Resources: Lifelong Education
Bellevue Community College (WA) launched the first associates degree program in the U.S. for individuals with learning, cognitive and intellectual disabilities. The program combines academics, social skills and workforce training. The program pushes students to develop mature social skills that will enable them to get and keep employment.
The Parent Tool Kit compiles materials identified to augment the previously released CD, Tool Kit on Teaching and Assessing Students with Disabilities, and offers a collection of resources on the same substantive areas addressed, including assessment, instructional practices, behavior and accommodations. These new documents were written specifically for parents and include information they need as they work with schools to ensure that their children are receiving a quality education. Materials included in the new Parent Tool Kit provide information that will help them become active and informed participants in IEP discussions and other decision-making meetings that support students with disabilities and their families.
To encourage broad dissemination of these materials, OSERS has launched a Web site, www.osepideasthatwork.org, which includes the materials in the Parent Tool Kit. The Web site will continue to be updated with additional materials as they become available.
Universal Design for Learning is defined as the design of instructional materials and activities that make learning goals achievable by individuals with wide differences in their abilities to see, hear, speak, move, read, write, understand English, attend, organize, engage and remember. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is achievable via flexible curricular materials and activities that provide alternatives for students with differing abilities. These alternatives are built into the instructional design and operating systems of educational materials; they are not added on after-the-fact.
Universal Design for Instruction: A New Paradigm for Adult Instruction in Postsecondary Education (S. Scott, S. Shaw, J. McGuire; Center on Postsecondary Education and Disability University of Connecticut, 2003). The authors included students in secondary and postsecondary educational environments in their investigation "because these students, by definition, represent a broad range of learning and cognitive differences that often challenge traditional notions of college instruction." They concluded, "We found the principles of UD to be quite encompassing as a framework for inclusive college instruction."
The authors adapted the North Carolina State University Universal Design Principles to formulate their own nine principles for Universal Design of Instruction. These are:
- Equitable Use. Instruction is designed to be useful and accessible for people with diverse abilities. Provide the same means of use for all students; identical whenever possible, equivalent when not.
- Flexibility in Use. Instruction is designed to accommodate a wide range of individual abilities. Provide choice in methods of use.
- Simple and Intuitive. Instruction is designed in a straightforward and predictable manner, regardless of the student's experience, knowledge, language skills, or current concentration level. Eliminate unnecessary complexity.
- Perceptible Information. Instruction is designed so that necessary information is communicated effectively to the student, regardless of ambient conditions or the student's sensory abilities.
- Tolerance for Error. Instruction anticipates variation in individual student learning pace and prerequisite skills.
- Low Physical Effort. Instruction is designed to minimize nonessential physical effort in order to allow maximum attention to learning. This principle does not apply when physical effort is integral to essential requirements of a course.
- Size and Space for Approach and Use. Instruction is designed for appropriate size and space for approach, reach manipulations and use regardless of a student's body size, posture, mobility and communication needs.
- A Community of Learners. The instructional environment promotes interaction and communication among students and between students and faculty.
- Instructional Climate. Instruction is designed to be welcoming and inclusive. High expectations are espoused for all students.