Addressing Common Accommodations with Universal Design for Learning

Originally published January 2024

Did you know that nearly 75% of Laurier students registered with Accessible Learning require extra time for exams and 55% require notetaking support?

These are the two most common student accommodations at Laurier and for which instructors typically request volunteer notetakers or individually adjust extra time for tests. In many cases, these accommodations can be proactively addressed by implementing a pedagogical approach to accessibility called Universal Design for Learning (UDL). With UDL, instructors can design their courses with learner diversity in mind. By increasing the ways to represent materials, engage students, and express learning in a course, instructors can provide learning experiences for the widest possible range of learners and create more equitable opportunities to succeed. 

With a UDL approach to notetaking accommodations, instructors can remove the barrier by providing additional ways to represent the lecture materials, such as:

• Recording and Posting Transcripts of lectures to MyLS
• Coordinating shared notetaking in which all students participate, either through a weekly collaborative Word document shared through OneDrive or by signing up for a week to post notes to share on a MyLS Discussion board. 

With a UDL approach to extra time accommodations, instructors can remove the barrier by evaluating whether or how time is a relevant task to demonstrate the learning outcomes. Consider:

• Extra time for the test for all students (for example, doubling the standard time allotted).

• Redesigning the format of the assessment as a take-home exam, poster, or project-based assessment. 

Watch the companion video about designing for common accommodations >>

Explore more about Universal Design for Learning in this Guide. 

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