Universal Design for Learning

What Is Universal Design for Learning?

Universal Design for Learning is a set of principles for curriculum development and lesson planning that give all individuals equal opportunities to learn.

UDL focused on providing the learner with multiple means of Representation, multiple means of Action & Expression, and multiple means of Engagement.

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 and ability levels.

Why is UDL necessary?

Individuals bring a huge variety of skills, needs, and interests to learning. Neuroscience reveals that these differences are as varied and unique as our DNA or fingerprints. This is why we all learn differently from one another.

Three primary brain networks come into play:

Recognition Networks: The "what" of learning. How we gather facts and categorize what we see, hear, and read. Identifying letters, words, or an author's style are recognition tasks.

Strategic Networks: The "how" of learning. Planning and performing tasks. How we organize and express our ideas. Writing an essay or solving a math problem are strategic tasks.

Affective Networks: The "why" of learning. How learners get engaged and stay motivated. How they are challenged, excited, or interested. These are affective dimensions.

Presentation Link

http://prezi.com/zvehbf95tho8/universal-design-for-learning/

Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) Link

http://www.cast.org/learningtools/index.html

Video Clip

UDL at a Glance - A short YouTube video created by CAST illustrates the three principles of Universal Design for Learning.

UDL Guidelines

 UDL_Guidelines_v2 0-Organizer_0[1].pdf
http://www.udlcenter.org/sites/udlcenter.org/files/updateguidelines2_0.pdf

How are Universal Design for Learning & Differential Instruction are related?

Differentiated Instruction and the Three Universal Design for Learning Principles

The following section looks at the three UDL network appropriate teaching methods, recognition, strategic, and affective, in order to address the ways in which differentiated instruction coordinates with UDL theory. Differentiated instruction is designed to keep the learner in mind when specifying the instructional episode related to content, process and product.

Recognition Learning:  Content, Process & Product

The first UDL principle focuses on pattern recognition and the importance of providing multiple, flexible methods of presentation when teaching patterns—no single teaching methodology for pattern recognition will be satisfactory for every learner. The theory of differentiated instruction incorporates some guidelines that can help teachers to support critical elements of recognition learning in a flexible way and promote every student’s success. Each of the three key elements of differentiated instruction, content, process, and product, supports an important UDL Teaching Method.

The content guidelines for differentiated instruction support the first UDL Teaching Method for recognition networks, provide multiple examples, in that they encourage the use of several elements and materials to support instructional content. A teacher following this guideline might help students in a social studies class to understand the location of a state in the union by showing them a wall map or a globe, projecting a state map, or describing the location in words. Also, while preserving the essential content, a teacher could vary the difficulty of the material by presenting smaller or larger, simpler or more complex maps. For students with physical or cognitive disabilities, such a diversity of examples may be vital in order for them to access the pattern being taught. Other students may benefit from the same multiple examples by obtaining a perspective that they otherwise might not. In this way, a range of examples can help to ensure that each student’s recognition networks are able to identify the fundamental elements identifying a pattern.

This same use of varied content examples supports a second recommended practice in UDL methodology, provide multiple media and formats. A wide range of tools for presenting instructional content are available digitally, thus teachers may manipulate size, color contrasts, and other features to develop examples in multiple media and formats. These can be saved for future use and flexibly accessed by different students, depending on their needs and preferences.

The content guidelines of differentiated instruction also recommend that content elements of instruction be kept concept-focused and principle-driven. This practice is consistent with a third UDL Teaching Method for recognition, highlight critical features. By avoiding any focus on extensive facts or seductive details and reiterating the broad concepts, a goal of differentiated instruction, teachers are highlighting essential components, better supporting recognition.

The fourth UDL Teaching Method for recognition is to support background knowledge, and in this respect, the assessment step of the differentiated instruction learning cycle is instrumental. By evaluating student knowledge about a construct before designing instruction teachers can better support students’ knowledge base, scaffolding instruction in a very important way.

Strategic learning: Scaffolding

People find for themselves the most desirable method of learning strategies; therefore, teaching methodologies need to be varied. This kind of flexibility is key for teachers to help meet the needs of their diverse students, and this is reflected in the 4 UDL Teaching Methods. Differentiated instruction can support these teaching methods in valuable ways.

Differentiated instruction recognizes the need for students to receive flexible models of skilled performance, one of the four UDL Teaching Methods for strategic learning. As noted above, teachers implementing differentiated instruction are encouraged to demonstrate information and skills multiple times and at varying levels. As a result, learners enter the instructional episode with different approaches, knowledge, and strategies for learning.

When students are engaged in initial learning on novel tasks or skills, supported practice should be used to ensure success and eventual independence. Supported practice enables students to split up a complex skill into manageable components and fully master these components. Differentiated instruction promotes this teaching method by encouraging students to be active and responsible learners, and by asking teachers to respect individual differences and scaffold students as they move from initial learning to practiced, less supported skills mastery.

In order to successfully demonstrate the skills that they have learned, students need flexible opportunities for demonstrating skill. Differentiated instruction directly supports this UDL Teaching Method by reminding teachers to vary requirements and expectations for learning and expressing knowledge, including the degree of difficulty and the means of evaluation or scoring.

Affective Learning:  Learner Engagement

Differentiated instruction and UDL Teaching Methods bear another important point of convergence: recognition of the importance of engaging learners in instructional tasks. Supporting affective learning through flexible instruction is the third principle of UDL and an objective that differentiated instruction supports very effectively.

Differentiated instruction theory reinforces the importance of effective classroom management and reminds teachers of meeting the challenges of effective organizational and instructional practices. Engagement is a vital component of effective classroom management, organization, and instruction. Therefore teachers are encouraged to offer choices of tools, adjust the level of difficulty of the material, and provide varying levels of scaffolding to gain and maintain learner attention during the instructional episode. These practices bear much in common with UDL Teaching Methods for affective learning: offer choices of content and tools, provide adjustable levels of challenge, and offer a choice of learning context. By providing varying levels of scaffolding when differentiating instruction, students have access to varied learning contexts as well as choices about their learning environment.

(CAST.org/publications, 2010)