CURTIN UNIVERSITY AUSTRALIA: Enabling Access and Engagement for ALL: ACollaborative Workshop on Realising the potential for Universal Design for Learning to bring about systemic change

CURTIN UNIVERSITY AUSTRALIA: Enabling Access and Engagement for ALL: A Collaborative Workshop on Realising the potential for Universal Design for Learning to bring about systemic change.

An increasing number of jurisdictions recognise the necessity to address issues of systemic marginalisation in education through more systemic measures. For governments this involves at least three coordinated dimensions; the development of inclusive policies, the provision of requisite resources to realise those policies and, the involvement and further professional enhancement of key educational staff. It is somewhat rare for these three facets of change management to come together at once and when such a confluence of theory, practice and collaboration comes together there is significant scope for advancing inclusion.

Australia is currently experiencing a sector wide change aimed at addressing gaps in learning outcomes for disabled students in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). In February, the Federal Government heralded a significant uptick in the allocation of funding for supporting inclusion and accessibility measure to support disabled students. Additionally, for the first time, policy documentation made explicit mention of the role that Universal Design for Learning has to play as an enabling conceptual framework for the holistic redevelopment of learning, teaching and assessment so that systemic barriers experienced by disabled learners could be deconstructed. Within such a facilitative context, there is a shared positive energy amongst line minded educators who are keen to shape the conditions for inclusive change.

To harness some of that energy, Dr Seán Bracken worked with colleagues at Curtin to plan for the event. Seán took on the role as part of his visiting scholarship which was hosted by the Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success (ACSES). The workshop took the form of a World Café, where participants were invited to contribute to round table discussions with each table providing scope for participants to elaborate their thinking and proposed actions for areas where UDL could make a demonstrable impact for disabled learners within their settings.

In the first instance, colleagues were invited to consider the importance of generating a shared commitment to Values, Voice and Agency. Participants noted the importance of underpinning all future initiatives with shared, and clearly articulated core values of compassion and empathy, emphasising the importance of cultivating these values across institutions. Participants explored how aligning institutional values with student voice and agency can lead to more meaningful engagement and improved student outcomes. There was a strong call to diversify and decolonize curricula, and to amplify Indigenous and disable learners’ voices in meaningful ways that included, but extended beyond, the traditional means of involving students in surveys. Further, disabled students’ agency was considered critical, especially when it came to developing systemic inclusion across module and course design.

Having established that a sound values base was a critical bedrock for future developments colleagues set about determining how UDL might inform the systemic inclusive design for learning, teaching and assessment. Participants provided clear examples of emerging changes that enabled assessment to become formatively incremental, authentic, and inclusive, offering multiple means of demonstrating learning. The workshop highlighted the importance of co-designing learning experiences with students, promoting empathy, and ensuring that assessment strategies reflect real-world relevance. By ‘real world’ participants articulated a strong desire for assessments to have a positive impact on wider communities rather than viewing them as being solely concerned with employers’ requirements. There was also recognition of the challenges posed by traditional assessment models and the need to move beyond unit-level design to ensure coherence across entire courses.

Colleagues were cognisant that changes in the reformulation of assessment for inclusion would necessarily consider the potentially disruptive nature of generative artificial intelligence, but also the need to keep abreast of its affordances for turbocharging accessibility and inclusion. Discussions touched on the realisation that while AI offers exciting possibilities for enhancing accessibility—such as providing audio versions of texts or real-time transcripts—it also raises concerns around equity, ethicality, and environmental impact. Participants emphasised the need for inclusive anticipatory design, especially for students from rural and remote areas, and called for a critical approach to AI that complements rather than replaces human learning.

Three major themes emerged from the workshop, these were:

• (Inter)Connectedness – the building of networks and taking advantage of existing national and transnational groups of colleagues to further advance systemic change.
• Awareness – In a climate of dynamic change, there is a necessity to keep abreast of the most recent and significant changes, especially a these inform the intertwined areas of inclusive assessment and generative artificial intelligence.
• Learner Centredness – Positing learner voice and agency at the heart of future developments would ensure that initiatives were grounded on an authentic values-based foundation.

To bring about the systemic changes required, discussions also noted the requirement for ‘change at the top’, so that inclusive leadership could guide future changes in a coherent and empathetic way. Coherent leadership for inclusion would orient thinking but also very much orient UDL practice into key strategic areas such as procurement processes, course reviews, and virtual learning environments. The workshop concluded with a call to celebrate successes through fellowships and awards, and to develop a strategic communication plan to unify and scale individual initiatives. With such a promising foundational basis, educational sectors in other countries will be watching developments in Australia with interest as developments there could provide a template for wider policy adoptions of UDL.

Author: Dr Seán Bracken, PFHEA, is an Associate Professor at Curtin University and a Principal Lecturer at the University of Worcester in the UK. He is a Co-Founder of INCLUDE and a Deputy Editor for IJUDUDL.