What is Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
The best one sentence description of what Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is comes from the cast website and states "UDL provides a blueprint for creating flexible goals, methods, materials, and assessments that accommodate learner differences" (www.cast.org).
UDL gets its roots from architecture. Ronald Mace who was an architect and wheelchair user started the Universal Design movement about 40 years ago. Universal Design was about designing buildings that were functional for a larger group of people without having to go through and retrofit. The term “Universal Design” (UD) was coined to reflect this approach of proactively incorporating inclusive design features while minimizing the need for individual, retrofitted accommodations (Center for Universal Design, 1997).
UDL principles help educators customize their teaching for individual differences in each of these three brain networks. A universally-designed curriculum offers the following:
- Multiple means of representation to give learners various ways of acquiring information and knowledge
- Multiple means of action and expression to provide learners alternatives for demonstrating what they know, and
- Multiple means of engagement to tap into learners' interests, challenge them appropriately, and motivate them to learn (www.cast.org)
The Access Project at Colorado State University has created a video that explains UDL and its best practices. The video is a quicktime file and can be viewed at http://accessproject.colostate.edu or by clicking the picture below.
Benefits of UDL
Most educators realize that students come with variying learning styles. What works for one student may not work for another. UDL delivers the content across multiple modalities which can increase a students access to the information being provided.
"UDL improves educational outcomes for ALL students by ensuring meaningful access to the curriculum and accurate skill and knowledge assessment" (www.advocacyinstitute.org).
Another great benefit to UDL is that in most cases it can help with the Accessibility requirements the some institutions are required to meet. For example, offering closed captions and a transcript with a video is a good UDL practice for learners that do better reading over listening and also meets 508 guidelines for delivering video.
How Do I Incorporate UDL Into My Teaching
UDL gives you the chance to greatly improve you effectivness as a teacher. There is a lot of liturature on the subject to help you get started using UDL. However the best way to learn UDL is to see how others are tackling their subject matter and recreating there lessons using UDL principles. On this page there are a few case stories from different grade levels. Colorado State University has created a website that offers free training modules and tutorials in UDl that covers creating documents and websites, through their AccessProject at
http://accessproject.colostate.edu/.
UDL Case Studies
UDL for Music
This first video is an excert of Dr. Sandra Yang's case story on UDL for music. The scene is Dr. Yang describing how she used the UDL approach to offer multi-modalities of learning to her students on her intervals lesson. It was part of the ELIXR grant. Her case story was highlited by CAST in February of 2009.
UDL For English Education
This video showcases Universal Design for Learning in English Education by Chingling Wo.
Other Case Stories
Other Resources
References
Merlot Elixr - Sharing Faculty Stories about Exemplary Teaching. Retrieved May 15, 2009, from elixr.merlot.org Web site: http://elixr.merlot.org
Universal Design for Learning - The ACCESS Project - Colorado State University. Retrieved May 15, 2009, from The ACCESS Project - Colorado State University Web site: http://accessproject.colostate.edu/
Comments (2)
Amanda said
at 4:28 pm on May 16, 2009
Hi,
Your grammar looks really good. I found one link under the ‘Benefits of UDL’ section that does not work. I tried to fix the link couple of times but I could not figure it out. I kept getting a pop up that said certain characters were not allowed in link, but I didn’t see any of those characters in the URL. The only other thing would be don’t forget to use APA to site all of the sources in a recourses section at the end of your Wikki.
Amanda
jrbeers@csupomona.edu said
at 4:24 pm on May 19, 2009
That one was actually an inline citation. Thank you for the other comments.
You don't have permission to comment on this page.