Universal design for

learning to promote
student engagement and
active learning
by Ms. Alakananda Bandyopadhyay
Lect in Special Education, NIEpID RC, Kolkata
 What is udl?
UDL is an approach to curriculum design that can help teachers customize
curriculum to serve all learners, regardless of ability, disability, age, gender, or
cultural and linguistic background. UDL provides a blueprint for designing
strategies, materials, assessments, and tools to reach and teach students with
diverse needs.

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ABOUT UDL……

Universal design for learning (UDL) is a set of

principles for designing curriculum that provides
all individuals with equal opportunities to learn.
UDL is designed to serve all learners, regardless
of ability, disability, age, gender, or cultural and
linguistic background. UDL provides a blueprint
for designing goals, methods, materials, and
assessments to reach all students including those
with diverse needs
Grounded in research of learner differences and effective
Instructional settings, UDL principles call for varied and
flexible ways to
● Present or access information, concepts, and ideas (the "what" of
learning),
● Plan and execute learning tasks (the "how" of learning), and
● Get engaged—and stay engaged—in learning (the "why" of
learning)
UDL is different from other approaches to curriculum design
in that educators begin the design process expecting the
curriculum to be used by a diverse set of students with
varying skills and abilities.

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 ENGAGEMENT: Universal Design for
Learning Principle
One way to integrate universal design principles into your classroom is to
provide learners with multiple means of ENGAGEMENT. This particular
UDL approach offers diverse ways for learners to be involved with course
content, their peers, and the instructor. By building in different engagement
opportunities, you can help learners see the relevance of disciplinary
knowledge in their academic, professional and personal lives.

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 TEACHING STRATEGIES
Multiple means of engagement can help different groups of learners
in different ways without watering down learning outcomes. Not
every strategy will work in every classroom, or for every subject
area—find the ones that you are comfortable with and that work for
your discipline and learners.

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 1. Build in opportunities for learners to
provide their input on how classroom tasks
are designed.
• Ask for periodic, informal feedback on whether students see class
activities as relating to their attainment of course outcomes.
• Provide students with opportunities to research, understand, and teach
their peers about course concepts and topics.
• Let students decide whether certain tasks (i.e., discussions) will occur
online or face-to-face

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 2. Include variety in classroom activities to
integrate learners’ different experiences,
identities, backgrounds and cultures
• In example scenarios or problems, use a variety of names, settings,
or cultural references.
• Invite students to share their experiences, but don’t ask a student
to “represent” a group.
• Ground classroom activities in a variety of social, professional or
cultural contexts beyond the classroom.

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 3. Build activities that ask learners to
engage with a “real” audience and have a
clear real-world purpose
• Use experiential learning strategies to highlight the relevance of
course content.
• Ask students to identify the potential real-world audiences or
applications they see in their work.
• Share examples of past students’ coursework and how it met
learning outcomes while being authentic to real-life situations.

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4. Divide long-term course or assignment
goals into smaller short-term objectives.
• Break final projects into stages that students can develop and
receive feedback on throughout the course.
• Link existing tasks into an overarching task to help students see
content connections.
• Ask students to break an assignment into manageable parts with a
timeline for completion

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 5. Require learners to reframe course
objectives into their own personal learning
outcomes.
• Begin the course by prompting learners to align course outcomes
with their own goals.
• Connect course outcomes to specific tasks and have students share
how well they met these outcomes at the conclusion of these tasks.
• Wrap up the course by asking students to reflect (in writing, in
discussion, or video) on how the outcomes impacted their personal
learning.

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degrees of difficulty that require learners to
work toward similar course goals or
outcomes.
• Build small (e.g. activities) and large (e.g. papers, exams) tasks
that address course outcomes.
• Vary activities—easy to difficult, difficult to easy, or a variety of
challenges–within a course session / time period.
• Use constructive alignment to link all learning activities to course
outcomes.

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7. Give learners feedback frequently and in
a timely manner.
• Provide feedback using rubrics - this may expedite assessment
while clearly indicating students’ progress.
• Stagger an assignment’s due dates if possible to reduce feedback
load.
• Pair students to provide formative peer feedback based on a rubric
or task guidelines.

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 8. Give learners resources to help them
cope with “subject phobias.”
• Share support tools, such as department/campus tutoring or coaching,
writing center, library help, and online resources.
• Emphasize a growth mindset, replacing “I’m not good at X” with “I’m still
learning about X.”
• Share concrete, discipline-specific examples of how past students have
coped with challenging learning situations or experiences.

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 Other UDL practices that are especially
helpful to learner groups often challenged
by traditional classroom styles.
1. Create text-based resources that learners can vary the size of
text – For students with Visual Impairment.
2. Provide text or spoken equivalents of images, graphics, videos,
or animation – for students with Intellectual Disabilities, under
achieving students, non proficient readers and visually
impairment

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3. Use visual (read: non-language based) resources to
clarify vocabulary terms – for auditory impaired and
children with ID.
4. Highlight to learners the connections between any
information provided as a text and the accompanying
representation (e.g. image, video, diagram) – children
with disabilities and learning problems.

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 Big concept
Bring the attention of your audience over a key
concept using icons or illustrations

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 UDL and ACTIVE Learning
Active learning is an instructional model which focuses on having
the students be an active part of the learning experience, rather
than a passive listener as with a traditional lecture. This can be
done by inserting individual and group activities during class
time in between lecture pauses. It can also be done by flipping
the classroom, where students watch videos of the lecture, read
materials and then go to class to work on activities and
homework.

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 What is active learning
✘ Active learning is an instructional model which focuses on
having the students be an active part of the learning
experience, rather than a passive listener as with a traditional
lecture. This doesn't mean that it can't involve lecturing but it
will take up additional class time to provide opportunities for
interactions.

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Benefits of Active Learning
During a lecture students begin to lose focus after about 15
minutes, making it difficult for them to learn the material. By using
active learning techniques, instructors are able to shift from the
lecture to short exercises that help students process and
understand the material covered in the lecture while also re-
engaging the student's focus. Active learning also helps to address
the different learning styles students may have and can increase
the sense of community in a classroom.

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Implementing Active Learning
Begin by studying the different techniques and activities that could
be effective for the class. Because active learning doesn't require an
all or nothing approach, it's possible to start small and slowly
increase the number of activities. This allows the teacher and the
students to adjust to the different style of teaching.
Examples of active learning techniques include role-playing, case
studies, group projects, think-pair-share, peer teaching, debates,
Just-in-Time Teaching, and short demonstrations followed by
class discussion.

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There are two easy ways to promote active learning through
the discussion. The first method is the mini lecture format in
which the instructor talks ten to twenty minutes about a
particular topic and then pauses for students to consolidate
their notes, find gaps, and work with classmates to fill in
gaps. The second technique is an active listening lecture
where students just listen to a lecture without writing notes
and then, after ten to twenty minutes, the student works
with a classmate or small group to recall, clarify, and
elaborate on the lecture's content.

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 THANKS!
You can find me at alakananda.nimh@gmail.com

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