The Universal Learning Center

Special Educators in public school districts throughout the country struggle to find curricular materials that are accessible to their students with disabilities. As a necessary stopgap, many are adapting their existing materials by hand or digitizing them for use with assistive technologies that improve access to the general curriculum. Other teachers are working without accessible materials altogether, consequently failing to meet the mandated learning requirements for students with special needs.

On a national scale, these difficulties result in a redundant and costly situation for the education enterprise and, even worse, the potential exclusion of an entire segment of the student population from effective instruction.

In addition, many of the 15,000 public school districts throughout the country are facing an educational crisis as a significant number of students fail high stakes tests. Our most vulnerable children - those with disabilities, English language learners, and those who are economically disadvantaged, in short, those who most need accessible materials - top the failure statistics.

The Project

To address these issues, CAST has launched the Universal Learning Center, a new system for transforming traditional "one-size-fits-all" print curriculum materials and delivering them in accessible, digital format to meet the learning needs of K-12 students with disabilities.

The ULC is ideally situated to address the urgent challenge that schools throughout the nation are facing: to ensure that all students, especially those who are most at risk, have access to the resources that will enable them to achieve high educational standards in general education classrooms.

The ULC's goals are to:

• Provide a Web-based resource for educators, enabling them to locate, acquire, and effectively use accessible digital curricular materials.
• Encourage the proliferation of accessible digital curricular resources by working with publishers, software developers, and other curricular content providers.
• Implement clear guidelines for the creation, distribution, and use of accessible and universally designed digital curricula in order to assist all stakeholders in the adoption of inclusive educational practices.
• To extend the knowledge base of educators, parents and students on issues such as learning needs, federal and state regulations, and technology innovation.

The Universal Learning Center (ULC) is comprised of these components:

• Digital Content Library: A repository for distributing digital materials to qualified special education personnel and students in compliance with Section 121 of the Copyright Act (Chafee Amendment).
• Resources and Workshops: The instructional hub of the ULC, providing a direct connection to CAST's Teaching Every Student professional development website and offering in-depth information on the effective use of digital learning materials.
• Personal Information Manager: Enables authorized users to store their acquired digital materials, manage resources, manage student lists, and more.

Current Activities

In collaboration with the California and Kentucky departments of education, CAST is currently piloting the ULC in public schools in these states. To meet the technical needs of participating schools, the ULC currently offers accessible, digital materials in both HTML and CD-ROM format. Web-based toolkits to guide educators in locating, selecting, and using digital learning materials, and in curriculum planning using Universal Design for Learning, are also under development.

Funding

The Universal Learning Center has received generous support from the following foundations and state agencies:

• California Department of Education
• Kentucky Department of Education
• Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation
• Oak Foundation
• Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation
• Verizon Foundation

The ULC is informed and supported in part by the National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum (NCAC), a cooperative effort with the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Programs (OSEP) of which CAST is the host and lead agency.

URL: ulc.cast.org

For more information on the Universal Learning Center, contact Skip Stahl at sstahl@cast.org.