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Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education

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Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education

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This guide provides some information on applying UDL, but it is perhaps more useful as an introduction to the concept. It addresses the essential elements and the neuroscience behind UDL, but it also includes criticisms of the method, which would be useful to give me a deeper understanding.

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Universal Design in Higher Education: Promising Practices

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Universal Design in Higher Education: Promising Practices

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This document incorporates methods for applying UDL in various higher education settings. I think it would be helpful to my understanding of UDL in the setting I work and teach in.

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Edited by Sheryl E. Burgstahler

Universal Design in Higher Education: Promising Practices is available in HTML and PDF versions. For the HTML version, follow the table of contents below. For the PDF version, go to Universal Design in Higher Education: Promising Practices - PDFs. We recommend the PDF version as the best choice if you want to create the entire book or an individual chapter in print format.

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Universal Design in Higher Education: Promising Practices

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Edited by Sheryl E. Burgstahler Universal Design in Higher Education: Promising Practices is available in HTML and PDF versions. For the HTML version, follow the table of contents below. For the PDF version, go to Universal Design in Higher Education: Promising Practices - PDFs.

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Ten Steps Toward Universal Design of Online Courses

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Ten Steps Toward Universal Design of Online Courses

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This page addresses applying UDL concepts in online learning. As a online instructor, I find these tips helpful to shaping my practices and keeping UDL in mind as I create course modules and assignments.

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Universal Design Checklist for Your Online Course

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Universal Design Checklist for Your Online Course

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This document lists a checklist of guidelines to make sure that an online course is following Universal Design principles. I like the checklist approach to check a course I am designing against the concepts and make appropriate changes.

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Keeping Up With... Universal Design for Learning

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Keeping Up With... Universal Design for Learning

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This page from the Association of College and Research Libraries offers a definition of UDL and ways that librarians can apply UDL in their library instruction, credit teaching library tutorials, and more. It has a lengthy list of recommended articles and links for more information. This is a great introduction with a library focus that I could use to inform my staff about UDL and how we can apply it in our library, as well as a guide for me in my library practices.

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Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL)

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This edition of Keeping Up With… was written by Robin Brown, Zach Welhouse, and Amy Wolfe.

Robin Brown is the Head of Public Services at Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY, email: rbrown@bmcc.cuny.edu

Zach Welhouse is the Online Learning Librarian at Oregon State University, email: zach.welhouse@oregonstate.edu

Amy Wolfe is the Accessibility Librarian at the Office of Library Service,  CUNY Central and a Open Educational Resources Developer at Brooklyn College. CUNY,  email: amy.wolfe@cuny.edu

Introduction

In 2018 Norman Youngblood, co-director of Auburn University's Laboratory for Usability, Communication, Interaction & Accessibility spoke to the heart of universal design: "Accessibility cannot be an afterthought. It needs to be part of the creative process."

The Invisible Disability Project defines universal design as "An approach to design that is meant to produce buildings, products, and environments that are accessible to virtually everyone, without the need for adaptation or specialized design, regardless of ability or age."

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an educational movement focused on changing our instructional practices to reach the maximum number of students regardless of ability, disability, age, gender, or cultural and linguistic background. Applying UDL to library instruction means designing instruction that accounts for everyone's abilities and differences. Library instruction needs to be presented and accessed in several formats, to be adjustable to the various styles of students, and to limit barriers for all learners. Designing for accessibility benefits everyone, not just those with disabilities.

Many librarians view universal design as a moral responsibility. Library service to the disabled has been a part of our profession since the late 19th century (Sheidlower, 2017). The modern ACRL reaffirms this responsibility:

"ACRL is dedicated to creating diverse and inclusive communities in the Association and in academic and research libraries. This core commitment permeates the work of the Association" ("ACRL Equity, Diversity and Inclusion").

If we persist in solving accessibility on a case by case basis, we miss invisible disabilities, are caught playing eternal catch-up, and require people to self -identify, opening up possibilities of stigma.

In a 2010 fact sheet, Teaching Excellence in Adult Literacy (TEAL) described UDL principles that call for varied and flexible ways to

"Present or access information, concepts, and ideas (the "what" of learning),

Plan and execute learning tasks (the "how" of learning), and

Get engaged--and stay engaged--in learning (the "why" of learning)"

What Can Librarians Do to Incorporate UDL into Their Library Instruction?

Incorporating UDL means committing to making sure library instruction is available to all students. Every library instruction can benefit from incorporating aspects of UDL. It's an ongoing process, and doing something is better than doing nothing.

Easy Tasks Librarians Can Do

Design library instruction sessions which present information in various formats such as text, images, video, and audio.

Use LibGuides or other website creation tools to provide multiple means of representation.

Run your LibGuide or site through the WAVE accessibility checker.

Design library instruction sessions with various types of built-in, hands-on work.

Make sure several stations in the instruction room have assistive technology (AT) installed, so students can use screen reader software, screen magnification, and zoom text.

Use class time to check in with each student and make sure nobody is lost.

Be conscious of using library jargon when teaching. Always check for understanding.

Teaching for Credit

Design courses with UDL from the start. Beginning with accessibility and UDL in mind makes it easier to sustain a workflow. Retrofitting inaccessible material is more difficult than starting from a clean slate.

Grade assignments for  accessibility. Can the students create a UDL document that addresses different audiences? The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education encourages information literacy learners to "identify barriers to entering scholarly conversation" and "see themselves as contributors to the information marketplace rather than just consumers of it."

Campus Outreach

Present UDL as a style guide issue. Create documentation showing how to implement UDL.

Check your institution's vision and mission statements for words like "equity", "access," and "everyone".

Academics want to make their citations correct to appeal to other scholars. Why not make the document accessible as well?

Demonstrate the difference between how screen readers respond to properly, accessibly formatted materials versus improperly formatted materials; demonstrate what an accessible formatted document looks like in Word.

A Little More Work

Caption all library videos.

Hire a user of assistive technology to evaluate your website for accessibility issues.

Here are some good links and information on captioning:

Jessica Kellgren-Fozard is a great teacher and champion of captioning. These three videos cover the importance of captions, how to caption, and captioning best practices.

How to get 80% more views! -- Captions and why they are useful (11 min)

How To Caption Your Videos On YouTube (6 min)

Don't Do This! -- How to do captions right! (15 min)

Infrastructure Issues

Does your classroom have a workstation with JAWS running, along with headphones?

Does your classroom have workstations that can be used by a student in a wheelchair?

How does your institution handle procurement? Does IT and the library require VPATs from tech and database vendors?

Doing all of this yourself is unlikely. How can the labor be shared?

Does the college provide institutional captioning services? If not, how can you promote their creation to administration?

Does your institution have a clear, specific Digital Accessibility Policy? If not, grants may be available.

Conclusion

The journey toward Universal Design is always a work in progress. We hope to encourage readers to consider what is possible, at this present time, and then to make plans for future goals. It's a mindset. It's something to be reached for over time.

Recommended Reading

For accessibility: For Items with a link, the title text is the active link while the URLs are not active.  When screen reader users access this document and pull up a list of links to be read aloud they will hear the full titles and not the URLs.

Association of Specialized Government and Cooperative Library Agencies (ASGCLA). 2019. "Resources".

http://www.asgcladirect.org/resources.

Beyene, Wondwossen M. "Resource Discovery and Universal Access: Understanding Enablers and Barriers from the User Perspective." Studies in health technology and informatics 229 (2016): 556-66.

https://doi.org/10.3233/978-1-61499-684-2-556/

Guevara, Senovia. "Starting the Conversation: The Disabled Library Patron." Information Outlook (Online) 22, no. 6 (2018): 6-15.

Johnson, Abbie. 2017. "Tech Talk: Captions as Universal Design."

http://techtalk.strose.edu/relay/captions-as-universal-design.

Kavanagh Webb, K., and Hoover, Jeanne. 2015. "Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in the Academic Library: A Methodology for Mapping Multiple Means of Representation in Library Tutorials." College & Research Libraries

https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.76.4.537.

Darby, Alexa. n.d. "NEA's Understanding Universal Design in the Classroom.

http://www.nea.org/home/34693.htm.

Shaw, S. F., Scott, S.S., & McGuire, J. M. 2001. Teaching College Students with Learning Disabilities. Arlington, VA. ERIC EDE618.

https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED459548.

Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST). 2018. "Universal Design for Learning Guidelines, version 2.2.

http://udlguidelines.cast.org.

Sources

For accessibility: For items with a link, the title text is the active link while the URLs are not active.  When screen reader users access this document and pull up a list of links to be read aloud they will hear the full titles and not the URLs.

American  Library Association. 2006. "ACRL Equity, Diversity and Inclusion."

http://www.ala.org/acrl/aboutacrl/directoryofleadership/committees/racialethnic.

Association of College & Research Libraries. (2015) "Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education."

http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework.

IDP. n.d. "Invisible Disability Project."

https://www.invisibledisabilityproject.org.

Kellgren-Fozard, Jessica. 2018.  "How Using Captions Can Get You 80% More Views! // Why Captions Are Useful." Filmed September 25, 2018. Video, 11:08.

https://youtu.be/6ZTRkXNXAfU.

Kellgren-Fozard, Jessica. 2018. "How to Caption Your Videos on YouTube." Filmed September 26, 2018. Video, 6:42.

https://youtu.be/LNl2bLJilt0.

Kellgren-Fozard, Jessica. 2018. "Don't do this! // How to do captions right!" Filmed September 28, 2018. Video, 15:17.

https://youtu.be/Vq6XVaEhpnk.

Sheidlower, Scott, "Accommodating the Disabled in Library One-Shots at York College/CUNY." Codex, the Journal of the Louisiana Chapter of the ACRL, 4, no. 3 (2017), 64-82.

http://journal.acrlla.org/index.php/codex/article/view/136.

Teaching Excellence in Adult Literacy (TEAL). 2010. "TEAL Center Fact Sheet No. 2: Universal Design for Learning."

https://lincs.ed.gov/sites/default/files/2_TEAL_UDL.pdf.

WEB Aim, Utah State University. n.d. "WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool."

https://wave.webaim.org/.

Wolfe, Amy. 2020. "Accessibility Across the Curriculum: An OER Website on Accessibility" MA Capstone, CUNY Graduate Center.

https://accessibilityacrosscurriculum.awolfeworks.com/.

Youngblood, Norman E., Lakshmi N. Tirumala, and Robert Anthony Galvez. "Accessible Media: The Need to Prepare Students for Creating Accessible Content." Journalism & Mass Communication Educator 73, no. 3 (2018): 334--45.

https://doi.org/10.1177/1077695817714379.

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Keeping Up With... Universal Design for Learning

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This edition of Keeping Up With… was written by Robin Brown, Zach Welhouse, and Amy Wolfe. Robin Brown is the Head of Public Services at Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY, email: rbrown@bmcc.cuny.edu Zach Welhouse is the Online Learning Librarian at Oregon State University, email: zach.we…

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Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in the Academic Library: A Methodology for Mapping Multiple Means of Representation in Library Tutorials

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Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in the Academic Library: A Methodology for Mapping Multiple Means of Representation in Library Tutorials

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This article looks at library tutorials and how librarians might approach designing them with UDL principles in mind. The authors offer models of approaching different learning styles and means of representation in tutorials, and also offer an assessment of these models. This could be very helpful to me as I look for applications of UDL in a familiar library setting, and also as I actually apply it in my tutorial design.

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Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in the Academic Library: A Methodology for Mapping Multiple Means of Representation in Library Tutorials
Katy Kavanagh Webb, Jeanne Hoover
Abstract

Librarians designed a biology tutorial not only to address an assignment, but also to make tutorials more accessible to students with various learning styles. The Science Librarian created the content by using aspects of the Information Literacy Standards for Science and Technology/Engineering, an informal survey of biology faculty, and assignments for the biology labs. The Instructional Design Librarian created multiple modules that engaged users through text, images, audio, and interactive tutorials. The researchers used Universal Design for Learning principles to address multiple learning styles, specifically multiple means of representation, and created a mapping technique for those principles that can be applied to any library tutorial. To assess the effectiveness, students with learning disabilities completed a usability test on the tutorial.

Copyright © 2015 Katy Kavanagh Webb and Jeanne Hoover, Attribution-NonCommercial (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) CC BY-NC

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Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in the Academic Library: A Methodology for Mapping Multiple Means of Representation in Library Tutorials | Webb | College & Research Libraries

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Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in the Academic Library: A Methodology for Mapping Multiple Means of Representation in Library Tutorials

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This guide contains a list of resources and approaches that articulate how UDL can be applied in the course of library instruction where students are introduced to strategies and methods for research. It offers a specific framework for applying UDL principles in the library classroom.

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Universal design for learning (UDL) and universal design for instruction (UDI) are frameworks for teaching and learning that can help instructors create lessons and learning materials that are inclusive of a wide variety of learning needs and preferences.

The basic principle of UDL is to provide equitable access to learning for all students regardless of learning differences. The three main concepts, each corresponding to a different brain network, are:

1. multiple means of representation - content is presented in a variety of formats (i.e. handouts, tutorials, infographics, closed captioned videos, etc.)

2. multiple means of action and expression - giving students a variety of ways to learn and express what they've learned (i.e. allowing students to share what they've learned in a one-minute reflection paper, or demonstrate search suggestions through online polling)

3. multiple means of engagement - providing students with multiple means of engaging with the material (i.e. allowing students to work alone or in groups, providing feedback, and minimizing distractions)

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Research Guides: Instruction Librarians' Toolkit: Universal Design

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Research Guides: Instruction Librarians' Toolkit: Universal Design

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How a little idea called Universal Design for Learning has grown to become a big idea — elastic enough to fit every kid.

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How a little idea called Universal Design for Learning has grown to become a big idea — elastic enough to fit every kid.

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This article by Katie Bacon in Ed. (the Harvard Ed. Magazine) from 2014 provides the history of the development of UDL through interviews with Harvard Ed School graduates. These graduates share their definitions of UDL and their real world experiences in teaching that led to the development of the UDL philosophy in the early 1990s. I found this interesting as an organizational history of CAST, which advocates for UDL. It gave me an understanding of how those early educators and current teachers see UDL impacting their students and why it must be expanded and carried forward.

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Lecturer David Rose, Ed.D.'76, hopes and believes that he and his colleagues are part of a revolution - a revolution called Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which is increasingly taking hold in schools and school districts across the country and seeks to design curriculum from the outset that can accommodate all types of learners, rather than retrofitting existing curriculums on an ad hoc, as needed basis. Rose and his colleagues at CAST, a nonprofit education research and development organization, started articulating the idea in the early 1990s. It's a concept borrowed from the world of architecture and product design - that if you design a building, for instance, in a way that is accessible to all from the outset, it will end up being more elegant, more efficient, and more useful while being less expensive than if you have to go back in and add features after the fact. And many of the features you add for those with disabilities will benefit others too - think of the automatic doors that help those in wheelchairs, yet also make things easier for those pushing strollers or carrying shopping bags.

Rose defines the philosophy of UDL as "tight goals, flexible means, as opposed to the tight goals and tight means that schools tend to have." Key to UDL is the idea of engaging students by presenting information in multiple ways, so it can be accessed by people with many different learning styles. Giving students multiple ways to show they understand information is also essential.

Gabrielle Rappolt-Schlichtmann, Ed.M.'00, Ed.D.'07, one of many Ed School graduates who now work at CAST, explains it this way: "We want every kid to have that personalized 'just right' experience, so they can grow as a learner no matter what they bring to the table. Most education has been designed for a middle that doesn't exist. We don't want there to be any categories; all learners are on a continuum." To go back to the building analogy, with UDL, all students will arrive at the second floor, but some may choose the elevator, others the escalator, still others the stairs, to get there.

Over the years, while teaching at the Ed School and helping to lead CAST (originally the Center for Applied Special Technology), Rose has become the most prominent public face of UDL. Professor Howard Gardner, who has taught with Rose since 1986, points out Rose's unusual double trick of teaching while helping to create and move forward a field that has taken hold on both the state and federal levels.

"Few, if any, of us have had the impact he has had on national policy. He's very well connected in Washington; he testifies; he affects legislation. We're in an ivory tower; we don't have impact on legislation - it's very hard to do," Gardner says.

When Rose made the decision to go to Harvard to get his doctorate in education, he couldn't have imagined the confluence of technology and ideas that would lead to the creation of UDL. In fact, he returned to school out of anger, not out of a desire to learn how to reshape school curriculum. After getting a master's in education at Reed College, Rose chose to teach English at an inner-city high school in Boston. There, he and an art teacher joined forces to work with their students on creating books of poetry. After they'd created the books, Rose recalls that he was called into an administrator's office and grilled about them.

"What made you think your students actually wrote these poems?" the administrator asked Rose. Rose continues, "His expectation was so low for these kids that he didn't believe they'd written the poems. But I had worked with them. I knew every word. I just looked at him." At that moment, Rose determined he would get his doctorate, so he could come back and fire that administrator. Of course, life and work took him in another direction.

At Harvard, in the 1970s, long before MRIs could give a precise view of brain activity, Rose became fascinated by the emerging science of psychophysiology, based partly on trying to understand electrical activity in the brain through skin conduction tests.

"I wanted to understand how kids' brains are developing and how we can measure it. It was shocking how little we knew at that point," he says.

For his thesis, Rose posited, based on animal studies and slides of the human brain, that between ages 5 and 7, when children in most cultures start schooling, new cells are being developed in the hippocampus.

"The absolute orthodoxy was that in humans there is no postnatal neurogenesis. I was bucking that, saying that I thought new cells were being born," he says. His thesis created a small stir, and he was given an advance to write a book on the subject. But he found himself hesitating. "One of my advisers said to me, 'David, you have to decide whether this is going to become your career. This will upset the applecart; you are going to have to get into wet science and prove this. Is that what you want?' But it wasn't. This was a vehicle for me. I wanted to work with the kids that I used to teach; I didn't want to be a lab scientist." (Decades later the first study came out proving Rose's hypothesis.) Rose's decision to work with students rather than in the lab was another turning point.

Soon he found a job combining his interest in neuropsychology with his interest in working with children. He became a neuropsychologist at North Shore Children's Hospital in Salem, Mass., evaluating students who were having trouble at school. It was there, among his fellow clinicians, that he met the people with whom he would create UDL.

***

At the clinic, Rose and his colleagues would evaluate students and give them a diagnosis. Sometimes the students would then start to receive services. Yet when Rose or one of his colleagues would visit the school six months later, they'd find that not much had changed. Discouraged, a group of them - Rose; Anne Meyer, Ed.M.'75, Ed.D.'83; Grace Meo; Skip Stahl; and Linda Mensing - met outside of work, at a pizza parlor, to talk about ways to make their interventions more effective. It was during the early days of the personal computer, when Apple Macintoshes, with their graphical user interfaces, were first released. What if students with disabilities could use computer programs as tools in the classroom? The clinicians started asking students to stay after their evaluations to test out new computer programs, and they added a section to their evaluations suggesting programs teachers could use to help students build particular skills. The group decided to create CAST as a way to research and develop the best ways that computers could be used as tools to help students with different disabilities. (Rose and Meyer served as codirectors until last year, when Meyer retired.)

Early on, the team had dramatic success with a young boy named Matt who had cerebral palsy and could only communicate by blinking his eyes and opening and closing his mouth. The school system assumed he was profoundly mentally disabled and was going to pay to have him institutionalized. But his mother believed her son was intelligent - he just couldn't communicate it. The team decided to teach him Morse code and gave him a switch connected to a computer that he could direct with his chin.

"He learned Morse code in about 10 minutes," Rose remembers. Then they taught him the alphabet, and he was a ble to type out to his mother that he loved her. Eventually, Meyer digitized some books for him, setting up a program where he could have the book read aloud and could turn pages by clicking with his chin. "He was so excited to be enabled in this way. Sweat was just pouring off him as he was reading." Matt was a very dramatic case, but he showed Rose and his colleagues how powerful an intervention computers could be. "That kind of transformation was what we were after - something that could make everything change," Rose says.

They built a strong business with referrals from schools. Yet they still weren't satisfied with the extent to which the computers were helping the students at the margins. As Rose recalls it, the schools tended to view these students as "broken," and they paid CAST to help them use the powerful assistive tools of a computer to "unbreak" them. But the team at CAST started thinking that the problem was not with the students but with the school curriculums and the barriers they placed in front of anyone who didn't learn in a certain way. Most schools were asking students to adjust themselves, whatever kind of students they were, to a rigid system; CAST wanted the system to be elastic enough to fit all the kids.

"Maybe the other way to look at it is that the curriculum was broken. That it was never good enough to handle the variability of the kids who are in our schools," says Rose.

Rather than providing different tools on an as-needed basis so that each child at the margin could access the curriculum, why not rethink the curriculum so that all children could access it, even those with different learning styles? With the help of computers, a literacy curriculum, for example, could by design include audiobooks for those with difficulties reading text, dictionaries where ESL learners could look up words along the way, and extra questions for those students ready to go on to the next level.

"Teachers used to think, 'Oh, I have this problem kid.' We wanted to change the thinking to, 'How do we make this curriculum so that it helps whoever walks in the door?'" says Meyer.

This was the fundamental shift in thinking that led to the creation of UDL, and it led to some difficult times for CAST. Referrals from schools plummeted as CAST began shifting from recommending ways to provide assistive technology geared towards individual children to recommending ways for schools to rethink their curricula to address a variety of learning styles. CAST started seeking out federal grants to replace the lost funding, but it took seven years of trying to get their first one.

"I think that's the period that we're proudest of. There was a choice point there of, are we going to be a successful organization, meaning that we grow and thrive through these school referrals, or are we primarily a mission-driven one where we're going to pursue what needs to be done, even if it's not working for us financially? There are a ton of people who have been here 30 years, 20 years, 15 years because they're here for the mission-driven part of it. It's not just a job," says Rose.

These days, CAST headquarters, in Wakefield, Mass., is a hive of activity, housing more than 40 staff. Rose and Meyer set out to create a work environment both collaborative and egalitarian. Rose describes the layout as similar to a New England farmhouse, with parlors in the front where people can meet, and an area in the back where the work gets done. The workspace is open, with desk placement determined not by seniority but by an NBA-style draft.

Rappolt-Schlichtmann, now CAST's research director, sees the working atmosphere at CAST as fitting tightly with its philosophy that UDL is a discipline that can always - must always - be made better.

"Our big idea is that UDL is a continuously improving framework. And we work in this incredibly intense collaboration; it's a very horizontal organization. Everyone is expected to question everything and contribute big ideas. Everyone's thinking is considered at the same level," Rappolt-Schlichtmann says.

She first learned about UDL when she took a class on it from Rose at the Ed School in 1999. Rappolt-Schlichtmann is dyslexic, and as a young student she experienced firsthand the stigmatization that can happen for children with learning issues.

"I had a terrible time growing up in a system where if you're different in any way, it tries to put you in a corner and give you less. I just had this 'aha' moment when I took his class. I thought, 'That's the way education should be.' No one should experience public schools the way I did."

Rose has always had two jobs: working at CAST and teaching at the Ed School. For a while, he taught a class on neuroscience and reading, but about 15 years ago it became clear that what students really wanted to learn about from him was UDL. When Rappolt-Schlichtmann took Rose's UDL course, it was one of perhaps just a few in the country. "Students were desperate to take that class," she says, "both because of the force of David's personality and the convincingness of the work itself."

Now, many education schools in the country offer a course on UDL, and some offer whole master's programs. Each summer, the Ed School offers a professional development course for educators, taught by Rose and Professor Tom Hehir, Ed.D.'90. Several other factors have come together to raise UDL's profile substantially within the education community over the past half-decade or so. In 2008, for the first time, a definition of UDL was included in federal law, in the Higher Education Opportunity Act. It stated: "The term 'universal design for learning' means a scientifically valid framework for guiding educational practice that A) provides flexibility in the ways information is presented, in the ways students respond or demonstrate knowledge and skills, and in the ways students are engaged; and B) reduces barriers in instruction, provides appropriate accommodations, supports, and challenges, and maintains high achievement expectations for all students, including students with disabilities and students who are limited English proficient."

UDL was also included in the National Education Technology Plan, written in part by Rose and presented to Congress in 2010 as a means to boost the learning of all students, particularly those at the margins. Once UDL was defined in federal law, it opened the door for school systems to apply for UDL grants. Finally, UDL, with its attention to scaffolding concepts for different types of learners, is being seen as a way to help schools achieve the Common Core standards, which have been adopted in all but five states. While UDL was originally thought of as a way to help students with learning difficulties, today it is used as a way to tailor curriculum for all students, including, say, a student with dyslexia who may be talented at math but has trouble with word problems, or a student who needs an extra level of challenge to stay engaged.

Implementation of UDL is growing, but it varies school to school, district to district, and state to state. In 2013 the state of Maryland passed a bill that teachers must integrate UDL into their teaching practices. The previous year, the Gates Foundation funded a project helping four school districts implement UDL - two in Maryland, one in Massachusetts, and one in Indiana. And individual schools and teachers are figuring out ways to rethink their curricula using the UDL lens.

One of those teachers is Jon Mundorf, who teaches fifth grade in Naples, Fla. He first took a class on UDL from CAST in 2006 and went into it skeptically, looking for some solution, any solution, to the one-sizefits- all curriculum he was struggling to apply in his classroom.

"I was a teacher in a classroom with all kinds of different learners and was frustrated and having a tough time of it," Mundorf says. "The standard approach to the curriculum just wasn't working."

These days, he presents information to students in a variety of ways and lets them present what they've learned in ways that fit their learning preferences. For example, during the unit he teaches on the U.S. Constitution, he gives his students a choice of reading or listening to an audio recording from the textbook, watching an explanation that he has prerecorded, viewing a video on BrainPop.com, or listening to a musical explanation of the Constitution on Flocabulary.com. The difference in his classroom has been stark. Discipline problems are "almost nonexistent" because, as Mundorf sees it, each student is engaged with learning. "Once you think about it, a one-size-fits-all approach to the curriculum becomes kind of silly," he says. "We need to help students understand their own learning and give kids their own path to explore. I have no control over the standardized curriculum, or who's assigned to my classroom. What I can control is the flexibility of my goals, my methods, my materials, and my assessments."

Katie Novak is the districtwide coordinator for reading and ELL in the Chelmsford, Mass., public schools. For 11 years she was a classroom teacher. Five years ago she did a weeklong training in UDL at CAST and has been a passionate advocate ever since. "There is no teacher in the world who doesn't believe we have kids who are tremendously different, whom you can't reach using these standardized methods," she says.

As an example of how UDL is applied in the real world, she described an assignment she gave to seventh-graders to see if they understood the way point of view is used in the book The Outsiders. While traditionally all students would have been asked to write a paper on point of view, in Novak's UDL classroom, they were given a choice of how to do the assignment. Some chose to do a video, others did a painting, others did various tweets showing a shift in point of view. Of course students need to learn to become proficient in writing, but Novak's point, and one of the points of UDL, is that separate skills - in this case, writing and demonstrating an understanding of the concept of point of view - should not be lumped together. In her observation, students do better if they're allowed to break these two skills into parts and choose the means for demonstrating that they understand a concept.

"This is very different from how teachers are taught to teach," Novak says. Giving the students different options for learning can "look messy," she continues, but "within the chaos is real engagement." (An added bonus: Novak saw a measurable leap in her students' standardized test scores after she started teaching using UDL.)

Adam Deleidi, assistant principal at the Susan B. Anthony Middle School in Revere, Mass., is working to help teachers use UDL in all aspects of their teaching, partly through a tool CAST created called UDL Studio. In his view, it's a way to shift lesson planning from aiming at the middle to targeting the specific needs of all the students in the class.

Rose is the first to admit that implementation is an issue. Learning how to implement a UDL curriculum takes time - and it often takes a whole rethinking of both curriculum and teaching philosophy. Some potential users of UDL would like CAST to box up UDL, create a short and specific set of steps for teachers to follow, and, voila, there you have a UDL classroom. This clashes with CAST's philosophy that great teaching can't be ritualized and imposed from the outside. For UDL to work the way it's supposed to, teachers have to understand it in a holistic way, understand their students, and then figure out how to implement it themselves.

"We are wrestling with how can we support people with implementing UDL without turning it into a cookbook. We want teachers to be cooks, not recipe-followers," says Rose.

Yet while CAST created the concept of UDL, it has now grown much bigger than the organization, and other groups are putting out their own instruction manuals and checklists for how to implement UDL in ways that CAST would never do. Rose and the rest of CAST considered trademarking UDL, but in the end they decided this wasn't the right approach.

"Our job is not to fight bad things because you could spend your whole life doing it. Our job is to continue to create better and better tools that will win out in the war of ideas," Rose says. CAST approaches the issue of implementation from many directions, including by teaching workshops and institutes at their headquarters or onsite at schools or state departments of education, by creating online courses, by publishing books on the policy, research, and implementation of UDL; and by making guidelines and teaching tools freely available on their website.

While UDL has become much more visible over the past half-decade, Rose argues that much work remains, in terms of expanding its reach and improving the framework and the scientific grounding behind it.

"We're in the hard part. Often revolutions falter when going from early adopters to really systemic change," he says.

Meyer, Rose's longtime colleague, says that CAST has been built with the future in mind.

"David has always wanted to hire people who are smarter than himself and distribute the credit. The next generation is coming along and is going to take this to the next level," she says. Those hires are the ones who will try to carry on the revolution that Rose, Meyer, and their colleagues started. They share an ambitious vision, one that began 30 years ago in the computer lab of a hospital clinic.

"We want to see education changed," Meyer says. "We want to see this approach be the norm, we want these tools available to everyone. We want to see UDL as a reform initiative, one that we hope will really take hold nationwide and worldwide."

- Katie Bacon is a freelance writer and editor based in Boston who has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and other publications.

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Lecturer David Rose, Ed.D.'76, hopes and believes that he and his colleagues are part of a revolution - a revolution called Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which is increasingly taking hold in schools and school districts across the country and seeks to design curriculum from the outset that can accommodate all types of learners, rather than retrofitting existing curriculums on an ad hoc, as needed basis.

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Worksheet: UDL Case Studies is a section of an open book on eLearning at Brock University. It provides background material on the principles of UDL and design thinking. Then, readers are presented with two college course case studies and guided through questions to articulate a redesign of each course. It provides me with some real-life examples of courses for me to consider how UDL could improve them.

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Worksheet: UDL Case Studies

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Guide to Teaching with Technology by Centre for Pedagogical Innovation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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UDL on Campus - Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education - About UDL

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UDL on Campus - Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education - About UDL

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This page, on a site within the CAST organization, focuses on defining UDL in higher education. It offers links to a brief overview of UDL, an explanation of why it is important in higher education, and a set of guidelines that bring together the recommendations from over 800 peer-reviewed research articles. These guidelines may be used by educators as they design and apply curriculum that puts UDL to practice. There are also videos on UDL and retention and UDL and accessibility, and a long list of articles and links that can add to my understanding of UDL.

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Why

Why is this important for higher education? UDL provides useful guidelines for developing curricula, selecting materials and creating learning environments that takes into account the wide variability of learners in higher ed environments.

(music)

[ Title: UDL On Campus, Gabrielle Rappolt-Schlichtmann, Co-President of CAST, appears on the screen.]

GABRIELLE RAPPOLT-SCLICTHMANN: Learning is really a lifelong journey and when students come to postsecondary they're incredibly diverse. They have a wide range of strengths and weaknesses and UDL is really about how to make that learning journey tractable for as many of those learners as possible.

[ Students sit in a circle on a lawn on a college campus. The scene changes to a large display of artwork. The screen changes to a photo of three students working together. Gabrielle Rappolt-Schlicthmann returns to the screen, followed by Skip Stahl, Senior Policy Analyst at CAST.]

SKIP STAHL: UDL is important because of the variability that we have across learners. We often think about individuals with disabilities as individuals at the margins and then if we can develop or create learning environments for those individuals at either end of the bell curve we go a long way towards addressing the needs of everyone else in between.

[ The screen shows students gathered around tables in a student center, then a student taking a picture, followed by many students standing and smiling during graduation in green caps and gowns. Sam Johnston, Research Scientist at CAST appears on the screen.]

SAM JOHNSTON: We've seen a an enormous growth in interest in using UDL ranging from individual faculty members wanting to use it to full departments to sometimes whole institutions wanting to adopt it as an approach to really better serving the broader range of students that are on campus.

[ Students are gathered around a table with papers and laptops. The scene changes to an instructor lecturing in a large classroom full of students. Another scene shows students passing by a library. Sam Johnston returns to the screen briefly, followed by Manju Banerjee, Director of Landmark College Institute for Research and Training.]

MANJU BANERJEE: It is not about faculty being the experts or administrators being the experts but the ethos of we're all in this together.

["Finda" Ihudiya Ogburu, a student, appears on the screen.]

FINDA IHUDIYA OGBURU: In a UDL classroom I felt like I wasn't feeling bad because you know I didn't participate like another student. I was more so looking at myself and trying to be my best learner.

[ Elysa Greenberger, a student, appears on the screen.]

ELYSA GREENBERGER: I think this has really made my learning deeper. It's different to me than lecture based courses where I sort of hear information and think it's really interesting but then end up forgetting it down the line.

[ Sam Johnston returns to the screen, followed by a photo of two students meeting with an instructor in an office. The scene changes to an instructor projecting images to a classroom of students, followed by students gathered around artwork displayed on the floor. Gabrielle Rappolt-Schlichtmann returns to the screen.]

GABRIELLE RAPPOLT-SCLICTHMANN: UDL is really about bringing flexibility and options into the environment by design so that students will have the resources that they need to make learning tractable in postsecondary environments.

[ End credits: UDL On Campus, CAST: Until learning has no limits]

UDL is a Framework

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a set of principles for curriculum development that give all individuals equal opportunities to learn. UDL provides a blueprint for creating instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments that work for everyone--not a single, one-size-fits-all solution but rather flexible approaches that can be customized and adjusted for individual needs.

The UDL principles are based on the three-network model of learning that take into account the variability of all learners-including learners who were formerly relegated to "the margins" of our educational systems but now are recognized as part of the predictable spectrum of variation. These principles guide design of learning environments with a deep understanding and appreciation for individual variability.

The UDL Guidelines (2012), whose foundation includes over 800 peer reviewed research articles, provide benchmarks that guide educators in the development and implementation of UDL curriculum. These Guidelines serve as a tool with which to critique and minimize barriers inherent in curriculum as educators aim to increase opportunities to learn.

Download the UDL Guidelines graphic organizer

Download any of the three variations of the UDL Guidelines on the UDL Guidelines site.

Consider UDL as a way to shift your understanding of how all people learn, then UDL becomes a systematic means by which to move to the practical. UDL is not a prescriptive checklist or formula with set methods and tools to be applied in every situation.

The UDL framework is translational -a means for translating research and innovation into practice-providing guiding principles. From the principles, guidelines are derived for creating and choosing tools, methods, and practices, whose specifics depend upon context: learners' developmental levels, varied schools and communities, and the proclivities of teachers who are doing the teaching, among many other variables. UDL can help reshape teaching and learning by guiding the design of an entirely new system with flexibility at its core.

Another important consideration in implementing UDL in any learning environment is including the learner in the learning process. Support students to become an "expert" about their own learning. The goal is to find a way into the learning experience, remain persistent in the face of challenge or failure, and continue to build self-knowledge. Encourage students to communicate their learning preferences and needs. Include students in designing better learning environments.

Powerful digital technologies applied using UDL principles enable easier and more effective customization of curricula for learners. Advances in technology and the learning sciences have made "on-the-fly" individualization of curricula possible in practical, cost-effective ways, and many of these technologies have built in supports, scaffolds and challenges to help learners understand, navigate, and engage with the learning environment. However, it is important to note that these technologies should not be considered to be the only way to implement UDL. Effective instructors can be creative and resourceful in designing flexible learning environments that address the variability of learners using a range of high-tech and low-tech solutions.

(music)

[ Title: UDL On Campus: Student Retention. Sam Johnston, Research Scientist at CAST appears on the screen.]

SAM JOHNSTON: So we know from retention research that, we actually, when we think about retention and study retention, we often forget to study the classroom. But the classroom is really, really critical. I mean it's the key element in why students persist or why they don't.

[ Groups of student listen to an instructor in a classroom. The scene changes to another instructor explaining a projected image to students. Sam Johnston then returns to the screen.]

SAM JOHNSTON: And UDL really offers a systematic way of looking at the persistence of all students in the classroom. That's why UDL is so critical for this issue of student persistence and institutions trying to retain their students.

[ A student works diligently in the library. The scene changes to students passing through a campus center. The screen displays numerous books on Universal Design for Learning. Sam Johnston returns to the screen.]

SAM JOHNSTON: It offers a systematic framework to look at better supporting all students in the classroom so they can persist in a course, get a degree, and get to the next place they want to go.

[ End credits: UDL On Campus, CAST: Until learning has no limits]

The Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) of 2008

The inclusion of UDL in HEOA indicates a federal recognition of the potential for UDL to improve practice in classrooms and provide opportunities for students to succeed.

The definition incorporates the three principles of UDL-representation, expression, and engagement-and emphasizes reducing barriers with appropriate supports and challenges built into instruction.

In addition to defining UDL, HEOA emphasized that pre-service training through teacher education programs incorporate instruction on strategies consistent with UDL. If future teachers are taught the principles of UDL, they will be able to better meet the diverse needs of their future students.

UDL and Accessibility

"The purpose of education is not to make information accessible, but rather to teach learners how to transform accessible information into usable knowledge." --Introduction to the UDL Guidelines (CAST, 2012)

Postsecondary institutions are obligated to provide accessible learning materials and technologies for students with disabilities, but UDL is more than simply providing information in accessible ways. Skip Stahl discusses the relationship between UDL and accessibility in the video below.

(music)

[ Title: UDL On Campus: Accessibility. Skip Stahl, Senior Policy Analyst, appears on the screen.]

SKIP STAHL: Accessibility is one of the key foundational principles of Universal Design for Learning and it's a component of Universal Design for Learning but is not by itself Universal Design or Learning. I always think, the way we sometimes phrase it is that accessibility is essential but insufficient on its own to be Universal Design for Learning. Accessibility is really captured in the first principle of UDL which is multiple representations of information and from an instructional perspective there's a whole mantra that if you can't reach them you can't teach them. That information has to be accessible and presented in a variety of ways; audio, print, tactile, graphically, by video, as many possible ways as there are to make sure that people can get the information they need. Where as UDL really expands beyond that and talks about action and expression, how people exhibit mastery how they can express their achievement, how they can really articulate well what it is they know. And then the third principle really thinking about engagement--how we engage learners to enforce and enhance their persistence in ways that really support them in the face of challenges.

[ End credits: UDL On Campus, CAST: Until learning has no limits]

Go to UDL and Accessibility for more information about legal obligations and recent developments pertaining to accessibility in higher education.

Resources

CAST - information about Universal Design for Learning

CAST's Learning Resources

CAST's UDL Guidelines site provides detailed description of each guideline and checkpoint and the research that supports them. Download any of the three variations of theUDL Guideline graphic organizers.

Learning Designed Critical Elements of UDL Instruction

The free online version of Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice by Meyer, Rose, & Gordon has specific sections relevant to UDL implementation in higher ed. Once you've created a free account and logged in, Alfreda Blue, Hofstra University, discussesplanning in advance for diverse learners. Candyce Engquist Rennegarbe, Tacoma (WA) Community College, describescritical planning elements for a new UDL project. Emiliano Ayala and Brett Christie, California State University, discussthe importance of ongoing, sustained professional development in UDL implementation.

Rose, D., Harbour, W., Johnston, C. S., Daley, S., & Abarbanell, L. (2006). Universal design for learning in postsecondary education: Reflections on principles and their application. Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 19(2), 17. http://www.udlcenter.org/sites/udlcenter.org/files/UDLinPostsecondary.pdf

Smith, F.G. (2012) Analyzing a college course that adheres to the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 12(3), 31-61. http://josotl.indiana.edu/article/view/2151

Abegglen, S., Aparicio-Ting, F. E., Arcellana-Panlilio, M., Behjat, L., Brown, B., Clancy, T. L., DesJardine, P., Din, C., Dyjur, P., Ferreira, C., Hughson, E. A., Kassan, A., Klinke, C., Kurz, E., Neuhaus, F., Pletnyova, G., Paul, R. M., Peschl, H., Peschl, R., & Squance, R. T. (2021). Incorporating Universal Design for Learning in Disciplinary Contexts in Higher Education (M. Arcellana-Panlilio and P. Dyjur, Eds.). Calgary, AB: Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning Guide Series. https://taylorinstitute.ucalgary.ca/resources/incorporating-universal-design-for-learning-in-disciplinary-contexts-in-higher-education-guide

A video about Universal Design at McGill University https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjUKGBipJZA

Notes

Meyer, A., Rose, D.H., & Gordon, D. (2014). Universal design for learning: Theory and Practice. Wakefield, MA: CAST Professional Publishing.

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Why is this important for higher education? UDL provides useful guidelines for developing curricula, selecting materials and creating learning environments that takes into account the wide variability of learners in higher ed environments. (music) [ Title: UDL On Campus, Gabrielle Rappolt-Schlichtmann, Co-President of CAST, appears on the screen.]