Teaching Every Student: Chapter 4 - UDL Implementations
UDL Implementation
The framework of UDL consists of instructional approaches that provide students with choices and alternatives in the materials, content, tools, contexts, and supports they use. But in addition to challenging teachers to be more flexible, UDL provides guidelines for creating flexibility that is both systematic and effective. These guidelines are derived from research on the learning brain and knowledge of the qualities of digital media. How do we use these fields of knowledge to develop systematic methods for increasing classroom flexibility?
Brain research provides a basis for determining the kinds of teaching and learning alternatives most useful for a particular student in a given circumstance. Insights about how the three neural networks function help us understand corresponding kinds of teaching and corresponding ways to individualize instruction for different learners.
Recall that the three networks–recognition, strategy, and affect–share several organizational features. Each processes information via distributed modules operating in parallel, using both top-down (contextual information from high in the hierarchy) and bottom-up (detailed information from low in the hierarchy) pathways. When we understand these features, we can identify several parameters that will help structure and simplify the selection of teaching and learning alternatives.
Building on the bottom-up nature of the learning networks (their reliance on detailed sensory information), we know we should provide students with sensory alternatives to ensure that those who have difficulty with one sensory modality (such as speech or sight) will not be excluded from learning opportunities. The verbal description of Mr. Costa's voter participation chart is a good example of a bottom-up sensory alternative. Similarly, bottom-up motor alternatives, such as special keyboards or voice recognition software, can ensure that students with physical disabilities will not be excluded from a particular learning task. This kind of alternative crosses modalities, offering students a completely different way to obtain or express ideas.
A second kind of alternative preserves the sensory or physical modality but provides enhancement to highlight certain information. Through these additions, we can scaffold students who have weaknesses that interfere with learning a task or who are novices in a particular domain. Returning to the chart example, Mr. Costa might provide an alternative version with the critical information circled or illustrated in a different color. This is an ideal scaffold for students who might have difficulty identifying key information in the larger context.
Recognition, strategic, and affective networks also use top-down processing to do their jobs. Therefore, a representation that provides additional context or background knowledge to help students constrain their search or action based on prior knowledge and expectation can be an equally powerful tool. Mr. Costa might build an electronic version of the voter participation chart, with hyperlinks to related information or to guiding questions that would direct students' interpretation. This kind of representation would be particularly useful to students with cognitive challenges that make it hard for them to remember information, students who lack the necessary background knowledge or have little experience interpreting charts, or students who can interpret the chart easily but desire more in-depth knowledge.
This short illustration shows that teachers' choices of media alternatives for particular tasks and students can be guided by an understanding of how the brain learns. Because UDL accounts for the organizational features and specialized learning in the three types of brain networks, it can guide flexible, individualized teaching.
The Role of Digital Media
In an ideal world, teachers might present information in a dozen different ways and offer students an equal number of options for expressing knowledge. But realistically, even the most creative teacher can only present one option at a time. And even if we did manage to use a variety of approaches and media to present concepts, our students would still need to practice those concepts and apply them on their own. The impracticality of using fixed materials such as printed textbooks to create a flexible learning environment is obvious. New digital media offer a much more feasible foundation for the UDL framework.
As we noted in chapter 3, the qualities of digital media most germane to education are their versatility (the ability to present information in any one of several media); their transformability (the capacity for content to be transformed from one medium to another); their capacity for being marked; and their capacity to be networked. Teachers and students using networked digital materials can select the most suitable medium or use multiple media simultaneously. They can also convert material from one medium to another on the fly, modify the appearance of information within one medium, delve more deeply or connect laterally to other concepts through links, and communicate with many different people through networked computers. Let's revisit one of our example classrooms for an illustration.
Digital Media Applied
Ms. Chen’s 6th grade class is studying Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The book is available both in a traditional print format and online at Project Gutenberg (http://promo.net/pg/). Ms. Chen has downloaded the digital version to the class computers. The content in the print and digital versions is identical, and students can choose the version they prefer.
The print version of Tom Sawyer offers many familiar advantages. Students can carry it around, mark it up to highlight important passages, make notes in the margins, and flip through the pages to look for particular sections. While reading, they know exactly where they are in the story and how many pages they have to go. Many students choose the printed version, finding it easy to use.
Many, but not all. Ms. Chen’s class includes one student who is blind, another who is physically disabled, and another who has been diagnosed with dyslexia. Several students speak limited English. For these learners, the printed version is not easy to use; in fact it may be totally inaccessible. Other students in Ms. Chen?s class whose reading is not fluent, who bring limited vocabulary and background knowledge to the story, or who are struggling with the literary concepts she is teaching find that although they can use the printed version, it provides little support for their learning. For them, the print version is a hurdle, not a ramp.
How is the digital version different? It offers multiple ways of presenting the same content–effectively supporting the different recognition, strategic, and affective networks of different learners and providing them both access to information and access to learning.
Recognition support. The digital version allows Ms. Chen and her students to customize the text according to their needs and preferences. Web browsers and word processors make it easy for them to change the size or color of text in order to make it more visible. Screen reading software is available to read the text aloud or display the digital text through a refreshable Braille device that provides a tactile representation of the story. The digital version can go beyond providing access, to also offer support for students with various recognition-based learning difficulties. There are a number of software programs (including TextHELP Systems Ltd.’s TextHELP, Kurzweil Education Systems’s Kurzweil 3000, and CAST’s own eReader, shown in Figure 4.4) that can present digital stories with supports for reading.
d
|
|
- Figure 4.4 -
Sample Recognition Support in CAST eReader
|
|
The eReader is a special Web browser that reads and highlights words, emphasizing the link between written and spoken language. Students can click on any word to hear its pronunciation or set up the program to read and highlight text sequentially–a word, a sentence, a paragraph, or a chapter at a time. Students can decide how fast the program reads and choose from a wide selection of voices.
When Ms. Chen plans how she will use the digital version in class, she considers her instructional goals. She wants her students to enjoy and appreciate the humor in Tom Sawyer and to study some of the literary techniques Twain uses. Reading mechanics is not her objective; Therefore, she encourages struggling readers to use the eReader to get at the story’s meaning and keep up with their classmates.
Strategic support. Students with physical disabilities that prevent them from holding the book or turning its pages can navigate through the digital version, take notes, and generate their own text using alternative keyboards or programs that allow alternate means of navigating the digital text (examples include IntelliTools’ Intellikeys-brand keyboard and overlays). Students with handwriting and spelling difficulties also find support for writing in the digital version of Tom Sawyer. For example, eReader offers a digital notebook next to the text itself, enabling students to copy passages and take notes while they read. Using programs that support embedded hyperlinks (such as Inspiration and HyperStudio), students can digitally record their own voices, draw, or write text comments. These digital tools provide media options for supported student expression.
Affective support. Finally, the digital version of Tom Sawyer offers multiple, flexible options for engaging students in the story. Because the story is in digital form, Ms. Chen can select from a menu of supports so that the level of challenge is appropriate for every reader. Links to background knowledge, vocabulary, and reading support can help students who struggle with the text in printed form–and keep their frustration levels low. Interested students who want to know more can follow embedded links to other stories by Twain, related information about the time and setting of the story, and other material relating to Twain’s writing technique. And Ms. Chen can also offer students varied choices of media for responding to the novel and creating their own compositions to demonstrate their knowledge. Students can create multimedia presentations using HyperStudio, design a Web page with links to related sites, devise a concept map, or write a paper.
As this example shows, digital media's versatility, transformability, and capacity for being marked and networked not only enhance the supportive power of learning media but also transform the learning enterprise itself. Flexible materials do not replace teachers, but they do extend our reach and make it easier for us to provide individualized learning supports and challenges for our students.
The New Role of Assistive Technology
Assistive technologies include tools such as video enlargers (tools that magnify printed text on a video monitor), single ability switches (tools that enable users to activate a mouse-click via different muscles such as an eyebrow or an elbow), and alternative keyboards (tools that offer alternative surfaces and “key sizes” for people who cannot use a standard keyboard). Although both UDL and assistive technology rely on new media to improve learning access, each assumes a very different role for curriculum.
The assistive technology model assumes that a printed curriculum is a given and provides tools to support individual access to it. Tools such as the video enlarger are not integral to the curriculum, but rather, are associated with the individual students who need them; they are simply means to helping these students overcome barriers in the curriculum. The assumption that students must obtain individual tools in order to overcome barriers in an inflexible curriculum is inherently antithetical to UDL.
To solve the same problems, UDL looks not to the student but to the curriculum itself. The underlying assumption is that by using flexible media, we can embed options within the curriculum so that it can be adjusted to meet the needs and preferences of each learner. This built-in flexibility reduces, but does not eliminate, the need for assistive technologies. Students with motor difficulties who access the computer via alternative keyboards or single ability switches will still need their tools. However, we believe the role of assistive technologies and the way people view them will shift as UDL curricula become more available.
As the concept of UDL gains acceptance, people will understand that assistive technologies are tools like eyeglasses and personal digital assistants that enhance personal effectiveness; they do not relegate their users to a separate category such as "disabled." Already, some of these devices, once solely linked to disability, are working their way into the mainstream community. For example, speech recognition technology is applied in voice-activated telephone directories, airline reservation systems, and banking systems.
As you can see, UDL has the potential to minimize the need for assistive technology and to maximize learning opportunities for all. We use the word "potential" deliberately, because the inherent flexibility of digital media does not guarantee that UDL will become real. Multimedia and the World Wide Web can be as inaccessible as print is. For example, image-based computer learning games are inaccessible to students who are blind; games that rely upon aural prompts and feedback without text equivalents are inaccessible to students who are deaf; and games that are text-based are inaccessible to students with dyslexia. To overcome these barriers, technology developers need to consciously apply UDL principles as they develop learning materials, and teachers need to select tools that have inherent flexibility.
