Principle of Engagement - Guideline 1 - Recruiting Interest
The first principle of Universal Design for Learning, ‘provide multiple means of engagement”, helps promote an inclusive learning environment on many levels.When developing a course and focusing on this principle, there are three guidelines to follow. They are:
Recruiting
Interest
Sustaining
Effort and Persistence
Self-Regulation
We are
now going to take a deeper look.
The first guideline, Recruiting Interest, again
is related to accessibility. This time it is a different kind of
accessibility. Information that does not engage the learner’s cognition is
effectively inaccessible. From the moment if passes by the student, if
the student does not process the information as relevant, the information
passes them by unprocessed, or unnoticed. After this point, instructors
will have to devote more energy to stimulate the learner’s engagement with the
material or getting the learner’s attention.
For Example: Recruiting interest is just like marketing a good product. You could have the best
product on the market. If customers are not aware of the benefits of
owning your product, or even that your product exists, then they will not
purchase your product. After they pass it by, more energy will be needed,
such as commercial advertising, to get the consumers interest in your product
that they currently do not recognize as an item that serves any purpose for
them. Just like a product, the information to be learned must have a reason for
the learners to engage with it.
Likewise, when teaching, learners need to know why the
information is important and that they should be engaged in it. The problem is
that not every learner is the same. They can differ significantly.
Even the same learner can differ over time or circumstance, such as their
interests change as they learn more. Thus, it is important to have
several alternate techniques to recruit learner interest. We can become
more inclusive by ensuring that these techniques are able to accommodate the
variety of differences among learners.
Some criteria to help meet this guideline include:
Optimize
individual choice and autonomy. Adult learners prefer to direct their own learning.
Optimize relevance, value, and authenticity. Learners are more likely to engage the
content if they find it meaningful or relevant.
Minimize threats and distractions
By promoting an
inclusive strategy with multiple ways of recruiting interest in a wide variety
of learners, your learning environment will be more accommodating and promote
student success.
Principle of Action and Expression - Guideline 3 - Criterion 4
When developing a course using the second principle of Universal Design for Learning, there
are three specific guidelines to assist us.
The third, Executive Function, allows us to take advantage of our environment and overcome short term reactions to reach our long term goals.
Criterion 4 of this guideline advocates that we enhance the learners’ capacity for
monitoring progress.
Feedback is
essential for learning, whether we are a student learning in a classroom or an
educator assessing their course.
Naturally, learners require a clear understanding of their progress, or
lack thereof. When assessments and feedback are not informative to the learner
or are not timely with the feedback, there is not sufficient time for learning
to take place. Students do not know what they need to do differently and do not have time to adapt. This lack of knowledge, may give the illusion
that students are careless or unmotivated, but it is a result of the learner
not having access to appropriate feedback and time to utilize it. This is in part, why Chickering and Gamson’s 4th Principle of Good
Practice in Undergraduate Education calls for prompt feedback.
Without the
communication, there is no learning. It is important to provide formative
feedback that allows learners to effectively monitor their progress guide their
own practices.
A few examples of techniques to meet this criterion include:
Promote self-monitoring and reflection. You can do this by asking reflective questions.
Show representations of progress. Often visual representations accompanying these markers assist students understanding.
Provide differentiated models of self-assessment strategies such as peer-reviews and self-tests
Ask learners to identify the type of feedback or advice they prefer.
Multiple examples of annotated work or
performance as exemplars or illustrations of what not to do.
By following these suggestions, your course will assist
students communicating and expressing their knowledge, as well as being in line
with the Principle of Action and Expression in the Theory of Universal Design
for Learning.
Principle of Action and Expression - Guideline 3 - Criterion 3
When developing a course using the second principle of Universal Design for Learning, there
are three specific guidelines to assist us.
The third, Executive Function, allows us to take advantage of our environment and overcome short term reactions to reach our long term goals.
Criterion 3 of this guideline advocates that we facilitate information and resource
management.
Working
memory limits executive function. The
ability to access information during comprehension and problem-solving is
limited for all of us and it placesmore cognitive load for those new to
the information or those with certain cognitive disabilities. While chunking content can help, there are other ways we can
assist learning as well. Those new to
course material may be disorganized, absent minded, or appear unprepared. Whenever working memory is being taxed, and
naturally it is not a construct of the lesson itself, it is vital to offer a
variety of internal scaffolds and organizational aids to assist students in
organizing the information. These are
the exact same organization tools that executives use, so their adoption both
assists learning and develops tertiary skills that will further benefit the
learner.
Some things
you should consider when meeting this criterion are:
Supplying graphic organizers or templates for data collection and organizing information
Prompting for categorizing and systematizing the information
Providing checklists and guides for note-taking
By following these suggestions, your course will assist
students communicating and expressing their knowledge, as well as being in line
with the Principle of Action and Expression in the Theory of Universal Design
for Learning.
Principle of Action and Expression - Guideline 3 - Criterion 2
When developing a course using the second principle of Universal Design for Learning, there
are three specific guidelines to assist us.
The third, Executive Function, allows us to take advantage of our environment and overcome short term reactions to reach our long term goals.
Criterion 2 of this guideline advocates that we support planning and strategy development.
After setting
a goal, skilled problem-solvers plan a strategy for reaching that goal. Adult
learners in new domains, or learners with factors that impede executive
functions in any domain, often skip strategic planning necessary to complete
tasks. Instead, they inefficiently jump
right to a trial and error phase. Offering a variety of options, such as
reflection points or graduated scaffolds that encourage implementing
strategies, greatly assists learners. It can also lead them on the path of
becoming talented mentors, when they share these strategies with others.
Some features
to promote this include:
Embedding prompts to reflect before acting
Requiring learners to demonstrate their understanding by showing and explaining their work.
Provide checklists and project planning templates for understanding the problem. This promotes setting up prioritization, sequences, and steps the learner can schedule and oversee the completion of difficult tasks
Embed coaches or mentors that discuss or encourage reflection of the process
Supply advice for the reduction of long-term goals into reachable short-term objectives. Even by structuring a course this way, students learn by example.
By following these suggestions, your course will assist
students communicating and expressing their knowledge, as well as being in line
with the Principle of Action and Expression in the Theory of Universal Design
for Learning.
Principle of Action and Expression - Guideline 3 - Criterion 1
When developing a course using the second principle of Universal Design for Learning, there
are three specific guidelines to assist us.
The third, Executive Function, allows us to take advantage of our environment and overcome short term reactions to reach our long term goals.
Criterion 1 of this guideline advocates that we offer guidance for setting appropriate
goals.
Not all
learners will set appropriate goals in order to guide their work. When learners do not set the goals, it is not
productive in the long run to provide the goals for them. Instead, it is better to foster the development
of new strategies and skills that will benefit the learner in the long term.
Courses should inculcate effective goal setting by embedding graduated
scaffolds to assist learners in the skill of setting realistic personal goals.
When developing frameworks to accomplish this, it should:
Provide models or examples of the process of goal setting and its results
Provide guidelines and checklists for accurate goal setting
Supply prompts and guides to allow accurate estimates of required resources, effort and difficulty.
Clearly post goals and objectives to help guide the learner
By following these suggestions, your course will assist
students communicating and expressing their knowledge, as well as being in line
with the Principle of Action and Expression in the Theory of Universal Design
for Learning.
When you are an ally, you are someone who promotes and
aspires to advance the culture of conclusion through intentional, positive and
conscious efforts that benefit people as a whole.You foster relationships based on trust and accountability
with marginalized individuals or groups.This requires that your effects not be self-defined and that your work
is recognized by those who you are seeking to ally with. One such way of doing accomplishing
this is to adopt inclusive teaching practices.
Blackboard Ally is a tool that can assist you on your path
to promote inclusive practices. This platform tool scans for inaccessible content
and offers advice for faculty on remedying inaccessible content. Besides contributing
to courses accessibility, the tools also promotes principles of Universal
Design for Learning, by offing students’ alternative formats to the content
within the course. Impressively, it does this while being architecturally agnostic,
i.e., Blackboard Ally works in D2L, Moodle. Canvas as well as Blackboard Learn.
Content is reviewed and a gauge illustrate how accessible it
is.Those with a low rating will appear
in red while highly accessible content will have a green color. Only faculty see this gauge and selecting it
will provide the specific issues, if any, with the content and solutions to fix
those issues. This can help guide
faculty through developing a perfectly accessible course.
Another feature of Blackboard Ally that helps promote inclusion
is that alternative content option it provides students.At a click of a button, students can have the
content presented to them in various modalities, including: Tagged PDF, Beeline
Reader, or MP3 Audio.This can not only
benefit students with disabilities, but all students can choose the modality
the best suits they way the need to learn.Likewise, Blackboard Ally can translate material in over 75
languages.This can be very helpful to
any student wishing assistance because English is not their first/preferred language.
Principle of Action and Expression - Guideline 2 - Criterion 2
When developing a course using the second principle of Universal Design for Learning, there
are three specific guidelines to assist us.
The second, Expression and
Communication, focuses on how learners effectively communicate and express
their knowledge.
Criterion 2 of this guideline advocates that we use multiple tools for construction and
composition.
Avoid focusing too much on traditional tools while ignoring
current tools. Educational institutions
tend to favor traditional forms to composition, such as writing research papers,
while not staying current to contemporary trends in digital environments.
Restricting learners to ‘old school’ techniques does not prepare them for the
future, but instead restricts their learning and the range of teaching methods
that you can adopt. It also bars many
students from succeeding.
For example: Many
educational institutions have policies baring cell phones, however their narrow
conception of mobile devices does a disservice to students. For the most part a standard smartphone has
more computing power than the computers used to navigate the Apollo 8 mission
to the moon. The student’s device is
more of a microcomputer that can receive phone calls than a telephone. Moreover, smartphones are the primary means
of access for a disproportionately higher number of non-whites and lower income
Americans. Many students have to choose
between a smartphone or a laptop, and select the former for easier access,
better safety, and affordability. To
adopt policies that discriminate against mobile devices effectively targets
these groups. It also send the message
that the school would rather be antiquated than adopt new technology.
Professionals have to stay current with the tools of their
trade, and developing learning environments should prepare the learners instead
of provide a skill in an archaic behavior.
When developing a learning environment, be sure to consider:
Encourage mobile devices and non-traditional tools
Provide spellcheckers and grammar checkers
Encourage outline tools and concept mapping tools
Use web applications
Provide computer aided design and notation software
By following these suggestions, your course will assist
students communicating and expressing their knowledge, as well as being in line
with the Principle of Action and Expression in the Theory of Universal Design
for Learning.
You are teaching an online course with synchronous sessions
and want it to be equitable. But what are the best practices for this style of
delivery?
Six tips for inclusive teaching in synchronous online courses.
1.Remember to consider
the digital divide. Access to technology varies greatly across race and
socio-economic groups.
For example: Bandwidth Distribution: Access to high-speed internet and personal
computers varies significantly when considering a family’s race.
To help level the playing field, remember to:
a.Refrain
from requiring the downloading of large files during the synchronous
session
b. Similarly,
when you have video content in your course, or in a session, make sure it is
streamed.
c.Allow students to download files in advance to
prepare for the session
2.Make
sharing your video optional unless it is absolutely necessary. Video
consumes resources. Resources that not everyone has. Merely using the video conferencing meeting
in MS Teams requires 4 Gig of RAM and video can draw even more memory. Meanwhile, many students have limited
financial resources and this will push many ‘affordable’ low-end machines to
their limits.
Respecting your students’ privacy and safety is another reason to keep video
optional. Sharing the video in the
session may reveal the student’s home location or aspects about them that they
need private for their safety.
Incidentally, they would never share this information if the course was
held in a classroom.
To illustrate, sometimes individuals seek safety from an estranged spouse or a stalker and sharing the local surroundings of where they live is an
unreasonable requirement that would never occur if the class occurred in a room
on campus. It behooves us to adopt a
teaching strategy that would subject someone to potentially jeopardizing
themselves or their family to get a grade.
Finally, we often forget about the student’s workspace and home life. Not every student has a pleasant place to
work in their home. Perhaps they would
rather not; show their communal kitchen which is the only place that they get
Wi-Fi signal, reveal they have to watch their kids who are in the background, or
show that their only access to internet outside of the college is in a local
coffee shop. Remembering their right to privacy affords everyone with self-respect.
3.Be
forgiving and flexible. IF the lockdown taught us anything as educators, it
is that anyone can have technical issues. Those less advantaged often have more
than their fair share of issues. Know
this in advance and be flexible. Try recording lectures sessions and offer the
transcript afterwards. Likewise,
consider access to used assets as well as an asynchronous option to assist
those who cannot contribute due to whatever issue they faced. These issues are, more often than not, out of
their control.
4.Use live
Captioning. Video conference technology has improved over the past few
years. Stop using the dinosaurs that lack this feature. Products like Zoom and MS Teams have live-captioning options.
Make sure to use the live auto-captioning and make your session accessible for
everyone. Besides helping the hearing impaired, the captioning helps everyone
when there are audio problems.
5.Avoid
Time Response questions. Revel in the silence. It allows others to think. Time responses favor
those with fast bandwidth and unfairly punish those with disabilities whose
assistive technology may inhibit their reaction/response time.
6.Ask –
Don’t Assume. Invite your students to contact you privately with any issues
that could impede their success. Also, anonymous polls can give you insight to
technical and bandwidth issue that students may face. Armed with this
knowledge, you can adapt your courses to be more accommodating on the fly.
Follow these tips and you may discover your more inclusive
course may have an uptick in student success.
How often do you hear from a student that they cannot hand
in an assignment because their computer crashed and they lost the file? Have you ever asked if they backed up the
file? Now, have you ever asked that of yourself
and your course work?
Backing up your course material offers many benefits
including allowing you to:
Add material in another Course in Blackboard
Copy your course into another school’s version of Blackboard
Move the content and course into another Learning Management System, such as Desire 2 Learn (D2L)
It is also best practice to back-up your data – be it on
your personal computer or your courses in an LMS.
You can choose to “archive’ your course, but this will
include all the student information and posts.
If you only want to have a copy of the content of your course to save
and take with you, you will need to export it and save the “package”. To do this:
Select Packages and Utilities on the menu
Select Export/Archive Course
Select the Export Package grey button.
Under “Select Course Material” choose “Select
All”
Naturally, if you want to save only a portion, you can select what you want.
But be sure to choose the “Include only the forum, with no starter posts” option for discussions
Select “Submit” (you are almost done)
Wait…. The LMS is working.
After a couple minutes (you may have to refresh the screen), you will see your file as a link on the Export/Archive Course
page. This will be a zip file
Select the Zip file and download it. This is the
Course Package.
Save the Course Package, the Zip File, in a
location that you can find. You may want
to rename the Course Package to something meaningful for you to understand.
That is it!
Please note: DO NOT UNZIP the file.
Unzipping the file may corrupt your package. Leave it untouched until you need it. Then move the content to another course or
LMS, such as D2L.
When you are ready to move the course into an LMS, you will
just go into that course, use the Import Tool, and select this Course Package.
Follow these easy steps and you will be able to move your course, content and all, to most every modern Learning Management System (Yes, that includes D2L).
"It is the little things that can make a major difference"
Often there are little changes in the way you teach or
organize your course that make big difference for promoting inclusiveness.This is particularly true in an online
environment where often students face challenges such as a digital divide. By
adopting a few heuristics to promote an understanding of diversity and equity,
you can help foster a more inclusive learning experience that will result in
higher student success rates.
The embedded webinar includes tips for making your courses more inclusive.It provides the following tips:
An Optional Session 0
Tips for Accommodating Multiple Learning Styles
Threaded Assignments and Scaffolds
The Value of Checklists
Multiple Representations of Content
Inclusive Reflection
Many of these can be an easy as adopting a different document
for organizing content or adding an element within the course design.Likewise, sometimes just being mindful of
vernacular and the fact that we do not all have the same shared experiences can
go a long way.
Principle of Action and Expression - Guideline 2 - Criterion 3
When developing a course using the second principle of Universal Design for Learning, there
are three specific guidelines to assist us.
The second, Expression and
Communication, focuses on how learners effectively communicate and express
their knowledge.
Criterion 3 of this guideline advocates that we construct fluencies with graduated levels
of support for practice and performance.
We should promote the development of a variety of fluencies.
Learners will often need multiple scaffolds, at many different levels, to
accomplish this. To assist them as they practice and inculcate new skills and
knowledge, courses should offer alternatives that vary in the degree of
scaffolding that learners can select to support them. They should have the
freedom to select help when needed or to forgo. Likewise, many opportunities of
performance will assist learners in developing fluencies. Performance helps
learners because it allows them to synthesize their learning in ways relevant
to them personally. For these reasons, it is important to provide options that
build fluencies.
When constructing learning activities, consider:
Providing various models that demonstrate the same outcome through different approaches
Scaffolding activities and assistive structures such that learners can gradually remove the scaffolds as they gain fluency
Providing differentiated feedback that varies per learner. This is particularly easier when working online with personalized learning tools.
Providing multiple examples to demonstrate original solutions to authentic problems.
By following these suggestions, your course will assist
students communicating and expressing their knowledge, as well as being in line
with the Principle of Action and Expression in the Theory of Universal Design
for Learning.
