Reaching All Learners by Leveraging Universal Design for Learning in Online Courses

An asynchronous online learning environment invariably includes learners who simply do not connect with the instruction. This method of learning can seem confusing and often isolating for those electing to obtain their degrees completely online. In the past five years, such learners at the University of Memphis have typically been adult students between the ages of 25 and 65 (post-traditional students), working full-time and returning to school to complete their first or second degree. Our institution's success rates for fully online program courses have historically been 8–10 percent lower than face-to-face, traditional format courses. Here we define "success" as the course final grade average exceeding 70 percent. When reviewing the factors affecting learners in this category, we perceived that some challenged learners who experienced difficulty in their online courses were more likely to fall behind without requesting support, while other learners found ways to excel in the same environment. To address the needs of students in the challenged demographic, our unit — the UM3D Instructional Impact team — focused on helping faculty create inclusive online classrooms, become aware of the diversity of their students' learning needs, and adapt their instruction to reach all learners.

In an effort to bridge the success gap, our team focused on helping faculty employ the principles and guidelines of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework. According to the National Center on Universal Design for Learning, the UDL framework consists of three principles: Multiple Means of Engagement, Multiple Means of Representation, and Multiple Means of Action and Expression.¹ The principles within the framework focus on the what, how, and why of learning. Each of these key principles helped our faculty address learner variability and include guidelines for encouraging their learners to become more motivated, resourceful, and goal-directed. By incorporating the UDL principles and guidelines into their online program courses, faculty created inclusive learning environments and addressed learner variability. With their newfound skills, most could use the strategies within the framework to design and develop online courses with flexible goals, instructional methods, materials, and assessments.

To assist faculty, we created a UDL Implementation Plan designed to teach them how to gradually incorporate UDL principles into their online classrooms, address learner variability, and create inclusive online instruction. We could customize the framework to meet every course, faculty, or instructional need, and they did not have to follow the principles and guidelines within the framework in a specific order. Instead, faculty could identify instructional methods or assignments affecting success in their course(s) and use specific UDL principles or guidelines to solve their pedagogical issues.

UDL Implementation Plan

In the fall semester of 2015, our unit set out to complete a campus-wide implementation of the UDL framework for all online courses and programs. Our institution has approximately 65 fully online programs that include more than 600 fully online asynchronous offerings. To serve the faculty responsible for designing, developing, and delivering our online programs and courses, we focused on determining paths and plans for support that meet instructional needs and move us toward scaling and optimizing a full UDL implementation. Prior to launching the plan, we reviewed the five phases within an integrated dynamic process of UDL implementation from the National Center on Universal Design for Learning, adapted from the 2005 publication Implementation Research: A Synthesis of the Literature [http://fpg.unc.edu/node/4445].² Following this review we decided to create a two-year timeline focusing on the first three phases (exploration, preparation, and integration) of the process. Now, two years later, we present the following findings.

Exploration: Creating UDL-Themed Professional Development Opportunities

For the first phase in the UDL Implementation Plan, our team developed, curated, and provided professional development opportunities around incorporating elements of the UDL framework into the design, development, and delivery of online courses. We wanted to drive home the framework's flexibility for faculty choosing to incorporate one or more of the principles and guidelines. We encouraged faculty to understand that the framework, while extensive, could have great impact even with minimal effort. We offered asynchronous and synchronous sessions focused on each principle, with examples for each guideline relevant to online courses.

Faculty wanting to address learner engagement and motivation in their courses could attend or review our Academic Mindset and Engagement series, which focused on helping faculty understand the "why" of learning. We assisted faculty with incorporating strategies that helped them leverage technology and the varied abilities of their students to increase engagement and motivation. Each session focused on

• developing a plan for addressing engagement and motivational issues,
• identifying tools and strategies that would help implement the principle of engagement from the UDL framework, and
• incorporating ways to share their ideas for learner engagement with their peers.

To encourage faculty to help learners become more purposeful and motivated in their learning, we created sessions that provided options for incorporating one or more UDL engagement strategies into their current or future online courses. The +1 strategy ("plus one") provided them with options for (a) self-regulation, (b) sustaining effort and persistence, and (c) recruiting interest. Prior to each session, the team encouraged faculty to think about a course in which they had observed issues of student engagement and/or motivation. Once they had identified the course and issue, they were asked to prepare to share one to two examples of engagement and/or motivation problems from that course. We encouraged faculty to explore the UDL resources curated by our unit, brainstorm any strategies or examples they found useful, and bring them to the session. Following the sessions, we asked faculty to consider the examples shared in their current or future course plan's modular objective(s), course activities/tasks, or assessments.

In this intervention, faculty seemed receptive to the opportunities presented by the strategies to address the issues plaguing their online program courses. The time we spent educating faculty on the principles and guidelines of UDL proved helpful in preparing for the next phase of the UDL Implementation Plan.

Preparation: Using UDL Principles to Help Faculty Address Accessibility

The next phase in the UDL Implementation Plan involved preparing faculty to use the UDL framework to address learner diversity. During preparation, we conducted a needs assessment and determined that requiring faculty to address accessibility in their online courses was easier for them if they focused on the pedagogical concepts of the UDL Representation principle and its guidelines rather than the technical concepts of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0). We preferred to employ UDL to address these issues because most faculty realized that access to materials was not the same as access to learning. Some faculty said they do not encounter students with documented disabilities in their particular disciplines, especially in the sciences, even though we emphasize that most students with disabilities remain unreported and undocumented. As a result, such faculty often are not intrinsically motivated to invest extra time for training and adaptations to instructional material to address accessibility. Creating accessible materials was a daunting task for most faculty, requiring them to focus on technology versus learning. Our unit created interventions to help faculty focus on the "what" of learning. Each intervention centered around helping faculty make their instructional material and strategies for delivery more accessible and accommodating for the various learners in their online courses.

Tutorial: Designing Accessible Course Materials

To assist faculty with creating accessible course materials for previously developed online courses, our unit created a tutorial with the purpose of (a) increasing awareness of course accessibility requirements, (b) encouraging faculty to redesign courses to be more universally designed and accessible, and (c) providing those completers with additional resources for extending knowledge of accessibility issues, the UDL framework, and campus resources for training. The tutorial was designed to be completed in approximately one and a half hours with the length of time varying based on the types of materials faculty used in their courses and whether faculty chose to make adjustments prior to the end of the tutorial.

The tutorial challenged faculty to identify ways to implement the UDL framework and meet the diverse learning needs of all students on campus. The strategies they learned assisted them with creating equitable learning opportunities for students with disabilities and learning experiences that engage all students, regardless of learning differences.

We designed the intervention to be mostly asynchronous, giving faculty the opportunity to review the content at their own pace and address issues specific to their own courses. Most faculty appreciated the hands-off approach to learning the materials in the intervention. However, most faculty also required additional assistance and preferred a more synchronous format to learning the strategies incorporated in the tutorial. To address the learning needs expressed by faculty, we scheduled follow-up face-to-face and virtual group sessions for all completers of the tutorial. This approach helped us gauge the effectiveness of the intervention and make necessary adjustments to the original intervention.

Integration: Using a UDL-Based Online Course Evaluation Rubric

The final phase in the Implementation Plan was to assist faculty with integrating UDL guidelines and principles into their newly developed or redesigned online courses. To accomplish this task, our unit created a Revised Online Course Evaluation Rubric incorporating UDL principles into the new development or redesign process. Faculty designing, developing, and delivering online courses for our institution must complete a full course development process managed and monitored by our unit. Within the process, online course developers walk through the process of developing quality online courses for the university's fully online degree programs. The quality of the online course is established by the Online Course Evaluation Rubric, which we redesigned to include the latest UDL guidelines, accessibility guidelines, and best practices for inclusive teaching. All guidelines were displayed in parallel to the WCAG 2.0 guidelines relevant to online course materials and a variety of UDL principles and guidelines.

We designed the intervention to help faculty understand how the technical aspect of making course materials relates to making learning accessible for all students. Our unit worked in collaboration with technical support units to help faculty relate the technical requirements of the rubric to the pedagogical best practices of inclusive instruction. The tasks required faculty to focus on designing their instruction in the most accessible and inclusive formats.

Faculty with varying experiences in developing or delivering online courses for the institution responded to this intervention differently. Those with little to no online course development experience initially seemed intimidated by the course development requirements. They had to understand the technical demands of making materials accessible and sort through the pedagogical hurdles of teaching in a new format. Those with previous experience expressed frustration with the extra requirements added to the course review process. To address the concerns of both audiences, we incorporated an approach similar to that of the Preparation Phase. We scheduled and administered face-to-face, virtual technology, and pedagogy-focused learning sessions for those needing assistance. We scheduled and administered open question-and-answer sessions to address the updates made to the online course development process.

Conclusion

The UDL Implementation Plan process, with its emphasis on experimentation, exploration, and inclusive instruction, yielded significant benefits for instructional effectiveness at the University of Memphis. After two years, we can encourage faculty to resist formulaic instruction and move to make learning accessible to all. Because of this, the university administration has encouraged our team to pursue the integration process with the remainder of our online programs and courses. As we continue the integration of UDL, we will work on the next phase of the process and determine how to scale this implementation to other methods of course delivery.

Notes

1. David Rose, Wendy Harbour, Catherine Sam Johnston, Samantha Daley, and Linday Abarbanell, "Universal Design for Learning in Postsecondary Education: Reflections on Principles and Their Application," Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, Vol. 19, No. 2 (2006): 17.
2. Anne Meyer, David H. Rose, and David Gordon, Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice (CAST, 2013); free registration required.

Roy Bowery is director of Distance Learning for the University of Memphis.

Leonia Houston is an instructional designer for the University of Memphis.