In this episode, Amalie and Camie discuss Universal Design for Learning, or UDL.

https://teaching.cornell.edu/teaching-resources/designing-your-course/universal-design-learning

https://teaching.uic.edu/resources/teaching-guides/inclusive-equity-minded-teaching-practices/universal-design-for-learning-udl/

https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/udl-equity/

Julie Dirksen Design for How People Learn

Accessibility Meme

Transcript

I explained it to them three times.

I don't know what more they want from me.

I can tell you what they.

Want from you. Well, let me explain.

It to you. It's UDL!

Welcome to the pedagogy toolkit. In this episode, Amy and Cami discussed Universal Design for learning or udl.

Following UDL helps make your course more accessible to students and allows them to interact fully with the course material, more access and more interaction means more learning and more support for your students.

So think about when someone is explaining something to you, they describe it and it kind of makes sense. I mean you get it and you know what they're talking about, but then they draw a diagram or a flow chart on a napkin, and it makes more sense and you totally get it.

But then you watch an action and wow, it makes sense. You have auditory, visual and experiential. This is U, DL and for me this brings to mind. Actually every time I have to explain my family tree to someone.

Because I always have to draw it. OK? And this is always preceded by them coming to a family event with me, so they know who.

People are right.

What does it bring to mind for you?

for me? I always think so. Every year. There's this one day that my Facebook memories pop up a picture of a napkin. Actually, where I drew a diagram of the offside rule in soccer.

I love soccer. I watch it all the time. My husband is not a sport person. He's like you're watching your sport ball again. Go, sport. I don't know. It's it's not his. His jam, so.

Occasionally, he'll start watching with me and he's he goes. I don't understand what that call was. I don't understand. And it was the offside rule. And so I.

Explained it to him. It's you know this, you've got your defenders here and your furthest offensive player can't be. So I'm explaining it and he's like, yeah, I I guess I get it, but I don't really get it. So anyway, and moves on.

So I took out a little napkin and I was like, no, I'm gonna. I'm gonna show you. And so I drew it. There's little X's and O's and little dotted lines for where the players are going. And he's like, OK, I think I see what you're saying sort of. And then.

He started actually watching the games with me and seeing what was happening as it was happening and I could talk him through it while he's watching it. Seeing it all happen and then.

He's like ohh I.

Get it? I get it now. And so my next step is to get him in the yard with a soccer ball and some of the neighbor kids.

And then he can truly experience it and know.

But that right there is.

Universal design for learning that is.

Teaching the same concept in a variety of different modalities so that your learner gets a better grasp of sort of a 360 view of what they need.

To know exactly.

Universal design for learning is an approach that helps eliminate learning barriers that can cause unequal access to opportunities for students.

Using those multiple modalities, having that same information presented in different ways really help students students overcome the barriers and.

It's considers all of the needs and abilities of all learners in your classroom.

So often when people think about universal design, they think about accessibility.

Yeah, and accessibility is so important. You and I. The other day you were talking about that mean that your friend sent you.

And it was.

Really great, because I feel like when we talk.

About accessibility or UDL.

A lot of times.

We won. Think UDL is just accessibility and it is not which we will explain further but accessibility also goes further than just let's make sure we have transcripts in our videos.

Right the the.

Image that Camie is talking about is a little is a picture of sort of all the different ways that.

People might need additional support with something and not even thinking of it as additional support. These are all the way we learn is sort of on a spectrum and everybody's learning things in different ways and in different contexts and in different spaces and need different.

Modalities at every point, accessibility is really important, but we forget that every student at every level needs some sort of accommodation.

Not necessarily, because you're hearing impaired.

But because.

You don't have time or the space to actually listen, and so it's a different kind of accessibility. Both are very important and UDL.

Encompasses both, but is not defined as just accessibility, so URL goes beyond that accessibility piece because it talks about and thinks through the why the what and the how on engagement representation and acts.

Then you may see action, sometimes called expression, when people.

Talk about udl as well.

So can you talk to me a little more about what engagement will encompass in?

Universal design? Yeah, absolutely. So we think through kind of engagement as.

How students are engaging with the course and learning material in general?

This is not just our students showing up.

Right. But it's rather our.

Students engaging with this in a.

Meaningful way that is useful.

To progress their learning is their motivation behind what they are doing right?

Is their motivation also, why are they engaging?

What are they engaging with and how are they engaging? So you think through like each section really matters. Sure. You know in online courses this is especially important.

Because if you're asynchronous.

Really, this is the students interaction with the course. Other than emailing you, which may happen sometimes too, it's.

Are they interacting with the materials you've put in to help prepare them? For those you know, whether it's that you're discussion board or whether you have a?

Different activity for students or, you know, a paper project, whatever it is that they've got to do that action, you want them to be able to engage with things.

Prior to that and you.

Accessible and open to every single student in a way that is meaningful to them that is representative of their needs.

Representative of the identities.

Of your students in the classroom.

So that they're able to fully engage with that material and understand it, you know, you talked earlier about multiple modalities, the same info.

Information. So when you have the information presented in multiple ways, students are able to better engage, they get that topic. You know that knowledge that you're wanting them to get from a different perspective because of that sometimes.

When I think.

The the engagement, that's where the line between there's there's being present.

And then there's engaging.

And those are. I had a conversation the other day where.

I was making the point that conversation is give and take. Talking is not necessarily conversation, right, that there's a difference and the other person I was talking to kept saying, but I have a conversation with someone. If I go ask them for directions. No, you're asking a question. You're having a dialogue or you're having a you're talking.

Every dialog.

To them.

You are soliciting information, but you are not having a give and take of information and that's, I think, similarly, your students can come and sit in your class or open up your your course online.

And they can see it and they can be there. But are they? Is there a give and take with that information? Are they bringing what they know to the plate? Are they taking from it what you're giving them? Exactly and that's.

What you're wanting to see with that engagement piece and why?

You want to bring in multiple modalities. Why you want to get to know who your students are at the beginning of the semester or term.

So that you can meet those needs so that you can present information to them.

For the.

In a way that they.

Are able and excited to engage.

With and when we talk about modalities, it's probably good to make the point that most of us have been told, oh, I'm a visual learner or I'm an auditory learner. I'm a kinesthetic learner. I'm a this kind of.

Learner, I'm a that kind of we.

Are all all of those kinds of learners?

Yes, the the.

Idea that we are only one type of learner is really not true. All of us learn in all of these ways, and the more access that we can get to different ways, the more we learn about that topic. Just like all we was talking about with explaining.

Offsides to her husband. You know when she explained it to him verbally. And then she drew it on the napkin and he saw it kind of flat and then he.

Went, you know, and watched the soccer game and saw how they were doing it and so.

The last thing that Amalie said was that she, you know, her next step is to get him.

Out of the.

Yard the soccer ball.

That he can actionably have the experience.

Of of offsides, of knowing what that feels like on a.

Field thing to point out too is that each one of those isolated doesn't do enough.

Right. Because just what cause he started off just watching it with me and going, why are why did they blow the whistle there? And so it wasn't just seeing, it wasn't enough.

But if I had just handed him the picture without any explanation, that wouldn't have been enough.

Just explaining it wasn't none of those things all together are all together. They are enough separately. They are not the.

Right. And if you threw him out in the yard with a soccer ball?

In the.

That's still wouldn't it wouldn't be enough, cause you still wouldn't know what.

Was going on.

That's well and there's a there was a a writer and Julie Dirkson who talks in one of her books. She I think it was teaching Julie Dirks.

Look that up.

And put a link to it in the show notes because it's fantastic.

She talks about how everyone is a visual learner.

And if you aren't using visual.

Tools. You are leaving things on the table. You are. You're not taking advantage of another way that your students could learn something or learn another part of something or learn another aspect of something.

I'm a huge fan of graphics.

You know, illustrations all of that, because for me, when I see it, you know it, it comes to life.

Sure. And and and that's also true sometimes when I'm listening, because I'll make a connection to something else.

And so it you know.

We're all all of.

The learners, and so it's important to put all of the things in there because it's just another experience for your students so that they get a deeper understanding of the.

Now that said, you are still going to have students who are perhaps more driven by having higher engagement.

They're the students.

Who need to know the motivation?

To get over there, they are going to do better if you give them that motivation upfront.

Or they just they need to know the information they need, the representation they need to know the information, and they're going to latch on to that more quickly than they will latch on to. The motivation. They're not concerned as much about why they're concerned with.

And then you have the students that need to to see it in action to to do it, and that's more, they still need all three of those parts, but they're maybe going to be more internally driven to learn.

Right.

In those three categories.

Right and and Udl doesn't think about it in terms anymore of the what type of learner are you or you know even how are you driven to do these things. But in each category that engagement representation?

And action.

They actually have. Think of it in terms of engagement because you want purposeful and motivated learners, right? You want to be purposeful. You want your students to be motivated to come in the representation.

Resourceful and knowledgeable learners. And so that's really where you're giving them.

What they need to dig into the resources.

Yes, you are providing resources but but more than that you're giving them the tools to dig into the resources so that it.

Again, open. They're engaged. They're motivated to dig into them, and then the action, strategic and goal oriented learners, you want all of your students.

To be all.

Of these things, you want them to be purposeful and motivated, resourceful and knowledgeable, strategic goal oriented because.

Right.

That's kind of how you progress in learning. That's how you move yourself along.

And there are also. Those are also those 3 categories are addressed in three separate areas of the brain. Yeah. So when you can tap into all three of those, you are. It's a more of a whole brain activity than just one.

And the the you you learn better, you retain better if you can. If your brain is making connections between the various areas of the brain, you have better learning.

And so this this taps into all of those, you get more whole brain kind of approach. So let's talk about.

How we can?

Use DL in the classroom or in the online class. We all know that these students are going to come to our classes with different experiences, different ideas, different perceptions.

Different, different, you know, base experiences that may have affected how they view information, how they want to process information, how they feel capable of process, the the students who did not do well in math are going to come going. I'm.

Just not a math person.

Or I'm just I. I don't like to read.

Right. And I do like to tap into growth mindset at those points and say.

You're not a math person yet.

You don't like to read yet.

But these are skill.

That we develop right that we can develop and all of us have the capacity to do so.

And Udl is a great way to.

Approach that approach the.

Growth mindset with students and kind of.

Experientially, let them know that.

They are a math person. They do like to read. They just maybe haven't tried the right combos yet.

Or they maybe only seen it presented to them in one.

Way and I'm I don't want to pick.

On math, but I see it.

A lot in math.

Where it has been.

Taught this one way and that's how everybody who and people who become math teachers, they were good at math. They like math. That's their. That's their jam. That's their math.

They understand it, and so it then gets presented in the same way, but you take those students and show them how so right before this podcast, we were having a conversation about how I had a student years ago who did a math project where he created a ghillie suit. And if you don't know what a Gilly suit is, look it up.

GHILOY it's it's basically makes you look like a swamp thing, hiding in the bushes.

He made it.

From scratch by hand, he wove the the strands together. He recruited his classmates to help him weave it together, but it was a he was not a math.

He was not a math inclined student, but I could hear him explaining the math of how he was figuring out how much yarn he needed, how many you know, how close things needed to be together, how to space all of that out, how to the proportions. And he was using math. And so when you can give students another entry.

Point into the things that you're teaching them. That's what you're you're just giving another entry point. You're not teaching anything different. You're not teaching anything else, you're just you're opening a different door. You can come in the side door or the front door or the other front door. You can go upstairs. There's like.

All these different entrances to a house, there's no reason to restrict it to 1.

One doorway.

Right. I mean you and and that's the point that's the part of the representation. You know, people perceive information in different ways. And so that means they're going to receive it different ways.

And then express it in different ways there.

It's it's all of these.

Things and so because people come from these different backgrounds and they have different ways, they're motivated.

Or they have.

I'm going to say misconceptions even about themselves based on their past experience.

It's really great when you can dive into. Let's add this.

Information in multiple ways so that students can engage with it and they can receive it how they need that expression. You know you've got representation in there and then.

They're able to act on that in multiple ways, so you don't just have your, you know, regular. Here's your midterm multiple choice exam and that's it. You have written assignments. You have project based assignments. You, you know, you might have some.

Low stakes quiz.

Because we we love our low stakes.

Quizzes. You might have graphic organizers.

Yes, this gets back.

To a lot of our alternative assessments too.

Is thinking about different ways that they can demonstrate to you that they have learned the concept or learned the skill and and allowing them to tap into the engagement, representation and action for themselves.

Maybe you've got students that are going into a very, you know, heavily academic career and they need to be able to write articles, journal articles. That's what they need to be able to do. And for them, it's going to be more.

Pull for them to write an academic paper at the end of your course because that is purposeful for them, for their path. But then for some students, they may need to express the same information, but they are going into marketing. Being able to do a live presentation for the client is going to be a more.

Beneficial. So if they can do hone their presentation skills in that, you're giving them an option to say this is what will motivate me. This is what will have purpose. For me, this is what will build my knowledge and is more representative of what I need.

And and then be able to act.

On it, right?

And so you kind of choose the acceptable evidence that you believe is appropriate for meeting your course outcomes, and then students have a choice in how they are giving you that acceptable evidence.

That leaves things open for feedback not only from you, but also from students you know. So it's a two way St. when you open yourself up to giving students choice, giving them variety, and presenting information in multiple modalities.

So that students understand it from different perspectives.

I've always also found that if you're giving them choice.

The the mere act.

Of watching how they choose something.

And how they execute that choice, it can tell you a lot about.

Whether they have truly learned what you've.

Been wanting to teach them.

I mean, if you give them the opportunity to.

Do a presentation.

And maybe you don't explicitly say this kind of a PowerPoint presentation. A Prezi presentation, a live video presentation, an animated presentation. You don't give them those restrictions, you tell them it's a visual presentation. It has to have. You know, these visual elements.

Depending on which one of those they choose, it may be.

More fitting to.

What you have been teaching and it.

Might demonstrate a little more of that metacognition.

Of of the.

You can see if they are learning what you're needing them.

To learn, yeah, absolutely.

It's kind of weird how much.

More we open ourselves to when we let go a little bit of the control that we put into our courses, so much more fun it is. I got. I mean, I was teaching and I know we go back to English examples a lot, but I was teaching English and I was reading.

The same essay.

Every time and that and I started to realize that didn't actually tell me if these students were learning what.

I needed them to learn, but I needed them to learn how to summarize or I needed them to learn how to synthesize.

It wasn't as much about can they write me a paper that is synthesizing these two same articles that everybody else is synthesizing. If I can allow them to. I started with just allowing them.

To choose their articles.

That alone made a huge difference.

Allowing them to choose how they showed me synthesis.

And when I had a student, I may have talked about this one before, but I I and when I had a student that did, he used a lot of samples of music. He wrote music and used samples in his music.

And he was synthesizing literally this music and then was able to talk to me about how he made those choices. The fact that he chose that to demonstrate.

The skill of synthesis showed me that he truly understood what synthesis was, and it was a lot more entertaining than reading one more paper about the.

Same article that everybody else was was writing.

And and we've talked about using rubrics before.

But this is an excellent time if you want to give students choice, you can make a single rubric.

That shows you how you are grading all of these different projects, so you don't have to be overwhelmed with how to assess.

You are not creating 10 different rubrics with 10 different assignment sheets and 10 different. Just create the one rubric that's you know, like you said, that visual presentation of whatever this is, it needs to include XY and Z in order to do that. Is the content appropriate? As you know, are you using the appropriate?

And add those in and and just have it be student choice. Here's this one assignment with this one rubric, and you put in your choice in this one place.

So you're not chasing things all over your course. It can get really crazy. I think sometimes when you think about approaching something like adding variety.

Right.

It doesn't have to be complicated and you can do, you know like if like always said, she started out just here's choosing your articles and when she got comfortable with that, then she said, OK, Now, now you can choose how. Yeah, you choose your modality of how you show me this skill that I need you to know.

Not at all.

And so.

You know, work your way up to where to where you feel comfortable, but but also know that it doesn't have to be a big complicated thing either and.

Or your asynchronous online courses. Instructional designers can help you design that so that it's easy for you and and not overwhelming. And then also for the students, it not only gives them choice, but is it very easy to use.

The thing that I.

Love about using the rubrics in in doing this is that it?

It strips it down.

So talking about it's, it doesn't have to be complicated. In fact, it's best if it's not complicated.

If you can.

Strip it down to the the specific things you are looking to assess.

So you are assessing.

Their presentation skills.

You're not. That's what you can focus on. You're assessing their ability to do this skill, this one skill, and.

How do they?

How do they tackle that one skill you're not having to look at the whole project, you're not doing this holistic grading process where you have to. Oh my God, how many times have I heard an an instructor say?

I mean, I read.

It and it just it felt like a C.

I've heard that so many times not here and not with our current faculty, but over the years I have worked with.

Teachers who would go.

Well, I read it. It's clearly AC paper.

But why point it to me? Show me what's the C about it?

Well, and you if you can't articulate that, then you really can't give students feedback so that they can.

Improve. Expect your students to have done what you were asking. If you weren't able to articulate it yourself in.

The first place, right?

And then maybe that's not even what you were actually looking for. Maybe you realize that that's.

That what you've been teaching and.

That that helps your.

Alignment, right? And so really thinking through what you're asking students to do, and rubrics really help to articulate that and and. And here's the thing, once you have this kind of the action piece.

Of your udl.

That's actually when I like to go back and think about the representation piece. I like to think about the action piece first. After you know you have your outcomes, what is the acceptable evidence for those?

And then I go back and I think about the representation. So what are the resources and knowledge I need my students to have and be able to engage with in order to really, yeah. And in order to really get this going to so they can be ready to create that acceptable evidence, rubrics are a big help in creating those resources.

And that representation piece, because that's when you go.

Oh, these are things they're going to be created on. To what pieces of information do I need to be able to give them and?

With representation, who are my students? How can I bring diverse perspectives and voices to this?

Information that I'm giving them to this, you know, skills and knowledge that they need to have.

So adding an interview with someone in the field who's presently in the field, on a theory that you're talking about.

You know, maybe where they're.

Talking about the theory or the topic, and they've used the theory to explain it.

Finding those different pieces can really help to bring to life.

Even if you're using a textbook chapter as your base.

So let's say you start with a textbook.

Chapter how do you bring that to life with?

Interviews or Ted talks or practice?

Things sometimes you can do, like whether it's drag.

And drop or.

You've got a fun little game thing in there that's not necessarily graded. It doesn't have to be graded, but you're adding in a piece that they can work with. You add in a list of websites that they can visit to explore more.

It's opening up more doors. It's opening up more closets, it's looking inside things, it's.

It's giving them.

All these different sort of entry points to that same information that's in the textbook, right? But it can seem, I think, very locked away for students when it's just.

In a textbook.

Yes. And of course, you know, one of my favorite ways is listening to a podcast, so.

Yes, I mean you know like.

The pedagogy toolkit.

Yeah. So I I really think that being able to add in these things starting with your.

Action. Once you've established your course outcomes, starting with the action, the.

Pieces that you know students need to bring as acceptable evidence of their learning. Then you go back to that representation and you find the.

Things that students need to know, but you do it in a way that's really meaningful and purposeful. You're trying to make them knowledgeable.

About this topic.

Not just let them read through the first foundation, right? You want them to explore? You want them to open those closet doors. Yeah. And then.

I think through the engagement piece.

OK, I've got all this stuff.

How do I make this flow together for students one so that it's easy to use for them?

But also manageable and we've talked a little bit about this in the past, but chunking we talked about micro topic lectures, you know just picking a very short topic where you can where you are focusing.

About 5 or 10 minutes on one topic and then have an activity or another resource for students to dive into on that topic and then add your second micro topic video you know, so you're kind of chunking.

By relevant information so students can dive in and explore each section.

And build those manageable pieces and it's something I think we talked about it the other day that if you've got a.

30 minute lecture and one hour lecture and they get to the.

End of that and go.

OK, now I have to answer these questions and I don't remember anything that happened.

What were they talking about at the beginning? But you can when you can chunk it.

That way it's.

It allows them to focus more explicitly on.

Those finer points?

Of the topic.

Well, Anne.

If you're a working parent or working caregiver.

Of any kind because.

We also have students who.

Are caregivers for their parents?

We also have people who may be working 3 jobs and it their first generation college students and so chunking it that way allows them to say, OK, I have 25 minutes, you know, for my lunch break, I'm going to spend that 25 minutes.

You know, eating, of course, but also on this one topic. So it's really easy for them to pick that up and then they can think through that one.

Topic before the next period of time when they can come.

Back and get the next one.

Yeah, that I will I.

Took some training in my.

Previous life it the training will remain nameless.

But it was.

It was supposed to be this very specific sort of micro topic micro training, but they gave us an hour and a half long.

Lecture with no breaks in it.

To watch.

You couldn't change the speed forward, you couldn't do anything and it was one of the I had to block out and you had to pass the quiz at the end of it. And like, I have to block out an hour and a half to watch this.

Block out the time stick and if I have to start over, I'm not gonna be happy. I'm gonna. I have to take notes now, which is fine, but I'm going to lose my.

Place, but it was it was.

I have to be honest.

I can no longer focus for an hour and.

No, I don't watch movies anymore.

I wish movie theaters would bring back the intermissions.

I not only.

I need a refill.

Yes, and I.

Need to go to the bathroom and there's A at home. I not only subscribe to the cheapest option of Hulu with AD supported.

Things because it's cheaper on my budget. I also do it because I enjoy the breaks because I can get up in the middle of a show and go do something. I don't know why I don't just pause it. No, my brain doesn't work that way. I feel like I can't pause it. I'll be ruining it. But a break is fine. You know, if I've got 2.

And a half minutes on my commercial.

And you can click and you can see when the next commercial is coming. You can plan out. OK, so when the next?

Commercial comes. I'll go.

Do that get.

I'll get up my.

Popcorn. You know you can plan? Yes. Exactly. And so.

We need that in our learning as well.

Well, I mean, and I know my my.

Husband hates ads on, like he hates watching who because of the ads because he hates them because he will just watch it straight through. So this is one of those cases where we are.

Two very different we take in information in two very different ways.

Yes, and your learners are all going to be like that and.

It's not just going to be two ways.

It's going to be 42.

Ways and so.

The more you can build those frameworks around it that encompass the things you need it to encompass, but with the freedom for them to wander around in those frameworks, that's UDO, that's udo.

That and that leads to more success, because they're going to be more motivated to be engaged because it's not a hardship on them to watch your lecture video or, you know, to sit through an hour and a half training somebody to.

Have to grit their.

Teeth to do that and and hate their life for that.

And I did.

I hated my life for that hour and a half because.

It wasn't even good. Yeah, so URL is just a way to think through your course and really to think about.

What you're doing, what your students.

Need how they are.

Receiving and taking in your information that you're giving them and also how they are bringing back and doing something with your information, right.

It's really about giving students the flexibility and access that they need to engage with your course and demonstrate the mastery.

Thanks so much for joining us this week on the Pedagogy toolkit. Don't forget to subscribe.