On Accessibility

UDL and the Reality of Online Courses

by Jackie L. Luft, Ed.D.

The classroom populated with average students is an anomaly in today's online courses. Students with disparate backgrounds, talents, interests, skills and abilities flood our online portals of instruction. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 11% of the population of students in higher education in the 2011-2012 school year reported a disability. In an average class of 30, that means over 3 of your students have a disability. As an instructor, I have never received that many letters of accommodation—have you?

How do we as instructors keep up with the various needs of these learners? This is where Universal Design of Learning (UDL) can help us. Rose and Meyer (2002) introduced the concepts of Universal Design for Learning Online with the idea that instructors should build flexible learning into their classroom to improve access to knowledge.

Flexible learning is a concept that continues to be tested and researched, continually proving that multiple avenues of knowledge acquisition provide students with improved knowledge. Bowe (2000) suggests that in order to prepare UDL curriculum and materials, instructors should consider:

1. presenting information in multiple ways
2. offering multiple ways for students to interact with and respond to materials
3. providing motivation through multiple ways for students to demonstrate comprehension of the material, and
4. making good use of course web pages.

These four concepts can be used as building blocks to make online classrooms accessible to not only students with disabilities, but learners who refrain from asking for the assistance of a letter of accommodation as well as second language learners, learners who benefit from re-learning, and even learners who are above average intelligence. By law, we are required to accommodate students with a diagnosed disability, but through our desire to dispense the love of learning, we can all strive to make our courses more valuable.

UDL helps to guide instructors to create courses that develop expert learners throughout a curriculum by providing multiple means for learning, engagement, and demonstration at each level of instruction (Quaglia, 2015).

References:

Bowe, F. G. (2000). Universal design in education: Teaching nontraditional students. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.
Rose, D. H., & Meyer, A. (2002). Teaching every student in the digital age: Universal Design for Learning.
Quaglia B. Planning for Student Variability: Universal Design for Learning in the Music Theory Classroom and Curriculum. Music Theory Online [serial online]. March 2015;21(1):1-21. Available from: Academic Search Complete, Ipswich, MA. Accessed September 1, 2015.
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2015). Digest of Education Statistics, 2013 (2015-011), Chapter 3.