State of play on implementing inclusion and universal design strategies in higher education across Europe and beyond

The social dimension of higher education has been featured in the discussions of the Bologna Process since its early years. A new set of Principles and Guidelines produced by the Bologna Follow-Up Group (BFUG) Advisory Group on the Social Dimension renews the sectors’ commitment to equity and inclusion and aims to foster concrete change in the EHEA in the coming years.

This SIHO webinar, which is part of the series “Towards Genuinely Inclusive Universities”, will review these recommendations and discuss them from the viewpoint of European higher education institutions and national bodies working on the topic of inclusion. The speakers will discuss findings of their research projects on university strategies for inclusion and Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and examine how UDL fits within these wide objectives for inclusion. This webinar will provide a concise overview of the European landscape on social dimension in higher education and address the barriers that have emerged with the implementation of the UDL framework.

Target Audience

This webinar series will be of interest to institutional leaders, service providers, academic staff, researchers, scholars, and students interested in the implementation of UDL. The objectives of the series is to offer participants the opportunity to deepen their reflection around UDL implementation and to encourage them to develop sustainable institutional policies and practices in this area. Each webinar includes its own specific participant outcomes.

Targeted participant outcomes

• Participants will reflect on the growing diversity of the higher education population and on the challenges in providing inclusive provisions for all;
• Participants will consider what inclusive provisions mean within the post-secondary classroom;
• Participants will examine policy at institution and government level that supports the furthering of inclusive teaching and learning.
  

Speakers

Ninoslav Šćukanec Schmidt is the Executive Director of the Institute for the Development of Education in Zagreb, Croatia. He has dedicated his career to the development of higher education policies. His main expertise is in institutional governance and strategic management of higher education, financing of higher education, the social dimension of higher education, quality assurance in higher education, and in the development of qualifications frameworks. He is the co-chair BFUG Advisory Group on Social Dimension (AG1) who created the Principles and Guidelines for Social Dimension to help 48 countries in the European Higher Education Area improve social dimension policies.

Valérie Van Hees is the coordinator of Support Centre Inclusive Higher Education (Belgium) and has accumulated over 20 years of experience in the field of policy and inclusion in higher education. At SIHO, she forms a bridge between policy and practice on a daily basis, being a point of contact for both the Flemish Government and higher education staff to support the implementation of inclusion measures in policies and practices.

Frederic Fovet is Associate Professor, School of Education and Technology at Royal Roads University (Canada). Fovet is an inclusion specialist with a specific interest in emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD), critical pedagogy and universal design for learning (UDL). Fovet also has a strong grounding in Disability Studies, and has served as a teacher and principal in schools with a focus on the successful inclusion of students with EBD.

Registration

Registration link webinar 1

Live captioning will be provided. A recording of the webinar and presentations will be available on the website of the Support Centre Inclusive Higher Education.

For updates, please follow #inclusiveUniversities on Twitter.

The webinar series ‘Towards Genuinely Inclusive Universities: an international perspective on best practices in the implementation of universal design’ is an initiative of the Support Centre Inclusive Higher Education. The series is composed of eight webinars and will run from December 2020 until July 2021. This webinar series will shed light on several topics closely related to current policies and practices in post-secondary education around the topics of inclusion and universal design. Each webinar will focus on case studies about implementation. More information on SIHO’s website