By Zainab Cheema
In this episode, I am joined by Katie Novak, best-selling author and consultant on the Universal Design for Learning (UDL). We talk about the principles of UDL, how to co-create an inclusive classroom with students, how to unlearn and relearn in the post-COVID classroom, and more. Katie also walks us through a UDL lesson plan. Get ready to be inspired.
UDL is about resisting the one size fits all educational model and embracing learner variability. Let’s go ahead and start with a basic definition. Could you define UDL for us?
Right now, educators know that some students are having really positive outcomes and others are not. That is because the learning that is being designed is not designed for all kids being successful. The idea behind UDL is how to design a learning experience that allows everyone to get what they need in terms of challenge and support in the same classroom. That is very different from traditional pedagogy in which every student is assigned the same book; every student is assigned the same lecture; and every student completes the same assessment. That works well for some learners but not all learners.
UDL is about recognizing when we design lessons, there are barriers that prevent some students from doing well. It is a framework that recognizes learner variability and designs instruction so that all students have access to the same firm goals but also have opportunities to become learners. A lot of it involves learners making choices for themselves. A teacher doesn’t have the bandwidth to make choices for all of their students. But if we recognize barriers, then we can design lots of different pathways.
You’ve talked about the unfreeze-change-refreeze process that educators should undertake. Can you say about that in context to the shocks of COVID-19 and their effect on education?
Before the pandemic, educators operated in flexible learning landscapes which looked different everywhere—the different varieties of synchronous, asynchronous, hybrid etc. I call those flexible learning landscapes. However, for the educator during COVID-19, the autonomy of choosing their learning landscape got taken away. Educators began to give a lot of flexibility to students because otherwise, we didn’t see much student work get turned in. Unfortunately, I feel like that’s getting reversed now that we’re coming out of the pandemic. Teachers now have options to design their learning landscape (whether brick or mortar or hybrid or online), but they’re walking back the flexibility. It doesn’t have to be this way.
COVID-19 made people realize that there are a lot of ways to do things, it’s now about thinking how we blend those together. It’s about taking the best of in-person instruction, the best of online instruction, the best of SEL, and really helping people balance out everything that we’re dealing with. That’s the sweet spot: we end up with the flexible learning modules where we’re flexible about how students learn, the materials they use, and how they show us what they know. At the same time, we need to recognize that there are really firm goals for this work. It’s not about trying to minimize rigor, it’s about simply asking ourselves “Is there another pathway to get to the space that we’re trying to create?”
Additional Resources
UDL Now! A Teacher’s Guide to Applying Universal Design for Learning, by Katie Novak
UDL and Blended Learning: Thriving in Flexible Learning Environments, by Katie Novak and Caitlin Tucker
UDL Playbook for School and District Leaders, by Mike Woodlock and Katie Novak
Listen to the podcast to get the full interview
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