Applications for spring 2025 open October 1, 2024 and close October 31, 2024.
Application cycles for courses taught in summer/fall will open in early spring.
Application cycles for courses taught in spring will open in early fall.
The College of Sciences Inclusive Design badge signifies a commitment to implementing inclusive best practices that accommodate diverse student needs, foster a less stressful learning environment, and help students better understand and meet faculty expectations. The Inclusive Design best practices were developed by a committee made up of COS faculty and staff, and staff from the Registrar’s Office and Student Accessibility Services.
Note: The Inclusive Design badges are awarded for an existing course that is taught in a specific mode. If you are teaching the course in multiple modes, please submit an application for each mode.
Some of the Inclusive Design best practices may be best suited for in-person or mixed-mode courses; others can be adapted for fully online environments.
To apply for an Inclusive Design badge the College of Sciences faculty member should:
- Identify at least 13 of the 20 best practices found below that you commit to follow in your syllabus.
- There must be at least one best practice from each section.
- An annotated syllabus is required.
- Within the course syllabus, highlight and identify each best practice (e.g., “III.B.”) and how it is being implemented. These best practices must be explicitly stated in the syllabus. Feel free to include additional narrative within your syllabus using the comments feature of Word or PDF.
- Ex: If you are implementing the practice: “No single item in the class (assignment or test) will be worth more than 20% of the final grade.”, please highlight the section of the syllabus that outlines how much each assignment is worth and label it as “III.B.”.
- Within the course syllabus, highlight and identify each best practice (e.g., “III.B.”) and how it is being implemented. These best practices must be explicitly stated in the syllabus. Feel free to include additional narrative within your syllabus using the comments feature of Word or PDF.
- Supporting documents are encouraged.
- If you will be implementing practices that cannot be highlighted in the syllabus, please include additional documentation explaining how these practices will be implemented and how students will explicitly know that this practice is allowed.
- Ex: If you are implementing the practice: “The instructor will spend 5 min on the first day of class (in-person or online) presenting different learning strategies and encourage students to communicate their needs to the instructor.”, please provide a narrative referencing “III.A.” and let us know what resource you would use to prepare this discussion or outline how you would lead the discussion.
- Feel free to also include screenshots of Webcourses, assignments or other information that supports your inclusive design approaches.
- If you will be implementing practices that cannot be highlighted in the syllabus, please include additional documentation explaining how these practices will be implemented and how students will explicitly know that this practice is allowed.
Faculty members who have a course approved for an Inclusive Design badge will be provided a digital badge to add to their Webcourse and language to include as a component in Simple Syllabus. The attribute code of INCLSVDSGN will be added to their course section in the UCF Schedule of Classes.
Courses that have been approved for the Inclusive Design badge will be renewed after five years. Renewed courses must be taught in same mode by same faculty member.