This participatory action research (PAR) dissertation study investigates the implementation of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles by community college faculty in first-year writing courses to support students with learning disabilities at a New Jersey community college. Through a collaborative approach involving faculty as active…

Universal design for learning (UDL) is a pedagogical framework intended to promote accessibility and equity in learning environments, especially for students with disabilities. In UDL, instructors provide optionality and flexibility in the learning environment for representation, engagement, and expression, rather than expecting the learner to…

Traditional course deadline policies uphold the myth of the "normal" student, assuming students face few and equal barriers to completing work on time. In contrast, flexible deadline policies acknowledge that students face unequal barriers and seek to mitigate them. Flexible deadline policies maintain structure while transferring some…

Current approaches to building inclusive classrooms for first-generation and working-class students tend to emphasize communicative strategies: receiving students with welcoming messages that acknowledge and value their life experience and promoting a growth mindset. These methods are important, but they do little to address structural sources of…

Higher education is working to diversify the undergraduate curriculum to support critical thinking and promote racial justice--pressing work, particularly at predominantly white colleges and universities. To support students' critical thinking, we need to better understand their awareness of systemic inequities as they enter and exit undergraduate…

The study was planned to explore the challenges faced by distance learners during paperless assignment process. This initiative was introduced a couple of years ago at a distance learning university in Pakistan. Target population comprised on distance learners of M. Phil Education and MBA (col) sessions 2017 to 2019 programs running online through…

This action research aims to investigate the determinants of asynchronous interaction among students, interaction between students and instructors, and interaction with course content in an online learning environment. The study involves fifteen graduate students from a state university as participants. The research employed multiple data…

Inequities in student access to trigonometry and calculus are often associated with racial and socioeconomic privilege, and often influence introductory physics course performance. To mitigate these disparities in student preparedness, we developed a two-pronged intervention consisting of (1) incentivized supplemental math assignments and (2)…

Background: First-generation (FG) college students have been a popular subpopulation to study within educational literature as these students experience many unique challenges in their academic careers causing them to drop out within their first year. This gives courses with high first-time freshman numbers such as introductory psychology courses…

This article seeks to theorize the pedagogical work disabled instructors navigate to create accessible writing classrooms. Through retroactive analysis, I introduce the concept of Access Negotiation Moments (ANMs) as limited, low-stakes contexts where disabled instructors define the limits of their own access needs. Ultimately, I theorize a…

Background and Context: Making is celebrated for bringing exciting tools and learning opportunities to non-traditional designers. However, people with disabilities may find themselves excluded from many making activities and makerspaces. This exclusion is present in making and computer science more broadly. Objective: We describe a university…

By using principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) within online learning environments, teacher education faculty have an opportunity to break down barriers and create purposeful course content that will benefit all learners. The application of UDL helps teacher education faculty recruit learner interest, sustain learner efforts, and…

Over a number of years, the Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) has encouraged and supported moves to Learning Management System (LMS) replacing aspects of paper-based and face-to-face teaching and learning including, assignments, workshops and examination. The views of learners and academics were explored to consider the advantages of the system…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to uncover preservice teachers' generative learning and explore whether and how they built on and/or extended linguistically responsive teaching 1 year after participating in a study abroad program and community-based international service learning project. We relied on narrative reflections, interviews,…

Contextualized in the critical pedagogies of universal design for learning (UDL) and social justice education, our study aimed to equip teacher candidates (TCs) to provide students with equitable access to learning social studies content knowledge, skills, and processes as a way to equally empower all students to be civically engaged, and thus to…