Category: Universal Design for Learning

Contributed by Sue Doner, Instructional Designer, eLearning (Originally published in The Confluence, November 2018)

As you begin to prepare course materials for next term, may I draw your attention to some great advice laid out in the UDL Guidelines about providing learners with Options for Perception?

But first, a couple of common-experience questions for empathetic context

• Have you ever cursed the tiny 8-pt font on a Children’s Tylenol bottle in the middle of the night when you and your aging eyes were just trying to find the right dosage information?
• Have you ever been listening to a radio program, missed hearing what that author’s name was (or when that event is happening, or what the URL was for that guest’s website), and wished you had the information written down?

My contextual reason for asking these questions is this. In our daily quests for information, we all have occasions to require information be presented to us in multiple or different ways. We’ve all appreciated being able to access information we needed, how and when we needed it. But we’ve probably also all experienced the frustration of a barrier when the information we need is presented in a singular format that is inaccessible to us.

Information formats and barriers to learning

What if that Children’s Tylenol bottle and that radio program are sources of information you need to successfully satisfy a course learning outcome? If 8-pt font is imperceptible to you, or if you don’t hear or remember all of the relevant details for information you only receive aurally, then you are missing information that is considered essential for your success in the course. In short, these singular representations of information are going to create significant barriers to your learning.

Implementing UDL Principles & Guidelines to avoid

barriers to information

Consider the difference it would make to your success in the course if your instructor recognized that “there is not one means of representation that will be optimal for all learners”.

Consider the difference it would make to your success in the course if that paper-based information in tiny-font was also readily available in a digital format that allowed you to:

• Customize how the information was displayed (e.g. you could enlarge font-sizes, or adjust brightness & contrast between background and text),
  or
• Use text-to-speech technology to hear the text read aloud.

And consider the difference it would make to your success in the course if the oral information was also readily available in a format that allowed you to:

• Access visual alternatives (e.g. text, graphics) to the oral information/instructions.

In your role as an instructor, you play a critical part in the selection of course materials. If you provide learners in your course with Options for Perception  and present information in multiple formats, fewer of your students will encounter learning barriers that result when the singular format provided is inaccessible to them.

Questions about providing more Options for Perception in your courses?

(Camosun College instructors) connect with a working group that is currently focused on this very topic. Contact group via:

• Sue Doner (Instructional Designer: doners@camosun.ca)

(Our final Slam Story in this series!)

In October 2016, the eLearning unit in CETL hosted Camosun’s first “UDL Slam.” Faculty and staff were invited to share stories about practical applications of UDL (Universal Design for Learning) Principles they have implemented in their courses or programs. The “Slam” format required that these stories include the following details and be told in 5 minutes or less:

1. The specific barrier to learning;
2. The solution applied to address this barrier;
3. Some assessment of the solution to date.

In this fourth and final in a special series of posts, we give you this effective and adaptable example of UDL in practice, which was shared at UDL Slam 2016 by Dan Reeve from Political Science.

At the bottom of this post, we have included our own mini-analysis of which UDL Principles & Guidelines underpin Dan’s solution to a learning barrier.

Barrier: Getting quiet people to contribute ideas in class

In his 1^st and 2^nd-year Political Science classes, Dan actively encourages discussion and feedback from students. However, he’s well aware that not all of his students are comfortable putting up their hands and speaking out in front of their peers or telling him if they are struggling with course concepts. Knowing that this discomfort can equate to missed learning opportunities for everyone and wanting to hear from more voices in his classes, Dan was looking for a way to coax ideas and feedback from the quieter or more introverted students in a way that would not also generate stress or anxiety.

Solution

After a conference workshop introduced him to the web-based tool, Poll Everywhere, Dan looked into whether he could incorporate it as a low-risk method of supporting communication in his classes.

Poll Everywhere allows an instructor to pose questions to students during a class and while the collective responses are shared for the full class to see, students’ responses are anonymous. The collected responses can then serve as a springboard for deeper class discussions on the topic, or give the instructor a quick read on the students’ grasp of concepts at that point in the course. Students can use their mobile phones or web browsers to respond to a range of question types (open-ended, multiple-choice, short text, etc.), and an instructor has options about how and when to reveal a class’s responses to the full group.

One of the reasons the Poll Everywhere tool appealed to Dan was because he could incorporate contextual questions for students into his in-class PowerPoint presentations and then display their collected responses within the same PowerPoint slides and context. Additionally, since most students in his classes already had cellphones, no additional technologies were required. If there were any students without a cellphone or laptop in the class, Dan simply paired them up with a classmate who did have the hardware. That said, students were not required to participate and were not assessed on their responses; if students still were not comfortable or willing to respond to questions, they could opt out.

And finally, as far as privacy concerns go, students did not need to provide any personally-identifying information to participate in the Poll Everywhere activities: they did not need to create an account on Poll Everywhere to respond to Dan’s questions, and they could also access the Internet through the college’s EDUROAM service and not their own data plans.

[For more information about Poll Everywhere and useful applications of the tool, see http://www.polleverywhere.com/blog/great-ways-to-use-poll-everywhere-in-the-classroom/]

Benefits

In his pilot use of Poll Everywhere, Dan found that he could pose open-ended questions to his class and generate more responses than he would typically get through the traditional “hands-up, vocal responses in front of the class” approach. In other words and as per his original goal, he did end up hearing more from the quieter introverts in his classes.

A tertiary benefit to the Poll Everywhere-based questions was that Dan was able to save some in-class time. Rather than posing a question and going around the room one student at a time to collect responses, all of the responses to a question would appear on the screen at the same time and could be reviewed and discussed further from there. This not only made “pair-and-share” activities more efficient, but also permitted more opportunities to pursue a wider array of questions.

Lessons Learned

In addition to being mindful about students having access to a cellphone or laptop in his classroom, Dan found that students’ enthusiasm for responding to Poll Everywhere questions waned if he posed too many questions per class; he could easily end up losing the participation he had just gained. His recommendation is to avoid overloading a class with questions; use Poll Everywhere thoughtfully and not too much.

Examples

The following screenshots illustrate examples of some of Dan’s Poll Everywhere-based, in-class activities and how the collected responses are displayed to everyone in a class:

1. Sample of student feedback to the open-ended, short-answer question: “What’s one thing that could be improved with this class?”
2. Sample of responses to this question associated with critical course concepts: “What is a conservative?”
3. Sample of a word-cloud display of one-word responses to the question: “If a nation is an imagined community, what – in a single word – binds a nation together?”

UDL Breakdown & Analysis

Contributed by Sue Doner (eLearning) and Rod Lidstone (Plumbing & Pipe Trades)

On October 14, the eLearning unit in CETL hosted Camosun’s first “UDL Slam.” Faculty and staff were invited to share stories about practical applications of UDL (Universal Design for Learning) Principles they have implemented in their courses or programs. The “Slam” format required that these stories include the following details and be told in 5 minutes or less:

1. The specific barrier to learning;
2. The solution applied to address this barrier;
3. Some assessment of the solution to date.

In this second in a special series of posts, we give you this thoughtful and transferable example of UDL in practice, which was shared at UDL Slam 2016 by Rod Lidstone from Plumbing & Pipe Trades.

At the bottom of this post, we have included our own mini-analysis of which UDL Principles & Guidelines underpin Rod’s solution to a learning barrier.

Barrier: In-Class Demonstrations to Students of “How To Use” Equipment & Tools

Before students in the Plumbing & Pipes Trades program can begin to get their hands-on experience with shop tools and equipment, they are required to gather around the tool in question while their instructor gives them a demonstration of how to use it. These demonstrations involve detailed, step-by-step directions on both using the equipment correctly and using it safely.

However, as Rod explained, these demos are given on the shop floor and the locations tend to provide limited space for students to gather around and be able to view all the details. In addition to the physical limitations, the in-class delivery of the demos doesn’t always give students enough time to digest the particulars of all the required steps.

So: how to give students as much access as they need to content they have to understand before they can begin to gain hands-on experience in their trade? As Rod observed, among other issues at stake are the safety risks to students if they don’t recall all of the requisite steps or missed some of the details.

Solution

Create videos of ALL the equipment and tool demonstrations and post them online for students to access any time. (To date: instructors in the Plumbing & Pipe Trades program have created almost 100 videos of 5 minutes or less.)

Once students have watched a demo video, they take a follow-up quiz to track and assess their comprehension; students can watch videos as often as they need to and can retake the quizzes. If they score well on the quiz, they schedule time with their instructor for a 15-minute pre-project meeting; pre-projects meetings are student-led presentations in which the student demonstrates to the instructor how to use a piece of equipment.

Benefits

Whereas the in-class equipment demonstrations limited students to a one-time-only run-through by the instructor, students can watch these demonstration videos over and over until they really “get it”. In fact, they can watch and review videos via a tablet or mobile device while they are actually in the shop, with the equipment. All of the videos are closed-captioned, so the instructions are still accessible within the environmental noise of the shop.

Lessons Learned

In the process of developing close to 100 video-based demonstrations, Rod and his team have learned several valuable lessons about creating effective instructional videos, especially when jockeying for access to the College’s limited and in-demand Audio-Video Services (AVS):

1. Pay attention to lighting; for detailed demonstrations in particular, good lighting of the subject matter is critical.
2. YouTube’s auto-generated closed-captioning service is convenient, but the accuracy is often poor. Be prepared to manually edit these. (Rod and his team are currently working through all of their videos to make corrections to YouTube’s auto-generated captions).
3. Develop your script in advance. Not only will this help to make the best use of limited AVS time to shoot but it will also help to save time in editing.

Examples of Demonstration Videos

YouTube

1. “Tying a Trucker’s Hitch”
2. “Two-Person Ladder Set-up”
3. “Sharpening Chisels” 

UDL Breakdown & Analysis

Contributed by Sue Doner (eLearning) and John Lee (Chemistry)

On October 14, the eLearning unit in CETL hosted Camosun’s first “UDL Slam.” Faculty and staff were invited to share stories about practical applications of UDL (Universal Design for Learning) Principles they have implemented in their courses or programs. The “Slam” format required that these stories include the following details and be told in 5 minutes or less:

1. The specific barrier to learning;
2. The solution applied to address this barrier;
3. Some assessment of the solution to date.

In this first in a special series of posts, we give you this engaging and creative example of UDL in practice, which was shared at UDL Slam 2016 by John Lee from Chemistry.

At the bottom of this post, we have included our own mini-analysis (see below) of which UDL Principles & Guidelines underpin John’s solution to a learning barrier.

Barrier: Template-based Lab Reports.

The majority of John’s students hate “tedious lab reports”, i.e. the formal lab reports that follow a dry, written, template format. From John’s observations, the format doesn’t meaningfully engage all learners (such as those with difficulties writing) or even reflect professional practice.  (These lab reports wouldn’t be part of real-world forms of reporting out results.) John feels that the only reason for these templates is to familiarize those students who will be going into 3^rd-year Chemistry at UVic with the process used there.

Solution

Give students a rubric to guide what information they need to include in their reports, but beyond that let students choose different methods to present their lab results.

Students have chosen a wide variety of methods and end up learning other skills that they wouldn’t have picked up by completing a dry, template lab report. Students also like to showcase talents that otherwise wouldn’t get noticed in a science class.  Some of the reports styles have included:

• Comic strips/Graphic novels
• TV show/video; YouTube and animations
• Music (song writing)
• Radio interviews and peer teaching.

Benefits

Primary benefit: Students get into the labs in more depth and really enjoy creating their reports.

Additional benefit: Students often pick up additional skills via the method they choose to create their report (e.g. technological skills; presentation skills).

Examples of Students’ Submissions

TV Show (via YouTube)

1. “The Life & Death of Sproinky: Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy” by Gabe and Aaron.
2. “Titration TV: featuring Xylenesuphonic Acid” by Gabe and Aaron.

Comic Strip/Graphic Novel

1. “Bad Chemistry (PDF)” (PDF) by Ivy and Dayna.

UDL Breakdown & Analysis