Keynote: Online Course Design for Active Learning within the UDL Framework

This past fall, I gave my first keynote presentation at the University of Houston (UH) to faculty and staff. Their 1-day conference, Innovative Teaching and Learning at a Distance (ITLD), focused on the Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Several of the co-authors for the Routledge book, Universal Access Through Inclusive Instructional Design: International Perspectives on UDL (Gronseth & Dalton, 2019), were invited to give sessions. Mine addressed online course design for active learning within the UDL framework. See my blog post on this topic for more details. This presentation is hosted on SlideShare.

I also provided a pre-conference workshop on how to use my Online Community of Inquiry Syllabus Rubric (copyright 2015 by Rogers & Van Haneghan). In both sessions, I used Mentimeter to engage the participants, as well as pair-share activities. Both sessions were well received. Some of the instructional designers stated that they want to use my rubric for their work and research! I had such a wonderful time at the UH, and the ITLD staff and professors were very kind to me. I’m a Texan, so I appreciated the Texas hospitality!

P.S. My peer, Susie Gronseth, and I conducted a case study research about this topic. It was published in the open access journal. Our paper is titled, Apply UDL to Online Active Learning: Instructional Designer Perspectives.