Instructional Insights

Last spring, The Faculty Center for Professional Excellence rolled out a semester-long Accessibility Initiative that defined key terms and accounted for the spectrum of learners that make up our Adelphi campus.

However, accessible education is always evolving and goes beyond online checklists. In reality, accessible education encompasses our pedagogical practices and can create a universally beneficial learning environment for both in-person and virtual learners of all backgrounds.

One approach that embodies this philosophy is Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a framework aimed at elevating students’ varied strengths and eliminating anticipated barriers. UDL is a research-backed methodology for intentionally designed teaching that, from its outset, addresses all learners.

In this Instructional Insights, we’ll talk about UDL and examine its three core principles across disciplines.

Neural Networks for Learning

UDL aims to activate students’ Affective, Recognition, and Strategic Networks, which can be thought of in an educational context as the Why, What, and How our brains respond to Learning. 

• The Affective Network takes charge of emotions and interest when receiving any kind of stimuli. Within a classroom, this network essentially answers the oft dreaded question from students: “Why are we learning this?” 
• The Recognition Network categorizes and connects new with prior knowledge. It gets learners wondering, “What is this new information and where does it fit in my mind’s map?” 
• The Strategic Network plans how to express ideas once they’ve been synthesized in our minds, finalizing “How can I demonstrate my new knowledge?”

Together, these three networks compose a nonlinear yet interconnected drive for students’ brains.  

UDL and Engagement

Designing for Engagement asks that we consider how students find relevance in their learning. We want to activate learners’ affective network and nurture an intrinsic motivation that helps them determine priorities and build sustained, self-regulated effort within our classrooms.

As students differ from one another, the triggers for their engagement likewise differ. Instructors might want to question, “In what ways do I give students choice and autonomy to connect authentically with the material?” or “How do I make the course content relevant to students’ individualized needs and interests?” Often, the answers help shape instructional approaches and activities within our lessons.

For example, we can see this in a STEM classroom, by:

• Offering students a choice of 2-3 different lab options that all address the same core learning objectives;
• Conducting periodic surveys to continuously align and adjust course content or material to students’ responses.

And in a Humanities classroom, by:

• Creating opportunities for opt-in collaborative group work in such a way that they can choose the format of their participation or contribution;
• Asking students to identify the potential real-world audiences or applications they see in class topics (e.g., historical events, literary texts, or philosophical concepts).

The previous Makers Making Change event at Adelphi University

UDL and Representation

When UDL talks about Representation, it emphasizes two key thoughts: that we must present information in multiple modalities (e.g., videos, audio, text, simulations, graphics) and that we need to account for how learners’ backgrounds affect their contextualization of course content. Essentially, students enter with various preferences and prior experiences; and the goal is to offer multiple pathways for both perceiving information literally and constructing abstract meaning.

Instructors need to ask: “What modalities am I missing when I present this information?” or “What prior knowledge do students typically bring to this material, and how can we bridge any gaps?”

In classrooms across all fields, professors might asses their materials by:

• Considering how visuals, audio, or interactive elements could enhance understanding–for example, STEM classrooms can incorporate both tactile models and graphic aids;
• Checking multimedia for limited customization options, such as videos without subtitles or images that cannot be enlarged;
• Defining domain-specific vocabulary and using both domain-specific and common terms to build learners’ linguistic fluency between academic and everyday understanding.

UDL and Expression

The last principle that UDL champions is the need to design multiple means of action and expression for learners. Their Strategic Network asks: “How will we show our newfound knowledge?” In addition to the final product, students benefit from scaffolds that help them plan a strategy, identify useful tools, and anticipate the challenges that will come with their expression, such as project planning or customizable study-guide templates.

Additionally, we want to think about the modality of expression. While some students excel with written work, others may show particular strengths in sharing ideas verbally, visually, or through hands-on activities. UDL encourages instructors to provide options and flexibility in how students demonstrate their learning.

However, what happens when the expression is the course content, such as in writing classes or “fact-heavy” prerequisites?

In such cases, it may be helpful to think about the process of our course content’s mastery and the various formative assessments we can build by:

• Adding multiple means of expressing the writing process’s brainstorming, revision, and editing phases;
• Allowing students to choose between different formats for knowledge recall or lab reports (e.g., formal scientific report, infographic, video presentation).

Want More UDL?

UDL recognizes that a “one-size-fits-all” approach often fails to support students’ autonomy, and instead proposes that various avenues of engagement with the course, representation of content, and expression of new knowledge are critical to the learning process. We invite you to continue exploring UDL–and how to implement these guidelines–through the following resources:

• Updated UDL Guidelines 3.0
• UDL Examples in Higher Education
• UDL in Synchronous, Asynchronous, and Face-to-Face Classrooms
• Think UDL Podcast: UDL Toolkit

Universal Design for Learning is a powerful, particularly effective framework in addressing course systems that inadvertently exclude learners, both those without and with disabilities.

Join Us for Makers Making Change!

Of course, Adelphi’s commitment to empowerment and accessibility extends beyond the classroom and into our community. All are welcome to join us Sunday, March 2nd at 11am for an exciting Maker event hacking toys and adapting them for use with an assistive switch.

Co-Sponsored by the FCPE, the Innovation Center, and Adelphi University Staff Council, this event with Makers Making Change will be held in Swirbul Library’s Innovation Center. The event aligns with Adelphi’s strategic goals in Momentum 2 and the Innovation Center’s mission to “serve stakeholders across campus and beyond,” as discussed in a recent article about the center and its director, Lee Stemkoski.

References

• CAST (2018). UDL and the learning brain. Wakefield, MA: Author.
• CAST (2024). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 3.0.