Higher education faculty are often trained to research and write as a large focus of their doctoral preparation. Although many programs provide doctoral students with experience teaching and assessing student learning, college-level pedagogy may not be a primary focus and explicit instruction in how to support students holistically is not always provided. Due to the gap in teaching and learning, it is easy to turn to traditional, compliance-based instructional strategies that are not mindful of students' lives outside of the classroom. As faculty emphasize the importance of seemingly trivial aspects of learning, such as assignment due dates or page limits, the learning process gets lost among students. With fear and anxiety about meeting deadlines, fluffing up papers to reach a word minimum, or finishing a course just to have an “A” on their record, students can lose sight of the content, how to apply it, and how to grow from it. On top of this, students face uncertainties and traumas outside of the classroom walls that create barriers to learning. With these external distractions and worries, it can feel impossible to make learning a priority. Furthermore, these practices often prevent students from acquiring or practicing skills needed for life-long development, such as self-regulation, coping skills, time management, and more. National surveys of student engagement repeatedly indicate that faculty-student interaction ranks among the lowest of all student–engagement benchmarks, despite proven positive impacts. With low rates of these interactions embedded in compliance-driven coursework, students often struggle to maximize their learning. Instead, instruction in higher education needs to prioritize the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework, which centers student voice, choice, and autonomy. When postsecondary instructors utilize the UDL framework, they create interactions and environments that value and honor students, their professional and personal lives, and their needs both in and out of the classroom. While there are several common misconceptions about implementing the UDL framework, such as added workload or time, they often stem from lack of accurate information and feasible action steps. Therefore, this session focuses on the need for more faculty to utilize the UDL framework in their instruction followed by tangible examples faculty can immediately put into practice. By the end of this session, participants will: (1) gain a deeper understanding of the UDL framework; (2) understand the positive impact of using teaching strategies grounded in the UDL framework; and (3) learn realistic examples to immediately apply aspects of the UDL framework to their coursework.

Keywords: Universal Design for Learning, higher education, postsecondary instruction.