With the development of education, students are becoming more and more uninterested in traditional teaching methods, more and more people want to acquire new knowledge, but find that the traditional teaching methods are not effective and suitable for them. This is where many students search for new educational methods to study to maximize the effectiveness of their learning methods. This is why I have developed much interest in UDL, UID and UBD, but in this post I mainly want to discuss about the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in Inclusion & Differentiated Learning.
What is Universal Design Learning? & My own experience
After reading Amanda Morin‘s post, I have learned that the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an approach to teaching and learning that gives all students an equal opportunity to succeed (Morin A, nd). I think students with disabilities should be educated like normal students, however, under the current traditional education methods, disabled students cannot learn and acquire knowledge as easily as non-disabled students. For instance, it is impossible for students who have hearing impairments to sit in a classroom and listen to what the instructor is teaching without further aids. This is where I believe the UDL approach can resolve this problem, for example, in some universities, they will invite some experts to translate the instruction provided by the instructor into something interpretable by the disabled, such as real time sign language translation. This is a good example of using UDL will make all students feel comfortable and is fair to everyone.
At the same time, with the popularity of UDL, this method is no longer limited to specific students. After reading Dave L. Edyburn‘s article, I noticed that all student can benefit with the UDL method as not only does it provide access to the curriculum to students with disabilities, but it also has simultaneous benefits to many other students (Edyburn, D. L., 2005). I particularly resonate with this as I am an international student and when I first came to Canada, the language barrier was incredibly difficult for me to overcome. I struggled to understand most of what my teachers said in class, and this led me to feel more nervous and anxious towards my studies. Fortunately, my teachers would upload the lecture files to our student account and mark key points in it, and so through the files uploaded by my teacher, I was able to review the content in my own time to make sense of what I did not understand in class. As a result, this gradually lowered my language barrier with learning as I got used to language and teaching environment here. When I learned the UDL method, my teacher used the UDL method to help us reduce the learning barriers and pressures when it comes to studying. On the other hand, I believe when teachers use UDL method it can also reduce their worktime as students can solve many problems on their own time which allows the teacher to prepare for other learning activities.
Ultimately, every student’s situation is different, not all students are suitable with a particular learning method. So, I think the UDL method is the best way to reduce barriers when designing materials and methods. In reducing such barriers to education, we can ensure that learning is accessible for everyone. Therefore, teacher should use the UDL method to provide learning opportunities and provide learning support as much as possible, so that students can achieve their full potential.
References
Morin, A. (n.d.). What is Universal Design for learning? Understood. Retrieved from https://www.understood.org/en/articles/universal-design-for-learning-what-it-is-and-how-it-works
— Edyburn, D. L. (2005). Universal Design for Learning. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.552.9700&rep=rep1&type=pdf
