide several pathways into the course
‘readings’
• Instead of just posting the assigned readings to Moodle for each
part of the course, I make sure there is an assortment of texts and
other media, offering a nice spectrum in terms of length and
complexity. Students are able to select the sources that suit their
ability in the language of instruction, their familiarity with the
concepts and their time frame. This creates multiple pathways
into to material offered

8. Multiple Means of Action and Expression
• Allowing students to submit format in multiple formats
• UDL engages us as instructor into a rich reflection on what assessment should
consist of. We routinely assess tasks in HE, that we don’t actually teach.
International Students are greatly penalized by this. We, in particular, place
an over-emphasis on papers and presentations – both of which present
challenges for International Students
• Unless an assessment is specifically the formative assignment on an MEd
writing tasks, I allow students to present the work in whatever form they
prefer: video, podcast, PPT, PPT with voice-over, multimedia montage,
animation. The rubrics are written in a way that can be easily transferred to
the format chosen by the student.

9. Multiple means of engagement
• Making sure students are genuinely engaged with the subject matter in a manner that is relevant
to them
• In the field of education, International Students are often asked to perform tasks, such as writing
a practitioner’s journal, or reflecting on their classroom practices, which present inherent
challenges: many International Students have no experience of the home country classroom.
They are lacking the context entirely.
• The film club idea: as a parallel to my course on Critical Pedagogy, I have launched the idea of a
weekly film club. The students are introduced to a dozen films that offer them a window into
the North American classroom and the perceptions the public has of them. As a result, issues
come up for discussion in class, students gain a better understanding of context, and they take
ownership over the tasks that are assigned the them – rather than resenting them because they
might fail to understand the gist of what we are after.

10. The strategic importance of this research
• The Disability movement has so far been viewed as a minority
discourse in Higher Education, and as a result has been for the
great part ignored.
• If Disability service providers in HE are able to combine their voice
with services for International Students and International
Development, as well as support staff for Indigenous Students,
they might be able to shift this into a noticeable voice that is no
longer seen as a minority discourse.
• There is strategic potential here for the quick, systemic adoption
of UDL by campuses.

11. Upcoming book chapter
• Kate Novak & Sean Bracken (Eds.) (2019) Transforming Higher Education through
Universal Design for Learning: An International Perspective. Routledge, London.

12. Contact details
• Frederic Fovet (PhD.)
• Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Prince
Edward Island
• ffovet@upei.ca
• @Ffovet
• www.implementudl.com