Overview
The focus of my research is understanding the needs and learning pathway of college students, especially students with disabilities (SWD) or more generally defined group of students with Access Challenges and Accommodation Needs (SACAN) using the framework of Universal Design for Learning. The goal is to identify and develop corresponding intervention methods to improve the learning outcome or experience for all students.
Objectives, Activities and Plan
Helping students with special needs had been on my heart before me joining the faculty of UIUC. I felt called after a period of personal struggle with health issue and experience with friends who have children with special needs or disabilities. But What can I help with? how should I do it? In the beginning, it seems obvious that I should show empathy to SWD students and try to accommodate them as much as possible. While I was busy jumpstarting my teaching career, Prof. Angrave reached out to me to join the effort in accessibility research. Although I happily joined, we felt we really don’t know that much about the needs of the students with disabilities. We reached out to the CITL data team and found out that there is a Chancellors senior exit poll that includes some accessibility questions. The issue is many SWD students don’t report to school, instructors, or such poll. I recall that to propose for a SIIP startup project on helping SWD students succeed, my colleague and I were in my office brainstorming what we should learn about students’ needs, a student came to visit me and called me out to the corridor, with tears welling up. She was having an emotional breakdown due to nervousness about her coming exam. After our chat, I came back to the brainstorming and Prof. Angrave gave me a comment that still resonates to this day. He told me that it’s good that I can accommodate each student as much as possible, but there might be other systematic way in which we can help them better. Then the light shined to us that the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) should be the framework for us to design questions to understand the needs of SWDs.
Fig. 1. The three core guidelines of Universal Design for Learning
UDL is a pedagogical framework and set of principles to improve learning for all students by emphasizing the importance of accommodating multiple modes of student learning, action, and engagement. The three core practices of UDL (Fig. 1) are 1) Provide multiple modes of content delivery to students; 2) Give students multiple ways of expressing their learning; 3) Engage and motivate students to learn in multiple ways. Accessibility for SWD using UDL-based methodologies is recognized as a best practice, which is different from the method of accommodation, as illustrated in Fig. 2 where the fence that allows everyone to see the canyon is UDL based design.
Fig. 2. Analogy showing the comparison between the inaccessible (Left), accommodated (Middle) and accessible via UDL (right) in course design. Illustrated by Cora Hayes 2021. This diagram especially demonstrated the difference between Accommodation and Accessibility via UDL.
Based on the UDL principle of multiple modes of content delivery, we surveyed large number of Engineering students over the past 5 years from various perspectives of the UDL framework and developed software tool/features that were used in several Grainger courses and evaluated their effects on the student learning and expectancy factors.
Table 1 is a list of the surveys and implementation my team conducted where I served as the lead PI; we denote students without disabilities with SWOD.
| Semester | Survey objectives | Results | Publication |
| FA2020 &SP2021 | Understanding the needs and learning pathways of students with disabilities | Students’ needs in 10+ course components, comparison between SWD & SWOD and MUSIC model | ASEE2021 |
| FA21 and SP22 | Understanding students’ needs for LMS | Students needs and feedback about Canvas, comparison btw SWD and SWOD | ASEE2022 |
| FA21 SP22 | Understand the needs of student with Disabilities in textbook and digital formatted material | SWD needs regarding textbooks and digital contents | ASEE2022 |
| FA22 and SP23 | Understand the opportunities and Barrier to implement UDL practices | Both Students and Faculty view; Comparison btw different groups including SWD; Involved all 3 core principles | ASEE2023 |
| FA22 | Evaluating the effects of digital notes (iNotes) generated from lecture videos | Developed the tool to make iNote; evaluated the effects of iNote in two courses regarding learning outcome such as low-state performance, belongingness, self-efficacy. | ASEE2023 |
| FA23 SP24 | Developed email nuggets and shared to the Grainger community to promote UDL approaches in course design and teaching approaches | Nuggets that include UDL practice descriptions, examples, and research resources. | ASEE2024 |
| FA23 SP24 | Evaluating the performance of LLM for analyzing open-ending survey responses | Assessment of various open source LLM models for survey analysis | ASEE2024 |
| FA24 | Understanding the students need of MATH equation, diagram, and description/interpretation | Students’ preferences and experience for equations and diagrams; Comparison btw demographic groups including SWD | ASEE2025 |
| FA24 | Evaluating and implementing ML/AI models for equation, table, diagram extractions | The pros and cons of existing ML/AI models and method to apply in education videos and lecture slides | ASEE2025 |
| FA25 | Evaluating the perceived outcomes and understanding the needs of engineering and computing students in connection to the use of multi-modal mathematical lecture content | The improved accessibility, belongingness, self efficacy using latex formatted Math equations; identified needs of students in such Math material. | Submission to ASEE26 |
| FA25 | Identifying, categorizing, and evaluating the taxonomy of STEM content and the obstacles in converting handwritten MATH lecture materials | Categories of issues that made conversion of Math equation difficult; Recommendations for instructors in designing such contents. | Submission to ASEE26 |
We did our first large-scale survey on undergraduate Engineering students for both SWD and SWOD (students without disabilities) regarding their usage and satisfaction of 10+ content delivery modalities. The result was published in ASEE 2021 conference proceedings and won the 3rd best paper and 2nd best diversity paper in NEE section.
Following up on the above work, I worked on applying what we found to implement digital book directly from lecture video as a UDL method to help all students especially SWDs in collaboration with Prof. Angrave and other faculty in BioE, ISE and Statistics. This project was funded by the IDEA institute’s GIANT 2021 program. In our phase-I project, we confirmed the hypothesis that the digital books generated from lecture videos with transcriptions as a UDL approach may help all students to retain course contents, particularly for SWDs. Our project has successfully developed a process to generate such modality. This worked appeared in ASEE2022 conference proceedings and won Best DEI paper award in NEE section.
My team further extended from the first principle of UDL (main focus on the SIIP start up) to implementations that involve all three principles and included a significant number of UDL based approaches suitable for college teaching. We disseminated examples and training instructors for more inclusive learning via Canvas and short email nuggets. This work was funded by SIIP implementation project. My team dived more in understanding students’ need for MATH equation, diagrams, tables and developed more tool/features via ML/AI methods to improve students’ learning outcome/experience.
Table2 listed the funds of the projects I lead surrounding UDL centered approaches. I sincerely thank all the support we received to make our courses more accessible.
| Time | Project | Funding agency |
| July 2020 | Understanding the needs and learning pathways of students with disabilities | SIIP, UIUC |
| Apr. 2021 | Applying a Theoretical Understanding of Text-Based Learning Modalities to Develop New Course Modalities That Meet the Needs of Student with Disabilities | GIANT, UIUC |
| July 2021 | UDL based best practices including utilizing Canvas for the needs of students with disability | SIIP, UIUC |
| Mar. 2022 | Universal Design for Learning in STEM | Microsoft |
| Apr. 2024 | Developing Tools to Make Mathematics and Other STEM Contents Move Accessible in College Engineering Courses | GIANT, UIUC |
| July 2025 | Developing Tools to Make Mathematics and Other STEM Contents Move Accessible in College Engineering Courses (Phase II) | GIANT, UIUC |
Please take a look at my research group page for more details including our publications and software.