Designing Inclusive Learning Experiences with UDL & AI Tools

Why This Learning Experience?

This instructor-guided professional learning experience is designed to help educators learn on their schedule while still receiving meaningful support. Participants complete practical activities, connect ideas to real classroom practice, and build confidence through application-focused learning.

Learning Experience Overview

motivation, attention, accessibility needs, executive functioning, and ways of demonstrating what they know. Designing Inclusive Learning Experiences with UDL & AI Tools introduces educators to Universal Design for Learning as a practical framework for anticipating this variability and reducing barriers while maintaining clear learning goals and appropriate rigor. Participants explore the three core UDL principles—Engagement, Representation, and Action & Expression—and learn to identify barriers within materials, activities, assessments, technologies, and learning environments.

The course also examines how artificial intelligence can support inclusive instructional design through brainstorming, alternative explanations, vocabulary support, planning, organization, accessible content, and flexible learning pathways. Rather than using AI simply because it is available, participants learn to begin with the learning goal and learner barrier, select an appropriate UDL support, and then determine whether AI adds meaningful value. Particular attention is given to using AI as a scaffold rather than a substitute for learning, as well as responsible considerations involving privacy, accessibility, accuracy, bias, human review, equitable access, and organizational policies.

Through interactive scenarios and practical application activities, participants bring UDL and responsible AI use together in a repeatable instructional-design process: identify the goal, anticipate learner variability, identify barriers, select purposeful supports, determine whether AI strengthens the design, and review the result for accessibility and instructional integrity. The course culminates in an Inclusive Lesson Design capstone project in which participants apply these principles to a learning experience relevant to their own setting. Participants leave with a practical approach for creating learning experiences that are accessible, flexible, rigorous, and responsive to learner variability.

Learning Outcomes

• Explain the purpose and core principles of Universal Design for Learning.
• Describe how learner variability influences instructional design.
• Identify barriers related to Engagement, Representation, and Action & Expression.
• Apply UDL principles and guidelines to lesson planning.
• Evaluate AI tools and AI-supported strategies for instructional fit, accessibility, accuracy, privacy, and bias.
• Distinguish between using AI as an instructional scaffold and using AI as a substitute for essential learner thinking.
• Integrate AI when it meaningfully reduces barriers or supports learner access, engagement, or expression.
• Design an inclusive lesson that applies UDL principles while maintaining clear learning goals and appropriate rigor.
• Reflect on how intentional instructional design can improve access and participation for variable learners.

Who Should Participate?

This course is designed for K–12 teachers, instructional coaches, special educators, interventionists, instructional designers, school leaders, higher education faculty, and other education professionals who want practical strategies for designing more accessible and inclusive learning experiences. It is especially useful for educators interested in Universal Design for Learning, learner variability, accessibility, or the responsible use of AI in instructional planning.