The UDL Task Force Charge

Taskforce members in consultation with their constituents, informed the development of a systemwide approach to alleviate the administrative, academic, and psychological burdens students with different abilities experience when accessing learning and support while in community college.

Objectives

The recommendation phase (2023-2024) of the UDL Task Force focused on the following objectives:

  1. Develop clear, minimum expectations for faculty and staff to implement universal design for learning (UDL) principles and practices in the classroom and in services to strengthen the learning environment and campus culture. These expectations will prioritize UDL principles, provide equitable access, remove friction points, and advance educational outcomes for all students.
  2. Identify areas of differentiated support in the classroom, including technology and system infrastructure needs, to support enabling conditions to implement universal design for learning (UDL) principles with fidelity.
  3. Identify the professional development priorities of faculty and staff to best support them in implementing universal design for learning practices.
  4. Provide recommendations on policy and/or regulation changes, and structural redesign concepts that maximize existing resources and facilitate the development and implementing of a student support continuum, which include universal design-based instructional principles and equitable student support services for all students.

Process

CAST facilitated the task force with six task force meetings – two in-person, day-long meetings and the remaining as four-hour virtual meetings conducted over Zoom. For the first four meetings, CAST brought in and prepared invited UDL experts who could seed the Task Force conversation about how UDL could be applied to areas that were already important for the system to create a student-centered system.

Task Force members were engaged in activities in each task force meeting to gather their perspectives, data, and facilitate collaborative problem framing and recommendation development. CAST also met biweekly with the Chancellor’s office and Task Force co-chairs to solicit feedback, co-create task force agendas and plan co-chair led sessions. For each task force meeting, members were provided with pre-work that was universally designed and post-work such as sending a survey to constituents.

Beginning in Task Force meeting 3, Task Force members’ and constituents’ data on emerging recommendations were reflected to them for review, refinement, socializing, and soliciting feedback from constituents. Based on this feedback, an initial set of recommendations were further refined into the nine shared on this site.

Task Force Recommendations

Revised 12.20.24

Next Step: Implementation Workgroup. The report calls for the formation of a state-level implementation workgroup to collaborate with system partners and execute the following recommendations. Continued engagement with constituents, including students, faculty, staff, and administrators, is necessary throughout the implementation process.

The implementation of these seven recommendations will allow the UDL implementation workgroup(s) to:

  • Develop a roadmap for creating an organizational structure and workflows at the state and local college levels for the roles and responsibilities various system partners take to ensure that all students who need accessible materials, technologies and environments have them;
  • Utilize the demonstrations carried out by various COPs outlined in these recommendations to produce a roadmap and timeline for UDL implementation

Develop communities of practice to pilot UDL initiatives at local community colleges with a capacity building and review process for UDL at the course, department, and institutional level focused on improving the student experience and student learning outcomes. Each community of practice will measure baseline UDL knowledge and practices, develop strategies aligned to department and institutional priorities, create plans to train faculty and staff and implement UDL, track progress, and evaluate success of key implementation priorities at the student, faculty and staff level(s). These demonstrations should help develop leading indicators of student success, inform roles and responsibilities and resources necessary for systemwide UDL implementation, and advance strategic approaches to student support that can be adapted and adopted at other local colleges in order to scale UDL across the CCC system.

Wherever possible, leverage existing metrics and reporting mechanisms used within the system for accountability/measurement of student outcomes.

These efforts could include:

  • AI Professional Development and Learning Opportunities. Integrating UDL professional development will ensure inclusive use of AI tools and strengthen the relationship between AI and accessibility and ensure AI equitably supports all students.
  • Zero Textbook Cost Program (ZTC) has provided 87 Colleges with $22 million to develop and implement over 300 ZTC program pathways state-wide. Integrating UDL into the design and delivery of the ZTC pathways ensures that these pathways are open to all students including those with disabilities who can also benefit from zero textbook cost degrees.
  • Together, integrating UDL into the ZTC and Vendor procurement processes (see recommendation 5 below) will ensure that the textbooks, digital platforms and tools and OERs created or procured are not only affordable, or zero cost, but accessible and universally designed, thereby ensuring that all students, including students with disabilities, can benefit. The CAST UDL Product Certification, developed in partnership with Digital Promise, should be used to ensure tools meet basic accessibility reporting requirements.
  • Additional initiatives should be investigated for alignment including efforts to Universally Design physical and digital environments in conjunction with Universally Designing the Learning (UDL). This will require at least one Community of Practice with representation from facilities and the task force recommends meeting with facilities to discuss the formation of a UD/UDL COP.   

Embedding UDL into these efforts will allow for development of clear, minimum expectations for faculty and staff to implement universal design for learning (UDL) principles and practices in the classroom and in services in order to strengthen the learning environment and campus culture. These demonstrations will also provide data to develop leading indicators on how and where UDL implementation provides equitable access, removes friction points, and advances educational outcomes for all students.

Design a website and curate artifacts that can be disseminated to support understanding of clear, functional definitions of Universal Design for Learning and accessibility that can be used across the California CC system and integrated into policy and strategic documents and key communications including Vision 2030 and Pathways to Economic Mobility. This website can provide resources and information to California Community Colleges system constituents including faculty, staff, administrators, and students to understand how Universal Design for Learning (UDL) operates to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all learners. As communities of practice pilot efforts to implement UDL, this website can offer case studies, best practice resources and tools to ensure peer to peer learning and adoption.

Examples of other systems that have developed such websites and associated resources: State University of New York system;The California State University: Inclusive | Universal Design for Learning; Association for Higher Education and Disability Ireland: Launch of ALTITUDE – the National Charter for UD in Tertiary Ed – AHEAD.

Capacity Building is critical to implementation of UDL and therefore the task force recommends prioritizing professional development for faculty and staff to build understanding of UDL principles and practices and the skills to apply them to practice. UDL is expected to be used for course outlines of record. In collaboration with the ASCCC, in the next three months, develop a plan to review and select a suite of flexible offerings for UDL professional development and credentialing. ASCCC in conjunction with CCCCO needs to determine what the language of UDL in the course outline of record requires for implementation and what timeline that implementation should take.

Examples of systems that have worked to implement UDL capacity building include Florida International University, State University of New York (SUNY), California State University, Boston College, and University of Rochester.

Additionally, all colleges will be required to adhere to the new Title II of the ADA requirements. This will require accessibility professional development for content creators including instructional designers, faculty and those procuring technology as well as cross-department coordination to monitor progress toward meeting the new requirements.

  • Create a cross-department working group to coordinate response to updated Title II requirements with quarterly meetings to monitor progress and make adjustments as needed to meet the requirements by the specified deadline in the Title II regulations related to web and mobile app resources.
  • Develop a curated list of technology tools that have been vetted for accessibility best practices and UDL alignment. The CAST UDL Product Certification, developed in partnership with Digital Promise, should be used to ensure  tools  included in the approved list meet basic accessibility reporting requirements (such as creation of a public accessibility statement and an updated Accessibility Conformance Report with explanations for all “not applicable” and “partially supports” items) and are aligned to UDL principles.
  • In coordination with the Accessibility Center, use the Choose Accessible Learning Materials (C.A.L.M.) campaign at Virginia Tech as a model for a system wide, multi-year effort to grow a culture of accessibility by promoting simple changes faculty and instructional designers can make to bring their content into conformance with accessibility best practices.
  • Promote the Accessibility Capability Maturity Model as a tool for intuitional advancement toward meeting accessibility goals, including the creation of case studies that highlight impact and encourage greater adoption of the ACMM across the system.
  • The CCCCO supports system-funded technologies that include student- and faculty-facing tools, as well as the backend information technology (IT) systems and services, including those related to accessibility and security. These and other technology tools and services are supported primarily, but not exclusively, through grant agreements with districts that facilitate the use of various Proposition 98 funding streams. Work is underway through the CCCCO to have ongoing analysis of technology resources supported at the system level, specifically around accessibility, adoption, and utilizationi. Every effort should be made to collaborate to ensure accessibility, UDL and user experience is considered as part of the analysis of system funded technologies. CAST and Digital Promise already collaborate around procurement of education technology and the Task Force recommends further alignment with existing efforts for system-funded technology analysis and coordination across efforts to ensure all students and faculty and staff, including those with disabilities, can access system-funded technologies and have an effective user experience.
  • The Chancellor’s Office, in collaboration with the FCCC CollegeBuys, launched a Digital Access Program to assist in procuring and distributing digital resources to students. Through this program, colleges may procure these technology resources in bulk on behalf of students, and have the program assist in the distribution of those resources based on a college’s unique needs. The program also hires and trains local students as Student Ambassadors to support their peers in navigating and optimizing resources in the new virtual environment. The Task Force recommends exploring integrating UDL product certification into the vetting of vendor products for CollegeBuys Digital Access Program and hiring and training students with disabilities as student ambassadors and as user experience testers.

The Task Force recommends implementing a system for collecting data and evaluating the effectiveness of UDL implementation in achieving equity goals. Data collection and evaluation should include self-assessment on UDL at the course, department and institutional level at baseline and at key points during implementation, data on what can incentivize behavior change, the feasibility of bringing UDL into various areas COP select for improvement and associated leading indicators, metrics, and outcome reporting and sharing. The Task Force also recognizes the importance of measuring outcomes that contribute to student belonging and create the conditions that foster learning and persistence for each student. Therefore, the task force recommends piloting academic stress as a leading indicator of student belonging at local campuses, and designing and disseminating artifacts to Increase awareness of how academic stress can disproportionately impact students with disabilities, including those with intersectional identities.    

The Task Force recommends continued progress in equity informed assessment processes and ongoing professional development for faculty and staff

Examples include competency-based assessment and professional development of socially just assessment practices. Credit for prior learning Including building capacity of faculty and staff in implementing equity informed assessment practices. In the next three months, the task force recommends bringing the topic of socially just assessment, beginning with a focus at the classroom level, to the ASCCC to determine what flexible professional development offerings should be offered to enhance equity in assessment. The task force considered how to advance socially just assessments within the classroom, services, and at the system level. CCCCO has invested significant resources into equity in assessment, with the understanding that equity in assessment is critical to access community college, persist in and complete a program of study and is critical for all students to have pathways to economic mobility.