UDL 7.3 | Identifying and Addressing Potential Barriers

How can educators identify and address potential barriers when designing instruction?

Universal Design for Learning

In this lesson on Identifying and Addressing Potential Barriers, please read all provided documents, listen to the audio clips, and use what you learn to complete the activities. This lesson is chunked into five sections as follows: 1. Goals 2. Assessments 3. Methods 4. Materials 5. Designing with UDL Please note that this Genially will take an estimated 30 consecutive minutes to complete.

Directions

Goals

Identifying and Addressing Potential Barriers

Goals

Source: IRIS Center

Teachers need to apply the UDL principles to the four main curricular components: Learning Goals, Instructional Materials, Instructional Methods, and Assessment. This wheel-shaped graphic illustrates the relationships between UDL’s four main curricular components. At the center of the wheel is a hub labeled “Learning Goals.” It reads, “A description of what students are expected to learn.” Surrounding this hub are “Instructional materials: The media and tools used for teaching content,” “Instructional methods: The manner in which the content is taught,” and “Assessments: The methods for measuring student learning.”

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Goals

Source: IRIS Center

Just as a destination on a map shows travelers where they will end up, a goal shows students what they should achieve by the end of a lesson or unit. It explains what students will understand, know, or be able to do after the learning experience. Educators using UDL often say “clear goals, multiple means.” This means they should set clear goals that are easy to understand, but allow flexibility in how students reach those goals.

Setting Clear Goals

Source: IRIS Center

Learning goals are essential for designing instruction. Educators should use clear, age-appropriate language when writing these goals, whether they create them or use a published curriculum. Goals can be content-based (e.g., understanding the Bill of Rights, figures of speech, or the Pythagorean Theorem) or skill-based (e.g., writing a persuasive paper, measuring length, conducting an experiment). In any case, the goal outlines what students should master by the end of the lesson. Goals should be clearly communicated to students. Informing students about what they need to achieve helps them become goal-directed and monitor their progress. Stating the learning goal at the beginning of a lesson and referencing it throughout instruction supports this process. Additionally, allowing students to help create or write their own personalized goals encourages learner agency.

Multiple Means

Source: IRIS Center

Goals must be clear and flexible, allowing multiple ways for learners to achieve them. This means the goal should not specify a single method for all students. Educators should consider potential barriers that might prevent students from reaching the goal and think of various ways to overcome these barriers. By providing different paths, materials, and tasks, educators can cater to different interests and strengths, empowering students to choose what works best for them. Despite the different approaches, all students aim for the same end goal.Designing for multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression will vary depending on the learning goal:

• Content-based goals
• Skill-based goals

Think to yourself & Respond within your Notetaker Guide

Why are "goals" central to the UDL process? What can you do in your practice to highlight the importance of goals? If needed, refer to the transcript linked below from David Rose for reference.

+David Rose Transcript

Assessments

Identifying and Addressing Potential Barriers

Assessments

Source: IRIS Center

After establishing a clear goal that allows for multiple approaches, educators need to determine how to assess learners’ progress and mastery of the goal. Assessments must align with the learning goal to provide useful information. Assessment results help educators monitor students’ learning, allow students to track their own progress, and inform educators about the effectiveness of their instruction. The third UDL principle—providing multiple means of action and expression—reminds educators that students need various ways to demonstrate their knowledge. Expecting all students to show what they know in the same way can be a barrier to learning. For example, a student may understand the content well but struggle with a written exam, revealing the need for more flexible assessment methods.

Assessments

Source: IRIS Center

Assessments should occur throughout the learning process, not just at the end of a lesson, unit, or course. A combination of assessments helps educators and students monitor learning during instruction and evaluate it afterward. The following are three common types of assessments, all designed with UDL principles in mind:

• Formative Assessments: These are ongoing assessments that help monitor student learning and provide feedback during the instructional process.
• Summative Assessments: These evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional period.
• Performance-Based Assessments: These require students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills through activities or projects.

Formative Assessments

Source: IRIS Center

Formative assessment involves ongoing evaluation of student learning during instruction. It serves several purposes:

Benefits of Formative Assessment

1. Provide Continuous Feedback to Educators:
1. Check for understanding
2. Identify misconceptions
3. Monitor student progress
2. Inform or Guide Instruction:
1. Make informed decisions to meet students’ needs
2. Review or reteach information
3. Go deeper into content
4. Use different instructional strategies
3. Provide Continuous Feedback to Learners:
1. Give frequent, timely, and constructive feedback Inform students about their progress
2. Guide students toward new strategies or tools for mastery
3. Acknowledge individual and group efforts
4. Help students persist through challenges and strengthen their learner agency

Feedback should go beyond marking items as correct or incorrect; it should help students understand their progress and guide them toward achieving their goals.

Summative Assessments

Source: IRIS Center

Summative assessment evaluates student learning after instruction has taken place. It serves several purposes: Examples of Summative Assessment

• Unit tests
• Final exams
• Portfolios
• Culminating projects

Benefits of Summative Assessment Measure and Evaluate Mastery:

• Determine if students met the learning goal
• Assess overall understanding of content or skills

Inform or Guide Future Design:

• Reflect on the effectiveness of the instruction
• Make adjustments for future lessons or units based on assessment results

Self-Assessments

Source: IRIS Center

Assessment is often seen as a teacher-led activity where educators design, administer, and evaluate student learning. However, students should also actively assess their own learning. Educators should teach and support self-assessment skills, allowing students to evaluate their own learning during and after instruction. Self-assessment helps students in several ways: Examples of Self-Assessment

• Marking off tasks on a checklist to visualize progress
• Responding to reflection questions after a lesson to identify what they learned
• Reflecting on areas of confusion
• Rating criteria on a rubric to evaluate their understanding

Benefits of Self-Assessment Monitor and Reflect on Progress:

• Self-monitor progress toward learning goals
• Use self-assessment to guide their learning process
• Educators should provide instruction, tools, and feedback to support this

Develop Learner Agency:

• Think about their choices and their impact on success
• Explicitly teach reflection strategies
• Provide supports to foster metacognition (awareness of their own thinking)

By fostering these skills, educators help students become expert learners who can independently monitor and guide their own learning journey.

Addressing Barriers in Assessments

Source: IRIS Center

Recall the importance of separating the goal from the means of learning. This practice allows for flexible assessment options. A goal that includes specific means offers only one way for students to demonstrate mastery, while a flexible goal provides various ways to do so. Many assessments require additional skills, such as reading or time management, which can act as barriers if they hinder students' ability to show their learning. To accurately assess progress and mastery, educators should use UDL principles to anticipate and remove these barriers.

Addressing Barriers in Assessments

Source: IRIS Center

Here are examples of barriers in assessments and ways to remove them: Examples of Barriers and Solutions Reading Skills Barrier:

• Barrier: A student may struggle with reading, making it hard to understand and respond to written questions.
• Solution: Offer alternative formats like oral assessments, audio recordings, or visual aids.

Time Management Barrier:

• Barrier: Some students might have difficulty managing the time required to complete an assessment.
• Solution: Provide extended time, break the assessment into smaller parts, or allow flexible deadlines.

Writing Skills Barrier:

• Barrier: A student may understand the content but have trouble expressing it through writing.
• Solution: Allow the use of speech-to-text tools, video presentations, or oral responses.

Access to Technology Barrier:

• Barrier: Not all students may have access to the necessary technology to complete digital assessments.
• Solution: Provide printed materials, loaner devices, or ensure assessments can be completed on various platforms.

By applying these solutions, educators can ensure assessments accurately measure students' understanding and skills, free from unnecessary barriers.

Methods

Identifying and Addressing Potential Barriers

Methods

Source: IRIS Center

Educators use various instructional methods to teach content and help students reach their learning goals. To ensure access and agency for all students, educators must proactively remove barriers from these methods. By incorporating flexible options, students can choose how they learn and pursue their goals. Understanding that no single method works for every learner, educators should use a variety of evidence-based and effective methods to provide multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression. This can be achieved by adapting and combining multiple methods to cater to learners' diverse needs. Click the "+ info" to read the article to learn more about Method.

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Think to yourself & Respond within your Notetaker Guide

What are two instructional methods from this article that you would like to implement in your class? How would you use them?

Materials

Identifying and Addressing Potential Barriers

Materials

Source: IRIS Center

Just as educators use different instructional methods, they also utilize various instructional materials to present content. These materials often include books, printed texts, lectures, videos, graphics, and worksheets. Typically, these formats are fixed or static, meaning they cannot be changed or adapted. Fixed materials may not engage or challenge some students and may be inaccessible to others. Digital tools also make it easier to embed additional information to support comprehension, such as glossaries, graphics, animations, and hyperlinks. By using flexible materials, educators can ensure that all students have access to and can engage with the content.

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Materials

Source: IRIS Center

Flexible materials align with all three UDL principles, allowing educators to: Provide Multiple Means of Engagement:

• Offer a choice of materials to encourage student autonomy
• Present varied levels of challenge to engage different learners

Provide Multiple Means of Representation:

• Offer alternatives to solely visual or auditory materials
• Illustrate content through multiple forms of media (e.g., text, images, audio, video)

Provide Multiple Means of Action and Expression:

• Ensure access to varied tools and technologies for navigation, composition, and communication

Additionally, educators can strengthen students’ agency by teaching them how to choose the best materials for their own learning needs. This empowerment helps students become more independent and effective learners.

Designing with UDL

Identifying and Addressing Potential Barriers

Designing with UDL

Source: IRIS Center

As you have learned, the three UDL principles—providing multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression—are essential for designing accessible and equitable learning experiences. Educators who embrace UDL understand that students differ in how they engage with learning, make meaning of content, and navigate and communicate their learning. Considering this variability, educators incorporate flexible options to reduce barriers in instruction and foster learner agency.

Designing with UDL

Source: IRIS Center

Educators can apply the UDL framework throughout the instructional cycle as they:

• Proactively design—before instruction
• Implement—during instruction
• Reflect and redesign—after instruction

Click the "+ info" to read the article to learn more about "Designing with UDL".

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References

Bowen, R. S. (2017). Understanding by design. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/understanding-by-design/. Buck Institute for Education. (n.d.). What is PBL? Buck Institute for Education PBLWorks. Retrieved from https://www.pblworks.org/what-is-pbl CAST. (2016). Top 5 UDL tips for learning environments. Wakefield, MA: Author. Retrieved from https://www.cast.org/products-services/resources/2016/udl-tips-learning-environments CAST. (2017). Top 5 UDL tips for fostering expert learners. Wakefield, MA: Author. Retrieved from https://www.cast.org/products-services/resources/2017/udl-tips-fostering-expert-learners CAST. (2018). UDL and the learning brain. Wakefield, MA: Author. Retrieved from https://www.cast.org/products-services/resources/2018/udl-learning-brain-neuroscience CAST. (2020). UDL tips for assessment. Wakefield, MA: Author. Retrieved from https://www.cast.org/products-services/resources/2020/udl-tips-assessments CAST. (2020). UDL tips for designing learning experiences. Wakefield, MA: Author. Retrieved from https://www.cast.org/products-services/resources/2020/udl-tips-designing-learning-experiences CAST. (2020). UDL tips for developing learning goals. Wakefield, MA: Author. Retrieved from https://www.cast.org/products-services/resources/2020/udl-tips-developing-learning-goals Cuevas, J. (2015). Is learning styles-based instruction effective? A comprehensive analysis of recent research on learning styles. Theory and Research in Education, 13(3), 308-333. https://doi.org/10.1177/1477878515606621 Finn, E. S., Shen, X., Scheinost, D., Rosenberg, M. D., Huang, J., Chun, M. M., Papademetris, X., & Constable, R. T. (2015). Functional connectome fingerprinting: Identifying individuals using patterns of brain connectivity. Nature Neuroscience, 18, 1664–1671. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.4135 Fuchs, E., & Flügge, G. (2014). Adult neuroplasticity: More than 40 years of research. Neural Plasticity, 2014, Article 541870. https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/541870 King-Sears, M. E., Stefanidis, A., Evmenova, A. S., Rao, K., Mergen, R. L., Owen, L. S., & Strimel, M. M. (2023). Achievement of learners receiving UDL instruction: A meta-analysis. Teaching and Teacher Education, 122(2023), Article 103956. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2022.103956 Kolb, B., Harker, A., & Gibb, R. (2017). Principles of plasticity in the developing brain. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 59(12), 1218-1223. https://doi.org/10.1111/dmcn.13546 McLeskey, J., Barringer, M-D., Billingsley, B., Brownell, M., Jackson, D., Kennedy, M., Lewis, T., Maheady, L., Rodriguez, J., Scheeler, M. C., Winn, J., & Ziegler, D. (2017, January). High-leverage practices in special education. Arlington, VA: Council for Exceptional Children & CEEDAR Center. Meyer, A., Rose, D. H., & Gordon, D. T. (2014). Universal design for learning: Theory and practice. Wakefield, MA: CAST Professional Publishing. Ok, M. W., Rao, K., Bryant, B. R., & McDougall, D. (2017). Universal Design for Learning in pre-k to grade 12 classrooms: A systematic review of research. Exceptionality, 25(2), 116-138. https://doi.org/10.1080/09362835.2016.1196450 Pape, B. (2018). Learner variability is the rule, not the exception. Washington, DC: Digital Promise Global. Retrieved from https://digitalpromise.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Learner-Variability-Is-The-Rule.pdf Posey, A. (2019). Lesson planning with Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Understood. Retrieved from https://www.understood.org/en/articles/lesson-planning-with-universal-design-for-learning-udl Ralabate, P. K. (2016). Your UDL lesson planner: The step-by-step guide for teaching all learners (1st ed.). Brookes Publishing. UDL-IRN. (2011). UDL in the instructional process (Version 1.0). Lawrence, KS: Author. Retrieved from https://www.learningdesigned.org/sites/default/files/UDL%20Instructional%20Planning%20Process.pdf Valizadeh, S. A., Liem, F., Mérillat, S., Hänggi, J., & Jäncke, L. (2018). Identification of individual subjects on the basis of their brain anatomical features. Scientific Reports, 8, Article 5611. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-23696-6 Willingham, D. T., Hughes, E. M., & Dobolyi, D. G. (2015). The scientific status of learning styles theories. Teaching of Psychology, 42(3), 266-271. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628315589505

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