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How UDL and OER can be used together to address various educational gaps like equity, accessibility, and availability of technology resources? 

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How UDL and OER can be used together to address various educational gaps like equity, accessibility, and availability of technology resources? 

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Both UDL and OER have effective key areas that educators can provide to express a positive learning environment despite a language and knowledge barrier. Nevertheless, both frameworks can collaborate in a classroom for the benefit of the student’s needs. UDL aims to create an equal opportunity to learn despite each student’s learning differences. While OER mainly focuses on providing effective tools for both educators and students to access online and digitally with no reduction in spending and time. Therefore, educators can improve and address students’ needs and strengths through the various educational gaps such as equity, accessibility, and availability of newfound technology resources. Now with the advancement of technology, students can create positive relationships with learning and technology which can benefit future professional purposes. Educators can use learning materials such as lesson plans, videos, textbooks, tests, activities, and projects from others, modify them, and then share them with the public domain. This creates a positive community for many educators who might feel lost trying to support students and the issue of financially struggling. For example, a science teacher might have a limited amount of lab supplies, they might use open online videos or lesson plans to contribute to their experiments. With the guidance of UDL, educators can still provide an inclusive education to diverse students who might be struggling with the primary school language. Educators might benefit from using open learning materials for students with a language barrier by creating connections from the representation of their cultural background.

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Universal Design for Learning (UDL) aims to provide all students equal opportunity to learn and succeed in a classroom regardless of the student’s cultural background, social class, race, gender, and language. This teaching framework approach allows various teaching methods to remove any barrier between a student's learning and limits the dropout percentages in urban areas. Educators are encouraged to use the three guiding principles (Representation, Expression, and Engagement) to further design and develop their curriculum to shape student’s understanding.

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UDL is an effective approach for educators to construct a course to accommodate the various needs and abilities that might cause barriers to a student’s education. Applying the three principles of UDL, educators can provide and encourage different learning approaches for students to engage with the material to improve areas that are not the strongest. Educators should understand, that every student learns at their own pace and in different methods. UDL can lead to a positive inclusive learning environment, where many students highly benefit and gain understanding.

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1. Removes learning barriers: Each student has their barriers that get in the way of succeeding in classrooms. Thus, UDL helps students get around the barriers (regardless of culture and language) through helpful learning methods that are beneficial in accessing and engaging with the material.

2. Developing curriculum: Educators are in full authority to develop curricula for the benefit of their students. This approach allows educators to change and upgrade their curriculum to better understand which method is or is not working with their students. Developing a curriculum includes introducing technology into assignments or projects to enhance engagement and using materials other than a textbook, which can sometimes be overwhelming with the amount of information provided.

3. Improve learner’s educational strength: Even though UDL works around the barriers, it is important to seek student’s strengths so it can empower their self-motivation and take charge of their learning style. Educators spend most of their time focusing on overcoming barriers rather than enhancing student positivity. At times, it can drain students’ motivation to overcome their weak areas and eventually forget to grow their strengths.

4. Overcoming challenges: Every student has different learning styles and abilities that make assessments, assignments, lessons, and objectives challenging. With an enhanced learning environment, it becomes an achievable challenge they can overcome. Therefore, it creates an increase in student engagement and motivation.

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As I mentioned earlier, educators are highly encouraged to implement and utilize UDL’s three guiding principles in their curriculum.

1. Representation: Provide multiple methods to represent information to students besides the textbook, such as audio, video, article, close captioning, and visual representation. Allowing students to choose their way of gaining information will increase motivation.

2. Expression: Evaluate a student’s understanding of the content by either providing a paper assessment or an oral presentation. After scores are received, educators can develop their lesson plans to improve the student’s needs.

3. Engagement: Allowing students various ways to expand their motivation such as interactive games, teamwork, projects, and providing choices. Providing a positive learning environment, affirmations, and feedback will build students’ confidence to continue achieving their needs and growing their strengths.

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Open Educational Resources (OER) is a wide range of free online teaching resources that do not have the added constraints of licenses allowing them to be free, used, changed, or shared with others for educational purposes. Essentially they can be anything from photos, videos, tests, courses, modules, and textbooks that are used throughout the public domain. With the advance of the internet, we have the ability to develop, share, and adapt high-quality and complex curricular materials to meet student’s needs.

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OER can assist teachers in obtaining free online resources since new digital and print materials can be expensive such as textbooks. Educators can edit, update, change, and improve content to fit objectives and meet the learning standards for students. For example, a teacher may use open lesson plans or other resources to demonstrate activities or provide additional practice for students who may be struggling with a specific Common Core concept. OER makes it easier to share online content with other educators who may be experiencing financial barriers. Schools and districts are now recognizing the advantages of OER, that they might have collections of open materials in their digital library making it easier to find specific resources for grade level and subject.

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1. Reduction of spending and paper usage: OER can be beneficial for any educator or student who is struggling financially with obtaining the required learning materials. It makes it easier for any educator to successfully, implement their knowledge into the open online lesson plans and materials that will benefit the student’s needs and abilities. Not only does OER reduce costs, but it can also lower the usage of paper. Now that we have the advancement of technology and devices, classrooms can reduce paper waste and explore the effective use of the Internet.

2. The use of technology: Educate students on the positives of the use of technology that will benefit them in future professions. At times it is difficult for students to notice the positives when they might experience the negatives of cyberbullying. However, an educator can create a connection by constructing fun lesson plans involving the use of technology. Technology outside of classrooms can be beneficial for students because they have access to all of the learning materials making it easier to finish assignments. Regardless of a student’s language and socioeconomic background, a student can still succeed in free learning materials with the advantage of technology to accommodate their needs.

3. Strengthen knowledge: Ultimately, the purpose of OER is to strengthen and expand a student’s knowledge that will help to overcome their barriers. It can be difficult for a student to understand the given information from textbooks, thus OER allows them to receive new findings from other educators that may be easier to learn.

4. Customization: OER can be improved through the process of editing, unlike textbooks. For example, educators can make improvements to an existing OER for a class, and make the modified OER version available for other educators to use. This can create a community of educators and inspiration to share their knowledge with others who may be struggling with finding effective resources.

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1. Educators can help students better succeed by providing resources at any grade level and meeting their needs. This allows educators to meet academic, cultural, and other aspects when lesson planning. OER in classrooms has allowed educators to reduce the need to create lessons from the beginning. Most importantly, educators can share their own creations to grow the inspiration and movement of OER. Nevertheless, OER saves time and cost for both educators and students.

2. Educators can implement fun activities such as videos, books, lesson plans, interactive games, and projects to increase student motivation and enhance classroom requirements.

3. Educators can create a positive learning environment and materials for students to succeed while obtaining effective information. Therefore, allowing students to discuss in group work will improve their understanding while creating educational conversations.

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Summary of what was learned about UDL & OER: 

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Summary of what was learned about UDL & OER: 

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I learned that Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework that aims to improve teaching and any barriers that get in the way of a student’s education. Most importantly, educators should keep in mind that we all approach learning in a variety of ways, therefore educators need to prepare their curriculum, lesson plans, and rubrics with diversity in mind. Effectively approaching this issue will recognize all of the students' different needs and strengths to minimize obstacles and improve positive experiences. What works for one student will not work for another student the same way, so educators need to design a curriculum that will engage all of the students by providing objectives and goals. UDL contains three principles; representation refers to the ways the learning material is presented from media sources (videos, animations, diagrams, and graphics) that help accommodations. Expression focuses on how students express what they learn in written and oral form. Engagement refers to how students engage with the content which can help with motivation and self-esteem. On the other hand, Open Education Resources (OER) is a wide range of unlimited learning materials such as tests, interactive games, lesson plans, and textbooks. These resources are free to use with no cost and are either in the public domain or released under a license that allows educators the ability to reuse, change, and share with others. Most of the learning materials are reviewed by other teachers or professors in the same field. This framework is very effective to incorporate into your classrooms because it helps students and educators to have free access to materials and resources. At times, it can be difficult and stressful for students to obtain the necessary money to pay for textbooks.

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How UDL and OER can apply to your current and future career as an educator? 

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How UDL and OER can apply to your current and future career as an educator? 

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As a future educator, I will create an inclusive environment for all students to improve their strengths and creativity. It is important that I remember to include equity in the curriculum so that every student has the same opportunities and resources regardless of their language, socioeconomic, and cultural background. By using and following the three principles of UDL, I will give students the ability to choose different learning methods that will demonstrate their understanding and engagement. Moreover, I can use OER materials that contribute to my lessons, activities, and tests which will save me time and money. Since OER allows educators to reuse and edit any learning material, I will support other educators with my resources that will have a positive impact on students and the community. I also want to foster the use of technology in my classroom because we are in a time where we regularly use the internet to our advantage. Many professions require the use of technology, which can influence students to pursue a career in that area. As a result, I will be able to support students in developing their self-independence in their learning, achieving goals, and overcoming any learning and language barriers.

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A playlist of videos that demonstrate the use of UDL principles and practices inside classrooms. The videos demonstrate the guidelines for math, language arts, and science that can be effective for educators to visualize the use of UDL in classrooms.

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This suite of videos was created to give examples of what UDL looks like in a classroom. Examples range from Grade 1 to Grade 6.

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An incredible website that provides a variety of tips, open sources, and other articles on OER such as IXL, Khan Academy, and YouTube.

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Open Educational Resources (OER): Resource Roundup

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An educators’ guide to open educational resources with information about online repositories, curriculum-sharing websites, and sources for lesson plans and activities.