"The Teaching and Learning Unit (TLU) and AnSEO - The Student Engagement Office are delighted launched our annual Combined Funding Call to support staff and students who wish to undertake short term projects related to teaching, learning, assessment and student engagement (TLASE) activities. This funding call enables teams of staff and/or students, to develop ideas that might enhance teaching, learning, assessment and student engagement across the student life cycle. The purpose of this session was to provide more information about the funding process itself, describe what supports are available and provide participants with an opportunity to hear from previous recipients in terms of what they achieved and how they felt about the experience and the impact these projects have on staff and students."

"The Teaching and Learning Unit (TLU) and AnSEO - The Student Engagement Office are delighted launched our annual Combined Funding Call to support staff and students who wish to undertake short term projects related to teaching, learning, assessment and student engagement (TLASE) activities. This funding call enables teams of staff and/or students, to develop ideas that might enhance teaching, learning, assessment and student engagement across the student life cycle. The purpose of this session was to provide more information about the funding process itself, describe what supports are available and provide participants with an opportunity to hear from previous recipients in terms of what they achieved and how they felt about the experience and the impact these projects have on staff and students."

The project is concerned with opening the institutional dialogue about the benefits of adopting the principles of Universal Design for Learning in our practice.

"The Teaching and Learning Unit (TLU) and AnSEO - The Student Engagement Office are delighted to announce our annual Combined Funding Call to support staff and students who wish to undertake short term projects related to teaching, learning, assessment and student engagement (TLASE) activities. This funding call enables teams, of staff and/or students, to develop ideas that might enhance teaching, learning, assessment and student engagement across the student life cycle. The purpose of this session was to provide more information about the funding process itself, describe what supports are available and provide participants with an opportunity to hear from previous recipients in terms of what they achieved and how they felt about the experience and the impact these projects have had on staff and students."

"The Teaching and Learning Unit (TLU) and AnSEO - The Student Engagement Office are delighted to announce our annual Combined Funding Call to support staff and students who wish to undertake short term projects related to teaching, learning, assessment and student engagement (TLASE) activities. This funding call enables teams, of staff and/or students, to develop ideas that might enhance teaching, learning, assessment and student engagement across the student life cycle. The purpose of this session was to provide more information about the funding process itself, describe what supports are available and provide participants with an opportunity to hear from previous recipients in terms of what they achieved and how they felt about the experience and the impact these projects have had on staff and students."

In this seminar, we outlined the principles of UDL focusing on the why, how and what of learning. We shared with you our experiences of completing the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education’s (NFETLHE’s) UDL Digital Badge which we completed during the 2020-21 academic year. We provided an insight into what was involved and how it has impacted our thinking and practice in MTU.

In June 2021, a project entitled “UDL@MTU – Towards Embedding UDL Practices and Principles at MTU” received funding under MTU’s allocation of the Strategic Alignment of Teaching & Learning Enhancement Fund 2020. As part of this project, in semester 1 of the 2021/22 academic year, a local MTU iteration of the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education’s (NFETLHE) Digital Badge “Universal Design in Teaching and Learning” was rolled out with twelve colleagues participating from across MTU. In order to complete the badge, participants learnt about Universal Design for Learning (UDL), reflected on their own practice and redesigned some aspects of a teaching activity they were delivering in line with the principles of UDL. They then had to implement and deliver the redesigned activity, collect some feedback from students in terms of their experience of the redesigned activity and submit a short ‘Redesign Activity Report’. Catherine O’Mahony, a lecturer in Tourism in Hospitality, was one of the twelve MTU badge participants.

As part of the UDL@MTU project, 12 colleagues from across MTU participated in a local MTU-wide rollout of the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning’s Universal Design in Teaching and Learning Digital Badge and were awarded their badges, To complete this badge, participants are required to complete a redesign activity where they take an element of their own practice and apply UDL principles to redesign it and make it more accessible. We have developed a podcast series, where we showcase some of the excellent practice demonstrated by these colleagues while completing the above badge, which we will be releasing over the coming months: