Imagine that you’re planning a trip for your family to travel from Wisconsin to Florida. To get there, you could travel directly through states like Illinois, Tennessee, and Georgia. Or if you were so inclined, you could head east toward Washington, D.C., and then south skirting the Atlantic. Or you could head southwest toward Houston and then move along the Gulf of Mexico to your destination. Furthermore, you could drive, fly, or take a bus—depending on your preference. As long as you make it to your goal—the Sunshine State—there are plenty of different paths that you could take to get you there.
The Universal Design for Learning framework (UDL) works on a similar principle. The teacher designs a lesson with firm learning goals in mind for the lesson. This is “Florida”—it’s where the teacher wants to end up. With the learning goals in mind, the teacher builds into the lesson flexible means to reach those goals. This allows students to make choices about how they might best reach the goal, just like trip-planning parents make a choice about the path they’d like the family to take to Florida.
Let’s look at an example.
In a lesson on the First Article, perhaps one of your learning goals is for the learner to be able to identify what God created on each of the six days of creation. When you deconstruct that goal, you see two parts that the teacher needs to address. The learner has to be presented with information about the days. The learner has to be presented with means to show that he can identify them.
First, how will the learner come to know the daily products of God’s creative work? One teacher might answer that question by saying: “Students will read the Bible account. I will write what God created each day on the board. They will write what God created each day in their notebooks.” That’s one plan.
But the UDL teacher knows that there’s more than one way to get to “Florida.” The teacher has thought ahead and designed this part of the lesson mindful that some students may not be strong readers, some may learn better by seeing and hearing, some may not be able to see a video presentation because they’re visually impaired, and some may learn better by sitting and quietly reading. UDL seeks to include as many of those learners as possible in the learning. So, with the learning goal in mind, the UDL minded teacher will provide the learners with a variety of options that will each lead them to the same set of facts. The teacher might say, “Read the Biblical account OR listen to the account on Bible Gateway OR watch the teacher-made video on the account at the link provided.”
But at this point, we’ve only partially addressed our First Article learning goal—the “input” part. Our learning goal also stated that the learner will be able to identify what God created on each of the six days of creation. Simply inputting the information doesn’t guarantee that the learning goal has been reached. What the student does with the information can not only help the information stick, but it can also serve as an indicator—to both teacher and student—of where the student stands in relation to the learning goal. So how will the student show what he knows?
One teacher might answer that question by saying: “Each student will take a ten-question multiple-choice quiz on the material.” Again, that’s one way to approach it.
But could offering more choices in this situation open the door for more participation by more students? Remember you have learners in your class who might speak well but struggle with writing. Some might be just the opposite, clamming up during class discussions but writing eloquently when given the opportunity. Some may eagerly dive into a “think-pair-share” exercise to show their knowledge, and some may be more inclined to sketch a diagram. We know these things before we ever step foot in the classroom, before we ever meet our students—because that’s just the way students are.
The UDL teacher, mindful that different students will best express their knowledge in different ways, intentionally designs a lesson with a variety of options so that students can choose what route will be best for them to reach the “identify” part of the learning goal.
Instructions to the students for this section of the lesson might read: “Compose a ten-question multiple-choice quiz (with answer key!) OR draw a diagram OR work with a partner to design an online quiz game that illustrates what God created on each day.” Each of those options will lead you to your “Florida,” but each student gets to choose which route he or she would prefer to travel to get there. (You might even allow the more adventurous student to suggest his own proposed route that you hadn’t thought of!)
By offering these choices to students, UDL accomplishes a couple of things. First, it opens the door to higher-level reasoning. A multiple-choice quiz is a quick and easy check for understanding—and it certainly can require critical thinking. It remains in our assessment toolbox. Yet it’s also true that a multiple-choice quiz might address only the most rudimentary knowledge and not necessarily give students the opportunity to demonstrate a depth of understanding.
Second, when students have choices, they become active partners in their learning. They start to develop an understanding of their strengths and weaknesses as a student, what formats resonate with them or which don’t. In other words, they’re not just learning the facts of a particular subject, but they’re also learning how to learn better, how they learn better.
If you remember anything about UDL from this brief introduction, may it be this: UDL is about firm goals with flexible means to reach them. We know that our students will have different preferences, abilities, and challenges. These things are predictable because they are universally true. If they’re predictable, the teacher can proactively account for them in the lesson design process. And by doing so, the teacher can play a part in making the material accessible to as many of his learners as possible.