CAST: Universal Design for Learning

This is an interesting, exciting, confusing time for teachers and students. We live in a world defined by technical change and social challenge. Teachers are asked to prepare students for a future world whose citizens will have to combine old and new skills and old and new knowledge in ways we cannot fully imagine. We discuss and debate what and how students should be taught. Computers offer us new teaching tools that change even as we learn to use them. Like any powerful new technology, computers not only help us do things, they change what we do — they simultaneously offer new ways to teach literacy and redefine what literacy is.

One of our aims in this book has been to identify some basic principles to help chart a path through the hype, reality, and potential of educational technology. We have discussed neurological research on learning and reading at some length because understanding how people learn seems a necessary foundation to understanding how they should be taught. That research has established certain basic facts about the way our brains function that remain important no matter what is being taught or what new technologies become available to help teach it:

• Learning is a complex activity cooperatively carried out by systems in the brain that recognize patterns, that develop and exercise skills, and that motivate and organize action.
• Learning a skill requires effort and practice, and exercising a skill does not.
• Every individual learns differently from every other, bringing unique preferences and capabilities to the process.

The fact that these scientific findings confirm what experienced teachers have known for a long time speaks well both for the teachers and the research. Good teachers know how important it is to adjust their teaching to the needs of individual students; they know that teaching works best when they can teach the whole student, offering the right balance of motivation, support, challenge, novelty, familiarity, connection, and independence. In discussing the role of computers in teaching reading, we have emphasized the ways that computers can augment the teacher's ability to give students personalized, responsive, balanced, and varied attention. By identifying flexibility as the defining characteristic of the computer, we accomplish two things. First, we cut through some of the confusion about what this technology in transition is really all about. Computers have been used as calculators, typewriters, fax machines, test givers, printing presses, and drawing tools. Their ability to transform themselves into all those things and many more suggests that the one unique thing computers can do for us is be flexible and help us perform tasks that require adaptation and a large, shifting repertoire of functions and responses. The second point follows from the first. Teaching is all about responsiveness, adaptability, and multiple strategies and resources, so the computer's flexibility — rather than any one particular feature — is what gives it so much potential as a teaching tool.

The Current State of Research

Is there any proof that computers and software really do offer the benefits we describe? What does research on the use of computers in reading tell us? The ongoing debate on this subject includes strong voices in favor and against. Disagreement stems from the complexity of the issue, as well as the participants' strong opinions about reading pedagogy in general.

The impossibility of demonstrating the efficacy of computers for reading instruction in a global way makes definitive results hard to come by. Lyon and Moats (1997) comment on the complexity of designing research to understand the "components, timing, and conditions of successful reading instruction… In essence such research must be able to ultimately identify the teacher characteristics and instructional components that are critical for individual children and the interrelationships among these components" (p. 578). Analyzing the effectiveness of computers in reading instruction requires attention to all these variables. Reinking, Labbo, and McKenna (1997) observe that "the effects of using computers for instruction are dependent upon a teacher's instructional philosophy and goals as much as upon the characteristics of the computer application or activity" (p. 85). They point out that teachers shape computer activities to fit their own views of reading. The effectiveness of computer reading instruction also depends on the appropriateness and quality of the software used and the particular needs of students. So researchers must consider many variables to obtain meaningful results: teachers' and students' characteristics, the nature of the software, and the instructional context. Results of careful, contextual research no more prove or disprove the efficacy of "the computer" than research on print-based curricula proves the efficacy of "the book." In fact, we probably need to reframe our basic question. Rather than debating whether or not computers in general help students learn to read, we can more usefully explore the particular circumstances in which particular computer tools do or do not contribute to the learning process for particular learners.

Rapid technological change poses another problem for researchers. Most findings quickly become outdated. Kulik and Kulik's 1991 meta-analysis of more than 250 studies — most of which found some benefits in computer use — is based on research now ten years old. Software and network resources that have become available since then have fundamentally changed how teachers can use computers, rendering some of the findings irrelevant to today's classrooms.

With these issues and disclaimers in mind, we can point to many studies that do in fact show computers contributing to improved student achievement (Davidson, Elcock, & Noyes, 1996; Greenlee-Moore & Smith, 1996; Kulik & Kulik, 1991; Martson, Deno, Kim, Diment, & Rogers, 1995). Studies measuring varying benefits for different kinds of students show that among the students who benefit most are those having the most difficulty learning to read (Kulik & Kulik, 1991; Niemiec, Samson, Weinstein, & Walberg, 1987; Waldman, 1995). The fact that these positive findings come from the infancy of our understanding of reading software suggests that its future potential is great. In this book we have explored both what current technology offers and the future benefits we expect from improved technology and new insights into how to use it.

In this chapter we bring together some of the essential points we have discussed to provide a clear picture of what computers and universal design can mean for teaching reading. Then we will address how technology is broadening our idea of literacy.

Teaching a Class of Individuals

Three third-grade students are learning to read. The first needs to build decoding skills; the second needs to learn strategies for deriving meaning from text; the third needs to build confidence in his reading abilities. In print-based classrooms, the assignment for all three students might be the same: read the story on page ten and write about how it reminds you of something in your own life. Each of these students might encounter a different barrier to success. The first might not understand the story because decoding words demands his full attention; working as hard as he could, he might still miss many key words. The second might decode the words effectively but miss the main point of the story and therefore not be able to draw relevant parallels to her own life. The third might be so lacking in confidence that he does not even try to complete the assignment.

A skilled teacher might set different goals for each of these students, but the materials, time, and tools needed to support their individual needs would not be available. In a classroom with adequate computer resources along with software and methods informed by the principles of universal design, both the assignment and the tools required to carry it out successfully could be customized to fit the goals and needs of each student. The first student's assignment could be to read the story aloud correctly and with appropriate intonation. When he encounters a difficult word in his electronic text, he could click on it to get help. The computer might speak only the initial sound, supporting his effort to decode the whole word. Or it could sound out the word phoneme by phoneme and then give him the opportunity to record the word and compare his version with the computer's. The second student might be asked to show her understanding of the story by writing about two key events. Software support in the form of vocabulary help would extend her understanding of individual words in context. Recorded think-alouds might suggest that she try to predict what would happen next, urge her to analyze why characters behaved in particular ways, or guide her to consider the main elements of the story. The third student, who lacks confidence in his reading and writing, might be asked to record comments about how the story resembles something that happened to him. He could ask the computer to read parts or all of the story aloud, or see it enacted in animations that correspond to sentence units. In addition to or instead of recording his responses, he could draw pictures illustrating parallel events in his own life, or try writing with the support of a word list or a template that already contained some elements of a written response.

This example shows why flexibility is the key to the computer's power as a teaching tool — more accurately, as a set of tools and resources. It is a hypothetical example, but not a fictional one. Everything described can technically be done today. Software that embodies universal design principles, allowing customization for individual goals, levels of accomplishment, and learning styles, is becoming a reality. Universally designed software takes advantage of computers' flexibility to build in adjustability for different learners. Through universal design, learning materials can adapt to the recognition, strategic, and affective systems of diverse students.

Toward a New Literacy

Computers are causing us to rethink both our definition of literacy and our approaches to teaching it. We are in a transition period, beginning to move away from print-dominated classrooms where literacy learning focuses almost completely on tasks related to dealing effectively with text — learning to decode text, learning to understanding text, learning to write text. New technologies and new media are broadening our perspective on the goals of teaching literacy, shedding new light on the learners we are trying to reach, what we should teach them, and how they should be taught. Even the ways we talk about the simplest goals and tasks are beginning to change. "Write your name on your paper" no longer covers all the options. Saying to students "identify the piece of work as yours" could result in them typing their names, making a digital recording, pasting a personal logo or a scanned photo of themselves into a document, or creating a link to their home pages.

Some visionaries are already reframing our traditional idea of literacy into a subcategory called "letteracy" to make way for a more expansive definition of literacy in the modern age (Papert, 1993). Our concept of literacy has been based on the assumption that print is the primary carrier of information in our culture and that the most important skills are those that enable students to understand and express themselves in text. The new definition of literacy is based on a different assumption: that digital technology is rapidly becoming a primary carrier of information and that the broader means of expression this technology makes possible are now critical for education. Text literacy is necessary and valuable, but no longer sufficient.

To those of us who have labored for many years toward the goal of universal literacy — undeniably without success — this may seem discouraging news. If we have been unable to achieve universal literacy within the limited domain of printed text, how can we possibly achieve it in the more expanded sense that digital technology will require? Not only has the bar been raised, but it is likely to keep going up. Leu (1997) observes that literacy can no longer be considered an end state. It is a continuing, rapidly evolving process: "changes in the strategic knowledge required to navigate traditional text environments have been glacial; changes in the strategic knowledge required to navigate Internet environments are meteoric" (Leu 1997, p. 65).

What, then, is the good news? First, the new literacy is more inclusive. For many students, old definitions and methods of literacy limited opportunities for success. Students with genuine gifts for communicating in modes other than text have seen their particular strengths ignored or devalued. Working exclusively in a medium they find difficult, they suffer frustration or failure. This is especially true for children with text-related disabilities, who are often disenfranchised by learning methods and materials inappropriate to their needs and capabilities. New media enable more students to participate: students who may communicate best through images or learn best by hearing rather than seeing words are beginning to find new media that serve those needs.

Second, the new literacy provides a broader set of alternatives for expression. The capacity to convey actual speech, with all of its emotional intonation and emphasis, allows the expression of affect, irony, and intent in ways that are nearly impossible to convey in printed text. The capacity to use image and video to represent the relations among things, either in space or time, is usually much more accurate and communicative than in text. On the other hand, the capacity to present legal argument, exposition, life stories, and fantasies is often most effectively accomplished in text. The new literacy means not the replacement of one medium with another, but access to a broader receptive and expressive palette. Literate citizens of the future will know how to select the most expressive and effective tools for the communicative task at hand.

Some Early Examples

Introduction

The new literacy is here to stay. It is more powerful, more expressive, more communicative, and more supportive than print-based literacy. Here are a few early examples of how today's students are defining the future of literacy.

Using Video to Write

In Northampton, Massachusetts, students at Clarke School for the Deaf use a desktop captioning system called ULTimate CaptionWorks to create multimedia captions on videos.* They have gone far beyond transcribing dialogue. In some of their productions, the video becomes merely a backdrop or stimulus for creative writing. They have layered dialogue onto silent movies, creating new stories, meanings, and images (see Figure 5-1). They have created their own new videos and narrated them through text and graphics overlaid on the video images.

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FIGURE 5-1. In this example, students used ULTimate CaptionWorks to add dialogue to a Charlie Chaplin movie, personalizing the story with their teachers' names.

Young Authors with a Worldwide Audience

On the other side of the globe, Alexander Balson, an Australian five-year-old boy, and his father created stories about a koala bear named Max and published them on the World Wide Web at {http://www.scribbles.com.au} (Leu & Leu, 1997). Figure 5-2 shows a page from one of Alex's stories.

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FIGURE 5-2. Koala Troubles: Max and the Magic Carpet Ride.

©1998 Netscape Communications Corp. Used with permission. All rights reserved. This electronic file or page may not be reprinted or copied without the express written permission of Netscape.

More than 200,000 people have visited this young author-illustrator's site and have corresponded with Max's creator. The vast communicative power of the World Wide Web and its capacity for handling text, image, animation, sound, and speech let learners experience the benefits of being an effective world-wide communicator even before they master basic reading and writing skills. Children who lack the print-based skills traditionally thought of as constituting literacy can express themselves effectively and publicly in other media. Countless examples exist of children publishing material on the Web and corresponding with others all over the world. By gathering information from CD-ROMs and other multimedia resources, they put together "stories" and "reports" in forms we could hardly have imagined 20 years ago.

New Literacy and Standards

WinStar for Education's MindsEye Curriculum Project Web site provides exciting on-line activities that support learning skills specified by the New York State Curriculum Frameworks (Leu, 1997). In one language arts example, the Monster Exchange, students draw a monster, write a detailed description of that monster, and challenge students in remote locations to draw the same monster from the text description. Students who respond can then compare their drawings to the originals. (See Figure 5-3.) This real-life exchange motivates students to write clearly and articulately, read carefully, and use graphic skills. In this example, the "karate man" monster, the text served to evoke a close reproduction from another student. The description reads:

My monsters name is karate. He has a hand head with triangle eyes one is red and the other is blue . His nose is a triangle that is grass green . He has a flag shaped mouth that is black the point of the flag is pointing to the right . He has a pizza body. His body has mushrooms ] olives ] pepperone ] and tomatoes and yellow all around them. He has finger legs and he is wearing blue pants and brown keen pads with blackshoes at the bottem. He is ten inches tall. He has 9 fingers on one side and on the other 7. He has peach hand head. His real name is hand head His middel name is pizza body last name thumb short name pepperone.

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FIGURE 5-3. Based on a student's on-line description of her Karate Man monster, another student attempted to draw the same monster. The paired drawings and written descriptions of monsters are posted on the WinStar for Education MindsEye Curriculum Project Monster Exchange Web site {http://www.win4edu.com/mindseye/center.html}. Susy Calvert, an elementary school teacher, volunteers her time to maintain the Monster Exchange.
©1998 Netscape Communications Corp. Used with permission. All rights reserved. This electronic file or page may not be reprinted or copied without the express written permission of Netscape.

This kind of activity can be done within classrooms of course, but who wouldn't prefer to have someone across the country give it a try?

Looking Forward and Back

The power of new technology goes beyond its capacity to change our methods for teaching reading — it can change our culture. Communication tools are changing faster than at any earlier time in our history. At the moment, we are primarily using new tools to teach old literacy, and often to teach it in old ways, translating print-based strategies to the computer, ignoring or only incidentally putting the astonishing flexibility of computers to work for us. We are just starting to understand and use the real power of computers to teach reading and writing. Together, new methods and changes in our culture are bringing us to the threshold of the next stage, when schools will teach both old and new literacies together, and in the process of teaching and learning will define what new literacy means.

Lovers of the old literacy should not despair. Books and other texts will stay with us, their unique value clarified by our growing understanding of what they and other media do well. Even more to the point, all forms of literacy, new and old, will serve the same aims of expression and communication, opening doors between individuals, between the individual and the world, and between the individual and his own true self.

Many of us can remember the moment in childhood when we became good readers, when written words stopped being puzzles to be solved and suddenly spoke to us, clearly and directly. A whole new world seemed to open up. The stacks of books we carried home from libraries were alive with adventures, mysteries, places real and imagined, and above all with people — people whose thoughts and feelings and voices we came to know, people who were our companions, guides, and friends.

That human connection and enlargement of mind and spirit are what literacy is all about, old or new. The new literacy will extend that experience of discovery and fellowship, not destroy it. Whether it consists of text, sound, pictures, motion, or some new unimagined blend of media, we are coming to understand literacy as the one great meeting place for humanity and we look forward to the time when all are included.