Universal Design for Learning
Principle of Engagement - Guideline 3 - Criterion 2
When developing a course using the third principle of Universal Design for Learning, there are three specific guidelines to assist us. The third, Self-Regulation addresses maintaining focus and determination.
Criterion 2 of this guideline advocates that we facilitate personal coping skills and strategies.
Most learners will require more than just a model of self-regulatory skills. Scaffolding and sustained apprenticeships, possibly with mentors, contribute to the development of these strategies. Employing reminders, checklists, and process models can assist learners in adopting an adaptive strategy for managing their response to external events, such as social settings that may produce anxiety. This also applies to responses to internal events, such as for decreasing depression from facing the workload.These strategies should offer flexible options to account for the individual variation in learners and accommodate the differences that variation brings. With these strategies, learners will be able to manage healthy responses to the stress of learning and possible setbacks, and eventually overcome these setbacks.
When addressing this, consider developing or providing scaffolds and feedback for:
- Managing frustration in not
meeting goals or succeeding in tasks
- Seeking external support (does
your campus have external services or could you embed them into your
learning environment?)
- Developing coping controls to stress
and setbacks
- Implementing exemplars to
demonstrate effective coping skills
- Dispelling antiquated tropes about
aptitude instead of viewing learning
as improving (For example adopting the mindset of “How do I get
better at Statistics?” instead of “I am not good at math”)
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.
