This paper describes an academic experience of podcasting, which involved a group of students of a course on multimedia communication and human-computer interaction. These students acted both as users of the university's podcasting service, and as creators of podcasted lessons. A comprehensive analysis based on the evaluation of the effects on student performance, on data from student satisfaction surveys, from interviews and from instructors' observations provided encouraging results: full-time students co-involved in lessons' podcasting outperformed colleagues of the previous years and achieved higher levels of what we define as competitive agency, that led them to better understand the theoretical issues of the course and to more effective practical skills.

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After almost 10 years from the first report on the diffusion of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in Europe, didactic planning related to the UDL is slowly spreading in Italy, while research is still in its infancy; there is a lack of documented experiences and impact assessments, especially for higher education. International research discusses the opportunities to redesign learning environments to create equal access to education for all in higher education courses. In this paper we report a university teaching experience based on multiple means of Engagement, Representation, and Action & Expression. We have experienced active and inclusive teaching methodologies in dual mode with second year students enrolled in a course on “Teaching and Learning” of the bachelor’s degree program in Education. The proposal repeats, with some improvements, a previous university experience of Flipped Classroom in distance learning. The paper reports the first results of the teaching innovation in progress. It investigates the students’ perception about: 1) the attractiveness of the proposal compared to more traditional approaches; 2) their own learning paths; 3) their motivation.

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In this paper we present an experience of the application of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) with four persons with severe language (and motor) impairments treated at an adult day centre for people with disabilities. Two apps on Android tablets were tried with one subject who had negatively experienced traditional communication boards in the past and with three subjects who had never been considered before for AAC intervention. After a sixmonth trial we achieved encouraging results: the ease of use of the proposed instruments enabled the persons involved in the experimentation to improve their communication capabilities, to better express their choices and feelings, and to potentially extend their communication circles. This experience testifies that AAC can be successfully applied to severe disabilities and encourages research in this direction.