Placing Universal Design For Learning At The Heart Of Instructional Design

The 2018 Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act defines UDL as “a scientifically valid framework for guiding educational practice that — (A) provides flexibility in the ways information is presented, in the ways students respond or demonstrate knowledge and skills, and in the ways students are engaged; and (B) reduces barriers in instruction, provides appropriate accommodations, supports, and challenges, and maintains high achievement expectations for all students, including students with disabilities and students who are limited English proficient.” The act calls upon states to prepare career and technical education teachers, faculty, specialized instructional support personnel, and paraprofessionals in the use of educational frameworks, including UDL, to effectively teach and provide accommodations for students from special populations, especially students with disabilities and English language learners.

The UDL guidelines, found on CAST’s website, are intended to support educators as they design flexible curricula that help all learners progress toward their learning goals (Meyer et al., 2014). According to Myere et al. (2014), the foundation of any effective curriculum is to establish clear learning goals. Only once these goals are established can we begin to consider the assessments, methods, and materials that will be most appropriate for the learning environment. Standards, on the other hand, highlight what is valued within a society and, therefore, what teachers must teach. In order to create clear learning goals, teachers will be able to identify the central purpose of a standard. This requires separating learning goals from the means to obtain them, then restating the goals in such a way that they can be approached through a UDL lens (Meyer et al., 2014). In essence, academic standards describe “what” students should learn, while the UDL framework supports educators in thinking about “how” lessons can be designed to minimize barriers (Rao & Meo, 2016). Additionally, Rao and Meo (2016) offer a process by which educators can use the UDL framework to design standards-based lessons that address the natural variability found in any classroom. This process has two parts: unwrapping the standard and applying the UDL guidelines during the lesson planning process.

Unwrapping A Standard

Rao and Meo (2016) explain that standards typically consist of two parts: what a student must be able to do (skills) and what students need to know (the concepts, knowledge, and background students will require). The skills are frequently represented by verbs within the language of a standard, while the concepts students must learn are more often represented by nouns or descriptive phrases. By breaking down a standard into its core components, teachers can better understand how to develop a lesson that addresses the skills and concepts students must learn.

Applying UDL to Lesson Components

In their 2016 article, Rao and Meo go on to explain how the UDL guidelines can be applied to reduce barriers in the four lesson components: the goals, assessments, methods, and materials.

• Goals: Clear goals help teachers articulate the objectives of each lesson and how the lesson will tie into the broader academic standard. In addition, having a clear goal in mind will help teachers to identify the potential barriers students might encounter. UDL can then be applied to the development of the methods and materials that will be used in the lesson to ensure all students can meet their learning goals.
• Assessments: Assessments help measure if students are advancing toward mastery of the skills and content related to learning goals. The UDL guidelines can be applied to both formative and summative assessments by offering options in how a student demonstrates their knowledge or by providing opportunities for mastery-oriented feedback throughout the learning process. In the case of preparing students for standardized tests, for example, Rao and Meo (2016) describe a process by which teachers can provide support and practice throughout a unit that will prepare students not only for the content of the test, but also for the specific formats they will encounter.
• Methods: The UDL framework provides a multitude of strategies that support students with flexible and engaging ways to work toward their learning goals. Rao and Meo (2016) suggest that teachers ask themselves what supports and scaffolds can be incorporated into instruction to help their students acquire the content and demonstrate their learning. Supports can include offering students options for comprehension-such as alternative formats or language supports–whereas scaffolds can be incremental supports that can be faded over time as students achieve mastery of concepts. The key is to provide options to support the perception, comprehension, processing, expression, and engagement of the range of learners in a classroom.

• Materials: When considering the materials for a lesson, teachers can incorporate both low-tech and high-tech resources, but it is important to align materials closely with the instructional strategies and supports that have been chosen. Furthermore, Rao and Meo (2016) encourage teachers to offer a range of materials and tools not only to the students who require accommodations, but to all the students in the class.

In this brief, Dr. Rao discusses the UDL framework as part of a design cycle that can help all educators – be they general or special education teachers – broaden their lessons to support all learners. At the heart of this process is recognizing the variability of your learners, be they individuals with disabilities, culturally and linguistically diverse students, or rural and remote teacher candidates, and then identifying the potential barriers to learning that might arise. Dr. Rao also discusses the ubiquity of assistive technologies in everyday devices and how these can be invoked to support all students by offering them choice and autonomy in their approach to learning.