UDL at the Heart: Designing Learning with Every Student in Mind

Students don't all learn in the same way. They bring different experiences, strengths, needs, expectations, technologies, and approaches to learning into our courses. Yet many course designs still assume that students will engage with content, participate, demonstrate learning, and navigate the course in essentially the same ways.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) offers another way to think about course design: anticipate learner variability from the beginning and make intentional choices that reduce unnecessary barriers to learning. That doesn't mean creating a different course for every student. And it doesn't mean lowering expectations or eliminating academic challenges. It means asking a different design question:

What does every student actually need to do to achieve the learning goal, and where might the way I've designed the course make that harder than it needs to be?

Accessibility remains an essential part of good course design. UDL asks us to look even more broadly. A resource might technically be accessible while still being difficult to understand. An assignment might meet accessibility requirements while giving students little clarity about what successful work looks like. A discussion might be technically available to everyone while privileging students who are comfortable responding quickly and publicly. 

This semester, the Course Roadmap to Equity (CoRE) takes Universal Design for Learning into the disciplines. Rather than asking faculty to redesign an entire course, or assuming the same strategies work equally well everywhere, four workshops explore teaching and course-design challenges within STEM, humanities, social sciences, and fine arts. Participants will bring something they already teach, identify potential barriers or opportunities, apply a UDL lens, and make one meaningful improvement they can put into practice.

Image: CoRE Learning Design infographic showing four discipline pathways: STEM, humanities, social sciences, and fine arts, focused on inclusive course design.

Early registration begins now: 

• Make STEM Learning More Accessible: Designing Multiple Ways Into Complex Content (Oct 7, 2026)
• Expand Access to Evidence and Inquiry: Designing Accessible Social Science Learning (Oct 14, 2026)
• Amplify Access to Creative Learning: Designing Accessible Fine Arts Experiences (Oct 21, 2026)
• Remove Barriers, Not Complexity: Designing Accessible Humanities Learning (Oct 28, 2026)

Across the series, the approach is the same: Bring something. Examine it. Redesign something. Leave with something you can use.

From Accessibility to Inclusive Learning Design

Designing for learner variability means considering not only whether students can access learning, but also how they can engage with it, understand it, and demonstrate what they know. It’s not about a long list of guidelines, or something that needs to be applied everywhere at once in your course. UDL doesn't require rebuilding everything. It begins by making intentional choices about what we design next.

Accessibility and UDL therefore work together: Accessibility helps remove barriers to access, while UDL helps us examine the broader learning experience.

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