Exploring the UDL Guidelines (June 2014)
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The document discusses Universal Design for Learning (UDL) guidelines for supporting all students. It defines the three UDL principles of representation, action and expression, and engagement. Each principle has three guidelines for providing multiple means of representation, action and expression, and engagement. The document provides examples of low-tech and high-tech ways to implement the guidelines in the classroom, such as providing options for language, perception, physical action, expression, interest, and self-regulation. It concludes by recommending educators learn more about UDL and incorporate the principles in their teaching gradually through feedback and collaboration.
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Exploring the UDL Guidelines (June 2014)
- 1. Support Learning for All Students: Exploring the UDL Guidelines By: Matt Bergman
- 3. Agenda ● Review the 3 Principles of UDL ● Define each of the 9 guidelines ● Show low-tech and high-tech ways of implementing
- 4. The Origins of Universal
- 5. What is UDL?
- 8. Do students need to understand what the topic is? Do students need to demonstrate how to do the topic? Do students need to understand why the topic is important?
- 10. Understanding the UDL Guidelines
- 11. Principle # 1: Multiple Means of Representation Source: National Center on Universal Design (2013) Do students need to understand what the topic is?
- 14. A. Perception
- 15. A. Perception
- 16. A. Perception
- 17. B. Provide Options for Language, Mathematical Expressions, and Symbols
- 18. B. Provide Options for Language, Mathematical Expressions, and Symbols
- 19. B. Provide Options for Language, Mathematical Expressions, and Symbols
- 20. C. Providing options for comprehension
- 22. C. Providing options for comprehension
- 23. Principle# 2: Multiple Means of Action and Expression Source: National Center on Universal Design (2013) Do students need to demonstrate how to do the topic?
- 25. A. Provide options for physical action
- 26. A. Provide options for physical action
- 27. A. Provide options for physical action
- 28. B. Provide options for expression and communication
- 29. B. Provide options for expression and communication
- 30. B. Provide options for expression and communication
- 31. C. Provide options for executivefunctions
- 32. C. Provide options for executive functions
- 33. C. Provide options for executive functions
- 34. Principle # 3 – Multiple Means of Engagement Source: National Center on Universal Design (2013) Do students need to understand why the topic is important?
- 36. A. Options for Recruiting Interest
- 37. A. Options for Recruiting Interest
- 38. A. Options for Recruiting Interest
- 39. B. Providing Options for Sustaining Effort and Persistence
- 40. B. Providing Options for Sustaining Effort and Persistence
- 41. B. Providing Options for Sustaining Effort and Persistence
- 42. C. Provide Options for Self-Regulation
- 43. C. Provide Options for Self-Regulation
- 44. C. Provide Options for Self-Regulation
- 45. Tips to Incorporate UDL in the Classroom ● Learn more about UDL ● www.cast.org ● www.udlcenter.org ● Take baby steps ● Try 1 lesson a week, month, quarter ● Ask for student feedback ● What works? What doesn’t? ● Connect with other educators
Editor's Notes
- The concept of Universal Design originated as an architectural and product design concept. It was designed to create barrier free environments that were caused by inadequate design. It’s intent was to eliminate barriers. The idea was if you planned for the needs of those with mobility issues and disability, then you could plan environments that would work for all. For example, think about the barriers that steps cause. If someone is confined to a wheelchair, using a stroller, or trying to use a hand cart, they are limited in what they can access. However, by integrating a ramp into the original blue print, you are reducing barriers and providing options for the person to get to where they need to go.
- In the 1990’s, the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) applied this idea within educational environments and designed the Universal Design for Learning framework. The idea was to design a flexible curriculum (goals, methods, materials and assessments) to address the needs of all students. One of the biggest differences between UDL and other types of curriculum design is that you are designing a curriculum from the beginning to take care of learner differences. Not when they occur. It’s very much like this comic strip. Why waste your time clearing steps when you can clear a ramp for all learners to access the curriculum?
- The framework was based on three principles – heavily influenced on brain research: Provide Multiple Means of Representation Provide Multiple Means of Action and Expression Provide Multiple Means of Engagement
- Using this framework starts with understanding of what you need to accomplish each day – through a learning goal. In other words: What do you want your students to know, accomplish or do? What is the point of the lesson?
- Constructing a lesson goal may also begin with understanding “teasing out” the intent / purpose of the standard, When you understand the intent / purpose, you can begin using the UDL principles to address the needs of your learners in order to address the learning goal. For example, If you want your students to understand a topic, you should design your lesson around providing students with multiple means of representation. If you wanted students to demonstrate how to do the topic, you would design your lesson around providing multiple means of action and expression. If you wanted students to understand why the topic is important, you would want to design your lesson around providing multiple means of engagement Depending on your lesson, you may want to address more than one principle. But this is a starting point to begin planning.
- Once you understand your lesson goal and the principle(s) you will be planning around, you want to think about potential high-probability barriers that may occur in the lesson. For example, if you are designing a lesson to provide students with multiple ways of representation to understand a particular topic, you will think about potential barriers students might come across. Will students have trouble understanding vocabulary? Are there student’s with visual difficulties, who may need alternate forms of text? Implementing UDL means planning for ways to overcome these barriers, but what does this look like? To answer you question, I would like you to think of a set of 3 , 3 legged stools. The seat of each of the 3 stools represents the UDL principle. To support these principles, you need 3 legs on each stool.
- The Legs represent the Guidelines or how we can address / implement the principle. That’s what we are going to talk about today. I’m going to define each guideline and provide some high-tech/low-tech tools to help address them.
- UDL Principle # 1 states that in order for students to best learn, they need to have Multiple Means of Representation or have different ways to perceive a concept in order to best understand it. The back part of the brain or Recognition Network addresses the “what” of learning and is responsible for how we perceive the world around us.
- There’s more to it because the recognition network is responsible for helping learners use their senses to identify and interpret information. It’s more than just showing information in a lot of ways. It involves giving students opportunities to absorb knowledge in their own way.
- How do we use the Recognition Network to provide our students with Multiple Means of Representation? The UDL guidelines provide us with a recipe to provide learners with different student-centered learning experiences to receive the information. These ingredients are: Perception Using Language, Expressions, and Symbols Comprehension Let’s take a look at each of the Guidelines (AKA ingredients) that support this UDL principle and some high-tech / low-tech ways of supporting student learning.
- When we provide Multiple Means or Representation, we may need to provide students with different ways of customizing the display or how they perceive information. We think of visuals, but this can also mean providing alternatives for auditory information. What if you assigned your students to listen to a podcast that you created and had a student with hearing difficulties? How would this student be expected to complete the same assignment without dumbing it down? Transcripts?
- Let’s say that you had a writing assignment for your students. We often limit our students to using notebook paper or Microsoft Word as a way to write. What if some of our students had difficulty structuring a paragraph? We may use a hamburger or sandwich graphic organizer to help our students with visualizing how to construct a paragraph. I received another great idea from an educator in Maryland called the Power Paragraph Organizer. Red = topic sentence Green = supporting details Blue = closing sentence
- Some teachers like to communicate statistics to students, but pie charts, percentages, and bar graphs may not solidify a concept. One popular method is the use of Infographics to communicate basic statistics in creative ways. Want to create your own infograph? A great free site called Piktochart, which will allow you to create innovative Infographics for free!
- Providing students with Multiple Means of Representation can also mean providing options for comprehending language, mathematic expressions, and symbols. Written language includes more than letters. How those letters are combined create language. Whether learning a new language, new math concept, or new vocabulary term…it can require clarification. This is why pre-teaching and providing scaffolding is so important to our students! I saw a great example of this when I was reviewing for my GRE test. To remember the different ways of working with average numbers, I was given an average pie to remember the equation.
- When I teach new vocabulary terms, I will often have my students create Bumper Stickers with the term, pictures to describe the term, and a slogan on it. I always tell my students, anyone can copy and read a definition, but true understanding occurs when we can verbally explain the. When we are finished, I will often have the bumper stickers posted around my room to help students. Other teachers use word walls. Some use flashcards. The whole idea is to provide students with multiple exposures to the vocabulary to make meaning.
- Quizlet is free flashcard program that provides students a variety of ways for understanding terms, symbols, equations, and even pictures. You can use the basic flashcard feature, have the terms read aloud, quiz yourself, or play review games. You can create your own set of cards or browse the thousands of user-generated cards that already exist.
- Providing Multiple Means of Representation also means that we provide options for helping our students move from background knowledge to a higher understanding of a particular concept. This could take the form of highlighting patterns, identifying the “big ideas” and identifying relationships.
- For some reason, I have found that my students often struggle when I have to go over historical information. In the past, I have used timelines, PowerPoint slides, and lectures. In one particular chapter, I had to review key events that shaped the Industrial Revolution. Instead of lecturing about this, I created a set of PowerPoint slides with key events. I printed them out in handout format and had my students arrange them on their desk as a timeline. It served as a great way to measure background knowledge, provide kinestic activity, and open class discussion.
- Concept maps are a great way to provide options for comprehension. We may give our artistic students the option of drawing theirs out on paper or we could use tools like bubbl.us to help our students make connections. Not only is it easy to use, but students can easily print, save, or collaborate on their word maps.
- UDL Principle # 2 is Providing Multiple Means of Action and Expression. After we have grasped “what” a particular concept is, we need to “show what we know.” The strategic network is involved in everything that we do from the planning to executing, monitoring and evaluating. We strategize for every physical and mental process that we perform.
- So how do we use the Strategic Network to provide multiple means of actions and expression? The guidelines (or ingredients) that help support this principle are: Physical Action Expression / Communication Executive Function
- Students need to physically navigate or interact with materials, like turning pages, writing in spaces, or clicking a mouse. Navigation and interaction in those limited ways will raise barriers for some learners – perhaps they have a physical disability, blindness, or perhaps they have a different type of learning style. Because we have all sorts of learners in our classroom and they need a variety of ways physically show what they know. This may mean changing the way that students respond, plan, and monitor.
- Let’s say that you want to review for a test. Many of us would put together a review sheet or play Jeopardy. I have found that although these techniques are effective, however, I like to mix in kinestetic activities to provide alternate ways for students to show what they know. I like to use a low-tech Kagan structure called 4 Corners with a twist. I label each corner of my room as the letter A, B, C, or D. I put questions up on a PPT slide and have students walk to the most appropriate corner. Instead of discussing “what” the answer is….it really opens up the discussion on “why” the answer is what it is. If physically walking to a corner is a barrier, we could provide students with cards with the letters A, B, C, or D on it.
- Or we could use a high-tech way of doing something very similar…Whether you need to create a quiz in advance or on the fly, Socrative is a great way to have ALL students participate in answering questions using any device. It’s perfect for BYOD programs. The best part is that students don’t need a login account. They can access your own private classroom by entering in your assigned Socrative classroom number.
- Our students have different ways of expressing and communicating themselves. When we provide students with tools to take what is in their brains and translate it into a project or assessment, we can be amazed. This may require giving our students options to use the tool that works best for them and using the tools to solve problems.
- Not all medians are effective of helping all students. For example, let’s say that you wanted your students to write a paper using a Word Processing program. This could be a major barrier for a student with Dyslexia. You may want to use the free speech to text Dragon Dictation App for the iPad. It will help the student accomplish the same task as everyone else, but will be able to take the information from the student’s brain to the paper.
- With all of the emphasis on digital media, we often forget that there is still power in the human voice. AudioBoo is an App (iTunes, Android, and Edmodo) has been referred to as the “YouTube of Audio.” It allows users to quickly record and upload podcasts with a click of a button. A librarian in Oklahoma uses it to have her students create book reviews. Once her students have uploaded it to AudioBoo, she generates a QR code for the recording. Students can scan the QR code and listen to the AudioBoo recording to see if they want to read the book.
- In order to show what you know, you need to have an idea of how you are going to get there. Options for executive functions means that students need to set goals and often need consistent, small, and meaningful reminders to help them plan and strategize.
- There are just some directions or information that would take a long time to write on a board. Instead of repeating myself over and over with reminders, goals for the day, or general announcements. I often use a Voki avatar to communicate class goals for the day. Avoids repeating over and over and over and communicates to students who might have been absent, have trouble listening, or may be learning a new language.
- There was a study done pertaining to classroom instructions. One set of students were given detailed typed instructions. The other group was given typed instructions with graphics. The students who had graphics and text scored higher on the task. With this in mind, in one of my classes, I created a set of Instructions / Checklist for the confusing task of balancing a checkbook. I used graphics and color coding to help my students.
- Principle # 3 is Providing Multiple Means of Engagement. I like to refer to it as the emotional “hook” needed to learn. Motivation is one of the biggest barriers to learning because if students aren’t interested in a particular concept, they may choose not to learn it. I like to say if there is no “why” in learning, then there is no engagement. The Affective Network of the brain is responsible for our engagement. It helps regulate our interactions with anyone or anything outside of ourselvesBecause no two people are alike, the way their affective network responds to a particular situation will vary.
- How do we use the Affective Network to provide our students with multiple means of engagement? We use the following guidelines (or ingredients): Recruiting Interest Sustaining Effort and Persistence Self-Regulation
- Many of us get the fact that engaging students is more than just entertainment. When you provide students with options for recruiting interests, it involves providing students with appropriate and structured choices, optimizing relevance, and even minimizing threats / distractions. Providing options for recruiting student interest is not about entertainment, but about creating an ideal learning environment. One where students are encouraged to learn through optimizing choice and autonomy when appropriate. This does not mean giving students unguided open-ended choices, but providing students with structured choices to give them a sense of independence and freedom.
- We often give our students PowerPoint overkill when we give presentations. Perhaps giving students to the option to use Prezi, create an iMovie, or giving a screencast – using screencast-o-matic. Another great presentation tool you may want to look at is MoveNote –combines slide shows and facial expressions. Can be easily shared.
- One Math teacher I found uses a Tic Tac Toe Charts for completing projects. This gives students options for demonstrating their understanding.
- When students have options for sustaining effort and persistence, they are able to take more ownership of their learning and connect with the goal of the lesson. This involves heightening the salience, or importance, of both goals and objectives, varying the demands and resources to optimize challenge and fostering collaboration. How would you describe your learning goals and objectives? Are students able to answer the essential questions and describe the big ideas? When a learning goal or objective is salient, it stands out. If you think of learning as a rubber band, growth (or the ability to hold more) will not take place if no stretch occurs. If too much stretch takes place, then the rubber band will snap. In a similar way, we need to think about the ways we challenge and motivate students. Students need the right balance of challenge and rigor to persist in learning.
- Providing options for sustaining effort and persistence also means heightening the salience of goals and objectives or making information stand out. One teacher I know wants students to understand the “Big Ideas” of the day. She devotes a blog to keep track of her daily essential questions.
- Providing timely feedback is another emphasis of this guideline. It’s important to communicate specific feedback to students. That’s why likert scale rubrics aren’t very effective. Rubrics that communicate specific information and help students improve are very important. Sites like Rubistar can help you create effective rubrics.
- The whole purpose of the Common Core Standards is to prepare students for their future. This means helping students develop into expert / life long learners. Self-regulation is an important component, which means that the students recognize themselves as learners and how to facilitate their own learning.
- Another part of this guideline emphasizes the need for students to have time for reflection. Common Core State Standards (CCSS) place a strong emphasis on writing, specifically bringing to light the three areas of research, reflection , and revision. In one of my classes, I have my students journalize their experiences in a weekly journal. They use this information to prepare an end of the course project. In the past, I have had them journalize using a Wiki or Word document. However, I am going to have my students begin journalizing on Penzu…a free online journal, where students can keep information private or share through a hyperlink.
- It also helps to have students be self-aware of themselves as a learner. I have my students use a tool that many fortune 500 companies use – called a SWOT analysis. It stands for Strengths – Weaknesses – Opportunities and Threats. I have students look at the internal and external factors that have an impact on their learning. It is very effective.