UDL: Representation, Expression, Engagement, oh my.

Sadly, I missed the first day of class and the discussion. However, here are my thoughts from reading about UDL...

After years of teaching, learning, reading, meeting, and attending conferences, I've certainly heard a lot of words and acronyms tossed around. While I've heard mention of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and had a foggy notion of it's principles, I never read anything about it until now. I'm a little embarrassed about that. Nevertheless, while the readings were interesting and thoughtful, I felt better when I realized that a lot of my work teaching technology to students and teachers incorporates some of the fundamental pillars of UDL.

I was grateful for the clear and concise definitions provided in The Future is in The Margins by David Rose, Ed.D. and Anne Meyer, Ed.D. which summarized "These flexible designs are called Universal Designs for Learning, and while initiated to meet the needs of students with disabilities and those with special talents, they are ultimately more effective with all kinds of learners." I copied key points below to help me remember them:

• Multiple means of representation - new designers will provide basic access for some students (e.g. for students who are deficient in one modality or other, like a student who is blind) and multiple routes to meaning for all students (e.g. representing a math concept both in text and graphically) 
• Mutiple means of expression - while many students will write (or type) their essays, there will also be alternatives that involve rich mixes of writing, illustrating, speaking, video-making, and drawing. Students will be required to meet a higher standard of expressive literacy—knowing in what contexts (for which purposes and for which audiences) to use text, images, sound, video, or combinations of media. Evaluation will be sensitive to purpose, audience, and the strengths of the learner. 
• Multiple means of engagement - new designs will embrace the flexibility of new media and will provide alternative means of engagement—more novelty and surprise in the learning environment for some students, less for others, for example.

Essentially a large part of my work (and UDL) entails working with teachers to design learning opportunities which provide students multiple means of representation, expression, and engagement. I teach teachers how to present information differently and students how to express themselves using a variety of media. Student engagement is often easy for me since the computers and sites we use are still novel. Plus, Google is in perpetual beta, so we tell the kids they are perpetually prototyping every time we start a new project. 

We are learning to learn differently. My sister is an emergency room doctor, and she specifically bought the iPhone with the largest capacity so that she could download multiple important medical tomes. Current doctors and nurses are not supposed to remember ridiculous amounts of information and diseases and pharmaceuticals. Rather, they need to know how to access the most up-to-date information; This entails being able to search, decipher, and synthesize information in a manner different from medical students from even 10 years ago. This part of the site resonated: 

The ultimate educational goals will no longer be about the mastery of content (content will be available everywhere, anytime, electronically) but about the mastery of learning. At commencement, we will graduate students who are "expert learners." They will know their own strengths and weaknesses, know the kinds of media, adaptations, strategies, and external technologies they can use to overcome their weaknesses and extend their strengths, and the kinds of colleagues who are likely to complement their own patterns of learning and performance. They will be prepared for a changing world, not a static one, prepared for the world in which they will actually live. 

I never really considered the three specific areas of the brain that are described in UDL theory the strategic networks are “the how of learning," the recognition networks are the “what of learning," and the affective networks are “the why of learning." Still, I'm glad that not all of my reading seemed new and different, and much of it resonated and reminded me of conversations I have in grade-level and division-level faculty meetings.