Enhance Teaching & Learning
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Join us for The 9th Annual CAST UDL Symposium! This year’s event invites educators at all levels to explore Universal Design for Learning as a lens to help you focus and improve all your schoolwide initiatives.
This engaging and thought-provoking event will highlight the promising ways UDL has made great practices even better. Participants from all over the world will co-create a vision for making UDL ubiquitous as a means of designing innovative learning without limits.
This hybrid event will take place July 31 – August 1, 2023, in Denver, CO, and online.
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Highlighting AEM on Global Accessibility Awareness Day
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The AEM Center at CAST is excited to team up with the Office of Special Education & Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) and the Office of Educational Technology (OET) at the U.S. Department of Education to commemorate Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). What better way to highlight accessibility than to showcase how educational systems at the state and local levels are being designed to ensure that all learners, including those with disabilities, can access the general education curriculum? In a post on the UDL Center Blog, the AEM Center shares innovative approaches and programs that can be adopted by your state or district.
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New Edition: Elevating Co-teaching with Universal Design for Learning
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The revised and expanded edition of Elevating Co-teaching with Universal Design for Learning by Elizabeth Stein is now available! In this new edition, Stein delivers a new structure, additional strategies, updated research, and fine-tuned language to show how best to apply the UDL principles and guidelines to co-teaching.
Want to save 30% as part of our Teacher Appreciation Week sale? Use the code TEACH23 during checkout for a 30% discount on all orders until June 1, 2023. Email publishing@cast.org for the same discount on purchase orders.
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CAST in the Outdoors: Connecting Rural Youth with STEM Careers
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We’re spreading our workforce wings and heading to Salt Lake City, Utah, to lead a panel discussion, Pathways to an Inclusive Workforce: Building Educator and Youth Collaborations, at this summer’s national Outdoor Retailer Conference on June 19, 2023. We’ll feature CAST’s National Science Foundation project that enlists youth in rural NH as co-researchers looking at how their engagement in the outdoors can be leveraged to connect with STEM learning and local economic development. Panelists include researchers from the University of New Hampshire, Weber State University, and industry retailer Carhartt.
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Stakeholders’ Ideas for Reimagining the UDL Guidelines
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As part of our community-driven process to update the UDL Guidelines, we have been conducting focus groups with diverse stakeholders (educators, faculty members, researchers, etc.) to learn from their ideas for reimagining the UDL Guidelines through an equity lens. Here are some quotes that are representative of stakeholders’ ideas for more fully developing the Engagement Guidelines:
- “I want to make sure we capture this notion of ‘multiple ways of knowing.’ Really thinking about heritage and culture in terms of what students bring to the classroom…”
- “Sometimes we treat students as if they have to earn the learning environment...you have to come a specific way…in a very compliant, buttoned-up kind of way. I wonder if the Engagement Guidelines can be broadened to allow for more than one way of being…?”
- “How do we help…people realize that it’s not about me dispensing knowledge?... Where is that in the guidelines now, and where could that maybe be more explicit?... Is the word co-design anywhere in the guidelines? Maybe that ought to be somewhere?”
Thoughts? Reactions? What ideas for updates are on your mind?
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Summer Learning with CAST
Join us this summer to jumpstart your instructional planning, design, implementation, and reflection with Universal Design for Learning in our online courses and virtual learning opportunities. To learn more about our course and virtual class options, visit Courses & Classes on our website.
We have three introductory online courses to meet the needs of different audiences in PreK–12, CTE, and postsecondary education:
- Introduction: Explore Universal Design for Learning
PreK–12 Instructor-Led Course | June 5 – September 4, 2023In this introductory online course for preK–12 educators, participants learn the research basis for UDL, practical applications of UDL to lesson design, and helpful technology tools that support flexible, inclusive instruction.
- Introduction: Explore Universal Design for Learning
CTE Instructor-Led Course | June 6 – July 28, 2023
This course, designed exclusively for those in Career & Technical Education (CTE) settings, prepares CTE teachers, administrators, and guidance counselors to apply the UDL framework in their courses and programs.
- Introduction: Explore Universal Design for Learning
Postsecondary Instructor-Led Course | June 26 – August 18, 2023
Designed exclusively for higher education, this course includes strategies to remove barriers to learning for postsecondary students.
Seeking a more intensive virtual classroom experience or something more advanced than an introduction? Try out one of our live virtual classes:
- Introduction: Explore Universal Design for Learning
PreK–12 Live Virtual Class | August 8–9, 2023
Learn the core concepts and foundations of UDL, practical applications of UDL to lesson design, and how to support flexible, inclusive instruction.
- Application: Utilize Universal Design for Learning
PreK–12 Live Virtual Class | August 15–16, 2023
Designed for educators with a handle on the UDL core concepts and ready for the next step in their learning. Prerequisite: Introduction: Explore Universal Design for Learning or Engagement, Motivation & Emotion in the UDL Classroom.
- Implementation: Scale Universal Design for Learning
PreK–12 Live Virtual Class | August 22–23, 2023
Designed for passionate educational leaders who are familiar with the UDL framework and looking to implement the framework and guidelines in their school or district. Prerequisite: Introduction: Explore Universal Design for Learning or Engagement, Motivation & Emotion in the UDL Classroom.
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New Professional Learning Series
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We’re collaborating with Professional Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) to offer a new Professional Learning Series: Exploring UDL through Cycles of Design, Action, and Reflection, where educators will learn the foundations of the UDL framework, apply it to their settings in real time to develop an action plan and receive personalized coaching and support as they begin to implement UDL into their practice.
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