EDUCATION

Ensuring Higher Education for ALL

GOAL

Students with disabilities have a disproportionately high drop-out rate. Our project strives to ensure that more students graduate from college. By implementing a three-part program of administrative, curricular, and pedagogical reform, the university community can be made more welcoming and supportive of all students.

In our efforts to change attitudes about disability at Temple University, we:

1. Infuse disability studies into the general education curriculum.
2. Educate new employees about disability through the new hire orientation.
3. Incorporate principles of Universal Design for Learning into the undergraduate curriculum.

DISABILITY STUDIES

Bring disability as diversity into the heart of Temple University's undergraduate curriculum.

Twenty sections of Temple University's required world civilization course for all new students (Mosaic) were made models for the incorporation of disability studies content and universal design for learning principles. Disability Studies faculty affiliated with the Institute provided guest lecturers in these sections, elucidating the latent disability content in the course's texts.

For example, Professor David Mitchell discussed Hannah Arendt's Totalitarianism in conjunction with the documentary A World Without Bodies (dir. S. Snyder), which describes the systematic killing of 300,000 people with disabilities in psychiatric institutions during the Holocaust.

The Mosaic faculty for these sections were also trained in the principles of universal design for learning - that best practices in teaching make the classroom a more productive place for all students, including students with disabilities.

We also sponsored a campus-wide survey of attitudes and practices related to people with disabilities (the Association on Higher Education And Disability's ACCESS survey). The results of this survey will allow us to assess attitudinal change about people with disabilities across the campus, state, and the country. Preliminary evaluation has shown that students with disabilities in our infusion sections had a higher course completion rate than students with disabilities across all Mosaic classes.

Some Mosaic presentations and instructors:

• "Disability and the City" Professor Diane Nelson Bryen
• "Images of Disability in the Old Testament" Professor Jeremy Schipper
• "Myth and Disability in Popol Vuh" Melania Moscoso, PhD
• "W.E.B. DuBois and Black Disability" Professor Joshua Lukin
• "Disability and the Holocaust" Professor David Mitchell
• "Freud and Disabled Women's Sexuality" Instructor Carol Marfisi

Coming at SDS 2010—Sign up for info NOW!

"Higher Education for All: Improving Outcomes for Students with Disabilities in Postsecondary Education" an exciting one-day pre-conference (see table display for more details and to sign up for mailing list)

ORIENTATION

Make Temple University more welcoming for faculty, staff, and students with disabilities.

We worked with Human Resources to:

• Make new hire orientation materials more accessible.
• Update the orientation content to show disability not as a legal issue to be managed, but as an integral part of the university's mission of diversity.
• Incorporate disability into existing diversity sensitivity training.

Example of change in new hire materials (Power Point SLIDE example):

BEFORE:

• Distracting graphics
• Low contrast (blue type / black background)

AFTER:

• Limited graphics
• High contrast (black type / white background)

UNIVERSAL DESIGN FOR LEARNING

Create a model for incorporating principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) throughout Temple University. When all styles of representation, expression, and engagement are encouraged, the classroom is a more productive place for all students. We worked with selected faculty members to create model classrooms to demonstrate the principles of UDL.

We plan to work with Temple University's Teaching and Learning Center to promote UDL as "best practices."

Examples

• Provide online access to lecture notes and supporting materials.
• Make materials available in multiple formats, such as large print.
• Promote conversation in multiple media.
• Use high contrast in visual presentations.
• Use easily readable fonts such as sans serif.
• Read projected slides and handouts aloud.
• Vary classroom activities - lectures, small group discussion, presentations - to reach students with diverse modes of learning.
• Provide open captioning in all videos

Institute on Disabilities at Temple University College of Education

www.disabilities.temple.edu

This project is funded by U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education (P333A080018).

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