It\u2019s been ten months since Universal Design for Learning hit\nthe streets at KPU (at least in a formal sense whereby an individual with the\nrequisite skills, knowledge, and experience was hired as an Educational\nConsultant in UDL in the Teaching and Learning Commons). A lot of solid,\ninteresting work has already been done in workshops, in consultations, class\nvisits, and at conferences. And the pace is picking up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As I have had the privilege and fun of working with faculty\naround UDL, some myths about what UDL is and isn\u2019t have been bandied about. As\ninstructors come across new frameworks, they integrate that information with\nwhat they already know and how they currently practice. For instance, I have\nseen a number of Faculty delighted that they are already practicing some of the\nmain tenets of UDL and are happy to see their approach named. For other\ninstructors who struggle with accommodation plans, UDL is recognized as\nsupporting accessibility needs. And still others, who are thinking about\nchanges, perhaps to address diversity, Course renewal, struggles with\nengagement, or the Academic Plan, UDL can be perceived as an opportunity to\nrethink their practices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whether beginning or expanding engagement in UDL, some\nmisconceptions and misunderstandings have emerged. For this blog post, I want\nto spend some time dispelling three main myths about UDL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But before\nwe get to that, let\u2019s remind ourselves that UDL is a DESIGN framework. It is\nconcerned with how we intentionally design curriculum, courses, and activities.\nThe main features of UDL are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Given that UDL can represent a change in the way we think\nabout teaching and learning, it is unsurprising that some myths emerge. Below I\nhave fleshed out three key myths that are often heard about UDL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
MYTH 1: UDL is About\nAccessibility<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This might be considered a pseudo-myth. At its inception,\nUDL DID come about through the desire to design curriculum accessible to\nstudents who had been excluded from school and instruction due to learning\ndisabilities. The idea was to design activities to provide alternative ways of\ngetting to learning outcomes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As research into learning, motivation, metacognition, and\nsocial learning increased in earnest in the last fifty years, there was more\nand more reason to see that learning itself is nuanced and variable. The\n\u201cproblem\u201d was no longer that only 10% of kids were struggling to read; we\nstarted to see how different everyone <\/em>is\nin the way they learn. We have a powerful understanding that as instructors, we\ncan shape the intellectual, social, emotional, and physical aspects of the\nclassroom (Ambrose et al, 2010). We know that culture and experience play an\nenormous role in shaping minds and to ignore those cultural and experiential lenses\nmeans that you will probably run into difficulties with the way students engage\nin discussions, receive feedback, demonstrate dependence or independence in\nlearning, and engage in troubleshooting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So yes, UDL can be about accessibility and indeed it is the\nfirst step in the framework. Design so that you make sure students can\nparticipate, see, hear, pay attention, and maintain focus. Caption videos,\nprovide notetaking support, provide choices in the ways student express their\nlearning, learn to work with interpreters, understand what a braille computer\nis, become friends with your Accessibility Services people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once that is done though, UDL takes you on a deep, deep\ndive, past that initial access stage and into places where students can learn\nthrough authentic settings, assignments, and assessment. The UDL framework has\nthe ability to help you flesh out conceptual frameworks, conduct meaningful\nvocabulary study, engage in experimentation, and demands that you acknowledge\nthat culture, language, and experience not only play a role in learning, but\ngives learning its joy and its fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n MYTH 2: UDL is Just\nGood Teaching<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n What to make of this statement? What is teaching? What is\ngood? And importantly, what is JUST?* As I said before, when people are coming\ninto contact with new frameworks, their first impulse is to cast that framework\nin light of what they already might know. Cognitive efficiency at its finest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The term good<\/em> is\nhighly subjective, value laden, and political but overall, we can probably\nagree that the good teaching category is constituted by subject area passion,\nmodelling how to learn well, establishing personal relationships with students,\nknowing who the student is and what they care about, being a good communicator,\nand creating the conditions under which student acquire, retain and later\ngeneralize at least some of their knowledge. A tall order, and nothing just<\/em> about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n UDL is a design framework which means that it overlays\n(expands, enhances) good teaching with design thinking. As such, the UDL\nframework provides ways of understanding the learner, to define learning\nproblems (engagement, representation, and action and expression), to find\npathways of creating innovative solutions and to test and redesign. Assessment\nis a great example. Where we may be seeking a departure from exam\/essay\nassignment, we may not be able to think of any alternatives. Tradition might\ntell us that the rigor of papers and exams are good teaching. The UDL framework\nallows us to reevaluate our position and technique around assessment. Meyer,\nRose, and Gordon (2014) suggest UDLing assessment using five benchmarks.\nAssessments should be:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. ongoing<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. measure both product and process<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. are flexible, not fixed<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4. are construct relevant<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5. actively inform and involve learners<\/p>\n\n\n\n So while you may be engaging in good teaching because you\nare passionate, a good model, good at establishing relationships with students\netc., the UDL framework suggests that you look at how you are designing\nassessment and enable you to check in on whether your tests are flexible,\nconstruct relevant, and ongoing. Thus, UDL can be good teaching but I prefer to\nlook at it as complementing good teaching with good design thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n MYTH 3: UDL Means an\nOverhaul <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n If you have attended any of my workshops, read previous blog\nposts, or talked to me about UDL in the hallway, you\u2019ll know that I like to use\nUDL as a verb to underscore that it is a process, and one that is best\nundertaken by baby steps. Sure, UDL can be used in a redesign, but anyone in\nUDL implementation will tell you that UDL is best started small. Try it with an\nassignment or project. Apply it to group work. Try plunking in a formative\nassessment on student engagement or prior knowledge. How do you melt an iceberg\nwith a hairdryer? One small section at a time. Design thinking means that you\nanticipate your students and anticipate their need. It means getting feedback\nand experimenting and getting more feedback and trying again. Design work is\niterative. Build from small pieces to large pieces. If you\u2019re chomping at the\nbit and want to use a blowtorch for the iceberg, UDL can help guide program\nreview and course redesign but if it gets overwhelming, go back to those\nsmaller places where we are developing expert learners, designing for flexibility,\nand acknowledging and supporting the variation in learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And as always, if you find yourself confronting UDL myths,\nscared of an overhaul, or wishing to dive deeper than access, please reach out.\nI\u2019m always so happy to chat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n *I\u2019m a skeptic of the word just<\/em>. Just<\/em> is used by people who want you to do work but also want to make it seem like it\u2019s going to take ten minutes so you\u2019ll say yes when it will really take two weeks and an assistant that you don\u2019t have and a spreadsheet that you don\u2019t want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ambrose, S.A., Bridges, M.W., Lovett, M.C., Di Pietro, M.,\nNorman, M.K. (2010). How learning works: 7 research-based principles for smart\nteaching. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meyer, A., Rose, D.H., & Gordon, D. (2014). Universal\ndesign for learning: Theory and practice. Wakefield, MA: CAST.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s been ten months since Universal Design for Learning hit the streets at KPU (at least in a formal sense whereby an individual with the requisite skills, knowledge, and experience was hired as an Educational Consultant in UDL in the Teaching and Learning Commons). A lot of solid, interesting work has already been done in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","iawp_total_views":18,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-universal-design-for-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":429,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions\/429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}