Universal Design with Technology

Universal Design for Learning will transform math education.

If you're a parent, you know that your child is unique. Your child thinks and learns in different ways than your neighbor, niece, or friend's child. But it's just those differences-the things that make your child and every child special-that can make it difficult for educators. How can your child's teacher reach the diversity of children in her classroom, some of whom may have physical or learning disabilities as well as different learning styles and preferences? And if the teacher uses technology to help her teach, how can the technology adapt to the varying needs of all those children? The answer is Universal Design.

In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law. That act prompted a rethinking of architectural design to give disabled citizens greater access to public buildings as well as commercial facilities and transportation. At first this seemed to benefit only one group, but people soon came to realize that the changes engendered by the new law had made everyone's lives better-parents with strollers, people laden with packages, as well as ordinary commuters with no special needs. The concept of designing technology for a broad range of personal needs and abilities is known as Universal Design. In educational technology, it means designing software and hardware that everyone can access and learn from. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) draws upon principles of universal design that are now widely accepted in architectural and product development, and applies these principles to the needs of teaching and learning. UDL is based on four tenets, described by the Center for Applied Special Technology:

• Rather than constituting a separate category, students with disabilities fall along a continuum of learner differences.
• Teacher adjustments for learner differences should occur for all students, not just those with perceived disabilities.
• Curriculum materials should be varied and diverse, and should include digital and online resources rather than centering on a single textbook.
• Instead of "remediating" students so that they can learn from a set curriculum, curriculum should be made flexible to accommodate learner differences.

UDL is exciting because it represents a convergence of thinking about the best uses of technology. UDL calls for multiple means of representation, multiple means of expression, and multi-ple means of engagement. Universal design goes hand in hand with technology because computer-based materials are the most practical way to provide the needed flexibility.

There is a considerable body of research in human cognition that provides experimental evidence for designs that UDL can utilize. One of the strongest findings involves using visual and audio outputs in parallel. While this is obviously useful for students with severe vision or hearing challenges, research has found that this benefits everyone. Another finding is that screen design needs to be highly stimulating for some students while others need a relatively "calm" and simple design. These and similar factors can be preferences that are set by teachers or students, or they can appear as options always available to the learner.

As the UDL revolution takes hold, students who are currently marginalized in traditional classrooms will soon find tools that suit their unique abilities. Schools and vendors will discover educational methods and materials that are flexible and powerful enough to help all students, regardless of their ability. And the revolution has already begun. Thinking Reader,(tm) developed by CAST and distributed by Tom Snyder Productions, is a highly successful reading program based on UDL.

But even as UDL is helping to transform technology for reading, mathematics education lags behind. The research results that gave rise to UDL make general statements about human cognition and perception, and are not specific to a single area of learning. But those findings have yet to be applied toward the creation of mathematical educational products that can meet the widely varying needs of students with different learning styles and strengths.

The Concord Consortium is dedicated to making such educational innovations available. We are currently planning a suite of web-based algebra interactives based on UDL. We will begin with "Talking Graphs," which will use graphing data to generate text and verbal descriptions of important features of the graph (e.g., axes, overall shape of the graph, and location of maximum and minimum values). The software will be designed so that students or their teachers can adjust the screen complexity and display options, and generate visual, aural, and haptic (touch) output. Algebra students, including the low-vision seventh-grade student and the remedial nine-grade student, will benefit from the opportunity to make math meaningful.

UDL Math

There is a need for flexible tools to teach math to young people, especially those with disabilities. With software based on principles of Universal Design, students are able to access course materials in ways that are flexible and customizable.

A central feature of UDL is its ability to adapt to students with different perceptual and cognitive needs. Our goal is to make software with multiple options to support mathematical problem description and problem solving.

Screen Display Options. A customizable set of screen display options (e.g., high and low contrast, as well as shades for the color blind; text size and font choice; and speed of motions on the screen) will allow the teacher or student to customize the display to match each student's learning preferences. We will also alter the surface complexity of the problems we present. For instance, with students whose number sense is weak, we will start by restricting variables to positive integral values. Later, students can control the variables and determine for themselves what happens when the variables take on fractional, decimal, or negative values.

Audio Options. Each object in Talking Graphs will be able to describe itself in words while highlighting whatever feature is being described. The description will have various levels of complexity, and will be sensitive to the context of the particular problem. For example, a position-versus-time graph that represents the motion of a vehicle will highlight a horizontal portion and explain, "This line segment represents the time when the car was stopped at a traffic light." In one mode, this explanation will include an animation panel showing the actual situation. Because some students find it difficult to concentrate with several simultaneous visual stimuli, sound effects will be available. In this case, imagine hearing the car motor rev faster and faster, as an upward sloping section of the graph is highlighted, or hearing brakes squeal when the graph moves precipitously downward.

Alternative Representations. We will present five different representations of information-text, graphs, tables, algebraic expressions, and animations. Each will be manipulable and when one is altered, all others will react accordingly. The representations will not be present on the screen at the same time. On the contrary, one of our strategies for gauging students' comprehension will be to hide one representation and ask the student to manipulate it by controlling a different representation. This ability to adopt different representations, to alternate among them, and to allow students to choose the representations they prefer, is one of the major advantages of computers over static textbooks, and a critical design feature of UDL.

Scaffolding Options. The degree and kind of help available to different students can be scaffolded, from high to low intervention; scaffolding is one of the primary ways software can be customized and aligned with a UDL approach. At the beginning level, we will show students how to set up a problem, and walk them through its solution, pointing out that many problems can be solved in multiple, equally valid ways. Subsequent levels will offer a choice of actions for students or a tutorial on how to solve problems of its general type, followed by questions designed to help the student map the general solution to the specific one. Other levels will monitor student actions and offer hints, either automatically or in response to a request. For some, the software will not intervene until the student either solves the problem or gives up. At that time the software will produce a report describing the student's actions with suggestions for improvement.

Feedback to Teachers. The data obtained by monitoring the students' problem-solving strategies will be analyzed in real time and reported back to the teacher at the end of each student's session. Because such analysis is timely and fine-grained, the teacher will be able to identify students with particular learning difficulties as soon as those difficulties become apparent, rather than having to wait for test scores that come too late and are insufficiently diagnostic.

One size doesn't fit all. With the invention of the printing press it became possible to produce textbooks that would transform education from a luxury available only to the elite to a commodity accessible to everyone. This was decidedly a major advance, but the price we paid for it was a uniformity of curriculum and pedagogical approach that cannot reflect the diversity of the human mind and spirit. The advent of the computer gives us the power to return to the days when education could be tailored to the needs and abilities of individual students, while still making it widely available. By applying UDL principles to the important area of math education, the Concord Consortium is taking a small but significant step toward that goal.