SUNY Fredonia will host its 4th annual Teaching and Learning Conference, themed, “Universal Design for Learning: Accessible and Assistive Technologies to Enhance Student Learning,” on Aug. 16. The day-long event begins at 9 a.m. in the Williams Center.
Colleges and universities are constantly facing many challenges, including meeting the needs of students, regardless of differences in learning styles, as well as students with disabilities, and the rising costs associated with implementing and maintaining up-to-date instructional technologies that are accessible to all students.
Students with disabilities are increasingly pursuing higher education. However, these students face numerous obstacles on campuses, as they must navigate inaccessible environments that do not accommodate human diversity.
One technique to ensure full accessibility in the classroom is Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a set of principles for designing curriculums that provide individual students with equal learning opportunities. Based on learner differences and instructional settings, UDL presents ways to display or access information, plan and execute learning tasks, and help students stay engaged in learning.
The Teaching and Learning Conference, sponsored by SUNY Fredonia’s Professional Development Center, is open to all campus faculty and staff, as well as employees of other SUNY schools, and non-SUNY regional colleges and universities. The conference is a “SUNY FACT2 Conference on Computing in the Disciplines,” which means it is open to all Western New York schools. Attendees will be able to share information and ideas about teaching and learning focused on the use of accessible and assistive technologies and UDL.
The keynote speakers will be Dr. Emiliano Ayala of Sonoma State University’s School of Education, and Dr. Brett Christie, director of Sonoma State’s Center for Teaching and Professional Development. In 2005, Drs. Ayala and Christie received a federal grant through the U.S. Department of Education, as a Demonstration Project to Ensure Students with Disabilities Receive a Quality Higher Education. The project, “EnACT,” an acronym for Ensuring Access through Collaboration and Technology, is designed to provide faculty within the California State University system with the skills, support and training necessary to ensure that students with disabilities are provided a high quality post-secondary education. The program is proving to be a model for the 23-campus CSU system which is pro-actively working to prepare faculty and instructional support staff on UDL principles as well as how to disseminate resources to students in an accessible manner.
In addition, a series of break-out sessions will occur throughout the day along a variety of tracks, including: best practices (teaching, scholarship, and creative activity); Universal Design for Learning; accessible and adaptive technologies; service-learning and community engagement; scholarship of teaching and learning; technology in the classroom; and instructional uses of ANGEL or iTunesU. The conference will begin with a conversation among SUNY colleges and universities, in hopes of visualizing what could be done to support accessible and assistive technologies throughout the SUNY system.
