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Project OPEN: Providing UDL Resources for Postsecondary Learning

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Screenshot of the UDL OnCampus web site home page

Project Name
Open Professionals Education Network (Project OPEN)

Project Website
udloncampus.cast.org

Description

The Open Professionals Education Network (OPEN) provides free support and technical assistance to all grantees of the $2 billion Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College & Career Training (TAACCCT) grant program from the U.S. Department of Labor.  The goal of the program is to expand education and career training programs that can be completed in two years or less

The community colleges that receive TAACCCT grants must ensure that all of their courses are 508 compliant and use universal design. Grantees must also contribute materials to an open repository for use and sharing by other organizations. OPEN’s partner organizations help TAACCCT grantees meet these requirements by providing resources and technical assistance.

As part of the partnership, CAST created a website called UDL On Campus: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education. The website offers resources geared toward multiple stakeholders in postsecondary institutions to help them use the UDL principles to improve learning opportunities, retention, and outcomes. They may do so through curriculum design, technology-purchasing decisions, or an Open Educational Resource (OER) strategy.

The resources on this site focus on the basic premise of UDL: that the most effective and scalable innovations occur when efforts are made to meet the needs of “students at the margins” from the beginning, as innovations that are essential to some end up being beneficial to many (Meyer, Rose, & Gordon, 2013).

The website supports grantees in the application of UDL across the following five areas:

  • Assessment
  • Improving Institutional Policies and Practices
  • Selecting Media and Technology
  • Planning Your Course
  • Teaching Approaches

Timeline

2012 – 2015

Funder

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Partners

Creative Commons
Open Learning Initiative (OLI) at Stanford University (previously at Carnegie Mellon University)
Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges

Project Leadership

Sam Johnston, Co-PI

Contact

For more information about this project, please email udloncampus@cast.org.

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