CAUTION!

This is the time when overwhelm can take over and cause faculty to freeze up. Remember that UDL as a practice is iterative and incremental. You may take an occasional wrong step and have to stop and re-think your approach. But the important thing is that you are doing something, not just thinking about it or talking about it. You are taking intentional action in terms of changes to your assessments, strategies or materials and always evaluating as you go along.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that to “UDL-ize” your course, you need to provide three or four versions of your lessons each week (text, video, audio, kinesthetic) to satisfy the myth of learning styles. Nor do you need to adapt to every single aspect of the three principles of UDL and the brain networks they serve (these UDL Guidelines were introduced at the beginning of this unit).

Instead, we suggest adopting what is called the “Plus-One Mindset”. This concept comes from the book "Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education" by Thomas Tobin and Kirsten Behling.

Step 1

Having taught your course several times over the past few quarters, you have one big advantage when it comes to adopting UDL: historical data. Take the time to analyze your courses over time and note when and where the pinch points are – these are the places where your students bog down repeatedly.

To identify pinch points, ask yourself these questions:

Where do my students always have questions?
Where do they always get things wrong on tests or assignments?
Where do they always ask for explanations in a different way than you provide?

Step 2

Brainstorm (with IDs and/or colleagues) just “one more thing” you could add to assist students in their learning. Provide one more way students can get to materials. Devise one more way you can engage them in the learning. Use the CAST -UDL Guidelines website that you looked at earlier in this module. Dive deeper into the three principles and consider the suggestions under specific checkpoints that you will find on the site. Connect what you are observing in your classroom and your students' behaviors - those pinch points again - with possible solutions or supportive strategies in the UDL Guidelines.

Design Tip! Start With Small, Student-Centered Changes

The beauty of this thinking is that the Plus-One mindset is student-centered. If you apply UDL strategies using this process, you are identifying the areas in your course of greatest learner need and addressing those needs to keep students motivated, on task, and learning.

And Plus-One mindset is not only for use in your established courses. As you begin to develop new courses, don’t forget to consider potential pinch points where you think students could get bogged down, confused or frustrated. Offer one alternative method of presenting information/materials, engaging students in the learning, or increasing their choices in assessments (consider both formative and summative assessments).

The following video serves as a quick reminder that UDL can be implemented effectively in small ways, with small changes to your course materials or design, or with small changes to your teaching strategies in the classroom or online. As you watch, begin to think about how you might make a small change to a course you teach using one or more of the three UDL principles you've learned about so far.

Getting Started