Week 5 Blog: Universal Design for Learning

 

Blog  Week 5

                                                            Review and Summary:

Universal Design for Learning

Guidelines for Accessible Online Instruction

by Carol Rogers-Shaw, MA, MS, Davin J. Carr-Chellman, PhD,  and Jinhee Choi, MS, BFA

 

            This article explains how Universal Design for Learning (UDL) can make online education more accessible and effective, especially for adult learners. UDL pushed educators to design instruction and content with flexibility, multimodal concepts, and inclusivity.

            The authors argue that traditional, one-size-fits-all teaching often leaves behind students with disabilities, language barriers, or diverse backgrounds. UDL shifts away from “fixing the student” and moves towards redesigning the curriculum itself. The UDL Framework is built on three core principles:  representation, engagement, and expression. Representation incorporates the ways learners access information. Engagement ties into motivation and involvement, and expression concerns the myriads of ways that students can showcase their learning.

            The article highlights how this approach benefits adult learners who often juggle many responsibilities. By giving these learners choices in how they engage and manage their own learning, it enhances their educational outcomes.

            In the end, UDL is not simply teaching tips. It is an epistemological shift in the way content creators and instructors think about knowledge and learning. For adult and distance learners, UDL opens the door to greater equity and success.

            UDL is incorporated into the lesson that I am creating. By utilizing student choice in the final step of the unit, I am allowing students to showcase their learning in individualized ways. I have also begun to weave in technology, varied print concepts, interactive instructional tools, self-directed/teacher-directed research, and video documentaries to enhance UDL in my lesson, Empathize, Educate, and Connect.

 

CAST UDL Integration

            One CAST UDL Guideline that I will thoughtfully continue to integrate into my lesson is to optimize choice and autonomy. I will utilize tools such as Wakelet to curate content for students and then allow them to use the tool of their choice to continue to explore the content that I have introduced. The final project will combine a collaborative approach between students and teachers but then transition to student-to-student collaboration. The students will co-design activities and tasks to complete the final project as a collaborative, whole-class project.

            Another important CAST UDL Guideline that will be a part of my lesson falls under the representation category for perception: “Represent a diversity of perspectives and identities in authentic ways.”  One of my lesson’s fundamental goals is to empathize. By allowing students to explore various authors, cultures, customs, history, and people surrounding the Holocaust, this will facilitate identifying biases and facilitate learning and listening to diverse perspectives.

            As I reflect on UDL as articulated in NETP 2024, I think of my high-poverty students and students with chronic absenteeism. As I continue to design and execute this lesson, I will need to be thoughtful about the needs of my high-poverty learners as they begin to explore ways in which they showcase their learning in the final class project. I would rectify this potential issue by having thoughtful conversations with students about where they believe their final project is headed and what barriers may stand in their way in accomplishing those goals. For my students who are chronically absent, I will make certain that the information and instruction in the lesson is also accessible to them. If these students do not have access to at-home internet, I will commence conversations with district administrators to solve this issue for these families.

 

A Call to Action for Closing the Digital Access, Design, and Use Divides 2024 National Educational Technology Plan. (2024).
https://portal.ct.gov/das/-/media/das/ctedtech/publications/2025/2025-used-oet-archive/netp24.pdf

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CAST. (2024). Universal Design for Learning. CAST.

           https://www.cast.org/what-we-do/universal-design-for-learning/

 

Rogers-Shaw, C., Carr-Chellman, D. J., & Choi, J. (2017). Universal Design for Learning: Guidelines for Accessible Online Instruction. Adult Learning, 29(1), 20–31. https://doi.org/10.1177/1045159517735530