Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a teaching framework based on research about how we learn. Through this approach, faculty anticipate the variability of learners and proactively design to eliminate unnecessary barriers. While no amount of intentionality and planning will result in a learning experience that works for all students all of the time, building in flexibility and choice allows faculty to engage a diverse student body while reducing the need for individual accommodations.
Introduction
Inspired by the accessible architecture movement, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a teaching philosophy that looks for barriers in the learning environment rather than “special needs” or “deficiencies” in the student. In the same way that a curb cut in the sidewalk helps not only people who use wheelchairs but caregivers with strollers, travelers with suitcases, and delivery drivers, a UDL approach can enhance learning opportunities for all students by embracing–and designing for–variability in learners.
The term Universal Design for Learning was coined by the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) in the 1990s, but has grown in popularity and complexity over the past three decades. Although UDL remains grounded in the insights from neuroscience and cognitive psychology upon which it was invented, new initiatives have shown connections between UDL and DEI initiatives, trauma informed teaching, and culturally responsive pedagogy. We hope the following overview of the UDL framework will help you to understand the rationale guiding this approach.
Learning Variability
For decades, diversity in teaching and learning was often described in terms of “learning styles”: dividing students into visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners and designing curricula that strove to combine elements of each approach. But recent research has shown that learning is far more complex.
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As it turns out, how we learn is incredibly situational. In a room full of strangers, we may be fearless, allowing us to thrive in group discussion or jump on stage. But perhaps among our colleagues, we hesitate. Similarly, we may grasp some topics easily in a lecture hall setting, but for others we need maps, problem sets, or hands-on practice before meaning is made. We may even know something cold–until test day anxiety, a family crisis, or a global pandemic changes our relationship to that knowledge.
One of the core principles of UDL is that learner variability is to be expected, and not seen as exceptions. Moreover, that includes not only variability between learners, but within learners. Even in the same class, the same student will have different needs in different contexts, and at different moments.
Designing for Choice
In the United States, educational accessibility is often defined in terms of individual students’ legal rights to specific accommodations. Accommodations, however, may be intimidating for students to present to their professors and challenging for educators to decipher and equitably apply. UDL will never eliminate the need for accessibility offices and policies. However, it posits that if we design our lessons with variability in mind, there will be fewer cases in which we need to awkwardly retrofit a course once it’s underway.
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CAST has developed a set of UDL guidelines based on neuroscience research about how we learn. These guidelines are organized around the following three principles:
- Multiple means of representation
- Multiple means of engagement
- Multiple means of action and expression
These principles offer us concrete ways to increase the flexibility of learning environments, in anticipation of our students’ variability. Each principle comes with a set of suggestions, known as checkpoints, for implementing UDL. Throughout this article, when a suggestion is related to a UDL guideline, we will name and link to the relevant checkpoint. These links contain specific suggestions for implementing the checkpoints.
By not designing for some imagined “normal” learner, we better serve the diverse students who enter our classes with different language abilities and attention spans, from different educational and cultural backgrounds, with different goals, interests and fears.
Following UDL does not mean you will be able to anticipate and design for every conceivable student need in every moment of every class. However, while it is not possible to create one design that will suit every imaginable learner in every situation, building in flexibility and choice will go a long way in serving all students. For instance, libraries offer the same text in a variety of formats, knowing that some readers like the solidity of a hardback book, while others prefer the more portable mass market paperback; some readers need the large print edition, while others want a digital version; others strongly prefer to listen to the audiobook. The wide variety of formats benefits many different kinds of readers, including, but not limited to, those who use screenreaders or have low vision. At the same time, libraries don’t, and could not, carry copies of books in every language spoken on the planet. Your role as the instructor is to define the goal and offer a small but diverse set of options, clearly described.
What does this look like in the classroom?
- Clarify goals. Clarifying goals can help you to determine whether you are actually assessing students on the skills you want them to demonstrate. Consider, for instance, whether the assigned format (means of delivery) is in itself a learning goal. For example, if you usually assign a paper, is the goal for students to “write an essay”—or is the real goal for them to “create an argument”? If the former, keep the essay assignment and provide opportunities for students to practice and receive formative feedback on essay writing before they submit a high-stakes essay assignment. If the latter, perhaps they could achieve the goal of creating an argument equally well by creating an essay, a pamphlet, or a video. Streamline and clarify the goals for yourself at the design stage so that when you give assignments to students, you can make the goals clear to them, too. (read more about increasing the salience of goals and objectives in checkpoint 8.1)
- Flexible needs. Once you identify the core goal of a given assignment, it’s easier to see where choice can be built in. What do you do because it’s needed and what do you do just because it’s the way it’s always been done? This doesn’t mean that you need to build an entire new podcasting assignment as an alternative to your customary essay. It might be as simple as allowing students the choice of three different texts on three different topics for an assignment with a goal unrelated to content (i.e., being able to summarize an argument), allowing them to choose what interests them or avoid a story that has some kind of hidden curriculum (i.e. requires knowledge of a cultural context that is unfamiliar to them). (read more about optimizing students’ individual choice and autonomy in checkpoint 7.1)
- Make all options available to all students. While only one student might be legally entitled to closed captions by their accomodation, many students might benefit from them, from English language learners to students working at the library who forgot their headphones. By making what had been “accommodations” freely available, you allow students to choose the option that’s best for them, for whatever reason that may be.
- Let students show you the barriers. Course evaluations (or mid-semester evaluations) are an opportunity to ask students directly about barriers they are encountering in your class. However, listen for other moments as well. For example, if multiple students ask you to repeat the instructions for a project–even though you talked through it in class–add an option. Record a video so students can go back to it, pause and rewind, even take it with them to a tutor or Writing Center consultant.
- Make these options clear and consistent. That way students know they can rely on the strategies that are working for them.
Cultivating Expert Learners
When we think about the myriad dimensions of learner variability, from language skills to preferred styles of engagement, all of which shift and change over time and in different contexts, we quickly recognize that the student is the only person who can truly evaluate what they need in order to learn. However, we aren’t born knowing how to learn. Thus, UDL’s stated goal is to cultivate expert learners, students who are self-directed and possess the skills to learn new things.
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But how do we–as trained subject matter experts, not educational theorists or cognitive psychologists–train expert learners? Should that be our job? UDL says yes and we can.
When we transparently provide all students with different ways to access and express knowledge in our field, we’re allowing them to test and learn what works for them. (If we prompt them to intentionally try and reflect on these experiences, even better – checkpoint 9.3) If we know our goals, we can give better feedback. We can even offer mastery-oriented feedback, a technique that emphasizes progress and growth over intelligence or ability
Critiques of UDL and Where to Grow
Even the name Universal Design for Learning illuminates imperfections within the idea of UDL. There is no one design that will benefit all students. Often, removing a barrier for one person creates an obstacle for another. This is why choice is so important to the UDL model: ideally we can create an environment that has the fewest barriers for the most people. But there will never be a moment when UDL is “done” and there is no need to make individual adjustments to ensure that all students have equitable access to content.
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UDL has also been critiqued for the overly individualistic approach inherent in the idea of cultivating expert learners. In many ways, this model doesn’t make visible the social, economic, and cultural barriers that students face, particularly women and people of color in the United States. Similarly, UDL does not address the role of ableism in the classroom which causes undue stress and pain, distorting what the student can actually do into what the instructor believes they can do.
These are all points that researchers, designers, and educators are working to address. You can read more about these initiatives in CAST’s Rising to Equity statement. In the meantime, UDL is one tool in a toolkit among others focused on race, disability, culturally responsive pedagogy, etc. which we can use to help engage all students.
This resource was created by Phillippa Pitts, a PhD candidate and Horowitz Foundation Fellow in the History of Art and Architecture Department and Graduate Associate at the Center for Teaching and Learning.
Last updated 12/19/2022
