Getting Started with UDL

by Deborah Hanuscin, Professor, SMATE and Elementary Education, WWU

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework that is designed to give all students an equal opportunity to succeed. The UDL framework offers flexibility in ways students access material and show what they know. It also takes into account students’ motivation and self-regulation.

I first became familiar with UDL while collaborating with Dr. Delinda van Garderen, a Professor of Special Education at the University of Missouri. We were working on an NSF-funded project to improve the quality of elementary science teaching. Delinda introduced me to the UDL Guidelines, which we used as a framework to help elementary teachers make their classrooms more inclusive. We co-authored a book with our teacher collaborators about the use of UDL.

The UDL framework isn’t just applicable to science or to elementary teaching, though– and it has become an important part of making my university classes more inclusive for students. One of the biggest impacts the use of UDL has had on my practice is where I situate the source of students’ struggles. You may hear teachers refer to “students who struggle with math” (or any other subject matter). These types of comments situate the problem with the students. UDL has helped flipped my thinking towards situating students’ struggles in my curriculum and instruction. That is, rather than “students who struggle in science” I focus on “curricula and teaching strategies that pose barriers to students’ science learning”. The bottom line is that individuals with disabilities have been and can be successful in the field of science, so if they are not able to be successful in a science class, it’s more to do with the class than their disability!

Identifying some potential barriers to students’ learning may be easy– for example, if you have a student with visual impairment, you could logically expect that reading materials and visual aids would be inaccessible for them. Guideline 1: Perception offers several checkpoints and strategies, including ways of offering alternatives to visual information.

In other cases, students may have invisible disabilities, such as learning disabilities, that make identifying barriers difficult. You might see only the impacts of those barriers on students– that they appear unmotivated and do not complete their work, or that they turn in work that fails to demonstrate a strong understanding. It can be confusing where to start!

Two areas in which I’ve found planning with UDL to be beneficial relate to student motivation and engagement as well as how students communicate what they learn. To promote students’ interest in the material we are learning, I plan ways to incorporate choice into the learning experience and help them see the relevance of what they are learning. To ensure they are able to communicate their learning more effectively, I vary the mode of expression and communication options for students to use. These guidelines take into account the needs of many different students, and can benefit all students.

Not ready to overhaul your entire class using the UDL framework? Start small– with a single assignment! For example, I used to have an assignment in my course in which students (future teachers) analyzed a lesson plan in relation to research on How People Learn. I provided them the lesson plan and the assignment took the form of a 5 page written analysis and critique. UDL led me to ask several questions about this assignment, among these:

Was it important that I choose the lesson plan they critique, or could students choose the lesson?
Did the critique have to be of a written lesson plan (a hypothetical situation), or would it be more relevant if students examined a video of teaching or even reflected on a personal learning experience?
Was a written analysis the best way to compose their critique, or would it be more effective for some students to be able to communicate in other formats or genres more effectively?

I revised the assignment so that students could identify a learning experience of their choice. Examples could include a planned experience (lesson or curriculum), a video of a teaching episode, a learning experience they had as a student, or a personal learning experience outside of school. I modified the instructions so that students would still use principles from How People Learn, but that they could choose the format their analysis took– I provided suggestions such as written papers, presentations, infographics, or podcasts– not knowing quite what I would get.In the end, I was surprised by the variety of things students turned in. Instead of reading essay after essay, I was listening to podcasts about their experiences learning chemistry, watching video presentations in which they featured family members who taught them how to cook, or scanning infographics that showcased the design skills students had for communicating information clearly and succinctly. Despite the variation in what they submitted, all projects met the criteria for demonstrating students’ understanding of How People Learn–and in ways I might not have captured through an essay (which yes, I still had a few submitted). In addition to having a more accurate understanding of what my students had learned, I was also learning more about their experiences, interests, and cultures in the process! Many were also sharing their projects with one another (which made me further reflect on collaboration and community in the UDL framework).

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