Principle of Engagement - Guideline 2 - Criterion 4

 

Universal Design for Learning

Principle of Engagement - Guideline 2 - Criterion 4

When developing a course using the third principle of Universal Design for Learning, there are three specific guidelines to assist us. The second, Sustaining Effort and Persistence addresses maintaining focus and determination.

Criterion 4 of this guideline advocates that we increase mastery-orientated feedback.

Feedback is critical for successful learning and is the fourth principle of Chickering and Gamson’s seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education.  When the feedback is relevant, accessible, constructive, and timely, the feedback is both more productive and critical for sustaining motivation and effort crucial for learning.

Mastery-oriented feedback guides learners towards master rather than a narrow and fixed view of performance and compliance.  It focuses on top tier learning in Blooms taxonomy while emphasizing the learners’ effort and practice as important factors for successful long-term habits and learning practices. This empowers learners with a sense of agency and treats learning as improving a skill, instead of a fixed target.  The latter notion often adopts the notion that some students, particularly those with disabilities, may be constrained from meeting these fixed goals, and thus impedes motivation to persist.

When trying to meet this criterion, consider:

• View learning as improving, and focus on effort, improvement, and achieving a standard. 
• Supplying feedback that promotes perseverance, the development of self-awareness, and encourages the use of strategies that will assist learning when they face challenges.
• Providing timely feedback
• Offering frequent and specific feedback
• Adopting strategies or models that will ensure that the feedback will be more substantive and informative, instead of comparative or competitive.
• Within your feedback, include how learners can incorporate the feedback to help identify patterns that promote errors so that they can self-correct in the future. 
• The feedback should also include positive strategies for further success. 

By following these suggestions, your course will assist students in communicating and expressing their knowledge, as well as being in line with the Principle of Engagement in the Theory of Universal Design for Learning.

References

Chickering, A & Z Gamson (1987) Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. American Association for Higher Education, p 2-6.