Summary of Universal Design for Learning Concepts: Core Concepts: Theory & Research: Universal Design for Learning: CAST

As a new paradigm for teaching, learning, assessment and curriculum development, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) draws upon and extends principles of universal design as used in architecture and product design. Architects practicing universal design create structures which accommodate the widest spectrum of users possible. In universally designed environments adaptability is subtle and integrated into the design. Designing for the divergent needs of special populations increases usability for everyone. The curb cut is a classic example. Although they were originally designed to help those in wheel chairs negotiate curbs, curb cuts ease travel for those pushing carriages, riding skateboards, pulling suitcases, or simply walking.

UDL shifts old assumptions about teaching and learning in four fundamental ways:

The central practical premise of UDL is that a curriculum should include alternatives to make it accessible and appropriate for individuals with different backgrounds, learning styles, abilities, and disabilities in widely varied learning contexts. The "universal" in universal design does not imply one optimal solution for everyone. Rather, it reflects an awareness of the unique nature of each learner and the need to accommodate differences, creating learning experiences that suit the learner and maximize his or her ability to progress.

Central tenets of universal design are being expanded and applied in the development of products, transit systems, public and private buildings, and the design of electronic media and Web sites. (See the Trace Research and Development Center Web site http://trace.wisc.edu/, the Sun Microsystems' Enabling Technologies Program Web site http://research.sun.com/techrep/1995/annualreport95/enabling.html, and the Microsoft's Accessibility and Disabilities Site http://www.microsoft.com/enable/ for examples.) The goal is to increase access for people with divergent needs and preferences.

Technological advances in three arenas have made CAST's conception of universal design for learning possible: new cognitive neuroscience research tools, new digital multimedia learning tools, and new network technologies.

New Tools in Cognitive Science

Powerful imaging technologies like Positron Emission Tomography (PET) provide a window on the learning brain in action and help us to understand individual differences in new ways. CAST has found it useful to examine learner differences within a three brain network framework as suggested by recent neurological research. Each network consists of distributed processors organized in the following way: networks for recognizing pattern, networks for generating pattern, and networks for determining priorities. New information about role of these three brain networks in learning and learner variation informs CAST's concept of universal design. See Chapter 2 of Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age (http//:www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/chapter2.cfm).

New Digital Multimedia Learning Tools

A universally designed curriculum would include strategies that engage all three brain networks (recognition, strategic and affective) and take individual differences into account. New digital multimedia learning tools, like computers and the World Wide Web, make this goal possible. These new learning tools can augment and streamline a teacher�s ability to provide students with timely, personalized, balanced and varied attention. Digital multimedia is both flexible and versatile making it an ideal medium for a new universally designed approach to curriculum, teaching and learning.

Versatility: With appropriate software, a computer can emulate a book, an audio CD player, a video game, a phone, a VCR, a spreadsheet, a drafting table, an editing studio, or even a battlefield. Through a computer we can control and combine many of these separate tools to create hybrids of great power: books that talk, a database that dials the phone, a video with an audio and a text track, a virtual reality.

Flexibility: Teachers know that students vary in the strengths and limitations of their sensory, motor, motivational, and emotional makeup, their amount of exposure to literacy, their languages and cultural backgrounds, and their preferred learning styles. Unlike print, where "one size" is supposed to "fit all," digital media are malleable and can be adjusted for different learners.

New Network Technologies

Increasingly powerful, fast, and ubiquitous, new network technology forms a third building block to support a universally designed approach to learning and teaching. Not unlike neural networks, electronic networks contain distributed information and resources which are processed in parallel by individuals who form nodes of related concepts through clusters of links. Networks facilitate quick resource selection and delivery, alternative pathways to information, connections to experts and mentors, access to current material, opportunities to publish work on-line and exchange feedback, and placement of widely varying content into structured curricular frameworks. Without a viable electronic network, true universal design would not be economically or practically feasible.