MSU Extension Organizational Development

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Universal Design for Learning, or UDL, is an approach to planning and teaching that really honors individual differences and learners so that they can all learn their best. Learners are diverse, not just in what they look like, but in their background and what they need to learn and how they learn and how they want to learn. And UDL accounts for all of this. It includes issues of accessibility, but it also goes beyond that. And UDL is actually based on neuroscience, which organizes our brain into three different parts. The part of the brain that's focused on engagement. The second being the part of the brain that's focused on representation. And the last part is a part of the brain that focuses on action and expression. Taking all three of those areas into account results in a more flexible curriculum that's accessible for everybody, but it's also diverse in terms of the goals of the curriculum, the methods used to reach those goals, and how the materials are presented. The main idea is that once again, like in backwards design, you start with the end in mind. You have to clearly know what you want to accomplish and then work backwards. And in working backwards, you want to anticipate what challenges learners are going to have in reaching the goal. And then you go back to those three neurological areas that inform UDL to think about how to solve them. So "Engagement" is looking at motivation and autonomy, and different learners differ in what motivates them and how they prioritize. They also differ in how autonomist they are. So not every learner is going to be motivated in the same way. One learner may love gamification or badges or awards, and another one might be motivated by chance to be creative and create something. Engagements really dealing with the why, why are the learners wanting to learn? Representation is about presenting the same information, the content in different ways. Some will want lectures, some might prefer reading, others like visuals. Some want to work on problems. And what you're presenting the information. Think about scaffolding. So scaffolding is kind of like the training wheels on a bike. It's what's helping the less experienced learners to be successful. So you want to scaffold the materials with things like extra background readings or glossaries for those that have less experience. Representation is really about the "what," it's about materials. "Action and expression" is about having a variety of assessments and a variety of activities so that learners can show how they're learning in different ways. So let them choose from different activities and tasks. And think about formative assessment. That could be something like writing a paper or it can be a short little quiz. It can be giving a presentation or creating something like a graphic or an image. Think about just different ways that can show what they learned and it's the same with with interaction. Interaction can be on different levels. Students can interact with each other like a group discussion. They can interact with the content, taking notes or transforming the content into another form. Or they can even interact with themselves through reflection and self assessment. It's the how the methods. In some UDL you want to think about different ways to motivate and engage, different ways to present the material and different ways that learners can interact with the material and express their learning. CAST is the organization that has created UDL. And to learn more about it, go ahead and check out their websites.