Professional Contributors
Boris Alvarez
Strategic Director of Fellow Group Latinoamerica UDL Associate Credential. Global MBA, Universidad de Chile & MSc in Business Administration, University of Rochester, NY. Ed. M(c). Consultant and speaker in Universal Design for Learning, Inclusive Education, team management and business innovation. Co-Manager of Connect content area in INCLUDE initiative.
Linda Plantin Ewe
Linda Plantin Ewe is a lecturer at Kristianstad University and a doctoral student at Malmö University. Her research concern teachers’ relational competence, specifically concerning students with ADHD and how to increase their academic and social accessibility in school. With colleagues, she has created a module for learning for Swedish teachers based on the principles of UDL and on increasing the knowledge of UDL among Swedish school leaders and teachers. With colleagues at Kristianstad University, Linda translated the UDL framework into Swedish in order to increase the accessibility for Swedish teachers. She is Coordinator for the upcoming 2020 UDL conference to be held digitally at Kristianstad University this autumn. Linda invites researchers and practitioners from all over the world to participate in this innovative and exciting conference.
Publications: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13632752.2019.1597562?needAccess=true
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJLLS-12-2019-0081/full/pdf
Tracy Galvin
Tracy started her career as a post-primary teacher and then worked in teacher education for over 13 years’ in higher education. She has moved into an education development role where she advises and facilitates staff through delivery of academic enhancement projects, workshops and one to one sessions. Tracy leads on a number of projects and chairs three working groups: Universal Design for Learning, Internationalisation of the Curriculum and Inclusive Assessment. Her interests and research includes: Universal Design for Learning, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), Internationalisation of the Curriculum (IoC), Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP), inclusive assessment and curriculum design.
Marcio Hollosi
DOCTOR PROFESSOR IN EDUCATION AND HEALTH, UNIFESP – FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF SÃO PAULO. Doctorate and Master in Education and Health, Professor of Libras – Brazilian Sign Language at UNIFESP, Researcher and coordinator of the GEICS project – Study and research group Identity and Deaf Culture at UNIFESP and registered at CNPQ and the project: Children’s Literature in Education the Brazilian Sign Language and the Portuguese Language in the Education of the Deaf in an Inclusive Perspective (Prolie-Libras), also at UNIFESP. Researcher at Grupo ILCAE – Linguistic Inclusion in educational activities scenarios at PUC-SP and ISEF – Research group on educational inclusion and training at UNIFESP.
Shigeru Ikuta
Senior Scholar of Otsuma Women’s University. Shigeru Ikuta is an education technologist, teacher educator in Science, and special educator with a focus on student learning and development on the basis of communication aids. He had been working as a Professor of Computation Chemistry at Tokyo Metropolitan University for twenty-nine years. He moved to University of Tsukuba and has started collaborative works with in creating self-made teaching materials with multimedia-enabled dot code and conducting many school activities in cooperation with the schoolteachers all over the world for more than 14 years. He is honored to be an Emeritus Professor of Otsuma Women’s University and Tokyo Metropolitan University.
Katie Novak
Ed.D. Education Consultant. Novak Educational Consulting, CAST Professional Cadre. Katie Novak, Ed.D. is an internationally renowned education consultant, a practicing leader in education, and author of 7 books published by CAST Professional Publishing, Routledge, Impress, and an 8th forthcoming by Corwin. Katie designs and presents workshops both nationally and internationally focusing on the implementation of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and universally designed leadership.
Thomas O’Shaughnessy
Assistive Technology Officer, University of Limerick. Thomas O’Shaughnessy, Assistive Technology Officer at the University of Limerick. Current PhD candidate researching in the area of assistive technology in Initial Teacher Education. Background in Computer Science and Software Engineering. Guest lecture on several undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Assitive Technology, Accessibility and UDL. Manage the purpose-built Educational Assistive Technology Center, a state of the art assistive technology training center at the University of Limerick. Member of the University of Limerick Web Group and current chair of the Web Accessibility subgroup. Research interests include: Accessibility, UDL Practice, Assitive Technology, Inclusive Education, Mainstreaming of Technology-based Supports, and Exam Technologies.
Virna Rossi
PGCert Course Leader, Ravensbourne University London.
A teacher since 1998 in all educational settings: Primary, Secondary, College (FE), Adult Education, Higher Education (university). My primary specialism is Language and Literature: English, Italian and French. After completing my PGCert (Greenwich University) in 2004, I also became involved in the delivery of some of its modules and I realised that teacher education was my ‘call’, and my roles became more and more geared towards teacher education. After completing the Master of Teaching (MTeach) in 2007 at the IoE (part of UCL, London, UK), I further qualified to become an ‘Assessor’ (2009) so as to take a role as MTeach module lecturer at the IoE, until 2016 when I joined Ravensbourne where I currently lead the PGCert in Creative Courses.
I am interested in all things education. I am particularly interested in inclusivity: inclusive learning design, inclusive assessment as learning, and feedback for learning. I feel inclusivity is very much on the agenda, it is a crucial aspect of 21st century learning but its impact is often underestimated.
Rebeca Soler
Doctor in Education, University of Zaragoza (Spain). I am Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Sciences. My field of expertise is Didactics and School Organization. I have participated in international and national scientific conferences, highlighting teaching development and research in my approach to training; also I completed various postdoctoral research stays in foreign universities. My research lines focus on discourse analysis in the didactic interaction, the school organization for inclusive education, the study of Information and Communication Technologies applied to teaching-learning processes and the use of Virtual Learning Environments as powerful didactic tools incorporating a new Pedagogy language.
David Stinson
Dave is the Director of the Learning Commons and Centre for Accessible Learning at Trinity Western University. He is very interested in the architecture of ideas and strategic design This includes how we might apply UDL principles to design better outcomes. He has also developed the Stinson Wellness Model, which helps people and organizations make wise decisions that align with who they are.
Seanna Takacs
PhD Faculty, Learning Specialist, and Accessibility Services at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Canada; and Educational Consultant for the Teaching and Learning Commons, focusing on UDL. Accessibility and inclusion, teaching, research, supporting students and faculty in inclusive practice, and universally designed instruction has been my passion for over 15 years. My background in language, literacy, and learning disabilities has meant the privilege of working across settings and institutions with a continuous improvement lens.
Paola Vergara
CEO Fellow Group Latinoamerica. UDL Associate Level Credential – Learning Designed. Ed. M(c). Academic Director in postgraduate programs at Fundacion Hospital Clinico Universidad de Chile and Fellow Group Latinoamerica. Consultant and speaker in Universal Design for Learning and Inclusive Education. Certified by CAST Professional Learning in Design for Implementation through UDL Framework and Certificate “Tutor in Universal Design for Learning Certification”. Academic in education, Binnakle methodology and innovation. CNB Chilean Sign Language. ASOCH, CHILE. Member of the team of Learn content area and Translation in INCLUDE initiative.
Leandro Key Higuchi Yanaze
Adjunct Professor, Federal University of Sao Paulo (UNIFESP).
I am a professor in the educational design course and one of the subjects is universal design. We understand that the educational designer must take ownership and apply the concepts of UDL in all educational projects. In particular, I am working with immersive technologies for education (virtual, augmented reality and games). And I am researching how to apply the UDL framework in the development of these immersive projects.
Zainab Al-Shidhani
Zainab Al-Shidhani is a 3rd year PhD student in the Learning, Design, and Technology program in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education, University of Houston. She has 15 years of experience in educational technology, having completed a bachelor’s degree in Instructional and Learning Technologies in the College of Education at the Sultan Qaboos University (Oman). Her graduation project for that degree was the development of an Omani e-Research Centre that provided an electronic hub for the researchers in Oman to access different resources, share interests, develop skills and knowledge, and work together in research projects. She is a member of the Omani Society of Educational Technology. She worked as a teaching assistant at Sultan Qaboos University for several years and then went for her Master’s degree in Digital Technologies, Communication, and Education from the University of Manchester (UK). Her thesis was “Facebook Groups as Professional Development Resource for the Omani IT Teachers from the Lens of Communities of Practice.” Then, she returned to Sultan Qaboos as a Lecturer in the Department of Instructional and Learning Technologies. She is interested in issues of accessibility and curricular equity on a global scale through the lens of inclusive instructional design frameworks.