As a teacher, you might benefit from implementing Universal Design for Learning into your usual lessons, which helps accommodate the entire classroom.
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Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
As a teacher, you might benefit from implementing Universal Design for Learning into your usual lessons, which helps accommodate the entire classroom.
The term ‘universal’ could suggest a broad approach that teaches everybody the same way, but UDL is instead a method of educating the class using the techniques that work best for them.
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What is Universal Design for Learning?
Universal Design for Learning, or UDL, is a teaching approach that aims to make learning more accessible and give its students the same chance of success. It understands the individuality of each student and the variety of learning styles that each person could have to tackle any educational barrier. This is notably useful for students with autism spectrum disorder and other difficulties but represents an innovative form of teaching from which any student may benefit. This leads to better class-wide performance and helps to ensure a consistent level of success.
The three principles of UDL
We can break UDL into three distinct principles, including:
1. Engagement
The key to any successful lesson is ensuring that the students are fully engaged with the material – and can pay full attention to what you’re teaching them. For example, they could struggle to focus if they’re sitting down at all times and doing the same activities every week. Variety in the curriculum, and materials, can be a great way to engage students, as can making these worksheets and assignments relevant to their lives. If you teach them math, you may deliver problems and concepts in ways they’re familiar with, such as contextualizing sums as calculations of their allowance money.
Encouraging the class to view lessons as a series of ‘goals’ for them to reach might also help, as some students could benefit from the sense of accomplishment this brings. Make sure to reward the class for their successes and provide opportunities for them to reflect on their work, as this can lead to them developing greater respect for their abilities. This encourages a child to work harder to continue meeting these standards or improve further. You can ensure the entire class succeeds by engaging students in the ways that work for them.
2. Representation
A beneficial component of UDL is its efforts to represent various learning styles and formats, as people might massively prefer one type of material to another. This might mean more work for you, as not everything can easily accommodate different formats, but giving students these options is important. Everybody has their dominant learning styles- auditory, reading and writing, kinesthetic, and visual – with the latter comprising about two-thirds of people. This means it’s vital that you accommodate them through visual materials and have methods available to educate the remaining third and their diverse learning styles.
Helping auditory learners might involve reading the materials out loud, maybe asking the students themselves to test their reading and speaking abilities. People who prefer reading and writing can benefit from reading the materials directly. Visual learners work at their best with pictures and videos that fit the topic, helping them visualize and recall the information. A kinesthetic approach may involve physical activity representing a concept, such as role-playing a historical event. By trying to suit each learning style, you can ensure your teaching remains universal in every lesson.
3. Action & Expression
Along similar lines, it’s important that you give students various options regarding their actual work, as assessments and projects can take many forms, and people can have their preferences. Some might prefer traditional writing tests, and others might articulate themselves better in a spoken report or a creative project. Depending on the task, some students could even prefer a mix of these. It’s also your job to prepare students for the next stage of education – which usually defaults to a written examination, so you might still prioritize these assessments.
Even if you emphasize writing tasks, giving students various ways to express themselves and convey their understanding of the topic helps them learn more while developing their creativity. Allowing the students to interact with the lesson’s materials and concepts differently could add a new dimension to their knowledge and help with certain barriers, such as difficulty speaking in front of a crowd. Another key way of circumventing these barriers is by offering assistive technologies to students who might benefit from them, giving them new ways to take action and express themselves.
The benefits of UDL
UDL offers many benefits to a classroom and the students themselves and helps accommodate a range of preferences and proficiencies. For example, someone who performs well during written exams may do even better with a creative video project. Accommodating this might make them more engaged in class and more likely to retain this information. Taking the UDL approach might help every student in some way, but it’s beneficial for the students who think differently, whether this manifests as autism, ADHD, or another condition. Other benefits of Universal Design for Learning include:
- More accessible resources, which fit the unique ways students prefer to learn, give them new ways of understanding the material. This also stimulates the teacher’s creativity, helping them find new ways to teach and interpret the topics of each lesson.
- Ensures equal progress by letting everybody learn using their preferred techniques; this lowers the chance of students falling behind due to not meeting their educational needs. Taking a UDL approach lets you move at a steady pace that suits your students.
- Actively works to understand the needs of individual students, such as if they have any conditions requiring specialist resources. If students have trouble reading due to their eyesight, you could print a worksheet with larger text for them to read.
- Promotes inclusion by offering everyone the same accommodations instead of segregating the students that require these measures. This gives the students more choices in learning and helps those with special requirements feel less alone.
- These measures help students reach their full potential, letting them succeed in class when they would otherwise struggle. Without UDL, these students could struggle to reach the next grade or graduate from middle and high school.
Multiple acts of legislation have enshrined UDL as a comprehensive way for schools to assist students who might fall behind without intervention. By adding it to the classroom, you might notice a steady improvement in performance across the board; and an increase in confidence among disadvantaged students. If your students, or your school in general, can benefit from Universal Design for Learning, it’s worth investigating further.
