Inclusive Practices Include UDL with Amanda Jungels

Welcome to Episode 53 of the Think UDL podcast: Inclusive Practices Include UDL with Amanda Jungels. Dr. Amanda Jungels is the Associate Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Rice University in Houston, TX. Amanda, along with Dr. Chandani Patel and a fabulous team of educational developers created a free EdX course entitled Inclusive Teaching: Supporting All Students in the Classroom. As I was making my way through the course myself, I knew I needed to interview the creators because of the emphasis on UDL in the course. I was so glad that Amanda Jungels was gracious enough to answer my questions and spend some time explaining the connections between inclusive practices and Universal Design for Learning principles. In today’s mega-episode, we get a really great understanding of how UDL is so important for and intertwined with equity and inclusion work. We will talk about learning as as social act, what engagement means through an equity and inclusion lens, and we will also bring in some educational tools. Then we will look at representation and talk about vulnerability, culturally responsive strategies, bringing context to content, why metaphors matter, examine the language we use and even explore what that means in various disciplines from STEM to art history. And finally, we take a look at inclusive assessments and why we should explore upgrading, specifications grading, and what grading for equity might look like. It is a jam-packed conversation and I think many will find something new and helpful, and maybe even revolutionary, with regard to design thinking, in our discussion today.