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Why Use Universal Design for Learning?

Luis Martos

Updated June 2, 2010

Transcript

In the early 1990's Ron Mace from NC State, stated " Universal design is the design of products and environments to be usable by all people to the greatest extent passible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design(Colorado State University, 2008).

EXAMPLES OF UNIVERSAL DESIGN

Ramps for wheel chairs
automatic doors
textured sidewalks or floors
braille writing on elevator buttons or ATM's
closed captioning

Principals

Educators and instructional designers adapted (UD) to develop UDL with its primary principals of

Provide multiple means of representation
Provide multiple means of expression
Provide multiple means of Engagement

REPRESENTATION

Students differ in ways they perceive and comprehend information

some have sensory disabilities, learning disabilities, language or cultural differences which cause learners to learn differently.

This also includes auditory & visual learners which learn better in their preferred methods than through text alone.

EXPRESSION

How do learners get to show their learning?

Some are artistic, or orators, or writers and some are abstract thinkers.

Should they all demonstrate their knowledge the same way?

Shoule they be given options?

ENGAGEMENT (WHY?)

How are students engaged in learning?

Are they motivated or disengaged?

Do they like spontaneity or routine?

HOW CAN WE USE IT?

Engagement

provide autonomy and choice
make activities socially relevant
connect to culture, gender, ethnicity or race
vary between group and individual work
checklists
rubrics
scaffolds
Take advantage of Personal interests

Representations

sizing of text or images
volume of sound/speech
color
contrast
closed captioning
animation or videos
talking books
primary language materials

Expression

assistive technologies
composing in multiple media
text
speech
drawings
manipulatives
music
multimedia
video
wordprocessors
speech to text

The central role of technology is to aid in guaranteeing accessibility to all learners, whether by making web sites accessible with text enlargement(zooming), volume control, text to speech, closed captioning for videos, talking books or ebooks, and visual of physical representation of objects (3D).

Impact

Potential impact on students' learning in our school.

By implementing UDL we would minimize the barriers to student learning. We can make the curriculum accessible to all learners by changing the "cookie cutter" method of curriculum to a flexible, individual learning style of curriculum.

Unfortunately some students become frustrated and discouraged when presented with curriculum the way that it stands now. UDL would enable educators to reach those learners and reel them in, instead of watching them fall through the cracks.

In my 2nd grade class I have students that comprehend content but have difficulty decoding. Using digitized books and tools such as eReader, students can have entire pages red to them and then they can try to read on their own. This would allow them to access the content while overcoming their lack of decoding skills(Howard,2004).

Brain Research

Brain Research has explained that the brain consists of primarily three networks

Affective networks assign emotional significance

What makes us excited or scared?
evaluate patterns
what is important to us

Personal

Cultural

language

The importance of technology only increases when we take brain research into consideration.

All the tools that exist today that we can use to reach all learners and take advantage of how the brain functions leave us no EXCUSES for leaving students out in the cold.

We can help them make all the connections necessary for meaningful learning to take place. We can remove the barriers that are holding them back from learning what they want to learn as well as what they should learn.

3 Cast Tools

UDL book Builder

http://bookbuilder.cast.org

The ability to create or use digital books to help the large numbers of students that do not read at their appropriate reading levels is an amzing tool that my school could benefit from.

The confidence level of students would increase and and content would be made available to all

Curriculum solutions finder

http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/tools/curriculumbarriers.cfm

This tools would be beneficial to all staff to aid in finding the barriers that exist in the curriculum or in lesson created by individual lessons and then providing solution examples that can be incorporated into the classroom for the benefit of all learners

Lesson Builder

http://lessonbuilder.cast.org/

After uncovering the barriers that exist in the curriculum and finding solutions, the next step is to create or find lessons that will make use of the solutions.

lesson builder does exactly that.

You can explore lessons that work as well as create and share lesson that you have created.

References

Colorado State University, 2008 retrieved from http://accessproject.colostate.edu/udl/documents/philosophy.cfm

Howard, K. L. (2004). Universal design for learning: Meeting the needs of all students. International Society for Technology in Education, 31(5), 26–29.

Retrieved from the ERIC database.

Rose, D., & Meyer, A. (2002). Teaching every student in the digital age: Universal design for learning. Retrieved from http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/