Name: Universal Design for Learning Principles : Learn
Uploaded: 2013-04-03T13:02:42.000Z
Duration: 50 min 8 s
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Hi, everybody, and welcome to today s webinar. Even though the university

Gerund

is on spring break, Jenny and I are still here and we are still going to do a webinar

Present continuous

for today. Today is going to be Universal Design for Learning Principles and we kind

of frame this around universal designs regarding the higher education setting and then we ll

point out aspects and ways it can be implemented in a K-12 setting as well. My name is Jim

Stachowiak. As always, I will be guiding you through this today and hopefully you will

get something out of it. So, here we go. What we will talk about today is what universal

design is first, because I do have to lay that groundwork before we talk about universal

design for learning. We will talk about UDL accommodations and implementing UDL into courses.

So what is universal design? Universal design is the design of products and environments

used by all people to the greatest extent possible without the need for adaptation or

specialized design. This is a concept that came out of architecture in North Carolina

State University in the 70 s. A guy named Ron Mace kind of looked at things and said

instead of building buildings and then having to add on these handicapped accessible ramps

later on that do not really look good in the flow of the building and maybe somewhere around

the corner that s not at the main entrance, why do not we take a look at trying to build

this kind of thing on the front end and making buildings and making environments accessible

to everybody on the front end. When they started doing this, they found that even though you

think and aim towards people with disabilities, you design toward that, you are going to have

something that benefits everybody in the long run, and I think that is probably where it

is used to the greatest extent possible. When we are looking at folks with disabilities,

we are kind of getting folks on that outer end and outer edge of mobility level, so by

doing that, by getting to those edges, we are making things that benefit everybody.

There are some examples on this slide of some classic universal design examples, the go-to

examples, I guess. Whenever anybody talks about universal design, it is probably the

curb cut and you are all familiar with those. Curb cuts are on every street corner and they

basically ramp into the streets so that somebody doesn t have to go over the curb to get into

the street to cross, and that benefits not only people in wheelchairs but also people

pushing strollers, people on roller blades, people riding, bikes, older people that might

struggle with taking a step down to cross the street that befits all those folks. We

are starting to see a new aspect of universal design added in that to be used by the greatest

extent possible. You kind of see it on there; it is that rubber pad with bumps on it. That

is there for folks with visual impairments that might be using a cane that are not quite

sure when they are about to hit the street. That raised bump areas gives them an idea

that they are getting pretty close to the street. Below that, you see a house that s

hard to tell there but there is a ground level entryway so even though there is no step up

to the front porch, it just kind of goes right into the door, and this is just an example

to show you that that can be done without making it look like it s an accessibility

thing. I mean, that is still a pretty nice looking entryway to the house and it is accessible

as well. Next to that, you can see a fire alarm. Fire alarms did not used to be universally

designed. Not that long ago a fire alarm code was just to make sure it made noise so that

people got out of the building when it went off. You would hear a loud beeping noise and

that was about it. If you look at it now, this one has a strobe light on it and anywhere

you look now you are going to see that. s code now to have a strobe light on your fire

alarm, because with just the noise how would somebody that was deaf know what was going

on? How would somebody that was deaf know how to get out of the building or get out

of their dorm room or whatever when a fire alarm went off. That strobe light indicates

the alarm is going off for somebody that might be deaf of hearing impaired. If you listen

to those now, they do not just give a loud beeping noise, either. If you listen to them,

they typically give you instructions on what to do. I know in our building when the fire

alarm goes off it says there is an emergency, get to the nearest exist, and get outside.

That might help people that struggle with panicking when they just hear loud noises,

giving them some idea of what to do and to get out of there. So, it has really become

a universally designed tool. If you look next to that, universally designed signage is helpful

as well. That is a sign obviously for a women s bathroom. If you just had the word women

up there somebody who is blind, somebody that has a learning disability, somebody that doesn

t speak English isn t necessary going to know what that word says, and that could lead to

some big issues if somebody happens to go in there. But if we put a symbol on it that

s universally recognized as well as braille underneath the word, all of a sudden we ve

made signs that are accessible to just about anybody. The case of the universal design

it to design environments to make them universal to everybody, so kind of keep that in mind

when we talk about universal design for learning and what universal design through learning

is. Well, this is what it is. It is a goal. It is a processed focus on planning. Really,

the key to universally designing something is just thinking out ahead of time what issues

people might have with accessing the class and then designing workarounds around those

issues, I suppose. It is the idea that not everybody learns the same way and that multiple

approaches might be needed to reach everybody in your class. It is a proactive process that

can be implemented in steps. The key to this is also that it is accessible to use and it

is inclusive, so if you universally design a class that is accessible to everybody, everybody

can use it and everybody is included as well. It is also a way to extend some of the benefits

and accommodations that are pretty common for folks with disabilities to everybody in

the classroom. There might be some people in there that do not have disabilities but

learn a little bit differently from others and can benefit from some of those accommodations,

so we can extend the benefit of accommodations through UDL. Also, it allows for students

to use their strengths to access the class. That s also another key about this is tapping

to the strengths of an individual and giving them the opportunity to use those strengths

to maximize learning and maximize understanding of things as well. One universal design for

learning is not groundbreaking and nothing that we are going to talk about here is groundbreaking

stuff. It is not a single solution. There could be multiple solutions here. In the college

thing, we talk about UDL. The folks think it might be a means to low quality or standards

or a means to life accessible to unqualified students. That is not the case here. There

are standards to get into classes that need to be met. What we are doing with universal

design is once you have qualified for those classes, we are making it easier to use your

strengths to benefit from those classes. So we are not lowering any quality or lowering

standards and we are not making it accessible to unqualified students. Universal design

is not necessarily completely required in every class. There are still some things that

are accommodation based that the student will still have to work with student disability

services or something else to get that taken care of. For example, it is not practical

to have a sign language interpreter in every classroom just in case you run into a student

that has a hearing impairment that might need a sign language interpreter. That is still

something where that is on the student, that is on the university, that is on the school

to get that accommodation when necessary. Finally, universal design for learning is

not a replacement for good teaching. It is really a complement for good teaching. It

is a way to help extend the good things that a teacher is doing in a classroom. Universal

design for learning comes out of some brain research that was done in the Center for Applied

Special Technology out of Harvard, and what this looked at was three primary brain networks

in learning. There is the recognition network, the strategic network, and the effective network.

What they saw with this when they looked at these networks with different individuals

is that with different people, networks work a little differently. The recognition network

is a network in the brain where we take in information and what we saw here is that people