Building Australian tertiary educator knowledge and skill in Universal Design for Learning

Students with disabilities continue to experience barriers to accessing tertiary (i.e., postsecondary) education in Australia. Using the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) may help educators proactively address barriers through the design of more accessible and inclusive educational experiences. However, at present, references to UDL appear in only a small number of Australian educational policies and tertiary institute websites, and few tertiary educators use UDL in practice. In this article, we describe how a team of educators, learning designers, accessibility advocates, and people with disabilities from multiple institutions across Australia collaborated to co-create a free, accessible eLearning program to build workforce knowledge and skill in UDL. We first describe how the advisory group was established, how the Knowledge to Action cycle was used to guide the activities of the advisory group, and the evaluation framework that was used to assess the outcomes of the eLearning program. We share potential future activities to raise awareness of UDL and influence policy and practice in local contexts and propose directions for future work in this area.