COURSE DESIGN AND UDL
Conversation Kit #4
Course design is a series of intentional choices to create an engaging and challenging learning and teaching environment. As professional educators, we have a responsibility to create the best possible learning environments for our students, including attitudes, learning goals, assessments, methods, and materials.
In this section, we'll explore how you can integrate a UDL approach to course design to increase the accessibility and engagement of your courses without lowering academic standards.
LEARNING GOAL
Create intentional, informed, and iterative ways to plan for all learners using the UDL guidelines.
DISCUSS
As an educator, you need to create meaningful learning experiences for highly diverse learners while maintaining academic rigor, ministry guidelines, and other industry requirements.
As a learner, what has been one of your best learning experiences? What has been one of the worst? What elements made the impact each time?
What individual adjustments or retrofits are you most often asked for by students? Ie. Extended time lines, presentation materials ahead of class, to meet one on one to review a concept?
What strategies do you use to design for the widest group of learners while maintaining clear learning goals and high standards?
If you had unlimited time, what changes would you make to your course design? Why would those changes be important to you and learners?
READ
First, review the CAST website to explore the UDL guidelines. udlguidelines.cast.org
Next, review the Critical Elements of UDL in Instruction from the Universal Design for Learning Implementation Research Network (UDL IRN). They provide perspective for integrating UDL into your instructional planning.
Finally, explore examples about Universal Design for Learning in postsecondary on the website UDL on Campus.
Questions:
How do you already intentionally plan for each of these elements?
In what ways could you improve your planning?
What obstacles exist in the way of planning?
How could you address those obstacles? (Remember, iterative improvements!)
WATCH
UDL at a Glance, provides a brief overview of the thinking behind the UDL guidelines and introduces how the guidelines align with broad networks in the brain. It’s this alignment of teaching practices to learning sciences that makes it particularly useful to educators.
The UDL Guidelines have a clear and intentional structure. In this video, UDL Guidelines Structure, CAST neuroscientist David Rose explains how the guidelines support access and expert learning. Note - there is an updated representation of the guidelines.
In your teaching and planning, how do you intentionally use:
multiple means of engagement
multiple means of representation
multiple means of action and expression
What has been the impact on student learning and engagement?
DO
Improvements to instruction need to be iterative and sustainable. Pick a trouble point in one of your classes, an area that learners routinely have difficulty with, or an area that you routinely believe needs improvement. Consider the learning goal of that instruction, then use the UDL principles of multiple means or the Critical Elements of UDL in Instruction to plan a small change you can make in the next class.
Once you decide on a change, ask yourself:
Does it design, not retrofit?
Does it maintain the integrity of the learning goal?
Is it sustainable?
REFLECT AND EXTEND
What areas of UDL do you feel comfortable with? What areas do you want to learn more about?
What “quick wins” could you make to improve the accessibility and engagement of your course design using a UDL approach?
Teaching is usually a series of iterative improvements, not massive overhauls. Using your knowledge of learner variability and the UDL guidelines, what small changes could you make to your course design?