Inclusive Practices and Universal Design for Learning

When you label a student as less engaged in the classroom, what are some of the indicators of a lack of engagement that you consider? Is it their recreational use of technology during lectures, their body language, or something else? These days in a remote teaching environment, it might be students opting not to turn on cameras during a live lesson, missing multiple classes, or infrequently logging onto Blackboard for many days. It is easy to take it personally when students are not engaged in a course you have worked hard on, but a more productive response is to ask, “Why are they disengaged?” The answer may be different than we expect, especially with the many ways higher education norms mystify students.

Since we do not know who will come into our class in any given semester, it helps to create courses from a design perspective, particularly one that is flexible and accounts for students with varied interests, strengths, and motivations.

Universal Design for Learning (or UDL) is a way to “improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn” (CAST.org). This approach considers the why, what, and how of students’ learning while reducing the barriers students may face in achieving course outcomes. Learning during the pandemic exacerbated these barriers, which is why UDL is the foundation of a recent Chronicle article on six ways to be more inclusive in your virtual classroom. UDL doesn’t water down instructional expectations or standards; instead, it provides students access to opportunities to succeed.

Things to Do Now (or Soon)

Here are some first steps to consider in increasing access for a variety of students. They don’t need to be completed all at once. The authors of Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education, recommend a “plus one” approach, which promotes making one change, one time, forever. Consider where you can get the most benefit for your work and what parts of your course do students typically:

• ask questions about the content,

• get things wrong on tests and exams, or

• ask for alternative explanations?

They also recommend choosing your starting point by asking students themselves questions like: Where do you get stuck? What kind of options would increase your motivation and deepen your understanding? These are just some areas to consider as you think about making your course more available to all students:

• Provide early access to course content. Allowing students to look at least one week ahead in a course helps them plan for uncertain schedules.

• Record sessions. Recorded sessions not only support students who cannot attend live sessions, but also provide an opportunity for students to review specific parts as many times as needed.

• Turn on live captions. Google Meet, Google Slides, Zoom, and Microsoft PowerPoint have live captioning options. While not perfectly accurate, this visual reinforcement can help students who have difficulty understanding audio.

• Be flexible in assignment due dates, when possible. Do assignments need to be turned in within a date range, or is it crucial for students to turn in assignments on the day specified? Timelines help students scaffold their learning, so consider how to encourage timely submissions without drastic penalties for work submitted shortly after the due date.

• Encourage variety in discussion forum expression (text, video, audio). With increased online classes, we are all likely doing a lot of reading these days. Encourage students to respond in a variety of formats: sometimes students can articulate more complex thoughts in audio or video, and variety can help increase student motivation – in BbLearn a tool like VoiceThread does this well.

• Provide checklists or templates to help students focus on learning. When enrolled in multiple courses, students are not only learning concepts related to the discipline, but also how each instructor sets up their course, how different activities work, plus a litany of other processes. Checklists or assignment templates can help free up some of students’ cognitive load in order to focus on the important stuff.

• Link to the reading source (rather than uploading PDFs). PDFs can either be highly accessible or difficult to read depending on how they are produced (check out this handy PDF accessibility guide). Check the original web source for a PDF, whether a journal article or popular web piece, and link students to that web page. This tends to scale better. Providing both PDFs and weblinks are an added bonus.

• Share course documents in Google Docs or Word rather than just PDF. These editable formats more easily allow students to customize the appearance and annotate the document based on their needs (highlighting due dates, rearranging information, etc.). Additionally, Google Docs has a “make a copy” feature that enables students to make a copy of a document, which allows you to maintain a master copy while also allowing students to annotate their own copy.

• Find existing reinforcement resources (YouTube videos, visual guides). Many faculty are publicly sharing their teaching resources. When you recognize a pain point in the semester, note it for later exploration and see what the web offers. Sometimes an alternative explanation and example reinforces a concept in a way that helps it stick for students. Bb Ally provides alternatives for students to listen to text-based documents. Make these additional resources optional for students who feel like they need additional review.

Inclusive Practices Reject a Deficit Model

I hope this checklist provides a good starting point and sparks a deeper interest in UDL. I also hope you continue to explore UDL’s opportunities. When considering UDL from an inclusion lens, it’s important to note that UDL is more than a “one size fits all” mindset. As is often articulated by disability experts, designing for students who have been historically marginalized in higher education not only benefits these students, but all students, simply through implementing a better course design. UDL de-centers the value placed on a singular mode of engaging students, representing ideas, and measuring their learning. In other words, UDL should emphasize students’ differences and view them as an asset rather than as a tool for perceived deficits.