Abstract:

The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) offers numerous benefits for both students and teachers in inclusive classrooms. For a curriculum to be truly inclusive, it must incorporate a variety of options for students to demonstrate their learning and abilities, as there is no one-size-fits-all approach (Flood & Banks, 2021). However, despite the extensive literature on UDL and its advantages, there is a lack of clear measurements and implementation strategies in many universities. As Evmenova (2018) concluded, "today's classrooms are characterized by ever-growing diversity" (p. 148), making it a challenging task for teachers to effectively motivate students who come from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and to offer adjusted answers to attend to diversity.
As part of the result of a research stay in the Netherlands, we collected data from 25 teachers in the sciences computer department at Twente University. The questionnaire was divided into three sections: The first section focused on assessing the knowledge and opinions of the teachers regarding UDL. The second section comprised an inventory of the guidelines that the teachers could be applying in their higher education courses, based on the work of Davies et al. (2013). This section included 20 agree/disagree multiple-choice questions (on a Likert scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree). The third section consists of questions in which teachers were asked if they were familiar with and utilized any educational methods, tools, or resources from UDL. In this section, teachers were invited to answer according to a Likert scale ranging from never to always.
The main objective of this study is to investigate the knowledge, opinions, and use of higher education teachers regarding the principles of UDL, within the Computer Science field at the University of Twente.
The exploratory study was conducted on the data collected from 25 teachers who completed the questionnaire, and the results were analyzed and presented according to the main objective. Our findings indicate that teachers in the Computer Sciences field have some knowledge of UDL and, in fact, apply its principles without necessarily realizing it. However, the results also reveal that while many teachers have a certain level of understanding of UDL, there are still challenges ineffectively implementing it. It is noteworthy that teachers often struggle with adapting UDL strategies to meet the individual needs of their students. Common barriers identified include a lack of time and resources, resistance to change, and hierarchical structures within educational institutions, as well as a general lack of awareness and widespread understanding of UDL.

Keywords:

The universal design of learning, higher education, sciences computer, inclusive education, and teachers.