Page 311 - RUICHSS 2023 Proceeding

University of Ruhuna ISSN: 2706-0063
Matara, Sri Lanka

Approach to Students with Disabilities in Academic Setting" for teaching

and non-teaching staff was developed within the framework of work page 3
"Development of Staff Competencies" (led by the University of Zagreb,

Croatia). Many studies in the field of inclusion of people with disabilities in

higher education have shown that investment in staff competencies
(knowledge, attitudes, skills) is an important factor in promoting the

creation of an inclusive environment in higher education (Blinov, et al.,
2018; Collins, Azmat & Rentschler, 2019; Lalor, Madaus & Dukes, 2020).

In addition to the development of the educational programme, extensive
training of 12 colleagues (from each Sri Lankan partner university) was

conducted to train them as educators, i.e., they were trained to conduct
educational programmes for teaching and non-teaching staff at their

universities in the future. In this way, the sustainability of the educational
programme will be ensured.

The educational programme "Inclusive Approach to Students with
Disabilities in Academic Setting" is an interactive training conducted in 20

hours for teaching staff and 10 hours for non-teaching staff. The programme

included lectures followed by exercises and discussions. Also, participants
were encouraged to look for creative solutions to effectively overcome

various barriers to the inclusion of students with disabilities in higher
education. Higher engagement leads to greater learning gains and better

retention of the material by the participants (Al-Natour et al., 2022;

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