Event 1: Mini-congres 'Campus Accessibility' - Geel - November 9-10, 2017
The overall goal of the ICLife project is to make life on a campus for higher education more inclusive.
More specifically, ICLife promotes and supports the inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities in campus life.
ICLife organised two exciting days on the topic. The agenda and presentations can be downloaded.
Location: Kleinhoefstraat 4, 2440 Geel (Belgium)
Almost all presentations can be seen on Youtube at
More specifically, ICLife promotes and supports the inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities in campus life.
ICLife organised two exciting days on the topic. The agenda and presentations can be downloaded.
Location: Kleinhoefstraat 4, 2440 Geel (Belgium)
Almost all presentations can be seen on Youtube at
Lectures
Vision of Thomas More on Inclusion; by Machteld Verbruggen (rector Thomas More)
Universal design should create more accessibility for everyone. For example, think about laundry machines that open from the side instead of from the front. There is no limitation to designing products, services and spaces so that they can be used by the widest range of people possible. And that is exactly what Mrs Verbruggen wants to work on in order to increase inclusiveness of students with disabilities.
She wants to introduce adjustments, like specific internships, as part of a management development programme because there are far too many students that got their degree but don’t get the job because of their disability. The programme should make it easier to convince people to come up with solutions to create more inclusiveness, not only for people who were already taken up in a group before the disability but for everyone. By integrating this programme, students with disabilities would be given more chance to a normal salary later in life, instead of having to live of the benefits they would get.
Faculty awareness would include reasonable disability-related accommodations where necessary, searching for solutions to existing problems… These decisions would be made within the department by decentralization, with as few administrative requirements as possible and with avoidance of labelling. There would also be a central follow-up of the granted adjustments.
Social Inclusion and Accessibility; by Prof. dr. Jean-Pierre Wilken (Utrecht University of applied sciences)
“Accessibility enables people with a disability to live independently and participate fully in all aspects of life, which is essential for the enjoyment of their rights.”
Mr Wilken stresses the importance of conventional rights for people with disabilities. He recognises the importance of accessibility to the physical, social, economic and cultural environment, to health and education and to information and communication. He wants to attain and maintain maximum independence by peer support.
But not only physical accessibility is important for people with disabilities. Equally important is social accessibility, which relates to person-environment relations, to the opportunity to perform meaningful social roles, etc. When there is no social accessibility, there is no inclusion. Therefore, it is very important to provide accessible communication and information.
The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, known more commonly as ICF, is a classification of health and health-related domains. Mr Wilken wants to pay more attention to the bodily functions and structures, the participation in activities and to the environmental and personal factors of people with disabilities to be able to improve their health condition.
He also wants to pay more attention to personal, environmental and general barriers (linked with physical access) that people with disabilities must face. For example: to be misunderstood, to be abused, to lack skills, to be over or under estimated, to not have the financial means…
He says the main reasons for exclusion (by the person himself or by the environment) are:
health condition, financial means and social environment. He suggests solutions like: accessible language, accessible technology, supportive communication, social support…
Social engagement of students; by Ann Van de Peer (Thomas More)
Ann Van de Peer, the community and campus national manager, speaks about the cultural heart of Antwerp and more specifically about the higher education campus there. The campus provides a social space, a learning park, an integrated co-working place and resembles multiple values like social character activities and added value for one of the 33 professional bachelor degrees of Thomas More.
Important things on campus are commitment, getting rid of stigmas, introducing the first wheelchair accessible rooms for students in Antwerp… All of this is done within a framework to provide support for students with disabilities. That’s why Ms Van de Peer also organises information sessions about disabilities for all residents of the campus, given by an expert or by the students themselves.
She also provides a programme, which boosts the students’ commitment to the neighbourhood, by having them volunteer 2 hours a week. The volunteer work is attuned to social problems in the neighbourhood and tries to make a positive change. The programme includes helping children with their homework, visiting elderly people, bringing food to homeless people… All residents of the campus with disabilities are involved in a social project of the neighbourhood. It makes it easier for them to be integrated in the neighbourhood and to be of added value. As a plus, they receive a certificate for voluntary work and are given the chance to attend supervision talks with students. But the programme also works the other way around, residents of the neighbourhood have access to the campus as well, which means they can use the pub and stay in contact with the students. The programme got the price for the most engaged project in Antwerp.
Applications can be filled in via online registration forms, starting from April.
Inclusive Continued Education; by Goele Sterckx & Ann Van Uytsel (Thomas More)
The inclusive education programme dreams about giving everyone a chance to participate in higher education, no matter the background of the person. This programme's goal is to make higher education more accessible and to break down the barriers for people with special needs.
Konekt is a non-profit organisation that has a huge impact on the accessibility to higher education. This organisation has its own settlements, but it also collaborates with schools. The professionals that work for Konekt organise something similar for bachelors. Students can come to the job coaches and they take care of job trainings. There are welcome days, so the students know what higher education is like.
Once the students are enrolled for their courses, they are assigned a buddy. A buddy is a Social Work student that helps the other student wherever he can.
The accessibility of the campus is very important for integrated education. They also get help with occupational therapy, communication skills, training to find a suitable job. A job coach supports the student during his or her internship.
Also social aspects of being a student are important. They showed some videos of actual students who talked about wanting to be baptised and just eat with other students, like any other student would want. They provide solutions tailored to their needs.
Digital Accessibility; by Wim De Backer (Researcher Modem; Thomas More)
Wim De Backer of Modem talks about support for communication for students. He suggests individual counselling while looking for the best technology to help.
He talks about digital tools to support reading. It is be software that can read texts out loud. The user decides what he wants to read and the software is multilingual.
They also use technology like spelling correction, word prediction and auditory feedback, e.g. Sprint and SprintPDF app, Kurzweil 3000, PDF Xchange editor, LibreOffice Math… When you have more needs, there is special software with symbols, for people with cognitive disabilities.
Speech recognition is also a very useful tool. There is a fast input of text, correct spelling and the student can study on his own. This is very useful for people with motor disabilities, because they can speak out loud.
They also use simplified agendas with digital symbols: RoutineFactory.
It is also important that everything is accessible and easy to use. Bigger and coloured keys on a keypad with combined vowels, joysticks instead of a mouse are some examples.
Modem wants to train professionals to work with these projects. Modem already organises over 30 courses themselves and it also outsources. Unfortunately there is a lack of funding. Thomas More already sponsors this project, but more sponsors are always welcome.
Design Education from the perspective of Multi-Sensoriality and Inclusion; by Prof. dr. Marc Dujardin (K.U.Leuven)
ArCsus Lab stands for Architecture Culture Sustainability and is well explained by Marc Dujardin of the Faculty of Architecture at KU Leuven. Marc has the idea of UD-L, the Universal Design for Learning. He talks about the UD-app empathy guide and the UD-L Toolbox
He says accessibility is about much more than just physical accessibility, but also about mental thresholds and stigmas. He prefers to call people with disabilities ‘differently abled’.
Marc wants to teach people how to design buildings so they are accessible for people with any kind of disability. The book ‘Zero-empathy Architecture’ is one of his works. This is a guide with sketches and drawings with chapter for different disabilities.
Workshops
Workshop 1: Internships of people with intellectual disabilities on a university campus; by Vera Nijs (Thomas More)
The aim of this lecture was to make employees of university campuses reflect on work placement and/or internships of people with cognitive disabilities. How would you address this as an employer/jobcoach? The college was conceived as a kind of intervision session for job coaches or internship coaches who employ people with cognitive disabilities as an intern or employee. It was very interactive, with the use of statements, green and red cards, markers and magnets.
Some important points from this workshop:
The greatest advantage for employers is that you reconsider your own job, and that a number of executive tasks (which you usually do not like yourself) are done by someone who enjoys doing them.
Workshop 2: Framework/evaluation system for a university campus; by Jeroen Knevel & Jan Dekelver (IC Life partners)
In workshop 2 first the idea of developing a framework was shared and discussed on usefulness. Jan Dekelver presented the CDIO Standard which is used for developing engineering education. Question was: can we use this structure also for a framework with regards to the IC Life intellectual outputs. One standard was converted to the IC Life context i.e. intellectual output 1 on accessibility. Purpose was to collect feedback from the workshop participants. In short the feedback and questions we received comprised: (1) not only describe the scales and criteria, but also provide guidelines on how to move from one to scale to the other, higher scale, (2) provide best practices (per standard), (3) consider making it a tool, not only a framework, (4) reconsider the language: there are two approaches; either you correct ‘errors’ from the past or you provide feed forward on ‘how to make sure that in the future things go right’, (5) also take into consideration the variety of campuses in size and location. Some campuses only consist of one or very few buildings, other campuses have over 30 buildings varying from university faculties, hospitals, research and development departments of multinationals, national expertise centres, student housing et cetera. (6) The size of the syllabus? Consider a website. (7) What should be the frequency of the monitoring? (8) This valuable feed forward will be included in following designs (drafts) of the framework. Who would use this framework and who should be responsible to using this framework? (9) The scope: remind you of the different partners involved as well and who are the ambassadors/advocates within the university – preferably a mixed group.
Workshop 3: Personal approach for students with a (learning) disability in higher education – workshop based on cases; by Elhasbia Zayou & Jolien Claessens (Thomas More)
In workshop 3 we got a short introduction of the two coordinators. The coordinators talked about GON-counselling. GON is a Dutch abbreviation for integrated education. It means that a student in higher education individually gets counselled by professionals. The counsellors don’t only help with school, but also with private aspects. Privacy is key, so the students themselves decide how open they want to be. Students can also ask for help without a certificate. Normally this is possible from primary school up until high school, but to just start higher education without this counselling is a big step. That is why GON-counselling is also integrated in higher education.
After some brief theoretical information, we started with the interactive part. The audience, around 10 people, were divided in two groups. Each group received several cases of students who were mentally challenged. For example a student who was autistic and got very dependant towards people. The group members had to discuss what would be the best solution a care coordinator in higher education could provide in each case. In one group there were two people from Czech Republic and the entire group compared the solutions found.
Vision of Thomas More on Inclusion; by Machteld Verbruggen (rector Thomas More)
Universal design should create more accessibility for everyone. For example, think about laundry machines that open from the side instead of from the front. There is no limitation to designing products, services and spaces so that they can be used by the widest range of people possible. And that is exactly what Mrs Verbruggen wants to work on in order to increase inclusiveness of students with disabilities.
She wants to introduce adjustments, like specific internships, as part of a management development programme because there are far too many students that got their degree but don’t get the job because of their disability. The programme should make it easier to convince people to come up with solutions to create more inclusiveness, not only for people who were already taken up in a group before the disability but for everyone. By integrating this programme, students with disabilities would be given more chance to a normal salary later in life, instead of having to live of the benefits they would get.
Faculty awareness would include reasonable disability-related accommodations where necessary, searching for solutions to existing problems… These decisions would be made within the department by decentralization, with as few administrative requirements as possible and with avoidance of labelling. There would also be a central follow-up of the granted adjustments.
Social Inclusion and Accessibility; by Prof. dr. Jean-Pierre Wilken (Utrecht University of applied sciences)
“Accessibility enables people with a disability to live independently and participate fully in all aspects of life, which is essential for the enjoyment of their rights.”
Mr Wilken stresses the importance of conventional rights for people with disabilities. He recognises the importance of accessibility to the physical, social, economic and cultural environment, to health and education and to information and communication. He wants to attain and maintain maximum independence by peer support.
But not only physical accessibility is important for people with disabilities. Equally important is social accessibility, which relates to person-environment relations, to the opportunity to perform meaningful social roles, etc. When there is no social accessibility, there is no inclusion. Therefore, it is very important to provide accessible communication and information.
The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, known more commonly as ICF, is a classification of health and health-related domains. Mr Wilken wants to pay more attention to the bodily functions and structures, the participation in activities and to the environmental and personal factors of people with disabilities to be able to improve their health condition.
He also wants to pay more attention to personal, environmental and general barriers (linked with physical access) that people with disabilities must face. For example: to be misunderstood, to be abused, to lack skills, to be over or under estimated, to not have the financial means…
He says the main reasons for exclusion (by the person himself or by the environment) are:
health condition, financial means and social environment. He suggests solutions like: accessible language, accessible technology, supportive communication, social support…
Social engagement of students; by Ann Van de Peer (Thomas More)
Ann Van de Peer, the community and campus national manager, speaks about the cultural heart of Antwerp and more specifically about the higher education campus there. The campus provides a social space, a learning park, an integrated co-working place and resembles multiple values like social character activities and added value for one of the 33 professional bachelor degrees of Thomas More.
Important things on campus are commitment, getting rid of stigmas, introducing the first wheelchair accessible rooms for students in Antwerp… All of this is done within a framework to provide support for students with disabilities. That’s why Ms Van de Peer also organises information sessions about disabilities for all residents of the campus, given by an expert or by the students themselves.
She also provides a programme, which boosts the students’ commitment to the neighbourhood, by having them volunteer 2 hours a week. The volunteer work is attuned to social problems in the neighbourhood and tries to make a positive change. The programme includes helping children with their homework, visiting elderly people, bringing food to homeless people… All residents of the campus with disabilities are involved in a social project of the neighbourhood. It makes it easier for them to be integrated in the neighbourhood and to be of added value. As a plus, they receive a certificate for voluntary work and are given the chance to attend supervision talks with students. But the programme also works the other way around, residents of the neighbourhood have access to the campus as well, which means they can use the pub and stay in contact with the students. The programme got the price for the most engaged project in Antwerp.
Applications can be filled in via online registration forms, starting from April.
Inclusive Continued Education; by Goele Sterckx & Ann Van Uytsel (Thomas More)
The inclusive education programme dreams about giving everyone a chance to participate in higher education, no matter the background of the person. This programme's goal is to make higher education more accessible and to break down the barriers for people with special needs.
Konekt is a non-profit organisation that has a huge impact on the accessibility to higher education. This organisation has its own settlements, but it also collaborates with schools. The professionals that work for Konekt organise something similar for bachelors. Students can come to the job coaches and they take care of job trainings. There are welcome days, so the students know what higher education is like.
Once the students are enrolled for their courses, they are assigned a buddy. A buddy is a Social Work student that helps the other student wherever he can.
The accessibility of the campus is very important for integrated education. They also get help with occupational therapy, communication skills, training to find a suitable job. A job coach supports the student during his or her internship.
Also social aspects of being a student are important. They showed some videos of actual students who talked about wanting to be baptised and just eat with other students, like any other student would want. They provide solutions tailored to their needs.
Digital Accessibility; by Wim De Backer (Researcher Modem; Thomas More)
Wim De Backer of Modem talks about support for communication for students. He suggests individual counselling while looking for the best technology to help.
He talks about digital tools to support reading. It is be software that can read texts out loud. The user decides what he wants to read and the software is multilingual.
They also use technology like spelling correction, word prediction and auditory feedback, e.g. Sprint and SprintPDF app, Kurzweil 3000, PDF Xchange editor, LibreOffice Math… When you have more needs, there is special software with symbols, for people with cognitive disabilities.
Speech recognition is also a very useful tool. There is a fast input of text, correct spelling and the student can study on his own. This is very useful for people with motor disabilities, because they can speak out loud.
They also use simplified agendas with digital symbols: RoutineFactory.
It is also important that everything is accessible and easy to use. Bigger and coloured keys on a keypad with combined vowels, joysticks instead of a mouse are some examples.
Modem wants to train professionals to work with these projects. Modem already organises over 30 courses themselves and it also outsources. Unfortunately there is a lack of funding. Thomas More already sponsors this project, but more sponsors are always welcome.
Design Education from the perspective of Multi-Sensoriality and Inclusion; by Prof. dr. Marc Dujardin (K.U.Leuven)
ArCsus Lab stands for Architecture Culture Sustainability and is well explained by Marc Dujardin of the Faculty of Architecture at KU Leuven. Marc has the idea of UD-L, the Universal Design for Learning. He talks about the UD-app empathy guide and the UD-L Toolbox
He says accessibility is about much more than just physical accessibility, but also about mental thresholds and stigmas. He prefers to call people with disabilities ‘differently abled’.
Marc wants to teach people how to design buildings so they are accessible for people with any kind of disability. The book ‘Zero-empathy Architecture’ is one of his works. This is a guide with sketches and drawings with chapter for different disabilities.
Workshops
Workshop 1: Internships of people with intellectual disabilities on a university campus; by Vera Nijs (Thomas More)
The aim of this lecture was to make employees of university campuses reflect on work placement and/or internships of people with cognitive disabilities. How would you address this as an employer/jobcoach? The college was conceived as a kind of intervision session for job coaches or internship coaches who employ people with cognitive disabilities as an intern or employee. It was very interactive, with the use of statements, green and red cards, markers and magnets.
Some important points from this workshop:
- Communicate with the person in a way you would want your son or daughter to be spoken to
- Split tasks into subtasks
- Don’t ramble from one subject to the other
- Explain the aim of a task, even if it is clear to you
- Create a win-win-situation (no occupational therapy, it has to be meaningful for both)
- Work partly on routine making the people with a disability feel that they can do part of the job independently (e.g. pick up and distribute the mail first thing in the morning, making copies, …)
The greatest advantage for employers is that you reconsider your own job, and that a number of executive tasks (which you usually do not like yourself) are done by someone who enjoys doing them.
Workshop 2: Framework/evaluation system for a university campus; by Jeroen Knevel & Jan Dekelver (IC Life partners)
In workshop 2 first the idea of developing a framework was shared and discussed on usefulness. Jan Dekelver presented the CDIO Standard which is used for developing engineering education. Question was: can we use this structure also for a framework with regards to the IC Life intellectual outputs. One standard was converted to the IC Life context i.e. intellectual output 1 on accessibility. Purpose was to collect feedback from the workshop participants. In short the feedback and questions we received comprised: (1) not only describe the scales and criteria, but also provide guidelines on how to move from one to scale to the other, higher scale, (2) provide best practices (per standard), (3) consider making it a tool, not only a framework, (4) reconsider the language: there are two approaches; either you correct ‘errors’ from the past or you provide feed forward on ‘how to make sure that in the future things go right’, (5) also take into consideration the variety of campuses in size and location. Some campuses only consist of one or very few buildings, other campuses have over 30 buildings varying from university faculties, hospitals, research and development departments of multinationals, national expertise centres, student housing et cetera. (6) The size of the syllabus? Consider a website. (7) What should be the frequency of the monitoring? (8) This valuable feed forward will be included in following designs (drafts) of the framework. Who would use this framework and who should be responsible to using this framework? (9) The scope: remind you of the different partners involved as well and who are the ambassadors/advocates within the university – preferably a mixed group.
Workshop 3: Personal approach for students with a (learning) disability in higher education – workshop based on cases; by Elhasbia Zayou & Jolien Claessens (Thomas More)
In workshop 3 we got a short introduction of the two coordinators. The coordinators talked about GON-counselling. GON is a Dutch abbreviation for integrated education. It means that a student in higher education individually gets counselled by professionals. The counsellors don’t only help with school, but also with private aspects. Privacy is key, so the students themselves decide how open they want to be. Students can also ask for help without a certificate. Normally this is possible from primary school up until high school, but to just start higher education without this counselling is a big step. That is why GON-counselling is also integrated in higher education.
After some brief theoretical information, we started with the interactive part. The audience, around 10 people, were divided in two groups. Each group received several cases of students who were mentally challenged. For example a student who was autistic and got very dependant towards people. The group members had to discuss what would be the best solution a care coordinator in higher education could provide in each case. In one group there were two people from Czech Republic and the entire group compared the solutions found.
Event 2: International Seminar "Northern Factor" - Kemi, May 17-18, 2018
Event 3: Work placements for people with intellectual disabilities on a higher education campus - Olomouc, October 11-12, 2018
EVENT 4: An environment of higher education and research for people with intellectual disabilities - Utrecht, June 7-8, 2019
Final event: November 27-28, 2019
We were very pleased to welcome about 90 participants to the final event of the project taking place 27-28 November 2019 in Brussels.
In this two-day conference, we hosted numerous workshops with specialists in the field: people with intellectual disabilities, teachers, researchers and others. Please discover the full programme here or download here the Easy-to-Read version of the programme. It contains a best-of of our most popular workshops of the former events of IC Life in The Netherlands, Czech Republic, Finland and Belgium, as well as other lectures given by experienced speakers. People with an intellectual disability will of course play an important role in the event. They will present, lead workshops, will take care of musical interludes, etc. Abstracts lectures and workshops Wednesday 27th of November Plenary Lectures: Lecture 1: IC Life: A never ending story by Aleidis Devillé (Thomas More Kempen-Belgium) Aleidis Devillé - IC Life project manager- explains the project from its inception to the project outcomes. She also looks ahead, because the project provided a breeding ground for further future developments. The various outcomes are presented and linked to a number of tools that may be useful for congress participants. The partners in the project are introduced, each with their own specialisation. Lecture 2: The power of… by Ellis Jongerius (life expert, IC Life student at Utrecht University of Applied Sciences-Netherlands) The Power of Ellis … heeft geen beschrijving. En dat willen we ook eigenlijk niet. Dat moet de verrassing zijn. Hooguit een tipje van de sluier: het gaat over ‘ontluiken’ , ‘je zelf ontdekken en ontwikkelen’ , het gaat over ‘floreren als mens’. Ellis gaat dat doen op een soort theatrale manier. Het floreren is wel een mooie term, want je kunt het verbinden aan de capability approach (doen we niet, doet Ellis niet, maar een luisteraar en kijker die tussen de regels leest, luistert en ziet en in brede termen denkt ziet daarin de capabilities zoals voorgesteld door Martha Nussbaum.) Lecture 3: The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (New York; 13-12-2006) explained by Sabine De Bethune, Senator and honorary-president of the Belgian Senat In her talk, Ms. De Bethune will focus on The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, drafted in 2006. This important international human rights treaty will be discussed in terms of its guiding principles. Also, Ms. De Bethune will shed some light on the further political development of the inclusion of people with disabilities in Belgium and Flanders. Legislative initiatives of which she herself was a part include the equal participation of people with disabilities on the labor market and the anchoring of their rights to autonomy and inclusion in the constitution. Lecture 4: Work Coaching for PID at a university campus by Raf Hensbergen (job coach at Medico-Pedagogical Institute, Oosterlo-Belgium) and Thomas Dierckx (life expert, Belgium) “Future Works – What kind of jobs are at risk in the nearby future? What kind of skills are a least at risk? How do these tendencies translate to our target group, namely people with disabilities? And how should / can we prepare for this? In a changing world of work we cannot just expect people to get ready for and adapt to change. We must also adapt our social institutions, our rulebooks and education systems to support people, so that people can be confident about their future, and the future of their children, also in a the new world of work (Marianne Thyssen – European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility)” Paragraph. Klik hier om te bewerken. Workshops: Workshop 1: ‘How to apply Work Coaching for PID at a university Campus’ by Raf Hensbergen (job coach at Medico-Pedagogical Institute, Oosterlo-Belgium) and Thomas Dierckx (life expert, Belgium) “Work is an important part of human life, leading – if in the right conditions – to greater individual autonomy, personal fulfillment and social participation. Supported Employment is a person-centered approach to assist individuals with disabilities to prepare, obtain and maintain integrated employment. In this workshop Thomas will share his findings concerting this methodology as a life-expert together with his jobcoach.” Workshop 2: So All May Learn: Honoring Cognitive Diversity in Our Classrooms by Philippe Ernewein (Director of Education, Denver Academy-Colorado, United States) Some of the most significant differences that exist within our students are invisible to the naked eye. The complex neurological profiles present in classes and the workplace are often misunderstood or overlooked by the misguided lens of “normal.” This session will highlight these profiles as well as share techniques to honor cognitive diversity using a strength-base, empowerment model. The goals of this workshop include: audience members will learn specific management and instructional strategies to create a successful learning environment. Workshop 3: Doing philosophy with regular students and PID by Jonathan Lambaerts (Thomas More Kempen-Belgium) Philosophy is child’s play. Anyone can engage in philosophizing. It requires no prior studies or specific knowledge. It is a game all men know by heart and that brings them closer together. In the philosophical act one learns to go beyond one’s own convictions and open up for other points of view. As the philosophical game has no need for any logistic support, it can be played by anyone, anywhere at any time. It is a truly inclusive activity. This workshop will show how easy it is to philosophize simply by letting its participants experience the joy of the philosophical game. Workshop 4: Teaching and co-teaching by Silvia Visser (Utrecht University of Applied Sciences-Netherlands) and Ellis Jongerius (life expert, Utrecht University of Applied Sciences-Netherlands). In this workshop we share experiences of how a lecturer at a university of applied sciences, can collaborate with an expert by experience in giving classes or training sessions. We will simulate some of the situations – i.e. exercises - that we perform in the classroom. We share some pitfalls and give some tips on what works well. Abstracts workshops and Lecture Thursday 28th of November Workshops: Workshop 1: Mixed teaching activities, an added value for students and students with special needs by Rauni Raty, Sari Halttunen, by Jussi Lehtiö, Sirpa Niskala, Harri Laito (life expert) and Risto Kuyansuu (life expert) (Lapland University of Applied Sciences) Workshop contains a short presentation and video of our mixed teaching activities. We will hear opinions of teaching and learning by social service program students, students with intellectual disability and teachers. Workshop contains a small interactive task. Workshop 2: Building bridges through classroom based activities by Liz Tilly (University of Wolverhampton, UK) Contribution of people with a learning disability in taught sessions on the Social Care degree programme at University of Wolverhampton I teach a module focused on the UNCRDP – the United Nations Convention of Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which explores issues from a rights perspective, e.g. community inclusion, accessible information, relationships etc. The module includes four half-day workshops with people with a learning disability, to enable the students to gain a practical application of the theoretical issues taught in class, e.g. disability rights, community inclusion and person centred approaches. The session begins with one of the people with a learning disability leading the introduction, ground rules and a fun welcome game. This workshop will demonstrate some of the group work activities, which help support better understanding of the lived experiences of people with a learning disability and demonstrate how we have more in common than those things that make us different. Workshop 3: First steps towards an inclusive university by prof. Dr. Tatiana Matulayova, (University Palackeho, Czech Republic) Development of Inclusive campus has been a challenge for our university. We would like to share experiences, methodology and best practices, collected during the ICLIFE project implementation project. After three years, we have slowly moved from university with very little knowledge about the inclusion of people with intellectual disability towards an inclusive university. While in the first part of workshop, we offer short presentation, the second part will be an opportunity to discuss with the participants sharing and identification of crucial principles towards development of an inclusive university. Workshop 4: Curriculum Innovation in Higher Education Settings: utilizing the Inclusive Campus Life framework and monitoring instrument by Jeroen Knevel (Utrecht University of Applied Sciences - The Netherlands) In the attempt to become an inclusive campus a framework and monitoring instrument has been developed to support this. This framework and monitoring instrument is depicted below. This workshop elaborates on this model and its applicability. Plenary Lecture Inclusion at universities – reasons, challenges and a very good example by Prof. Dr. Fabian van Essen (IUBH International University of Applied Sciences, Germany) Why should a university decide to develop inclusive learning environments with respect to people with intellectual disabilities? While the answers should be obvious for ICL project participants, the views of university leaders might differ. Fabian van Essen will outline four different approaches of universities on dealing with diversity and relate these approaches to people with intellectual disabilities. He will highlight challenges and solutions in implementing inclusion at a university. Eventually he will present a rather disruptive approach: The German Institute of Inclusive Education qualifies people with intellectual disabilities to be fully paid lectures at universities.” Next to this, we had also set up an attractive social programme, consisting of a marvellous Belgian-style conference dinner on Wednesday evening at "Chez Leon", in the heart of the city center of Brussels. Serving specialties from a good piece of Belgian beef, to mussels and vegetarian options alongside Belgian beers, this place is a must visit. Furthermore, on Thursday afternoon, we offer four options to explore interesting aspects of the vibrant city of Brussels. You can pick from the following options:
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