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

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

take in information in different ways. What the folks that came up with the concept of

universal design for learning said that was because everybody takes in information differently,

what we need to provide to our students is multiple means of representation of the materials.

Some people might take in information by listening to a lecture, others by reading, and others

by watching a video. If we provide all of those potions, that gives users a choice to

be able to actually see information the way that best benefits them. The middle network

there is the strategic network. With the strategic network, that s the area where we kind of

plan and demonstrate what we ve learn, and everybody does that a little bit differently,

so the universal design for learning calls for providing multiple means of expression

for students. Not everybody is great at writing an essay, but you are going to have to do

all these at one time or another. Not everybody displays what he or she learns best by writing.

Other people might do it better by presenting. Other people might even do better by singing

a song about what they learned. What the strategic network and having multiple means of expression

indicates is that we should provide multiple ways for students to demonstrate what they

learned. The third area is the effective network and that is kind of where we are engaged in

learning, and again, everybody is engaged a little bit differently. So to provide multiple

means of engagement to students, we provide multiple ways for students to get interested

in learning and just really sit down and dig into things. One of the examples that is given

in something like this in maybe a K-12 setting is maybe if you are doing a report on different

states and everybody s got to take a state and do a state, instead of approaching it

in terms of learning about a state and giving a report, approach it as you are going to

be the expert on your state and you are going to teach others about that, and that gives

the student a little bit of a sense of ownership in what they re doing and that might be one

of those ways that engages them a little bit differently. Thinking about things in terms

of that, in terms of engaging students would be the third way to implement universal design

for learning. So those are you three hallmarks for universal design for learning: multiple

means of representation, multiple means of expression, and multiple means of engagement.

This image comes from the Cass website here. Why is it necessary? Well, I want to talk

about why it is necessary at a college level why universal design for learning is necessary

at a college level. When you come to college, the IEP does not come with you. If you are

a student in special education in a K-12 setting, the IEP listed all your accommodations and

teachers had to follow those accommodations and make things accessible to you and your

classroom. When you come to K-12 level, that is no longer the case. The teachers do not

have to follow IEP. At this point, the student becomes responsible for self-identifying that

they have a disability and working with student disability services in getting the accommodations

that they might need. Here at the University of Iowa, we did an accommodations needs assessment

a couple years ago where we basically distributed a survey to everybody on campus and we asked

them if they had a disability, and we had 10 to 12 percent indicating that they had

a disability, which is about what we d expect because that kind of flies with the national

average. Part of the reason we did this is because when we talked to student disability

services and asked how many people they had signed up with them, we were hearing things

like 400, 415, and that is certainly not 10 percent of the population of students at the

University of Iowa. We were wondering what the issue was, and so when we asked about

the disability, the next question was if they were registered with student disability services,

and we found out that almost 60 percent were not registered with student disability services.

Most of the people that indicated they had a disability indicated that they had an invisible

disability of some type, whether that be a learning disability, emotional disability,

something that a teacher wouldn t be able to look at them in the classroom and understand

why they might be having some issues. We found kind of what we suspected, and that is that

on campus here there are several students with some type of disability running around

on campus that are not getting help from student disability services and we have no idea if

they re struggling, if they re doing well, or ways that we can reach them right now to

make things easier for them. That is why we decided to focus on universal design for learning

here on campus. If we can universally design classes, it should not matter if these students

are going to student disability services. The accommodations for most people with high