Faculty Development: Reaching Every College Student with Universal Design for Learning

Community colleges, with their open-enrollment policies, often serve as a gateway to postsecondary education for a diverse population of students, including first-generation college students, students of color, academically underprepared students, and students with disabilities. Faculty in postsecondary institutions are expected to be content experts rather than trained educators. They may not have experience addressing the varied needs and preferences of the students in their classrooms. Universal design for learning (UDL) provides a framework for designing courses that consider student diversity at the outset, potentially increasing retention, degree progression, and graduation rates. A three-session faculty development program was designed to increase awareness of diverse learning needs, promote the use of UDL principles across campus, introduce the core principles of UDL in a manner that could be readily integrated into existing courses, and develop a foundation for future faculty development focused on improving pedagogy. The program was piloted over 7 weeks in the Fall semester with faculty from each of the four schools on campus. Data were collected pre, post, and at a 6-week follow-up. The results of the program suggest that the faculty who attended (n = 13) gained awareness of barriers to learning and in willingness to implement UDL principles. Faculty development programs that provide training in UDL offer postsecondary education faculty members valuable tools for supporting success among the diverse students they encounter on their campuses.