Are your learning spaces a barrier to student learning and UDL implementation? This session illustrates a process to better integrate UDL into the space design of schools, using the new Mission Bay School in San Francisco as a case study. The design principles and process tools are valuable whether you’re involved in capital improvements or simply wanting to hack the spaces you have today.  The session will highlight 8 key design principles every school should pay attention to.

Session Video Recording
Gould Evans Education
UDL Deck of Spaces

Have you ever been moved to wonder and awe by studying a flower or gazing out upon a sunset? If so, then you have experienced Biophilia, love of nature. In this sensory immersive talk you will hear how incorporating biophilic design strategies on your campus removes barriers to learning by improving student emotional wellbeing, circadian system functioning, and cognition. You will leave with the power to activate biophilic design on your campus and advocate for nature as a requirement of all school facilities improvements projects targeted at removing barriers to learning.

Session Video Recording
Slide Deck
Interactive Notes Document

Being in nature returns us to the environments where as humans we feel most at ease, and it reconnects us to our innate sense of creativity. What if classrooms could feel more like natural environments, helping to make us happier, more connected, and kinder learners and educators?  What if going back to our roots, connecting with nature and biophilic elements, could redefine what learning spaces could be?

Kate Rancourt discusses the idea of an ecosystem of ‘regions’ within a classroom designed to inspire diversity and mimic what we encounter in the natural environment. Starting from a place where learners are seen as humans first, we can understand the needs of the individual at a biological and psychological level and tap into our powerful relationships to nature. 

Session Video Recording
Slide Deck
Interactive Notes Document

Space design strategy development at any level can be difficult to initiate. Whether it be within your college or department to full campus- or university- wide, come prepared with a UDL toolkit. Gain a new vocabulary and methodology you can take directly to your campus to support student engagement, faculty training, endowments, and more as we teach you how to use the UDL Learning Spaces Idea Kit for Higher Education.

Session Video Recording Part One
Session Video Recording Part Two
Slide Deck
Interactive Notes Document

Space design strategy development at any level can be difficult to initiate. Whether it be within your college or department to full campus- or university- wide, come prepared with a UDL toolkit. Gain a new vocabulary and methodology you can take directly to your campus to support student engagement, faculty training, endowments, and more as we teach you how to use the UDL Learning Spaces Idea Kit for Higher Education.

Session Video Recording Part One
Session Video Recording Part Two
Slide Deck
Interactive Notes Document

Representing learning content in different modalities and formats is a key tenet of UDL, yet alternative formats of instructional materials have traditionally been reserved for students with disclosed disabilities. Providing all students options to choose how they engage with course content empowers learner preference, fostering metacognitive awareness that can improve study habits for effective lifelong learning. This session examines student usage of alternative formats generated through machine learning inside the Learning Management System (2+ Million downloads), and how access to multiple formats helps foster a more inclusive learning environment for all students, regardless of need, ability, and device. 

Session Video Recording
Slide Deck
Interactive Notes Document

Join the authors of the UDL Learning Spaces Idea Kit for fresh perspectives on space design and the learning environment as the third teacher. 

Session Video Recording
Slide Deck
Interactive Notes Document

In the same way that fighter pilots need adjustable seats as described by Todd Rose in the “End of Average,” all learners need to have choice and agency in their environments in order to learn effectively. This interactive, audience engaged, dialogue infused presentation empowers participants to evaluate space and actively participate in the planning and staging of spaces that support all learners. Environmental factors will include lighting, acoustics, furnishings, suite versus corridor organization and indoor-outdoor connections.

Session Video Recording
Slide Deck
Interactive Notes Document