Universal Design for Learning Guidelines 3.0 (2025 Inclusive Pedagogy Series #2)

This is the second in a four-part webinar series organized by the Status of People with Disabilities in the Professions Committee. The first was on “Teaching with Disability” and occurred in May 2025.

In the summer of 2024, the latest guidelines for Universal Design for Learning (UDL) were released. Behold, UDL Guidelines 3.0! In all of the iterations since their creation in 2008, UDL guidelines have been intended to help educators consider and proliferate options for student engagement (the “why” of learning), representation (the “what” of learning), and action & expression (the “how” of learning). This approach benefits not only students with disabilities, but all learners in our diverse classrooms.

Watch the 20-minute recorded presentation to learn more about UDL and some of the important changes that this most recent iteration has introduced.

Then, join us for a 1-hour workshop on July 25th, where you’ll have the chance to ask questions, brainstorm with others, and consider how to apply these updated UDL guidelines to your own teaching.

Emily O. Gravett is an associate professor of religion and an assistant director in the Center for Faculty Innovation at James Madison University. She has spent over a decade supporting fellow instructors as they reflect on and develop their teaching. She has published widely on teaching religion, specifically, including for the JAAR and the popular Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion. Her book on Studying Religion and Disability is coming out later this year. Dr. Gravett is the 2022 AAR Katie G. Cannon Teaching Award winner.

Nick Shrubsole is an Associate Lecturer in Humanities, Religion and Cultural Studies at the University of Central Florida. He is chair of the Status Committee for People with Disabilities in their Professions at the AAR. Nick is a legally blind person who has lived with a visual impairment for most of his life. His primary research area is in law and religion, author of What Has No Place, Remains: The Challenges for Indigenous Religious Freedom in Canada Today (University of Toronto Press, 2019). More recently, he is interested in exploring the scholarship and the practice of the value of disability perspectives in the higher ed classroom.