Artificial intelligence is increasingly embedded in digital learning environments, influencing how learners access content, participate in activities, and express their understanding. While AI-based tools are often promoted for their potential to enhance personalization and efficiency, their educational impact is frequently discussed from a technical or functional perspective, with limited attention to underlying pedagogical assumptions. As a result, the quality of the learning experience and the conditions that support inclusion and learner agency risk remaining implicit.
This poster proposes Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as a pedagogical framework for examining AI-mediated learning environments. Rather than treating UDL as a prescriptive set of guidelines or accessibility strategies, it is presented as an interpretive lens to analyze how educational environments are designed in relation to learner variability. By reframing the three UDL principles—engagement, representation, and action and expression—as analytical questions, the poster highlights how AI systems can both reduce and generate learning barriers.
The contribution focuses on key pedagogical dimensions affected by AI, such as learner agency, transparency of content mediation, and the legitimacy of assessment and feedback processes. Particular attention is paid to the risk of narrowing learning pathways through automated adaptation and opaque decision-making, as well as to the potential of UDL-informed design to support openness, participation, and meaningful choice.
The poster aims to offer educators, designers, and institutions a conceptual tool to reflect critically on AI-mediated learning environments, emphasizing pedagogical intentionality as a condition for inclusive and sustainable educational innovation.

Authors:
Giulia Angeloni, University "G.d'Annunzio" of Chieti-Pescara and University of Macerata, Italy

About the Presenter(s)
Giulia Angeloni is a teacher in secondary schools and a PhD candidate in Teaching & Learning
Sciences at the University of Macerata and University “G. D’Annunzio”.
Her research focuses on school inclusion, educational technologies, and the use of AI.

Connect on ResearchGate
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Giulia-Angeloni-6

Additional website of interest
https://giuliaangeloni.my.canva.site/#page-0

See this presentation on the full schedule – Monday Schedule

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