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The Inclusive University project led by CIRTL at UCC aims to enact a sustainable model of professional development fostering equity-minded inclusive teaching practices that support the participation and success of all our learners.
The project seeks to implement models that build long-term, sustainable capacity for institutional change towards equity-minded inclusive teaching practice grounded in universal design for learning approaches. This will include the development of pedagogical partnerships with students who identify as members of the National Access plan priority groups, and intentional support for staff CPD to enable their growth as critical and equity-minded change agents. This poster will provide an overview of this work and share emerging findings.
Everyday technologies like Microsoft and Google are used by learners as part of their learning environments. These technologies have a vast array of inbuild accessibility features to support the learning needs of a wide variety of learners. Using the UDL lens to introduce these features allows learners to see that all technology is assistive technology and that learners can support their own learning needs. It is essential that educators and learners are aware of the assistive features within their everyday technologies.
We will demonstrate Microsoft’s Immersive reader and its potential to support a diverse range of learner needs.
The project team works with students to co-create virtual reality simulations that address challenging and abstract concepts in molecular and cellular biology and virology. With learning design and the student voice as the underpinning themes, they provide a roadmap for the integration of virtual reality in inclusive and universal teaching in the life sciences
This poster will explore the concept of inclusive pedagogy in undergraduate nursing education, through a participatory action research approach. The concept of disabilities in undergraduate nursing education will also be explored through the lens of the student, patient and nurse educators. The enablers and barriers to inclusive pedagogy will also be explored.
ATU are the 2022 John Kelly UDL Collaborative Award winners, and through our UDL Centre of Excellence we are committed to sharing best UDL practice and approaches throughout Further and Higher Education. This poster will concentrate on the big take away ideas regarding what is worth considering when implementing UDL into the fabric of the whole college/ centre. The ATU UDL Centre of Excellence will discuss how they are making UDL everyone’s business by sharing the stages our colleagues move through on their UDL journey; knowledge, understanding, badges, implementation, and informing/ reforming. Other key takeaways include garnering and fostering leadership, stakeholder, internal and external engagement.
The National Learning Network (NLN) in association with The Disability Support Service at University of Galway, facilitates external clinical supervision to the Assistant Psychologists (AP’s) who are supporting the students accessing the DSS service. With the addition of the Assistant Psychologists to the DSS in recent years, this supervision is provided by an NLN Psychologist on a weekly basis, to ensure support and best practice for the AP’s in dealing with various student presentations.
This poster will show the additional value of the AP resource to the DSS at University of Galway, and the importance of external Clinical Supervision in ensuring best practice.
This poster will explore the steps taken to embed the principles and practices of Universal Design for Learning (CAST, 2018) in a fully online, flexible and practice-based accredited programme for those who teach in Higher Education, namely the Level 9 Graduate Certificate in Academic Practice (30 credits) at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. The poster will share the design features of the programme (including a focus on mentoring and the establishment of peer learning groups) as well as the pedagogical design and use of the Virtual Learning Environment in order to offer a highly flexible, experiential and contextualised learning experience for Higher Educations teachers which includes individualised learning pathways grounded in academic practice. It will highlight how the programme promotes multiple means of engagement, representation and action and expression, in order to model to Higher Education teachers how to embed Universal Design for Learning into their own modules and programmes.
The Student Experience Team (Student Learning Centre, Student Health and Student Counselling) at IADT have seen a significant increase in students presenting with what they perceive as ADHD, requesting referral for testing and possible diagnosis. Students who are presenting to Student Counselling compare their attentional based learning capacity significantly to that of their peers, which contributes to dysregulated mood and anxiety concerns.
This project aimed to respond to the need for more inclusive learning by providing a suite of ADHD information resources and targeted supports which are available to the IADT student community. This project has benefitted both student mental health and student learning. This project incorporated teaching and learning between multiple divisions at IADT, ADHD Ireland and UCD through the development of a toolkit for academic staff to support students with ADHD. This toolkit was based on universal design principles in its teaching and assessment strategies across the Institute.
?Access UCC EmployAbility is a collaboration with graduate employers to create a pathway to employment for students with a disability through Career Mentoring, Summer Internship, and Graduate Hire Programmes. A primary aim of the programme is to support the transition of students with a disability from college to the workplace. The poster will outline the 3 main strands of the project;
The DS Career Mentoring Programme matches students with a disability with mentors in industry. Mentoring Partnerships meet 4-6 times during the academic year to cover a variety of topics focused on employability skills development
The DS Summer Internship Programme invites employers to make paid summer internships available to students with a disability. Support is provided to applicants and employers throughout the recruitment process, and to successful candidates for the duration of the internship.
The DS Graduate Hire Programme invites employers to come through Access UCC to specifically hire a UCC student/graduate with a disability. Support is provided to applicants and employers throughout the recruitment process.
With over 1.1 million digital titles available to students in further and higher education, Bookshare Ireland has grown to become the largest inclusive accessible digital library for students in Ireland. Bookshare Ireland not only serves students with sight loss, but also students with reading difficulties such as Dyslexia, or a physical disability that stops access to print.
This presentation relates to the application of UDL principles to virtual reality platforms. Specifically, we are demonstrating the affective use of VR as a presentation tool to reduce anxiety or nervousness for students in assessment situations.
With high demand for Needs Assessments in the early weeks of each trimester there is often not immediate appointment availability for all students seeking disability services. In UCD we are exploring if an individual Needs Assessment can be conducted in a group setting to ensure quality of service in a timely manner.
Activity-based learning via in-class assignments allowed 2nd year biomedical engineering students to generate virtual and physical three-dimensional anatomical models from medical image datasets using open-source software (3D Slicer). Access to medical datasets and diagnostic equipment was provided by an in-house Medical Imaging Suite. The peer-to-peer interaction, research-teaching interaction, and lecturer’s mentoring role with feedforward increases the student’s learning motivation (Why of Learning). Various representation methods were provided for demonstrating the software’s functions and students relied on different assistance methods when encountering problems within the lab (What of Learning). The software could be downloaded to the student’s device which allowed customised keyboard setup, continuous self-reflection, and evaluation against assessment criteria (How of Learning).
Student feedback:
The goal of the poster is to showcase the current inclusive practices, in one Algerian university, which is the first university to adopt inclusive practices and establish a disability support office, as an attempt to promote accessibility and to support students with disabilities journeys, in addition to the barriers that impede disability support staff efforts work, in this university.
This poster will explore the learning needs of autistic students and the role of lecturing staff in promoting success, based on the experiences of both a lecturer and an autistic university student.
The poster aims to educate attendees about effective strategies for supporting autistic students as they initially make the transition to third level, and subsequently as they progress with their studies.
Key topics
This poster will give colleagues an overview of how UCC aims to continually enhance the quality of its teaching and learning opportunities to create an engaging learning environment by providing recorded lectures for all. We certainly aren’t there but have started by ensuring all students registered with Disability Support have access.
Recording lectures, where appropriate, is strongly encouraged in UCC. In accordance with Universal Design principles, we want to ensure an equitable experience for all learners.
The Policy, Recording Live Teaching to Assist Student Study was approved by UCC’s Academic Board in June 2022. It outlines that the provision of recordings to students registered with Disability Support is considered a reasonable accommodation under the Equal Status Acts 2000-2018. Lecture recording is now the preferred accommodation by the university for all students registered with Disability Support.
We will share the additional technical support (two staff) we put in place, as well as sharing learnings from UCC’s Student Union and giving a breakdown of a student survey they ran.