What Every Instructor
Wants to Know About
Universal Design for Learning
Presented by Iowa Center for Assistive Technology
Education and Research
ICATER
Introduction Hi! I’m Jim Stachowiak,
Director of the Iowa Center for Assistive
Technology Education and Research,
or ICATER.
My job is to spread the word about how UDL
can make your instructional job more student
centered, effective and rewarding. There are a
few ideas you will learn about in the next hour
that will make you aware of how to anticipate
and plan to offer the greatest range of
accommodation for all; students with and
without disabilities.
Universal design is about access without
restriction for everyone. For example, we have
all seen how curb cuts make it easy to get
around town and campus.
Access is everything. We take for granted that
with the push of a button someone with
restricted mobility can easily enter a building.
But there is a lot more to universal design
than architectural improvements. When you
apply many of the same principles to
instruction it becomes UD for Learning or UDL
for short.
The idea is really pretty simple: Make things
accessible and usable for all. This deceptively
simple principle leads to some interesting and
very rewarding strategies for instructors who
want to make their courses more student
centered and productive for all.
There are just a few big ideas to learn about.
UDL can make your course a lot more
student centered.
x
Keeping text live is vital to making it available to
students the way they can best use it.
x
Doing it means looking at the classroom
environment and the content presentation.
x
Understanding and applying the principles of
Multiple Means of Representation, Expression
and Engagement.
1
2
Here’s the game plan:
In the second section we will show and tell you about
the principles of UDL and give examples.
x
3
In the third section we will talk about your classroom
environment, and why this is important and what others
have done to apply UDL principles.
x
4
In the fourth section we will talk about class presentation
and the content presentation, and how to get attention
and engagement making your course student centered
using a variety of pedagogical methods.
x
5
In the fifth section we will talk about digital text and how
to use it effectively.
x
6
In the sixth section we’ll discuss your course syllabus
and disability statement and the current situation at
Iowa.
7
x
In the seventh section we will direct you to resources
and cool technology you can incorporate into your
course development and where to find how-to guides for
making accessible files.
Section Two What is Universal Design for Learning?
After completing this part you will be able to define universal
design and universal design for learning (UDL) and give
examples of how you might implement its principles in your
courses.
x
So what is universal design? Universal Design (UD) is
defined as the design of products and environments to be
usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without
the need for adaptation or specialized design (The Center for
Universal Design, University of North Carolina 1997).
x
This concept implies that people with disabilities should be
able to use universally designed devices or environments
successfully without any modifications. People without
disabilities should also be able to access these devices or
environments normally, without being affected by the
accessibility design options.
x
For example, someone pushing a grocery cart can benefit
from an automatic door opener at a grocery store in the
same way someone in a wheelchair can.
UD concepts are not limited to physical barriers.
They also consist of utilizing a variety of sounds, colors,
texture, and other stimuli that help make signage and devices
accessible to people with sensory impairments.
You are already familiar with many examples of UD from curb
cuts and automatic doors to fire alarms that have visual
signals along with the traditional blaring klaxon and close
captioned videos. The increase in the power of these signals
to get attention leads us to an important principle that
connects Universal Design for Learning to UD.
Use multiple sensory modalities for the way you represent
the content of your courses, legitimize multiple ways for
students to express themselves, and affectively engage them
in multiple ways.
When used successfully, it provides rich supports for
learning and reduces barriers to the curriculum while
maintaining high achievement standards for all
students (CAST, 2006).
Students with physical, sensory, and cognitive/learning
disabilities, as well as language barriers, and behavioral or
emotional issues are becoming more prevalent in general
education classes. To reach all students, teachers need to be
able to create lessons that students can benefit from
regardless of their individual strengths or weaknesses.
UDL concepts help educators customize their curriculum and
adapt teaching styles to accommodate individual
differences and learning styles (CAST, 2006).
A successful UDL-based curriculum consists of three
key components.
Flexibility: A course that designed with UDL principles adds to
a person’s capability. Specific concepts and practices can be
applied as needed by each individual. This means the
instructor must be flexible, too, in order to convey the
importance of this idea in practice.
Easy and/or intuitive to learn: Any technology must be
relatively easy to set up and training should take a short
period of time. In other words, it should be well tested to
insure that it is usable.
Low physical effort: The environment should be efficient to
use and comfortable to use incurring a minimum of fatigue.
In addition to the physical space there is the
curriculum and the methods by which it is
delivered. It is important to understand that a
successful UDL-based curriculum consists of
the following components:
Multiple means of representation (written, picture, audio. etc.)
gives learners various ways of acquiring information and
knowledge.
Multiple means of expression (written, verbal, picture-based,
etc.) provides learners alternatives for demonstrating what
they know.
Multiple means of engagement (books, presentations,
simulations, field work, videos, etc.) taps into learners'
interests, challenges them appropriately, and motivates them
to learn.
ACTION
Think of a course in which you learned a lot. What factors do
you feel contributed to your learning? Tell us why that course
was effective.
Enter text for item 1 here.
Providing multiple means of information
representation, expression options, and
engagement allows teachers to reach students
regardless of their abilities.
Review what you’ve learned.
In school settings, information is typically provided through
verbal presentation and print. Students are expected to listen
and write answers in the form of worksheets, papers and
tests.
Give three examples of universal
design.
However, some students may have difficulty accessing
information or reading books because of:
Give an example of a means of
representation, of expression, or
engagement.
a visual impairment
a learning disability
a language barrier
a lack of attention span for reading
Other students may have difficulty writing answers to
questions due to a physical disability inhibiting their ability to
grasp a pencil, or move their hand to write. Students in these
situations would best be served in a UDL environment, where
accessible options are available.
Enter text for items 2 & 3 here.
Section Three Creating an Accessible
Physical Environment
After completing this section you will know
how to make your course student centered
and assess the accessibility of your
classroom environment.
Use these points to guide designing your course
with a single overarching goal in mind: Make your
instruction student centered. Let’s explore a few
ways to make your course more student centered.
Provide constructive feedback on assignments and assessments.
Ask for feedback on instruction.
Describe scaffolds to support learning, including technology to
enhance learning for all. Retire scaffolds to indicate mastery as
performance criteria is attained.
Describe teaching methods (pedagogy) that accommodate
multiple learning styles and abilities, experience and student
background.
Describe examples of multiple paths to all course goals and
methods (give an example).
Promote interaction among students and instructor consistent with
the principle of bringing the student into the field’s community of
practice.
Provide multiple ways for students to contact you such as email,
face-to-face, instant messaging, and phone calls. Doing this
means all students will have a method they are comfortable with to
work with you.
The Classroom Environment
No matter how student centered your course
is on paper, where it counts is the delivery.
Students will not be ready to learn if they are
unable to navigate the physical space.
Ask the following questions to evaluate whether your
assigned classroom is accessible.
Can every student get into the classroom? Are doors
accessible?
Can every student navigate the room? This means are
the aisles wide enough for wheelchairs, are the chairs
and tables, desks or lab benches height adjustable?
Does everyone have a choice of where to sit? In many
cases students with assisted mobility are consigned to a
part of the room that is not amenable to properly hear or
see what is going on.
Do you know the emergency plans helping students with
disabilities evacuate the room?
Can everyone see and hear the instructor?
Are the accessibility features on the AV equipment on?
Here’s an activity to do.
Think back to your most recent classroom and based on
what you have learned so far, tell us about one thing that
stands out as either inaccessible or an adaptation that
made the room highly accessible.
Review what you’ve learned.
Enter text for item 4 here.
Download The Physical Classroom Environment
Checklist.
You may Save it or Save and Print it to use as guide for
planning your classroom.
ACTION
Walk through your assigned classroom using the guide
as a checklist.
Why might a student in a wheelchair be
placed where they can neither see nor
hear what going on?
List three things you can do to make
your classroom accessible.
Enter text for items 5 & 6 here.
Section Four Applying UDL to the Class Presentation
After completing this section will have a good
idea of how to make your course student
centered using a variety of pedagogical methods.
Some of these ideas seem like a lot of work upfront.
Indeed, they do require thinking through your course in
new terms.
But it all comes together if you believe and practice the
idea of putting students at the center of your instruction.
There are four aspects to class products:
Learning Supports
Web/media Accessibility
Assignments
Assessment
Determining the Essentials
This is the most important part from
a teaching standpoint.
As each point is presented, take a moment to write in
your expectations for a student. Save your responses
and compare them to what you might write at the end of
the your first semester here at Iowa.
ACTION Enter text for item 7 here.
What is it that the students must be able to do by the end
of this course?
What must they know?
Why must they be able to do it or know it?
In what ways can the student demonstrate that he or she
knows the information and can do the task?
Learning Supports:
Lecture
Lecture is not going away, but bear in mind the cognitive
load some students face when they encounter unfamiliar
material and how you can help increase their
understanding of the content.
Provide a guide. Have notes available on the course
website in advance and make them accessible
documents.
Pause and ask for questions. This is effective if students
see you as truly considerate of all learners.
Incorporate natural scaffolds into the presentation.
Learning Supports:
Video
Videos are great when a showing sequence of actions. It
helps increase retention of concepts that are amenable to
visual presentation. Placing them on the course website
makes them available anytime.
Use captioned videos
Helps all types of students
Students with hearing impairments
Students with language barriers
Students in noisy rooms
Provide transcripts
Learning Supports:
Use pedagogical methods that enable students
to express themselves from their areas of strength.
Establish a dialog with you to find out how they might
best express themselves.
Discussions can be done live or online. Some people
prefer online and can demonstrate their ability and
knowledge without the social constraints that may inhibit
them otherwise.
Group work can be done in or out of class, in small or
larger groups, and as part of a problem solving approach.
Simulations are excellent ways to achieve a high level of
realism in which the experience approximates the
conditions found but scaffolded to control immersion and
develop competence. Simulations also are good for
incorporating fieldwork, lab work, and all forms of
multimedia.
Learning Supports:
For example let’s look at the benefits of
providing class notes. They are a scaffold that are very
useful for studying for tests and projects.
Providing them to everyone in the class benefits
everyone.
Provide a structure for the class (image of a road map).
Help students that have difficulty with organization.
Help students better prepare for class.
Help students locate and understand the important points
of class.
Learning Supports:
Presentation slides can be used for class notes.
They are very helpful if they are prepared
with an eye to accessibility.
Students can use them as a guide for notes.
Allows students to focus on class, not mechanical task of
writing notes, reducing the cognitive load.
Put online before class, save as a Word document to
enable access for screen readers.
Learning Supports:
The key is to match pedagogy to class products.
How does the field assess performance?
Write down what your field considers a valid index of knowing.
ACTION Enter text for item 8 here.
Offer opportunities to demonstrate learning.
Interactive materials engage students using multiple
sensory modalities.
Continuous feedback lets students know their status to
give you feedback on your instruction.
Performance rubrics enable students to plan what level of
performance they wish to attain.
Extend time for fieldwork or tests.
Will permit changes in the setting to facilitate
concentration free of distractions or desks inappropriate
for left-handers or for open book tests.
Scale fieldwork to realistic achievement levels for the
semester.
Make learning objectives criterion based and scaffolded
them to leverage prior learning.
Website accessibility
Your courses are posted on ICON so its
user interface will determine its usability.
If you have the skills to set up your own site,
consider using a template from CAST
or another organization that specializes in UDL.
Make sure the organization of material is clear and is
consistent with other course materials.
Make sure all pictures are accompanied by a alt text tag
with thorough description.
Link should be meaningful (ex. Class Notes not Click
Here)
UDL and Assignments
This is where your field will help you determine the
type of assignments you require. This section fall under
the principle of multiple means of expression.
What are the performance indexes used by the field?
Essays or critical reviews of the literature may offer some
students a more robust means of demonstrating their
knowledge than multiple choice.
Presentations may be multimedia, documentaries, videos
or audio recordings.
Group projects can be powerful ways to promote the
belief systems of a field if teamwork is common.
If possible, offer a choice.
Section Five Accessible Digital Text
When you have completed this section you will know
what digital text is and how it is vital to student
centeredness.
Digital text is a powerful idea.
It expands the course to places and times outside
classroom hours on the students’ terms but with full
accessibility.
Digital text represents a powerful general principle: Enter
once and use many times.
Live data means text can be used in many ways.It can be
used in Word files without redundant keyboarding. This is
very important for course documents.
Accessible to all means it is easily manipulated by
individual students.
If someone prefers to have it read to him or her a text-tospeech utility is very valuable. Live text can be
transformed into different media (sound files or animation,
or put to music, or used in many different ways).
It can be made larger, the color of the text and
background changed to improve contrast
Continued on next screen…
Digital text is dynamic.
Continued from previous screen.
Braille is vital to visually impaired who cannot see
conventional text.
It also means that if possible, choose a textbook that is
available in digital form.
Digital text accessibility means that the materials you put
on the course website must meet certain standards.
Inaccessible PDFs and Word files are as useful as faxes.
Digital text can be used in multimedia
as well as traditional print.
Multimedia presentations engage multiple sensory
modalities and can be accessed at anytime after the first
presentation. The following exercise will help make your
multimedia more accessible.
ACTION For each pair select the best option.
Enter your responses to items 9-16 here.
Which background is better?
Which is an example of good contrast?
How might you emphasize an important point?
(Remember some people cannot see color well.)
A
B
A
B
A
BBB
*
Which example shows sufficient font size?
Continued on next screen…
Too Big
To o Small
Digital text can be used in multimedia
as well as traditional print.
Multimedia presentations engage multiple sensory modalities and can be
accessed at anytime after the first presentation. The following exercise
will help make your multimedia more accessible.
ACTION For each pair select the best option.
A sans serif font is often a better choice for legibility.
Which slide has about the right amount of content?
Which provides the best description for a picture?
Digital text is the cornerstone of good
accessibility.
Review what you’ve learned.
Tell how you might change your course
materials to make them amenable to
different presentations.
Explain why the idea of keyboarding
text once and then leaving it ‘live’ is a
powerful aid to instruction.
Enter text for items 17 & 18 here.
Section Six Creating a UDL Syllabus
When you have completed this section you will
understand the important points of your course
syllabus, disability statement, and know some facts
about the present situation at Iowa.
Your syllabus represents you, your course,
and what you value.
Students use it in conjunction with the course website
as a guide for readings, assignments, links to notes, and discussion.
In it students will find all policy-related matters clearly described.
As a downloadable document it must be accessible as live text.
Typically the first contact students have with your class. It explains the
course objectives, requirements, your expectations, location of the class,
and schedule.
Must include a disability/accommodations statement. This signifies that
you are aware of how many students do not register their disability
increasing the need for universal design that benefits all.
Include institutions language to ensure consistency of representation of
policy.
Include personal values statement signifying to students your personal
conviction that your course is learning and student centered.
Provide information in at least two formats.
Clearly explain the goals of the class.
Provide multiple ways to contact you; office hours, phone and email.
Discuss the disability statement in the first class
meeting.
How does it signify importance to you.
Use it to speak to your acceptance of disability.
It indicates you are willing to work with all students that have difficulties.
Use it to begin building trust with your students.
Treat this more as an open invitation for discussion than a statement.
Collect a student information card.
What should be in this statement?
A statement of your appreciation for diversity.
An invitation for the student with the documented
disability to meet to discuss their needs.
Notification that the request must be made in a timely
manner.
A statement encouraging students to register with the
Student Disability Services Office.
The table shows tips for reaching all students
using a UDL syllabus.
Review what you’ve learned.
Explain how your syllabus represents
your values.
What roles does the syllabus play in
how students see you and the course?
Enter text for items 19 & 20 here.
Download a copy of the table.
Section Seven Technology and Resources at Iowa
We have collected a lot of resources and would like
you to take advantage of the materials we have
created for instructors.
An example of technology that can be used to create a
UDL environment is a scan and read program.
A scan and read program allows the teacher to provide a
written assignment to the class in a format that can be
accessed by all students.
Students without disabilities can simply read the
assignment while students who cannot comprehend the
written material (i.e. they may better understand audio
material) can scan the assignment into the computer and
have it read to them at a desired speed.
Other technologies such as programs that aid students
who struggle with spelling, need help organizing thoughts,
who have difficulty seeing written material, etc. are also
available to help teachers create UDL environments.
Three assistive technologies we use at Iowa
BrowseAloud
If your computer already has BrowseAloud, you can
hear this entire presentation.
The University has a site license for this text-tospeech program.
Contact IT Services to install it if the icon is not
displayed on your taskbar.
Three assistive technologies we use at Iowa
SmartPen
The SmartPen is an example of a note-taking tool. It
records what is spoken at the time you take a note. To
replay what was said that accompanies your notes,
merely tap the page with the pen and it plays it back.
Using the SmartPen, a student can more effectively
manage the cognitive load in a lecture–a big help for
students struggling with writing or who have ADHD.
Try this idea: Provide students with a SmartPen to
pass around so that for each lecture a different
student takes notes and posts them to the course
website. You will very quickly get an idea of how well
students are understanding the material before
midterms roll around. It also shows students that note
taking is a varied affair in which there is no single best
method.
Resources from ICATER
At ICATER we have compiled an edited list of great
resources to help you become expert at universal
design for learning. We encourage you to browse the
ICATER/Universal Access site. Our main URL is:
http://www.education.uiowa.edu/universalaccess/index.
htm
One of the resources we’ve created is a nine-part
video of our very own Noel Estrada-hernandez and
Jim Stochowiak showing and telling how Noel planned
and implemented UDL principles in one of his courses.
More resources from ICATER
Within the site there are more resources for specific
tasks such as creating accessible files:
http://www.education.uiowa.edu/universalaccess/tipsheet.htm and on that page are links to specific HowTo Guides: Making Accessible PDFs from scanned
documents
Creating an Accessible PDF from a Word File
Creating Accessible PDF Files with Form Fields
We also recommend these sites:
Adobe PDF www.adagreatlakes.org
Microsoft Word http://ctfd.sfsu.edu/accessibility-resources.htm
PowerPoint www.adagreatlakes.org
Flash www.adagreatlakes.org