The History and Philosophy of UDL

The History of UDL

The principles of Universal Design (UD) were first developed during the early 1990s by the architect Ron Mace at North Carolina State University’s Center for Universal Design. According to Mace, "Universal design is the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design."

Educators and instructional designers have since adapted Mace’s original principles of “universal design” to create Universal Design for Learning (UDL) also known as the Universal Design of Instruction. These principles include the following (Sheryl Burgstahler, Universal Design: Principles, Process, and Applications, Do-It, University of Washington):

  1. Equitable Use. The design is useful and marketable to people with diverse abilities. For example, a professor’s website that is designed so that it is accessible to everyone, including students who are blind and using text-to speech software, employs this principle.
  2. Flexibility in Use. The design accommodates a wide range of individual preferences and abilities. An example is a museum, visited as a field trip for a course, that allows a visitor to choose to read or listen to the description of the contents of a display case.
  3. Simple and Intuitive. Use of the design is easy to understand, regardless of the user’s experience, knowledge, language skills, or current concentration level. Science lab equipment with control buttons that are clear and intuitive is an example of an application of this principle.
  4. Perceptible Information. The design communicates necessary information effectively to the user, regardless of ambient conditions or the user’s sensory abilities. An example of this principle being employed is when multimedia projected in a course includes captions.
  5. Tolerance for Error. The design minimizes hazards and the adverse consequences of accidental or unintended actions. An example of a product applying this principle is educational software that provides guidance and background information when the student makes an inappropriate selection.
  6. Low Physical Effort. The design can be used efficiently and comfortably, and with a minimum of fatigue. Doors to a lecture hall that open automatically for people with a wide variety of physical characteristics demonstrate the application of this principle.
  7. Size and Space for Approach and Use. Appropriate size and space is provided for approach, reach, manipulation, and use regardless of the user’s body size, posture, or mobility. A flexible science lab work area designed for use by students who are left- or right-handed and with diverse physical characteristics and abilities is an example of employing this principle.

According to Burgstahler, these UDL principles “can be applied to the overall design of instruction as well as to specific instructional materials, facilities, and strategies such as lectures, classroom discussions, group work, Web-based instruction, labs, field work, and demonstrations.” They underscore the need to provide all students fair access to information and opportunities to learn. They also reassure us that, using these principles, the goal of equal access can be achieved without extreme measures or undue burden on the faculty.

Universal design can thus be applied to three realms, all of which are pertinent to higher education:

  1. The design of environments (buildings, classrooms)
  2. The design of tools (documents, websites)
  3. The design of learning (courses, activities, assignments, assessments)

UDL in Higher Education

Students today arrive at the university with very different sets of skills, life experiences, abilities, and learning styles. For some, English is a second language. Others learn better through visual or kinesthetic representation of ideas rather than verbal lecture (Detweiler, 2005). Still others—more than 700 students at CSU—have some form of disability, either apparent or non-apparent.

According to the tenets Universal Design for Learning, this diversity can be addressed most effectively by providing alternative modalities for learning. According to Rose (2002), we must give students “a range of options for accessing, using, and engaging with learning materials.” Specifically, university instructors should:

  1. Present content to students in multiple ways and in a variety of formats
  2. Encourage students to engage with new ideas and information in multiple ways
  3. Allow students to express themselves and their understanding of the material in multiple ways

These three pedagogical principles (multiple means of content representation, student engagement, and student expression) are based in part on the work Tracey Hall (Hall, 2002), Senior Research Scientist at the National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum, and David Rose and Anne Meyer (2005 and 2002) of the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST). Their early work focused on pedagogy at the K-12 level. However, many researchers (including Burgstahler, University of Washington; Silver, University of Massachusetts at Amherst; Madaus, Scott, and McGuire, University of Connecticut; Izzo, Ohio State University; and others) have found broad applicability of UDL principles to higher education. (See What is Universal Design for Learning?, Center for Applied Technology (CAST).)

Universal design for learning (UDL) is a set of principles and instructional strategies designed to improve the academic experience of students with disabilities by making instruction, and instructional materials, more accessible to all students. In other words, the UDL model predicts that strategies designed to improve learning for students with disabilities will have equal benefit for other students in the class (see UDL, a Brief Introduction).

UDL and Pedagogy

The principles of universal design for learning correlate strongly with modern theories of pedagogy. They also dovetail with the commonly accepted principles and practices of instructional design. UDL teaching methods include a wide range of “best practices,” such as innovative strategies for creating engaging lectures, facilitation of class discussions both in-class and on the web, promoting student engagement through the use of problem-based learning, fostering greater in-class participation through the use of “clickers” and group presentations, and enlarging the repertoire of student assessment through the use of journals, portfolios, videos, etc.

Universal design for learning also promotes “active learning,” which is one of the widely acclaimed “Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education” (Gamson and Chickering, 1987). By providing multiple forms of representation, a professor gives her students alternative media to convey essential concepts. This allows them to grasp the material in their preferred learning style and at their own pace. By offering multiple forms of engagement, she allows students to connect with the material at various levels of knowledge and skill. For example, by tying class topics to current world events, the instructor taps into her students’ interests. Finally, by allowing multiple modes of student expression, she permits students to demonstrate comprehension and mastery of course content in ways other than traditional quizzes and exams.

UDL and Instructional Materials

In addition to advocating innovative instruction and multiple modes of student engagement, universal design for learning encourages the use of “accessible” and “usable” course materials. These are documents saved in electronic formats (e.g., Word, RTF, PDF, HTML) and formatted so as to enhance their usability for the largest possible audience.

A single presentation method can prove limiting, as exemplified by the traditional paper syllabus. Because a “hardcopy” can only be used in one mode (that is to say, it must be seen to be read), it is inaccessible to students who possess visual impairments. The same syllabus, however, saved in an electronic format, can be read aloud by screen reader software and translated into Braille, which can in turn be printed or read at the computer using a refreshable Braille keyboard (available in several locations at CSU). The same document can be posted on the web to help students who have simply misplaced their copy. By offering a syllabus in multiple formats, the instructor makes the information available and accessible to everyone.

Experience with universal design for learning also reveals that when we design for a wide range of abilities and learning styles, content becomes compatible with a wider range of technologies. For example, when we separate the content and structure of a web page from the codes that govern its appearance, we also make our content accessible to PDAs and cell phones. When we create captions for a video, we make it accessible to people watching in a noisy airport or in a quiet computer lab. And because the captions are text, we’ve also made the content of the video available to search engines and archival database systems. Finally, when we add alternative text descriptions to images, we make our pages accessible to speech synthesis software.

Conclusion

Universal design for learning integrates accessibility, usability, and research on effective teaching methods. The universal design concept, which began as a way to provide greater access to the physical world through inclusive architecture and product design, has broadened in scope to include access to computers (assistive technology), access to the Internet (web accessibility), and ultimately access to learning. As a framework for inclusive pedagogy, universal design for learning strives to benefit not only students with disabilities, but all students.

Universal design for learning is a valuable paradigm for helping maximize scholastic achievement and retention while maintaining the highest standards of academic excellence.

References

  1. Burgstahler, Sheryl. (2001). Universal Design of Instruction: Definition, Principles, and Examples. (Taken from the Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology (Do-It) website at the University of Washington: http://www.washington.edu/doit/Resources/udesign.html)
  2. Burgstahler, Sheryl. (2005). Steps toward making distance learning accessible to students and instructors with disabilities. Information Technology and Disabilities E-Journal (published by EASI). Vol. XI, No. 1.
  3. Chickering, A.W., & Ehrmann. (1996, October). Implementing the seven principles: Technology as lever. AAHE Bulletin, 3-6. (Electronic version retrieved online June 4, 2004, from http://www.tltgroup.org/programs/seven.html)
  4. Chickering, A.W., & Gamson, Z.F. (1987, March). Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education. AAHE Bulletin, 3-7.
  5. Rose, D.H., & Meyer, A. (2002). Teaching every student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
  6. Rose, D.H., Meyer, A., & Hitchcock, C. (2005). The universally designed classroom: Accessible curriculum and digital technologies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
  7. Detweiler, Richard. (2004). At Last, We Can Replace Lectures, Chronicle Review, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 9, 2004.
  8. Detweiler, Richard. (2005). The Rewards of the Digital Era. Chronicle of Higher Ed. December 9, 2005.
  9. Hall, T. (2002). Differentiated Instruction. Wakefield, MA: National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum. (Retrieved September 8, 2006 from http://www.cast.org/publications/ncac/ncac_diffinstruc.html).
  10. Madaus, J.W., Scott, S. & McGuire, J. (2003). Addressing student diversity in the classroom: The approaches of outstanding university professors (Tech. Rep. No. 02). Center on Postsecondary Education and Disability, University of Connecticut.
  11. McGuire, J., & Scott, S. (2002). Universal design for Instruction: a promising new paradigm for higher education. Perspectives, 28(2), 27-29.
  12. Silver, Patricia. (2003). The Challenge of Implementing Universal Instructional Design in Higher Education. (Retrieved September 8 from Brown University’s “Ivy Access Initiative” website.)
    1. (Note: The Ivy Access Initiative was a joint venture of Brown University, Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Stanford. The grant activities concluded in September, 2003. Like CSU’s ACCESS Project, the Ivy Access Initiative was funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education, through their Demonstration Project to ensure students with disabilities receive a quality higher education.)
  13. Silver, P., Bourke, A., & Strehorn, K.C. (1998). Universal Instruction Design in Higher Education: An Approach for Inclusion. Equity & Excellence in Education. 31(2): 47-51.
  14. The Center for Universal Design (2006), North Carolina State University (http://www.design.ncsu.edu/cud/index.htm).
    1. (Note: the term “universal design” was coined by the late architect, Ron Mace. For more information, see http://www.design.ncsu.edu/cud/about_us/usronmace.htm.)