Instructor: You may have already looked
at the universal design for learning guidelines
and kind of thought through these three principles.
And I just wanted to kind of bring it back up
with this visual of the different brain networks
because the piece that I think is so strong about
universal design for learning
is that it's based on two bodies of research,
one being the neuroscience of learning,
which has been happening over a long period of time.
And as new developments happen in neuroscience,
they are being applied to UDL.
So one of the things that I think was a huge shift
when learning about UDL for me
was the fact of when you're learning,
there used to be some preconceived ideas about
learning styles or right brain, left brain kinds of ideas.
And a lot of that now
that we have so much advanced technology
with neuroscience research,
those kinds of things have really been debunked
as far as people having a particular learning style.
Now they talk about more learning preferences
that people might prefer a certain way to learn,
but your brain is actually, your whole brain
is working all the time when you're learning.
It's not only the right side or the left side
or a particular visual area of the cortex,
it's all of your brain.
And so thinking about how to engage
these three different networks
was really an aha moment for me.
And the first principle talks about
providing multiple means of engagement.
And you'll see the area of the brain
that's highlighted there is the limbic system.
And I know some of you may have knowledge already about
the brain and neuroscience.
So I'm not trying to teach
anything particular about neuroscience.
It's more of the overarching ideas.
So the fact that in the affective network
where your limbic system lives, the amygdala's there.
And any time that you are coming into a learning environment
and putting yourself in that place, emotions are happening,
whether you like it or not,
that's just what your brain does.
It checks to make sure you're in a safe environment.
And if your environment isn't safe,
you may know the fight or flight syndrome
where your brain literally turns off
those critical thinking aspects.
And instead it's like, uh-oh, this is not safe.
I've got to get out of this area,
this environment, whatever I'm in.
I've got to run from that bear
that's chasing me back from that reptilian brain
as it was first developed.
And so we have to just keep that in mind
that we don't want our students
to be feeling lots of stress or anxiety
when they're entering into a learning environment
that we're helping to create.
So that's always the first thing
that I try to think of when I'm planning
whether it's an online course or an in-person space,
just making sure that there are some perhaps agreements
amongst the students of how we're going to be interacting.
And particularly in an online class,
when you might be asking them to share ideas
and post to discussions,
whether it's Yellowdig or the Blackboard Discussion,
Perusall, whatever it might be,
that there are some sort of some agreements about
community and respect and how people will engage.
So the recognition network is talking about
providing multiple means of representation.
And that's because the area in purple that's highlighted
is the area where memories and prior knowledge is stored.
So what you want to be doing
is actually showing parts of your content in different ways.
So perhaps as I noticed, Jen had set up for this week,
like there's a podcast,
there's some videos and screencasts, there's texts to read.
So there's different options.
I think also Perusall this week, maybe Jen, I saw happening.
So there's different ways to be engaging
with the content that she's wanting you all to learn
and not just one modality.
And so if you were to read something
and you didn't quite get it through just reading the text,
you can also like watch a video about the same topic
or hear a podcast and then go back again
and kind of reread it.
And it might help put those pieces together
because one of those different ways
of accessing the knowledge
might trigger more of what know you
in your own prior knowledge.
And my understanding of neuroscience
is that's how those neural networks are built.
If you take something that you already know
and then connect it to the new knowledge,
and that's how you get more super highways
and being able to recall your information
and really process it more efficiently.
And so the more that we can help folks access
what they already know, their prior experiences
and connect that and help make sense
of why this knowledge is important for them to know,
that really helps with the learning.
And then finally, you see, the frontal lobe is highlighted
for the strategic network principle number three,
which is providing multiple means of action and expression.
And that's really where students
would be doing their critical thinking
and putting together the knowledge that they had learned
and showing it back to you,
so different ways they can express what they know.
And so going back to my original example
of the multiple mid-term, sometimes you're restricted
as far as like the size of the class
and what you're able to offer for assessments,
but creating those little ways
of practicing ahead of the larger test
can really put students in a better position
if you need them to express something in a particular way.
And I know that can be really important in certain fields,
for example, in nursing, when you need your students
to be able to do something in a particular way,
a particular procedure that they're supposed to remember
or a way of administering something,
it can be really important
that they do it that particular way.
However, as scaffolds ahead of that,
you can help them do parts of that procedure ahead of time
and give all a wide variety of opportunity for practice.
I think that's what's most important
if it needs to be demonstrated in a particular way.
So that's kind of the overarching ideas
amongst the three principles of universal design
for learning and how the neuroscience ties into that.
The other piece of research that UDL is built upon
is universal design and architecture.
And I didn't make a separate slide for that,
but I just wanted to put that out there
and let you know that in architecture,
when you're thinking about creating the best approach
to an environment that's physical,
so let's say you're building
the Davis Center at the UVM Campus,
you need to decide what are the best ways
that the most people, regardless of their mobility,
can access the building
and be able to get around in the building.
So things like you'll notice at the Davis Center,
they have curb cuts in front of the building.
They have the big buttons that you can press
to get those giant glass doors to open.
And they also have elevators
to get up and down to the different floors.
So there's a variety of ways that regardless
of how you are moving around the environment,
that you can still access what you need to do
at the Davis Center.
And that's kind of the overarching idea of universal design
for learning from the point of view of the architecture
is that you construct a learning environment
that is accessible for all the students who come into it
and that there's different ways of approaching it.
So when you have a curb cut,
it's very useful for someone in a wheelchair,
but certainly useful for those of us
who have a grocery cart, a piece of luggage
that's on wheels, a baby stroller,
the FedEx delivery person
who's bringing goods to the bookstore.
It's helping all those people.
So the way this is designed is the very top row
is to provide access to students.
And so a lot of times UDL is talked about
as principle number one, principle number two,
principle number three.
And what I like about the visual I have on my slide
is it's asking you to think across the whole horizontal bar
of engagement, representation, and action, and expression
as like an entry point for your students.
And I've also heard it talked about
by the folks at Cast as a welcome mat.
So welcoming folks into your learning environment.
And so a lot of things on this first row
are very more simple ideas of ways
that you can give students options to get into the content
for your class and really get engaged.
And the most important one, in my opinion,
is on the engagement side
is minimizing threats and distractions.
And we were already talking about that
and the idea of how students can get triggered
just by the fact of having something
like math anxiety or feeling like,
I'm sure we've all heard students say things like,
I'm not good at chemistry.
I'm not good at math.
I just don't get how to write essays,
whatever it is, even graduate students in a lot of regards
feel like there's particular things
they're not as strong at.
And so helping to give students options
as far as how they can take in that content,
but then also how they can give you formative assessments,
which means little places where they can be writing about
or talking with you or talking with each other
about the content and building on their knowledge
before they need to do a larger assessment is so important.
So I have my students do a weekly journals.
That's something that I'll give them
a couple of prompts about the content.
And it's a private conversation just between me
and a particular student.
I teach smaller graduate classes.
So obviously, I have a little more time
with not having 100 students to be able to do that
and read through their journals and interact with them.
But it's like a place where they can be more transparent
with me about like what they're understanding
and what they're not understanding.
It's a place they could ask private questions
about something, and many times they do.
And another component of what I asked them to do
in those journals is try to apply
what they're learning that week to their own personal lives
or their own work and how it might be applied directly
to something they already are thinking about.
And I definitely recommend that you do that in your classes
that you're thinking about doing.
Next piece there for representation
when I look there is, again,
like offering those different options
for ways to acquire the information.
And they talk there about offering alternatives
for auditory, offering alternatives for visuals,
offering ways of customizing the displays of information.
So a lot of these can mean,
just like I was mentioning before,
having not only a reading by a particular author,
but then offering a video with that same author
talking about their subject.
It can also mean like if you offer a video having captions
or a transcript,
so if somebody doesn't love to always acquire things by text
that there is another option for them.
Maybe they can use their computer
to have it speak out the transcript for them,
if they prefer that.
And you might be thinking, well, these are things generally
that are student accommodations.
Well, yes, a lot of what UDL is based on
is to also support students with disabilities.
But the fact is when you offer things
like captions, transcripts, videos,
that actually helps a lot of students
that don't have a documented disability,
but just have a preference
for the way they take in information.
And so that way, it doesn't make anyone have to disclose
a particular thing that they need an accommodation for.
It just makes it available to anyone.
And then finally, under action and expression,
you'll see under that first row
that it says providing options for physical action,
optimizing access to tools,
other assistive technologies, responses, and navigation.
So some of that is related to assistive technologies,
but other things like when I think of that
and how I would do that in a classroom
with my students who are graduate students
would be to use something like a student response system
to offer moments to pause and give them a chance to respond.
Just like I was asking you all to put in a one or a two,
depending on if you wanted me to keep going
with this content or switch over to something else.
So response systems are, they can be physical clickers.
They can be an app that students use on their phone.
It could be something simple
like a poll using Teams or Zoom,
but it's a way that students can signal to you
where they're at
and if they want to move on in a lecture situation
or if they want to keep going with what you're doing.
Also, you can ask comprehension questions
to see if they're understanding the material
and you can give them some opportunities.
If you're in a physical setting,
you could give them an opportunity to turn to a peer
and talk with them about the question that's being asked
and then click in.
So there's lots of ways to kind of interpret
these different checkpoints that are in UDL.
And I can't stress that enough.
It doesn't have to be a really rigid interpretation.
Okay, so as we build down the chart
and since I could talk about this all day,
but I realized we only have about 15 more minutes.
So I'm going to just highlight like one thing
in each of these principles across this row.
So this is building your knowledge,
you see that little Build tab there.
And so one of the things I really like
in these check points under engagement,
I'm really thinking about, all of those are important.
All four bullets are checkpoints,
but this idea of increasing mastery-oriented feedback,
I think, is something that sometimes gets left out, right?
So we know goals and objectives are really important.
And we know some of the other things there
are important about community and such,
but the idea of increasing mastery-oriented feedback,
again, going back to that illustration
of the faculty member in the beginning
of this session today, that's really what happened
by incorporating those small little quizzes,
was that the students were able to get more feedback
on their own learning and figuring out
where the gaps were so that they could work
to close those gaps in their own knowledge.
And I think that can be really a way to go
as far as how to decide where to spend the most of your time
when you're going to be figuring out engagement
for students is to figure out if there's ways
that you can incorporate times
for you to give more feedback to the students.
And it could be like the automated feedback
of a multiple choice small quiz
is still really helpful for students.
And it allows you in Blackboard
or whatever tool you might be using
to give particular things.
Like if they got a question wrong
by choosing the incorrect answer,
you might guide them to say,
no, this isn't the right answer,
but go back to such and such part of the chapter
and look at that again or revisit the podcast again.
And you could even earmark
like when in the podcast it's talked about.
So there are ways with technology
to really give more targeted feedback
of if they got that question wrong,
how they would go back and build on their own knowledge.
So if you have to highlight one of those things
in the middle row,
that's what I would ask you to put your energy into.
And when we move across the next one, I would,
so the top two bullets,
as far as like clarifying vocabulary,
that can be so helpful for students
who are embarking on a new discipline or in graduate school
where there's a lot of new vocabulary perhaps,
just helping them to clarify that vocabulary
or symbols in math or science
and offering them easy ways to keep going back
to that vocabulary and kind of acquiring that knowledge,
whether it's like a glossary that's available, hyperlinks
to a website that might offer some of that context for them,
that is really, really important.
And then also the, let's see the, yeah,
so this all talks about that, like the decoding of text,
mathematical notations and symbols,
and then illustrating through multiple media,
which we already talked about.
But I've heard in certain disciplines
where people will talk about,
well, it's actually a whole nother language.
And I think sometimes going back to that idea
of the novice learner,
you don't always remember that because now you're an expert
on that language and it's not designated as like, well,
this is French class and it's a language you have to learn.
So thinking back to, well,
there were a lot of things I had to learn
as I was building my knowledge of chemistry
and there was a whole new language that I was figuring out.
So I think that can be really helpful for your students
is to just let them know, like,
this is something you're going to have to learn
all this new vocabulary and that's okay.
We can work on that together.
And then finally this, providing options
for expression and communication.
And so thinking about how to give students practice
with graduate levels of support.
So what that means is like, as they're learning new skills,
you give them some supports to build on.
And then as they learn things,
they don't need as many supports.
So again, back to that idea of the midterm,
you can really give them opportunities to practice,
but then when it's time to do the larger assessment,
you remove some of those scaffolds and then they were able
to do better because they've had so much time to practice.
And then finally, this last row is internalize, it's called.
So providing different options for the more complex things
that would be happening in your brain,
like offering options for self-regulation,
offer options for comprehension and executive functions.
And finally, you see the target or the goal
is to provide purposeful, motivated learners,
resourceful, knowledgeable learners,
and strategic goal-directed learners.
So if I were, again, in that third row
to pick some different checkpoints,
I would probably develop more self-assessment
and reflection as a component.
As I mentioned, the journal was a great way
for me to get a sense of how students
were processing information and reflecting on it
and applying it to their own personal lives.
Thinking more also in the middle under-representation about
how to activate their background knowledge
because that's really something that they build upon
when you're learning new knowledge,
and under executive functions,
definitely thinking about enhancing their own capacity
to set goals for themselves.
So one thing I tend to do in my graduate courses
is I have obviously my own learning objectives
for the class, but I always ask students
to set their own one or two personal goals
after they've had a chance to look over the syllabus.
And I ask them at several points in the course
to check in on how they're meeting that goal
that they set for themselves,
and if there's anything I can do
to support them meeting that goal.
So whether it's giving them a couple more articles about
something they're interested in
or whether it's providing some flexible time
to learn something, whatever it might be,
I definitely asked them to set that goal
and then track their goal
over the course of the class itself.
So that also helps with that fourth bullet
of monitoring their own progress
and how they're doing with their goal
because I've built in a lot of scaffolds into the course
as far as how they monitor their progress on the goals
I've set for them,
but it's also important that they're monitoring progress
on what they've set for themselves as a goal.