Teaching Every Student: Universal Design for Learning

In 1984, David Rose co-founded CAST (Center for Applied Special Technology) to explore ways of using new technologies to give students with disabilities greater access to the general curriculum. Early on, he realized that solutions for students with disabilities also improved learning outcomes for all students. David is now Chief Education Officer at CAST where there are over 15 major research and development projects sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, among many others. Virtually all of the work involves the development and application of Universal Design for Learning, a theory developed at CAST and now disseminated world-wide.

Following are two current projects for which David serves as principal investigator:

The National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS)
The overarching goal of this project, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, is to make appropriate and accessible versions of print textbooks available to every student who needs them. It focuses on the development and dissemination of a technical standard for U.S. textbook publishers to produce source files (in XML). These files can be used to provide multiple specialized formats (such as Braille, digital, or audio books) easily and quickly for students with “print disabilities.” Virtually all publishers in the U.S. are now using the NIMAS standard, and every state is developing means for their dissemination. Learn more about NIMAS.

Universal Design of Inquiry-Based Middle and High School Science Curricula
This project, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, supports CAST in collaboration with Education Development Center, Inc., University of Michigan, and SRI. This collaboration is creating new kinds of web-based science materials, ones that embody both the principles and practices of high quality science and universal design for learning. The curricula and technologies produced by the collaboration will be used as models for further development of modern science curricula through NSF. Learn more about this research project.

David is also an author/consultant on a number of commercially produced and distributed educational products including WiggleWorks, Read 180, and ReadAbout by Scholastic; Thinking Reader by Tom Snyder/Scholastic; and others in production.

David Rose teaches T-560 Universal Design for Learning:  Meeting the Challenge of Individual Differences.