8 Unit : 8: Implementing UDL

After working on this unit, you are expected to be able to:

• Demonstrate an understanding of how to implement UDL
• Recognize UDL as an ongoing process and practice that requires regular reflection and iteration
• Design a syllabus that incorporates UDL principles
• Explain how learning goals can be used to guide course design
• Describe how the idea of “separating the means from the ends” applies to assessments

The decision to begin using a new framework to design courses and learning environments can be daunting. Having ideas for how to get started can help instructors avoid feeling overwhelmed. Knowing that changing or shifting just one or two practices or materials can help build momentum.

Watch the following video for tips on getting started with UDL:

Watch Video: https://youtu.be/_HHvRzemuHA

Video attribution: “Getting Started” by UDL on Campus is under a CC BY 3.0 Licence. Transcript is beneath the video on this page: Getting Started

Suggestions from the Field

 Here is some advice from post-secondary faculty for someone just starting to implement UDL in their classrooms or courses:

• Start with small steps and select a specific challenge or issue.
• You don’t need to start with sweeping changes all at once. Think about each lesson and make small changes.
• Start with tight learning goals for your students and then provide multiple ways for them to access content materials.
• Have students help drive the changes. Have them be partners in the learning. They can be a great help to understanding what they need to be more successful.
• Think about how each assignment can be influenced by the guidelines, provide multiple ways to access the information, multiple ways that students can demonstrate their understanding, and multiple ways to engage with the curriculum.
• Enlist the help of other faculty and talk with each other about your experiences implementing UDL.

• Listen to a podcast from Teaching in Higher Ed where Bonni Stachowiak, Ed.D speaks with Mark Hofer, Ph.D. about his experience in implementing UDL in his teaching: Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast Episode 058: Universal Design for Learning (38 minutes).

A process for getting started

Image description: The process for getting started with UDL is represented as a cyclical diagram. First, identify, then investigate, then teach, then reassess, then reflect, and then repeat.

Image attribution: “Process for Getting Started” by CAST based on Nelson (2014) is under a CC BY-SA 4.0 Licence.

Loui Lord Nelson (2014, p. 136) suggests a process that starts and ends with reflecting on the needs and desired outcomes of your students:

• Reflect on the needs of your students. “What are my students struggling with?”
• Identify a principle or checkpoint that addresses that need. “Howmight I use this checkpoint to meet the needs of my learners?”
• Investigate and create new methods or strategies. “What bringsthis principle or checkpoint to life?”
• Assess the new method or strategy. “In what ways did my students demonstrate knowledge or skills?”
• Reflect on how the new method or strategy worked. “How did the principle or checkpoint enhance my students’ outcomes?”

Thinking about Materials and Technology

 The following video explores ideas about using technology to create a richer learning environment and considerations for selecting materials and for student assessment.

Watch Video: https://youtu.be/Z777kK8lHDs

Video attribution: “UDL, Technology and Materials” by UDL on Campus is under a CC BY 3.0 Licence.

The learning experience becomes much more flexible and adaptable both when instructors can leverage technology to share course content in multiple modalities or formats that are accessible. Technology can also enable students to interact and engage with course content and course activities in multiple ways.

Often the syllabus gives students information on what to expect from the upcoming learning environment. The syllabus is an opportunity for each instructor to set the class climate, identify specific learning expectations, and discuss options and accessibility.

UDL Connection

• Provide Multiple Means of Engagement: Outline the learning goals and objectives, the relevance of the content, and any opportunities for choice within the course.
• Provide Multiple Means of Action and Expression: Use the syllabus to communicate regular routines to establish expectations, outline the timing and format of assessments, and offer resources for the management of information.
• Provide Multiple Means of Representation: Be explicit about the ways in which students can access content (e.g., textbook, slides, course website, videos) where to find background information and multiple examples.

About Developing a Syllabus

A syllabus designed based on the principles of UDL has the potential to provide additional access and participation in a course. This type of syllabus provides a variety of options for how information will be presented for the course, how students will be assessed, and ways to participate in the course as well as explicit expectations and available supports.

UDL works most efficiently in the design stage. The construction of a course syllabus is an ideal opportunity to implement UDL principles for all incoming learners, demonstrating that there are multiple paths for learning and achievement within the course. Instructors can use the syllabus, therefore, as a powerful way to communicate or model how they will implement UDL principles and guidelines in the classroom. At the most fundamental level, the syllabus document itself should be accessible.

Example Syllabus

Here is an overview of several major elements of a syllabus and the corresponding UDL considerations.

In addition to a syllabus, you might want to consider including a separate learning guide for each week or unit. This guide would outline the specific learning objectives for that week and how they relate to the assignments, specific due dates, and a detailed calendar.

1.  Instructor Introduction

Engage students by making this first introduction personal. Include a photo and a video to introduce yourself, the course, and your expectations.

If teaching online, add a video “tour” of critical features in the course including supports, communication, and progress monitoring.

Add several options for communication. This could also include social media that you may use professionally.

2.  Student Resources and Accommodations

Often accommodations are placed at the end of a syllabus. From a UDL perspective, consider placing information about support systems, including accessibility, at the top of your syllabus. This ensures that students see the support available and sets the tone that you want them to succeed.

3.  Course Description

Highlight the goal(s) of the course and include a note from the instructor about why the course material is relevant to students.

4.  Course Objectives

State in your syllabus that objectives will be connected directly to assignments each week to increase understanding of the purpose. These can be outlined further in a separate learning guide or on the course website.

Break up objectives by topic to help students see the structure of course material. You could also include a graphic organizer to display how the objectives relate to each other.

Include an objective that asks students to identify features of UDL within the course to increase awareness of their own learning preferences.

5.  Materials

Include a variety of materials, beyond printed text, to increase the options of representation and increase engagement. Invite students to contribute to the collection of the materials to increase ownership of the course. Be sure that any materials included in the course are accessible to all learners, including links to outside resources and tools.

• YouTube videos for extension activities
• Blogs
• Accessible slide presentations
• Accessible and downloadable PDFs
• Websites that feature real-world applications of content
• Podcasts with transcriptions

6.  Assignments and Assessments

Provide assignments and assessments that provide choices for physical actions, expression and communication, and executive functions. In planning assignments and assessments, consider possible barriers and construct irrelevant factors. We will discuss assessments in the next section.

7.  Timing and Scheduling

Dependable routines and expectations within the course help students plan and prioritize. Establish a schedule that explicitly states when assignments are routinely due and when students can expect to get feedback.

A syllabus may be the best place to address the general routine and cover any additional communications, such as the week-by-week content topics, the material to be covered, and how the assignments connect to the course objectives.

8.  Student Expectations and Responsibilities

Explain in detail expectations for learners at the beginning of the course and frequently throughout different points in the course.

In your introduction video, include an overview of your expectations and their responsibilities.

Learners at all stages benefit from being aware of their own goals and the goals instructors and institutions hold for them (Simon & Taylor, 2009). Learning goals, oriented towards growth, are shown to support course completion, persistence through challenging transitions, and change in deeply held conceptions (Yeager & Dweck, 2012; Ranellucci et al., 2013).

Consider how goals are articulated and communicated: goals that unnecessarily prescribe narrow means of achievement will inadvertently privilege, exclude, and under-engage learners (Meyer et al., 2014). Clear goals are the cornerstone of well-designed curricula, as only through clarification of what learners are expected to accomplish, and by when can instructors begin to consider which assessments, methods, and materials will be most effective.

In the UDL model, goals move beyond their traditional role in curriculum planning as mere content or performance markers. A UDL approach seeks to create clear learning goals and support the development of expert, lifelong learners that are strategic, resourceful, and motivated (Meyer et al., 2014). A UDL approach to effective learning goals in postsecondary settings consists of three key components:

• Separating the means from the ends
• Addressing variability in learning
• Providing UDL options in the materials, methods, and assessments

Separating the Means from the Ends

From a UDL perspective, goals and objectives should be attainable by different learners in different ways. In some instances, linking a goal with the means for achievement may be intentional; however, oftentimes, we unintentionally embed the means of achievement into a goal, thereby restricting the pathways students can take to meet it.

The solutions above illustrate that well-designed goals should make explicit the desired outcomes, rather than the means of achieving those outcomes. By focusing on the desired outcomes, instructors are able to maintain high expectations for students while opening multiple pathways towards achievement. This focus also capitalizes on the varied strengths of a wider range of students. Such support encourages persistence and content mastery that otherwise might be inadvertently deterred.

Goals need to be relevant to students. Especially at the postsecondary level — where there is a focus on functioning independently in professions or life after school. Educators must consider that “students will never use the knowledge they don’t care about, nor will they practice or apply skills they don’t find valuable” (Rose et al., 2006).

From cultural and linguistic proficiencies to unbridled enthusiasm for study, to desperate anxiety about the challenges ahead, students vary. Reducing cognitive, linguistic, executive, and affective barriers is of vital importance as students negotiate college and university expectations differently, according to their wide-ranging background experiences.

UDL Connection

• Provide Multiple Means of Engagement: Stimulate interest, motivation, and persistence in learning. Just as students learn more effectively when they are engaged and motivated, their performance on assessments can be enhanced by increasing engagement.
• Provide Multiple Means of Action and Expression: Offer different methods for students to demonstrate what they are learning such as through writing, multimedia, or demonstration.
• Provide Multiple Means of Representation: Consider the ways in which the items are presented (e.g., text, graphs, charts, images, videos, demonstrations, objects to manipulate) and if they create barriers for students.

Types of Assessment

The purpose of assessment in post-secondary courses varies. Assessments are often designed to gather student data that will yield information about accountability, student progress, and instruction.

• Accountability: Assessing student performance with respect to job preparation, prerequisites, and university or college program goals
• Student progress: Assessing changes in student performance over time as a result of instruction (assessment of learning)
• Instruction: Probing student responses to instruction in order to optimize the course of learning (assessment for learning)1

Assessment is used in courses to determine how well students are meeting goals that have been set (e.g., goals around job performance, goals around changes in knowledge). Measurable outcomes from assessments should be comparable with or benchmarked against set course goals. Assessment outcomes, in turn, should inform further instruction.

Assessing Variable Learners

Providing options in formative and summative assessments helps ensure that all learners can act on new information and demonstrate what they know.

For example, students with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) may have issues with working memory that would make long multiple-choice assessments challenging. If this is the only way students are assessed in a course, students with working memory challenges will have more demands and fewer benefits when it comes to assessment.

If writing long responses to text passages is the only option for assessment, students who are not native English speakers, like Yuki, will have more demands and fewer benefits, especially if they do not have access to aids such as a glossary or dictionary or if there is time pressure to respond.

In sum, greater attention must be paid to issues of learner variability in the design of assessments. Further, consideration needs to be given to embedded design features in digital assessments (such as text-to-speech capability, availability of keyword definitions, hints or coaching tips, etc.) so that assesments support students that vary in terms of their strengths, weaknesses, and learning needs.

Image description: A young East Asian woman with a shoulder bag and books under one arm.

Image attribution: Yuki by Andrew Fryer is under a CC BY 4.0 Licence.

Construct Relevance

Assessments are designed to measure knowledge, skills, and abilities. Constructs are the knowledge, skills, or abilities being measured by an assessment. By their nature, however, most assessments include features that are not relevant to the construct being assessed. Often the methods and materials used in assessments require additional skills and understanding. These are considered to construct irrelevant. Construct-irrelevant features of assessments may pose barriers for some students, preventing accurate measurement of the construct.

Minimizing construct-irrelevant factors does not lessen the rigor of an assessment but instead gives a more accurate picture of what learners are actually learning in terms of the knowledge, skills, and abilities identified in the course goals.

Having an accurate picture of student learning is particularly important for formative assessments, where results can be used to revise instruction as a course progresses. Minimizing construct-irrelevant factors helps to focus in on where students are actually struggling with content, skills, or abilities that the assessment is meant to measure.

It is important to consider construct relevance when creating assessments. For example:

• Supports can be provided to reduce the measurement of construct-irrelevant factors. In the example of a math assessment using word problems, providing a text-to-speech tool ensures that reading ability is not being measured in an assessment of content knowledge in mathematics.
• Students can be provided with options for how they demonstrate what they know, such as presenting a project either through an open-book essay or an oral presentation.
• When construct irrelevance cannot be avoided, such as when administering a standardized test that has not been designed with attention to constructing relevance, it is important that the instructor is aware of learners for whom there may be barriers and how it would impact their performance. The demands and benefits of any one form of assessment will differ depending upon who is taking it.

By providing supports and options around how to demonstrate knowledge, and by developing awareness of what barriers different forms of assessment create for different students, faculty can better distribute the demands and benefits of any one form of assessment among all learners.

UDL Principles and Assessment

In learning environments, individual variability is the norm, not the exception. Learners differ from one another, and an individual learner differs over time (students may be tired or hungry on a given day), depending on the task in front of them (students may be bored or feel over-challenged), and the context for the assignment (students may consider the material to be controversial or feel that the material is not relevant to them).

Three primary principles of UDL, which are based on research in the learning sciences, guide UDL. These principles can be helpful in thinking about the design of assessments.

Provide Multiple Means of Engagement

Providing multiple means of engagement (the why of learning) means supporting interest, motivation, and persistence. Just as students learn more effectively when they are engaged and motivated, their performance on assessments can be enhanced by increasing engagement.

It is important to consider construct relevance when creating assessments. For example:

• Do students think that they can be successful? Emphasizing the importance of effort and motivation and expressing confidence that students can meet high expectations can improve their performance.
• Do assessments provide different levels of challenge? One way to do this is to provide options on essay exams so that students can choose a question they feel they can answer well. Another way is to allow students to answer essay questions in different formats. Perhaps students could write a classic essay, create a short play, or create a video response. Once an instructor has addressed the question, “What do I really want the learner to learn?” (i.e., construct relevance) then the individual motivations and desires of learners and the time constraints of their instructors may be the only limits to the possibilities.
• Are different formats used for assessments over the course of a semester? As mentioned earlier, the demands and benefits of any one form of assessment will differ for each student. Therefore, the options and supports provided for the first two UDL principles (representation and action and expression) can enhance engagement in the assessment process.

Provide Multiple Means of Action and Expression

Providing multiple means of action and expression (the how of learning) means providing different ways for students to work with information and content and to demonstrate what they are learning.

In assessment, consider the ways in which students will demonstrate what they have learned.

• Will they need to write or draw?
• Will they demonstrate an action?
• Do they need to organize information mentally, or can something be provided to help them organize the information (e.g., concept mapping software)?

Again, consider which actions are actually relevant to the construct being measured and which ones can be supported or varied in order to gain an accurate picture of what each student has learned.

Provide Multiple Means of Representation

Providing multiple means of representation (the what of learning) means presenting information and content in different ways and making connections between them. When planning assessments, consider the ways in which the items are presented—text, graphs, charts, images, videos, demonstrations, objects to manipulate.

• Do the ways in which items are presented create barriers for any students?
• Are there alternatives that could be used that would still allow accurate assessment of what students should know or be able to do?
• Are the representations used construct relevant? For example, if students need to be able to interpret information in graph format, then the graph itself is relevant. If they only need to be able to use the information in the graph, consider providing different formats for displaying the information. Tables, charts, infographics, or even plain text may be a more accessible format for some students.

Remember, the goal is to find out what students are actually learning. Keep in mind basic accessibility requirements for images (including images of tables, charts, and graphs). Any text in an image needs to be readable by a computer or other assistive device that a student might need for access. All images should have alt text. Additionally, a long description is needed when an image is complex and cannot be described briefly.

Ongoing assessment is an essential part of any course. Learners vary in the ways in which they learn and can demonstrate what they are learning. Because of this variability, construct-irrelevant features in assessments can create barriers that prevent some learners from accurately demonstrating what they have learned. The principles of universal design for learning (UDL) can be applied to help identify and address construct-irrelevant barriers in assessments.

There are a few practical steps that can be taken by institutions to help ensure that digital content, online delivery systems, and technologies are accessible for students with disabilities:

1. Conduct an internal accessibility review of electronic and information technology, including websites, digital content, online delivery and learning management systems, classroom technology, and library databases and resources. Involve students, faculty, and staff in usability testing. Develop a proactive plan to fix any problems.
2. Make accessibility considerations a priority from the start and incorporate them into the acquisition and procurement process. Require vendors to submit a product Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) and be adamant about the need for VPAT accuracy. A VPAT is a document prepared by vendors that describes the extent to which a particular product is accessible.
3. Ensure the college or university in question has plans for providing alternate access for technology that must be purchased that is inaccessible. Consider developing an Equally Effective Alternate Access Plan (EEAAP) form.
4. Provide training for faculty, staff, and students about accessibility issues.
5. In making decisions about the purchase of new technology and materials, ask the following questions:

• What educational opportunities and benefits do the school provide through the use of technology?
• How will the technology provide these opportunities and benefits?
• Does the technology exist in a format that is accessible to individuals with disabilities?
• If the technology is not accessible, can it be modified, or is there a different technological device available, so that students with disabilities can obtain the educational opportunities and benefits afforded by it in a timely, equally effective, and equally integrated manner?

Getting started with using universal design for learning in course design can feel daunting. However, it’s good to remember that UDL is a practice rather than an end point. It’s perfectly fine to start small and take the time to figure out what is going to work best for your course. Also, it’s likely something that you will return to regularly based on feedback from your students. Reflection and the incorporation of student feedback are key components of UDL.

Your syllabus is a place where you can put principles of UDL into practice for students. It is also where you can communicate the design of the course and layout options and supports for students. Considering the learning goals of your course is key to being able to implement UDL. Having a clear idea of what the learning goals are can help you select appropriate learning materials and design flexible assessments. Clear learning goals also benefit students as they help provide clarity on what the course aims to accomplish.