Universal design for learning : enhancing student's involvement

What is Universal design for Learning (UDL)? The underlying idea is that lectures, exercises and evaluations are designed for maximum accessibility right from the start. UDL is an educational framework stating that students assimilate what they have learned in various ways. Therefore students' learning capacities and needs differ widely. Traditional teaching methods do not always take into account students' backgrounds and previous trainings. UDL offers a scientific framework to develop an inclusive learning environment that meets a wide range of needs, strengths, backgrounds and interests of current students. It offers a method to diminish barriers in the learning process without the need to find various solutions for the individual need of each separate student. Project UDL The policy Unit Diversity and Gender (Ghent University) offers its lecturers an UDL-coaching project. The aim is to get teachers from different faculties acquainted with the concept of UDL and to help them to apply the theory to their teaching and evaluation methods. In doing so, the policy unit wants to support teachers in their educational tasks and to bring them together to investigate how to make academic lectures more accessible and effective. The outcome is to enhance the involvement of all students. Together with the coaches, the lecturers will examine the way in which their study material is currently structured and how small adaptations can be made to reach a larger group of students. The participants of the coaching sessions will learn how exercises and lectures can grip and hold the students' attention. Although the project has a central theme, each participant will be able to give UDL a highly personal interpretation, depending on his or her needs and wishes. To guarantee this personal approach the group of participants is limited to 20. Participants come together with the project coach four times a year. During these meetings the principles of UDL are explained and the progress the teachers make is monitored. This coaching project enables lecturers to motivate a large amount of students with various backgrounds. They learn how to make small adjustments to their everyday teaching and evaluation practice. Moreover, by exchanging experiences and ideas about the principles of UDL we hope to bring about an enduring dynamic between the participants

Guidelines for designing middle-school transition using universal design for learning principles

Transition from primary (elementary) to secondary school can be both an exciting and daunting prospect for young adolescents. Ensuring that students quickly settle into their new secondary school environment is the goal of transition programs employed by schools. These programs typically comprise a number of discrete and interrelated initiatives that often commence in the year prior to the move and continue during the initial months in the new school. These activities generally include specific initiatives for both the students and their parents. The needs of both groups are many and varied. It is critical that whatever transition events and strategies are planned, the needs of all students and parents are catered for. In this paper the authors propose that the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) may provide a useful basis for the development of transition programs that address the needs of all participants. UDL is based on three principles which are; multiple means of engagement, multiple means of representation, and multiple means of action and expression. Examples outlining how these principles can be applied before, during and after transition are provided. The authors conclude with the proposition that research be conducted in a variety of cultural contexts and across countries to investigate whether transition programs based on UDL principles better enable schools to meet the needs of all transitioning students and their parents

YourMOOC4all: a MOOCs inclusive design and useful feedback research project

User feedback can be of great value for the development of guidelines to design MOOC platforms, courses, and open educational resources. Considering other learners’ experiences may benefit the development of course recommender systems that consider not only the quality of the content but also the level of accessibility to address disabled learners needs. In this paper a novel design for a recommender website is introduced which collects user feedback requests for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), offering the possibility to freely rate the taken courses following Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles. The development of this website, which is currently in a pilot process by UNED, will gather valuable information directly from the learners themselves to improve aspects such as the educational quality, accessibility, and usability of this open learning environment advising about the missing means regarding inclusive design

Contours of Inclusion: Inclusive Arts Teaching and Learning

The purpose of this publication is to share models and case examples of the process of inclusive arts curriculum design and evaluation. The first section explains the conceptual and curriculum frameworks that were used in the analysis and generation of the featured case studies (i.e. Understanding by Design, Differentiated Instruction, and Universal Design for Learning). Data for the cases studies was collected from three urban sites (i.e. Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Boston) and included participant observations, student and teacher interviews, curriculum documentation, digital documentation of student learning, and transcripts from discussion forum and teleconference discussions from a professional learning community.The initial case studies by Glass and Barnum use the curricular frameworks to analyze and understand what inclusive practices look like in two case studies of arts-in-education programs that included students with disabilities. The second set of precedent case studies by Kronenberg and Blair, and Jenkins and Agois Hurel uses the frameworks to explain their process of including students by providing flexible arts learning options to support student learning of content standards. Both sets of case studies illuminate curricular design decisions and instructional strategies that supported the active engagement and learning of students with disabilities in educational settings shared with their peers. The second set of cases also illustrate the reflective process of using frameworks like Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to guide curricular design, responsive instructional differentiation, and the use of the arts as a rich, meaningful, and engaging option to support learning. Appended are curriculum design and evaluation tools. (Individual chapters contain references.

Contours of Inclusion: Frameworks and Tools for Evaluating Arts in Education

This collection of essays explores various arts education-specific evaluation tools, as well as considers Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and the inclusion of people with disabilities in the design of evaluation instruments and strategies. Prominent evaluators Donna M. Mertens, Robert Horowitz, Dennie Palmer Wolf, and Gail Burnaford are contributors to this volume. The appendix includes the AEA Standards for Evaluation. (Contains 10 tables, 2 figures, 30 footnotes, and resources for additional reading.) This is a proceedings document from the 2007 VSA arts Research Symposium that preceded the American Evaluation Association's (AEA) annual meeting in Baltimore, MD

Inclusive Design in Assisted Instruction

Much instruction starts with abstract representations for which learners have insufficient foundation [1]. The British Standard, BS 7000-6:2005 Guide to Managing Inclusive Design, provides a comprehensive framework that can help all private enterprises, public sector and not-for-profit organizations, build a consistent approach to inclusive design into organizational culture as well as processes [2]. While courses, technology, and student services are typically designed for the narrow range of characteristics of the average student, the practice of universal design in education (UDE) considers people with a broad range of characteristics in the design of all educational products and environments [3]. This paper has been designed to provide an overview about the curriculum paradigm consisting in the fusion of the technology and the classroom instruction in economic higher education.information gap, concept map, active learning design, student-centred learning

Universal design for learning: what occupational therapy can contribute

As an occupational therapist supporting disabled students1 in higher education, I frequently came across barriers that impacted on students’ ability to succeed in university. I recognised that many issues were due to an inaccessible educational environment rather than impairment, that modifications for diverse learners supported all students and how my occupational therapy perspective could contribute to affecting institutional change through promoting and explaining universal design for learning. This article presents a perspective on how occupational therapy could contribute to universal design for learning (UDL), a specific educational application of universal design. It first explains the basic principles of UDL and then explores the contribution that occupational therapy could make to this area and how we could all benefit from it

Color Universal Design for Educators: An Instructional Design Research Project

Is it imperative that inclusive learning materials are created to ensure all students, whether in-person or in online learning environments, have access to a quality education. Creating visually inclusive learning materials for students with disabilities, in particular, students with colorblindness, will help with academic success. However, many educators are unaware of their students with colorblindness and few know how to create inclusive visual materials for them. Color Universal Design, a relatively new approach under the conceptual umbrella of Universal Design and Universal Design for Learning, can help. Therefore, the purpose of this research study was to create and evaluate the effectiveness of an online instructional module on Color Universal Design for post-secondary educators. This module aimed to increase awareness of students with colorblindness and teach Color Universal Design techniques. Disseminated to a sample population of post-secondary educators of the University of Hawai’i system, pre- and post-assessments were used to evaluate participants’ application mastery of the module’s content and to measure the overall instructional effectiveness. Color Universal Design can assist educators with steps to improve their visual materials, decrease learning barriers for their students with colorblindness, and enhance the experience of all their students