Universal Design for Learning is a process of making course concepts accessible and skills attainable regardless of learning style, physical or sensory abilities.
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About the EnACT Grant
Ensuring Access through Collaboration and Technology: Partnerships, Technology and Dissemination will offer students will disabilities within the California State University system more than just hope in attaining their postsecondary educational goals. Building on our Ensuring Access through Collaboration and Technology (EnACT) 2005 - 2008 accomplishments, the mission of Ensuring Access through Collaboration and Technology: Partnerships, Technology and Dissemination (EnACT~PTD) is to enhance and extend our success in providing faculty within the California State University (CSU) the skills, services, and training necessary to ensure that students with disabilities are provided a quality postsecondary education.
Goals of Ensuring Access through Collaboration and Technology: Partnerships, Technology and Dissemination (EnACT~PTD)
The Ensuring Access through Collaboration and Technology: Partnerships, Technology and Dissemination (EnACT~PTD) will achieve the following three distinct yet interconnected goals:
Goal 1: Faculty Development
Recognizing the value of Universal Design for Learning as a model pedagogical approach embedded with effective teaching practices, Ensuring Access through Collaboration and Technology: Partnerships, Technology and Dissemination (EnACT~PTD) offers California State University (CSU) faculty the skills, support and training necessary to ensure the successful implementation of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) into their teaching practices. In addition, faculty participants acquire a shared understanding of the importance of accessibility in higher education by considering the need for equitable accommodations and emerging technology-based teaching approaches to support all students.
Goal 2: Faculty Learning Communities
Central in our model of faculty development, Ensuring Access through Collaboration and Technology: Partnerships, Technology and Dissemination (EnACT~PTD) establishes campus-based Faculty Learning Communities to complement the activities identified in Goal 1. Faculty Learning Communities supplement the traditional workshop-only model of training by offering faculty a forum to mutually consider the scholarship of teaching and learning via small-group learning communities. Each Faculty Learning Communities (FLC) is facilitated by a trained leader who supports group members in making course changes that reflect Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles.
Goal 3: Resource Development and Dissemination
Ensuring Access through Collaboration and Technology: Partnerships, Technology and Dissemination (EnACT~PTD) also offers faculty an opportunity to reflect and capture their novel pedagogical practices in a format that can be disseminated and utilized by other faculty as well as broader professional audiences. Accessible Instructional Multimedia are online resources that exemplify how faculty members address a specific instructional issue through the successful incorporation of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) elements into their teaching practice. Through partnership with the California State University Center for Distributed Learning, Ensuring Access through Collaboration and Technology: Partnerships, Technology and Dissemination (EnACT~PTD) disseminates these online resources nationally via existing academic databases such as Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT), an international online community of over 41,000 members.
Research Associate
Research Associate will have the support to their respective faculty, students with disabilities, student support services, assistive technology services and faculty development programs in implementing all Ensuring Access through Collaboration and Technology: Partnerships, Technology and Dissemination (EnACT~PTD) related research and faculty development efforts. This Research Associate, under direction of the Campus Coordinator, will spearhead several project components at SF State and therefore must commit to the project for a period of three years (spring 2009 to spring 2011). The grant will offer up to $10,000 per grant year (include salary and benefits) in compensation for Research Associate coordination efforts.
Responsibilities may include:
- Lead and facilitate the Faculty Learning Community meetings
- Facilitate the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) workshops/training
- Support the Research Faculty in making course changes that reflect Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles
- Develop resources that capture the pedagogical practices of Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
- Support the dissemination and promotion of Ensuring Access through Collaboration and Technology: Partnerships, Technology and Dissemination (EnACT~PTD) information and resources
- Participate in Ensuring Access through Collaboration and Technology: Partnerships, Technology and Dissemination (EnACT~PTD) meetings, events or sponsored activities as appropriate
- Facilitate campus-based Ensuring Access through Collaboration and Technology: Partnerships, Technology and Dissemination (EnACT~PTD) data collection and general reporting
- Present at related professional events
Research Faculty
Research Faculty are made up of 5 tenure or tenure-track faculty member who will participate in the two central components of the Ensuring Access through Collaboration and Technology (EnACT) faculty development model including the Universal Design for Learning workshop and ongoing participation in the Faculty Learning Community. These Research Faculty are committed to participate the entire three year project cycle (spring 2009 to spring 2011) and each will receive $2,000/year ($6,000 total). During the three year project cycle, they will also implement the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) into at least one course each fall semester (fall 2009 and 2010). In Year 3 (fall 2010 and spring 2011), they will spearhead dissemination efforts within SF State and across the California State University (CSU). Travel and supply funds are provided to meet this expectation.
Accessible Instructional Multimedia
Ensuring Access through Collaboration and Technology (EnACT)seeks to strengthen faculty development programs by encouraging use of current and emerging technologies within the postsecondary classroom. To this end, Ensuring Access through Collaboration and Technology (EnACT) will support the development, implementation and dissemination of Accessible Instructional Multimedia resources that demonstrate the use of technologies in the teaching and learning process. Thus Accessible Instructional Multimedia (AIM) resources for postsecondary faculty will enable them to understand the myriad ways that current and emerging technologies can be successfully used to support student success.
Many SF State faculty members are actively creating Accessible Instructional Multimedia (AIM) resources projects.
Explore the Center... Site Features and Highlights
Make your course concepts accessible for all your students. Find out how easy it is to implement UDL in all of your courses with these resources.
The Center sponsors a number of workshops, events, and brown bag sessions every month open to all SF State faculty members.
The Accessibility Guides provided by Center for Teaching and Faculty Development (CTFD) are here to help you convert and create your course materials into accessible formats.
A veritable smorgasbord of easily digestible and healthy ideas for the busy faculty member ... all delivered to your door!
