Many students with disabilities face challenges in the transition to online or hybrid learning, as they are removed from the structure of the physical classroom and must now rely solely on technology for their coursework. By creating supportive experiences that help all students in a manner best suited to their unique circumstances, universal design for learning (UDL) guidelines can bolster student motivation, change how they receive and perceive information, and improve their capacity to navigate, organize, and approach a learning task.

A centerpiece of Guttman Community College's first-year experience learning model is the Ethnographies of Work (EOW) course, a required yearlong social science investigation of workplaces that helps students better understand and exercise agency around their future career paths. In a normal semester, our students would be found observing work throughout the city, ethnographically mapping workflow and power structures, talking to New Yorkers about their work experiences, and exploring possible careers. When COVID-19 ravaged through New York in March, we couldn't just take traditional fieldwork pedagogies and put them online. Instead, we needed to redesign our fieldwork experiences so that students could meet the learning outcomes in the virtual world in ways that are equitable, inclusive, and student-centered.