Universal Design for Learning: Technology and Pedagogy

When educators hear the term universal design for learning (UDL), most associate it with technology (cf. Zascavage Orkwis Rose others are technological (such as closed captions on television sets). Within universal design, seven guiding principles drive the design of products and environments so that they are usable by more people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design (Connell et al., 1997). When educators employ these principles in the design and delivery of instruction, accommodations noted on individualized education programs (IEPs) for students with learning disabilities (LD) may more naturally occur in general education classrooms. As applied to the educational needs of students with LD, these principles are played out in both technological and pedagogical ways. The seven guiding principles originally identified for universal design are equitable use, flexibility in use, simple and intuitive use, perceptible information, tolerance for error, low physical effort, and size and space for approach and use (Connell et al., 1997). The principles are sometimes overlapping in function, as noted in the following examples. One principle, flexibility in use, is evident when teachers design instruction that accommodates a wide range of students' preferences and abilities. For example, when the instructional goal is for students to measure the perimeter of quadrilaterals, teachers can use concrete and virtual manipulative demonstrations to show the different types of quadrilaterals with corresponding formulas. The concrete and virtual manipulative demonstrations are flexible because they provide students choices in learning, and these choices also accommodate students' needs when learning the content. However, it is not simply the use of concrete or virtual manipulatives that conveys information to students with and without LD. How teachers verbally explain the math content, concepts, and rules, that is, the pedagogy that is used, can either clarify or confuse learners. For this example, the pairing of the virtual manipulative technology with the way teachers instruct has the potential to increase the number of learners, regardless of ability, who can more quickly learn how to measure the perimeter of quadrilaterals. Equitable use of instructional materials can be achieved via technology, such as digital texts for students with LD. However, when the instructional material is a textbook that is not well designed in terms of how its content is organized, depicted, and sequenced, pedagogical features that increase the content's accessibility for many learners become the focus. For example, researchers who have analyzed textbooks found the content difficult to comprehend, laden with minimally related facts and information (cf. Jitendra, Deatline-Buchman, Jitendra et al., 2001; van Garderen, 2006). Taking a UDL approach to textbook usage, these weakly designed features are redesigned before instruction is delivered, so that key facts are targeted and relationships among them are determined. …