Universal Design for Learning
An IRIS Peabody Professional Development Experience
While researching the concept of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), I found a professional development opportunity on the IRIS Center Peabody website titled "Universal Design for Learning: Creating a Learning Environment that Challenge & Engages All Students". It was an easy process sign-up, I used my personal Gmail address to make an account with IRIS center. If you decide to try this educational course that only took me about 2 hours, you will also receive a certificate of completion. You will have 90 days to complete the module... plenty of time! After the completion of the professional training, I feel much better with the notion of UDL and it's principles.
In the module, the following is explained:
- What is Universal Design?
- Design: curriculum, lesson planning, and learning process
- Universal: addresses the needs of all learners
- 4 main curricular components: These principles of UDL is engagement, representation, and action & expression
- Challenge (Scenario):
- Sycamore Middle School (Urban School) with a large % students from diverse backgrounds
- Age group- 10-14 years old
- 11% students with disabilities
- 85% of students receive free or reduced lunches
- # of students do not score in the proficient range on the required EOC standardized exams.
- A team of Sycamore Middle School personnel convenes to research and evaluate potential approaches
- Some student are engaged, struggle with academic expectations, and others are not engaged
- Challenge: How can teachers at Sycamore Middle School meet the educational needs of all of their students?
- Initial Thoughts: To meet the needs of the widest range of students, what should teachers consider when planning their instruction?
- Objectives:
- Understand the principles of UDL
- Be able to apply UDL principles to the components of a curriculum
- Universal Design in Architecture: In 1990, Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) law which discriminates against persons with disabilities in employment, transportation, public accommodations, and telecommunications.
- Principles of Universal Design:
- Equitable Use
- Flexibility of Use
- Simple and Intuitive
- Perceptible Information
- Tolerance For Error
- Low Physical Effort
- Size & Space for Approach and Use
- UDL Addresses the educational needs of all students:
- Average learners
- Emergent Bilinguals
- Student who have received poor instruction
- Students with learning disabilities
- Students with sensory and motor challenges
- Gifted & Talented
- Migrant Students
- Students who have been affected academically from the circumstances brought upon by the global pandemic (COVID 19)
At this point, you will come across an activity of a 'Barsch Inventory' survey which encompassed 32 questions. This can be used with students to seem what type of learners my students are and plan my lessons accordingly. Through the questionnaire, I received a score of (Visual 32/Auditory 24/Tactile 30/Kinesthetic 20). Based on my score, I am more of a visual and tactile learner.
Curricular Components:
- As a practice exercise, the team attempts to apply what they have learned about UDL to a social studies goal developed by one sixth-grade teacher: “The students will read the textbook chapter about ancient Egypt and write in cursive a 500-word report about burial customs.”
- Traditional Goal: The students will read the textbook chapter about ancient Egypt and write in cursive a 500-word report about burial customs.
- The Sycamore team learns that the principles of UDL can be applied so that all students can meet the learning goal. As was outlined above, a teacher must first know the intent of the learning goal he or she wishes to create. Once this is accomplished, he or she can allow students multiple ways to access and demonstrate their learning.
- The team now realizes that their goal needs to specify that the students will learn about ancient Egypt, and should not involve learning about writing a report. They thus set about applying UDL principles to rewrite the goal in a way that does not confound the means that students use to access information or to demonstrate their knowledge
- UDL Goal: The students will learn about and present information about the burial customs of ancient Egypt.
- Instructional Materials:
- The most common type of flexible media is digital text, a format in which the content is separate from the manner in which it is presented. For example, the digital text on a computer screen can be manipulated in many different ways (e.g., by increasing the font size, switching on the text to speech feature, highlighting text as it is read) to make it more accessible to more students. After learning how UDL principles apply to materials, the team at Sycamore Middle School generates more options for students to access the content on ancient Egypt. Their UDL ideas are summarized in a table-graphic organizer.
- Instructional Methods:
- The Sycamore Middle School faculty now knows how to apply Universal Design for Learning concepts to teaching goals and materials. They must also assess the content-teaching approaches they employ. They discover that, just as they need to present information in a number of forms, they also need to convey content to all learners through a range of instructional approaches.
- The Sycamore teachers assess the sixth-grade lesson on ancient Egypt, focusing this time on the instructional approaches utilized to teach the material. They discover that traditional training is predominantly teacher-directed rather than student-directed, and that it focuses on the acquisition of facts rather than concepts and abilities.
- Below highlights some instructional methods that teachers can us to address the principles of UDL—Representation, Action and Expression, and Engagement—when teaching a diverse group of learners.
- Representation
- Provide multiple examples
- Highlight important information
- Present content utilizing multiple media and formats
- Build or activate background knowledge
- Action and Expression
- Model skills in a variety of ways
- Provide opportunities to practice with scaffolds and supports
- Provide corrective feedback
- Allow alternatives for students to express or demonstrate their learning
- Engagement
- Offer choices of content and tools
- Provide adjustable levels of challenge
- Allow students to choose from a variety of reinforcers
- Allow options for the learning environment or context
- Utilize flexible grouping
- Assessment (Final Curricular Component):
- Reflect the learning goal
- Ex: Allowing students to create a diorama about pilgrims is aligned with the learning goal.
- Provide flexible opportunities to demonstrate knowledge or a skill
- Ex: For some projects, students could be allowed to create a video to demonstrate their knowledge.
- Allow scaffolds and supports
- Ex: Teachers may support students by allowing them to use assistive technology.
- Be conducted in an ongoing manner
- Ex: Teachers can monitor student understanding by asking questions during instruction.
- Formative assessment-teachers can evaluate student understanding and progress on an ongoing basis
- UDL In Practice
- UDL in practice addresses the learning preferences and learning needs of our students.
This is key!
Learning Modalities Examples 
Visual Learners- Printed or digital text
- Video
- Images of artifacts
Auditory Learners- Lecture
- Narration on video
- Small-group discussion
Tactile Learners- Three-dimensional models of pyramids
- Center activity: create a picture, story, or model to demonstrate what they think they would find if they excavated the school playground
Kinesthetic Learners- Excavation kit
- Implementation Issues:
- As the Sycamore Middle School team becomes more knowledgeable about implementing UDL, they realize that teachers need to accomplish a number of steps to effectively incorporate the approach into their instruction.
- Step 1: Acquire knowledge of UDL practices
- Step 2: Move beyond the textbook
- Step 3: Design curriculum
- Step 4: Obtain administrator support
- Step 5: Educate and involve parents
- Although UDL strives to meet the needs of all students in the classroom, this is not always an accomplishable goal. In some cases, teachers will find it necessary to use other instructional approaches and supports to meet the needs of individual students.
- Wrap Up: Teachers must offer information in a variety of ways, give students opportunities for learning and displaying their knowledge, and use strategies that increase student involvement, according to UDL. UDL allows students with a wide range of abilities to access the knowledge and skills taught in general education classrooms in this way. Teachers can lessen or eliminate barriers to students' learning or their ability to demonstrate their learning by including the three concepts of representation, action and expression, and engagement into their lesson plans. A teacher must also understand the aim of the lesson or unit's learning goal.
- Certificate:
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The UDL principles that I have incorporated in the past is Representation. I do give my students various examples and build on background knowledge. As well, I try to implement Engagement in my lessons by giving students the opportunity to research a topic of their choice for a final project presentation.
I could incorporate more Engagement into my teaching practice by offering choice of content and tools for class activities and assignments. I do enjoy embedding hands-on projects/assignments for student to also use their artistic creativity- as it pertains to the content (Action & Expression). As well, I will be thinking about the space and layout of items like furniture in the classroom, making the learning environment comfortable for all learners is always a good thing. When thinking about planning my future library, I may have changed my idea of what a great library looks like. By bringing architecture and encouraging ourselves to ask, "Is this library layout ADA compliant?" It encourages you to plan accordingly to meet your students needs and knowing your school's population. This way librarians are able to give patrons the most out of their library experience.
Sources:
https://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/module/udl/#content
https://udlguidelines.cast.org/
The IRIS Center. (2009). Universal Design for Learning: Creating a learning environment that challenges and engages all students. Retrieved from https://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/udl/
