Title: Welcome to the class - begin here
Course: CIT 641 1001 - 2025 Sumr > Section: Start Here

CIT 641 - Universal Design for Learning

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Welcome to CIT 641 - Universal Design for Learning. My name is Kendall Hartley, and I'll be your guide in this course.

I'll introduce myself in the discussion forum. I will use this space to provide you with an overview of the course content, expectations, and design.

The Course

As indicated in the title and the course description, we will investigate UDL principles and implications. We will also investigate the potential of Generative AI tools to augment our instructional development process in support of UDL.

Pro Tip: If you are interested in improving your knowledge of computer applications, all UNLV students get free access to the entire LinkedIn Learning course catalog. I encourage you to take advantage of this while you are a student. They have a tremendous variety of computer application courses available.

Expectations

We are likely all educators in this course, so I suspect a lengthy description of expectations is unnecessary. What might be worth mentioning in this context is the necessity to plan for success.

Important: This is a fast course (16 weeks compressed to 5). You likely have other obligations that you need to meet during the next five weeks, so planning will be critical.
Time Commitment Guide:
Plan to spend a significant amount of time at least five days a week on this course. As a general guide, consider the equivalent 16 week face-to-face course. Each week we would meet for 3 hours and have at least 6 hours of homework (reading, writing, projects, and exam prep). Consider how you might commit the same ~150 hours to a five-week course.

Course Design

I try to organize my courses as simply as possible. While there are pedagogical advantages to using various tools, strategies, activities, and assessments, those advantages quickly disappear if the learner is overwhelmed.

Navigation: I provide a sequential, week-based outline of the course on the home page. Every activity, assignment, and discussion is directly accessible from the home page. In addition, there is a course resources page.

Questions

Contact Info:
Please use the Webcampus 'Inbox' function to send me questions regarding the course. You are welcome to use my unlv.edu email for non-course inquiries.

This concludes the course welcome. If you made it to this point and are attending to this text, that is a great sign. You might be familiar with the acronym TLDR. I prefer my version, TLDL(earn).