By Dr. Timothy Hendrickson and Dr. Michael Dieter, Trinity Christian College
Throughout the Bible, Christians are directed to be hospitable. We often associate the term with providing food, drink, and shelter to others, but there is also an established tradition of viewing hospitality more broadly as being welcoming to strangers. Christian educators can practice this type of broader hospitality by fostering an environment in which all students are valued and equally set up for success, and one well-known way to establish such a space is by following Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles.
UDL is the belief that students should have a choice in how they engage with and communicate knowledge
A product of the Center for Applied Specialized Technology at Harvard (CAST), UDL seeks to eliminate unnecessary barriers to learning by providing students with multiple means of representation, engagement, action, and expression. At the core of UDL is the belief that students should have a choice in how they engage with and communicate knowledge. In contemporary classroom spaces, those choices often include only digital options. And while adhering to UDL principles allows for digital technologies to support student access to, and engagement with, the school curriculum, there is also a need for educators to consider the ways in which digital technology may prevent access, whether through distraction, lack of resources, or difficulty in classroom implementation/integration. While it is of course important for students to encounter and effectively utilize digital technology, it is more important that students can effectively communicate their learning in multiple ways. Our call to hospitality in the classroom requires us to accommodate all learners, including those for whom reliance on digital technology prevents learning. This essay seeks to re-vision and re-imagine UDL principles for use as an analog tool and to explore the ways in which analog options can be embedded in courses to further student learning. Examining artifacts from a class at Trinity Christian College in Chicago, IL, that followed UDL principles while offering analog options, we argue traditional (i.e., analog) submissions allow for as much variety and creativity as those based on technology use.
[W]hile adhering to UDL principles allows for digital technologies to support student access to, and engagement with, the school curriculum, there is also a need for educators to consider the ways in which digital technology may prevent access, whether through distraction, lack of resources, or difficulty in classroom implementation/integration.
Defining hospitality for Christians is not as easy as it might seem, especially considering that contemporary understanding of the term does not really match its biblical usage. In the New Testament, we find two instances of the Greek noun philoxenia (φιλοξενία): Hebrews 13:2 and Romans 12:13. 1 While most translations render the Greek into “hospitality” (NKJV, NIV, ASV, ESV, etc.), some add a reference to strangers (NRSV, CEV), which is important for our purposes here. The word is related to the adjective philoxenos (φιλόξενος), “hospitable,” and formed from the roots philos (φίλος) and xenos (ξένος) (Strong and Vine 184). 2But this information does not really tell us anything about how Christians currently interpret the word. 3
What we can say with clarity is that hospitality in the United States in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has become simplified. In support of this claim, writers often reference Henri Nouwen’s Reaching Out, published in 1975. More recently, though, Christine Pohl opens Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition with a telling story about a conversation she had with a founder of a community for homeless people. When asked whether he understood his organization’s work as “offering hospitality to strangers,” the founder said no. Rather, he said “[we] welcome strangers into a home environment; we give them a safe place” (Pohl 3). That this organization could be practicing hospitality without its founder knowing it suggests that Nouwen is right—for many, hospitality has become nothing more than “tea parties” and “bland conversation” (66). And while Pohl notes that it is both impractical and unwise to return to an ancient understanding, she argues that a rejuvenated concern with Christian hospitality “provides a bridge which connects our theology with daily life and concerns” (8). She agrees with Nouwen, who defines hospitality as “primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend” (71).
Pohl, Nouwen, and others like them encourage us to view hospitality as a posture of love that extends to every aspect of our lives.
Thus, Pohl, Nouwen, and others like them encourage us to view hospitality as a posture of love that extends to every aspect of our lives.4 As teachers, we would do well to consider the ways in which our classrooms and courses welcome strangers. Again, Nouwen says it best:
When we look at teaching in terms of hospitality, we can say that the teacher is called upon to create for students a free and fearless space where mental and emotional development can take place. . . . The hospitable teacher has to reveal to the students that they have something to offer. Many students have been for so many years on the receiving side and have become so deeply impregnated with the idea that there is still a lot more to learn, that they have lost confidence in themselves and can hardly imagine that they themselves have something to give. (86–87)
One of the ways in which teachers create that “free and fearless space” is through utilizing Universal Design for Learning (UDL).
A Brief History of UDL
Interestingly, we find the origins of UDL outside of the field of education. In 1985, architect and designer Ronald Mace published “Universal Design: Barrier-Free Environments for Everyone” in Designers West. At the time, Mace was president of Barrier Free Environments Inc., an organization that researched and created designs for disabled and elderly people, a cause that concerned him intimately—he was a wheelchair user who experienced difficulties accessing campus facilities at North Carolina State University, where he completed his undergraduate degree (Woodward). Mace defined universal design as “simply a way of designing a building or facility, at little or no cost, so that it is both attractive and functional for all people, disabled or not. The idea is to remove that expensive ‘special’ label from products and designs for people with mobility problems and, at the same time, eliminate the institutional appearance of many current accessible designs” (Mace 147). Mace’s vision was of a future in which accessibility is the norm, not an afterthought.
CAST refined what would come to be called Universal Design for Learning, increasingly drawing on neuroscience to better understand how humans learn and how environments can be designed to support learners with various strengths and learning styles.
At around the same time Mace articulated Universal Design, a group of education researchers in Massachusetts formed the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST). Their goal was to explore how technology could be implemented to create better educational opportunities and outcomes for students with disabilities by removing barriers to student success (CAST, “Timeline”). Over nearly twenty years, CAST refined what would come to be called Universal Design for Learning, increasingly drawing on neuroscience to better understand how humans learn and how environments can be designed to support learners with various strengths and learning styles. Tobin (et al.) notes, “The scientists at CAST incorporated neuroscience into the mind-set of UDL because UD principles that were created to guide the design of things (e.g., buildings, products) were not adequate for the design of social interactions (e.g., human learning environments)” (24). This neuroscience-informed research laid the groundwork for CAST’s formal definition of UDL: “a framework to guide the design of learning environments that are accessible, inclusive, and challenging for every learner. Ultimately, the goal of UDL is to support learner agency, the capacity to actively participate in making choices in service of learning goals” (CAST, “Goal of UDL”). Although much of CAST’s early work focused on using technology to reduce barriers, UDL is not dependent on it. Nelson emphasizes that UDL is not something educators “do,” but rather a decision-making framework that guides them to “investigate all of the resources available,” including non-digital tools and strategies, to design flexible and barrier-free learning environments (47).
UDL is built on research about how the brain learns, and it recognizes that every learner is different. Researchers have found that learning involves three main networks in the brain: engagement (the why of learning), representation (the what of learning), and action and expression (the how of learning). Engagement is about interest and motivation—what ignites a learner’s curiosity and keeps them involved. Representation focuses on how information is understood and interpreted, recognizing that students may need different ways to access content. Action and expression are about how learners plan, organize, and show what they know in different ways (CAST, “UDL & the Learning Brain” 1–2). As this neuroscience-based framework demonstrated its potential to make education more inclusive, it led to wider adoption of UDL principles in K–12 settings and, later, in higher education, particularly after the 2008 reauthorization of the Higher Education Opportunity Act, which required colleges to report on the UDL-related training provided to education majors and minors (Tobin et al. 33–34).
Emerging research suggests that UDL practices not only improve academic outcomes but can also enhance the college student’s sense of belonging in learning environments. Wells found that providing flexible participation, varied access to materials, and multiple assessment options was associated with greater perceptions of inclusion, comfort, and connection among fifty-seven undergraduates in virtual and group learning environments (6–8). Similarly, Fleming, based on a qualitative study of twenty-two undergraduate students in a UDL-redesigned course, concluded that offering meaningful choices in classroom engagement and assessment fostered a stronger sense of belonging and inclusion, which reinforces UDL’s role in creating and fostering welcoming learning spaces (84–85).
Emerging research suggests that UDL practices not only improve academic outcomes but can also enhance the college student’s sense of belonging in learning environments.
Going Analog with UDL
If educators are to remain true to the principles of UDL and its aim to identify and remove barriers to learning, it is necessary to consider not only digital tools that can support learning but also non-digital, analog options that provide students with multiple ways to engage and demonstrate understanding that honor their needs and preferences. The following section illustrates how these principles can be lived out in the classroom, showing that intentional, analog UDL practices can extend Christian hospitality by removing obstacles to participation and empowering students with genuine choices in how they engage and express their learning.
Last spring, a class covering J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings at Trinity Christian College provided evidence that UDL structures can be just as, or even more, effective when teachers provide analog options. Offered as a section of English 356, Topics in Literature, the course awarded either English or Communications credits due to its interdisciplinary content: students were required to read Tolkien’s novel(s), watch the Peter Jackson movie trilogy, and listen to BBC radio dramatizations from the 1980s. Staying true to UDL principles, the three major assignments provided at least two options for completion and could be submitted in whatever order the students chose. According to student evaluations at the end of the term, such a set-up was welcomed by many of the students. One representative comment read:
The non-linear organization of larger assignments was exciting because it allowed us to arrange them in a way that was most beneficial to our semester path and interests. I got to leave the one I knew would excite me the most for last, which made the end of the semester more fun than stressful. Moreover, the assignments prompted us to engage with Tolkien’s work in different forms, something that my other classes haven’t really done before, especially to the extent of reaching beyond Tolkien’s own work into work influenced by him (e.g., for the Universe assignment). This was a great way to push me to think creatively in making connections and thinking deeply about what parts of the books really drew me in.
One assignment, with which the rest of this article is concerned, required going outside the books, movies, and radio plays and examining a single facet of the extended Tolkien universe. The Tolkien Universe Assignment offered students five options: a work of fan fiction, a review of The War of the Rohirrim (which was in theatres at the time), Twitch streaming video game play and commentary, cosplay of a scene from either the books or the movies, or something of the student’s own imagining (with prior professor approval, of course). There were, as was expected, several students who recorded themselves playing and commenting on LEGO Lord of the Rings, Shadow of Mordor, and other video games—decidedly technological options. Many of the most memorable submissions for this assignment, however, were either completely or primarily analog. Four are worth more discussion here.
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- In the former, the writer encourages Jewish Christians not to “neglect to show hospitality to strangers” by reminding them that the strangers may be angels, a clear reference to Genesis 18, in which Sarah and Abraham receive angels unaware. In the latter, Paul directs the Roman church to “extend hospitality to strangers” (NRSV).
↩︎ - Philoxenos (φιλόξενος) appears three times in the New Testament: I Timothy 3:2, Titus 1:8, and I Peter 4:9 (Strong and Vine 184). ↩︎
- For a detailed discussion of historical hospitality, see And You Welcomed Me: A Sourcebook on Hospitality in Early Christianity, edited by Amy G. Oden (Abingdon, 2001).
↩︎ - There is not space for a more extended discussion here, but Elizabeth Newman’s Welcoming God and Other Strangers insists that “hospitality cannot be sequestered from our economic, political, and public lives” (13). ↩︎
Michael Dieter is an Assistant Professor of Education at Trinity Christian College. A former high school reading and social studies teacher, his research interests include hospitality in the classroom and autoethnography as method.
Timothy Hendrickson is an Associate Professor of English and Chair of Literature and Languages at Trinity Christian College. While his specialty is Victorian literature, he and three colleagues have just completed the first draft of a book that examines methods for pairing graphic novels with canonical works of literature.
Works Cited
Anastasiou, Dimitris, Andrew L. Wiley, and James M. Kauffman. “A Critical Analysis of the Theoretical Underpinnings of Universal Design for Learning.” Exceptionality, 2024, pp. 1–18, doi.org/10.1080/09362835.2024.2426801.
CAST. “The Goal of UDL: Learner Agency.” UDL Guidelines, Version 3.0, CAST, 2024, udlguidelines.cast.org/more/udl-goal/. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
———. “Timeline of Innovation.” CAST, 2025, www.cast.org/resources/timeline-of-innovation/. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
———. UDL & the Learning Brain. CAST, 2018, www.cast.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/cast-udlandthebrain-20220228-a11y.pdf. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
Fleming, Erica C. “UDL for Inclusive Teaching: Offering Choice to Increase Belonging Through Technology.” Journal of Teaching and Learning with Technology, vol. 12, Special Issue, 2023, pp. 72–90.
Laughlin, M. J. “Access to the General Education Curriculum: Paperwork and Procedure for Redefining Special Education.” Journal of Special Education Leadership, vol. 12, no. 1, 1999, pp. 9–14.
Mace, Ronald L. “Universal Design: Barrier-Free Environments for Everyone.” Designers West, vol. 33, no. 1, 1985, pp. 147–52.
Nelson, Loui Lord. Design and Deliver: Planning and Teaching Using Universal Design for Learning. E-book, Brookes, 2021.
Newman, Elizabeth. Untamed Hospitality: Welcoming God and Other Strangers. Brazos, 2007.
Nouwen, Henri. Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life. Image Books of Doubleday, 1975.
Pohl, Christine D. Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition. Eerdmans, 1999.
Strong, James, and W. E. Vine. The New Strong’s Concise Concordance & Vine’s Concise Dictionary of the Bible. Thomas Nelson, 1999.
Tobin, Thomas J., and Kirsten T. Behling. Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone : Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education. West Virginia University Press, 2018.
Tolkien, Christopher. The History of Middle-Earth III. William Morrow, 2002.
Wells, Jacqueline. “Student Perspectives on the Use of Universal Design for Learning in Virtual Learning Modalities.” Smart Learning Environments, vol. 9, no. 1, 2022, pp. 1–17.
Woodward, Stephanie. “Ronald Mace and His Impact on Universal Design.” Center for Disability Rights, 21 Aug. 2008, cdrnys.org/blog/advocacy/ronald-mace-and-his-impact-on-universal-design. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
