This is the blog for the George Washington University (GWU) Department of Teacher Preparation and Special Education’s annual Universal Design for Learning: Implications for Career Assessment and Transition graduate summer institute. This course began during the summer of 2003 with its first set of students. At that time we fashioned the course around material gathered by instructor Fran Smith, who had attended the 2001 CAST UDL Summer Institute. We also tried to include information on the foundational principles of universal design, links to multiple intelligence theories and learning styles, and weaved into best career assessment and transition practices.
We are now completing our sixth summer class and continue to be amazed at the individual interests and directions of each new UDL student implementer. We’ve expanded our content each year — sometimes addressing the focus in postsecondary education and following the growth in k-12 settings. As each year, we embed technology at every turn and often find we lack enough time to cover it all. This year we included some Web 2.0 technologies including this blog. We hope this will continue to be a virtual space we can grow as we gain new students each year.
