Embracing universal design for learning in higher education to create inclusive provisions for international students

1. Thinking outside the box
Frederic Fovet, School of Education and Technology,
Royal Roads University
Australian International Education Conference 2019, Perth

2. Personal introduction
• Personal background is important here as this is a phenomenological
exploration of my various professional roles within this arena.
• Currently Associate Professor within the School of Education an
Technology at Royal Roads University, in BC
• Spent three years as Assistant Professor at UPEI, and acted as Academic
Lead on an MEd with a prominent International intake
• 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
• Have been able to transfer most of my UDL expertise from the context
of Disability to the ‘internationalized’ 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.

4. Adapted from AHEAD resources

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 as 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; the deficit model is - sadly – still routinely used in HE
to describe the challenges faced by instructors.
• UDL places the burden back on the instructor to design accessibly

6. Literature on UDL in the internationalized
classroom
• There is a paucity of literature on the topic.
• There is an emerging body of literature on UDL and
multiculturalism
• However the literature is still very shy of proposing a direct
application of UDL in the context of the internationalized HE
classroom.
• This presentation seeks to challenge this and to encourage other
scholars to consider the application of UDL in this context.

7. How can UDL be useful for the inclusion
of International Students?
• For the sake of brevity and conciseness, I will only offer examples
of practices that can be adopted when embarking on a reflection
around the implementation of the three principles of UDL in the
context of an internationalized classroom:
• Multiple means of representation
• Multiple means of action and expression
• Multiple means of engagement

8. 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

9. 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 assignment is specifically the formative assessment of 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.

10. 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.

11. 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. The same can be said about the voices of
International Students, despite the direct revenue they represent.
• If Disability service providers in HE were 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.

12. Implications of this work
• What do we need to learn to do differently?
• Create osmosis between accessibility services, International Students support
and Indigenous services.
• Widen the current wording of PD around UDL so that International Student
support personnel might immediately feels its relevance
• Encourage International Student support services to widen their discourse
from multiculturalism to an active discussion on pedagogy
• Demonstrate to faculty that practices adopted for students with Disability
have great impact on the inclusion of International students.
•

13. Book chapter exploring this research in
detail
• Kate Novak & Sean Bracken (Eds.) (2019) Transforming Higher Education through
Universal Design for Learning: An International Perspective. Routledge, London.

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