Universal Design for Learning and Open Educational Resources - TAACCCT Round2 Kick-Off

Universal Design for Learning
and Open Education Resources
Sam Catherine Johnston
CAST
06.21.13
Project Open
Thursday, June 20, 13

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At CAST we developed a framework called Universal Design for Learning. Instead of telling you about the framework, I want to talk about the problem it’s meant to solve. The
myth of the average learner.
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The myth has deep roots in education, and I will argue that believing in it hurts our competitive advantage in because we create educational environments that ignore natural
variability and work against our greatest assets -- diversity and the capacity for innovation.
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variability matters. and we need to understand how to design for it and make choices about technologies where people have designed for it.
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universal design
view of variability
• rule, not the
exception
• accessibility-
variability
• a source of
innovation
• systematic differences
VARIABILITY
5
She claims she is a primarily visual thinker[8] and has said that words are her second language. Temple attributes her success as a
humane livestock facility designer to her ability to recall detail, which is a characteristic of her visual memory. Grandin compares her
memory to full-length movies in her head, that can be replayed at will, allowing her to notice small details. She is also able to view
her memories using slightly different contexts by changing the positions of the lighting and shadows. Her insight into the minds of
cattle has taught her to value the changes in details to which animals are particularly sensitive, and to use her visualization skills to
design thoughtful and humane animal-handling equipment.

UNIVERSAL DESIGN FOR LEARNING
6
UDL-
translational framework
in the states, etc

VARIABILITY
7
networks
recognition
• convert sensations
into meaningful
information
strategic
• plan, organize +
initiate purposeful
behavior
affective
• evaluate signiﬁcance

VARIABILITY
8
networks
recognition
into meaningful
information
strategic
initiate purposeful
behavior
affective

VARIABILITY
9
networks
recognition
into meaningful
information
strategic
initiate purposeful
behavior
affective
+ value of
information

An audio recording of a press conference
A Web page includes a link to an audio recording of a press conference that identifies the audio recording. The
page also links to a text transcript of the press conference. The transcript includes a verbatim record of
everything the speakers say. It identifies who is speaking as well as noting other significant sounds that are
part of the recording, such as applause, laughter, questions from the audience, and so on.
Captions (Live)
Captions are provided for all live audio content in synchronized media.

Engagement is really connected to the social and emotional aspects of learning, which is where variability is much less
systematic, more difficult to plan for.
In many ways that is why we say that you can design for a community of practice, but you cannot design a community of
practice. Engagement really requires an environment that is conducive to learning for all. Here is an example of how
engagement is really the heart of learning and shapes how learning happens.
John Seely Brown illustrates this well with an example of how Xerox learned to change how it trained tech reps. Those
people that are integral to the company because they go out and ﬁx the machines when something goes wrong. While
each rep had a manual that they were trained to use in response to different error codes, reps knew that machines rarely
break in the ways you want them to or are able to be repaired in a way that is clearly outlined in the manual. More
difficult tech issues, were often “problems of one”, not outlined in the manual. While Xerox was training reps to use the
manual, reps were learning by going out for breakfast.
Xerox technician example - reps collaborate, see one another’s practices through stories if they can’t directly. Response
was to provide two way radios so that technicians were always in one another’s periphery. Practices make sense of
process. So we can focus on goals, and separate means from them, but we need to teach people to respond to
variability as the need for it arrises and to see this as an asset to be leveraged, rather than a deﬁcit to be overcome.

new technologies
new possibilities
Technologies are increasingly able to help us enrich instruction by bringing in a richer media set, allowing for users to
act on information in different ways, and proving to be a place where learning can happen in relationships where peers
can share ideas, build ideas, and get information easily to collaborate on
enhancing new ideas. Yet, how technology is used in the service of learning matters very much. There are several
common errors in how we conceptualize of technology for learning. Each of these errors can stand in the way of the
power of technology to transform how we work, learn, and extend our knowledge by collaborating with others.
How we think about using technology is much more important than how much we know about technology. In this talk,
I’m going to use three examples in emerging technology to show how you can use the three principles of Universal
Design for Learning to guide your decision making about technology and learning, whether this relates to resources you
recommend to adult educators in your state, or to how you work with your own state community of practice.

no “gift-
wrapping”
(Fischer 1998)
no gift
wrapping
Fischer, 1998, 2013
Many uses of technology for learning take a gift wrapping approach where technologies are add-ons to existing
approaches, rather than used to fundamentally alter how we think about education. Fischer suggests that education
often follows on the boot heels of technology rather than the other way around. A better understanding of lifelong
learning and the nature of learning is needed if we are to leverage technology to transform how we teach and learn.

Humans aren’t containers
Learning isn’t a content dump
Lave and Wenger (1991) suggest that learning can be measured in terms of its usefulness, or how much information was
transferred. If usefulness increasingly becomes the measure of learning, than assessing students’ ability and success at
practicing newly learned skills and knowledge with others in the contexts where they are needed (e.g., workplaces, family),
replaces the value of assessing how much content was transferred from professor to individual students, often done through
tests of factual knowledge. Fischer (?) tells us that learning too often is aligned with notions of schooling that largely focus
on the transfer of large bodies of information from an expert to a novice. We then use new technologies in old ways. Maeda
indicates that we are underestimating the power of technology by treating computers as souped up pieces of paper.

no techno-
determinism
Fischer 2013
This happens when technology is so powerful and its use for learning is not well thought through or
understood such that technology drives learning rather than the reverse. A push for gaming in
education without mapping design and technology choices onto why and how it supports learning.

Distributed intelligence
Intelligence augmentation instead of artificial
intelligence - empower people (Fischer & Nakakoji 1992)
Social creativity
reflective practitioners to reflective communities
from assigned tasks to personally meaningful
tasks (Fischer et al., 2005)
Contextualize generic systems
aid group design, customization, and end-user
development (Fischer, 2001)
Intelligence augmentation instead of artiﬁcial intelligence - empowering people
support group learning and meaning making, not only individual learning to exploit social creativity
contexualize environments so people can resolve design challenges unique to the problems they are trying to solve
and the context they are trying to solve it in. (Fischer and Konomi 2007)
We risk more when we are intentionally working with others to frame, examine and resolve problems. We need to offer
some of our own thoughts, values and beliefs about the problem, and be willing to take in those of others, even if they
may clash with ours. So social, in a sense is deeply intertwined to emotional. I don’t actually believe they can be
separated easily, and so we need to pay attention to both if we want to advance social creativity, sharing of tacit
knowledge, end-user design.

We need to attend to
variability
What is most interesting is that as the value of social learning goes up, so does the value of variability. Big problems require many
different kinds of minds to resolve and the integration of separate knowledge systems. Think about the need for engineers,
scientists, lawyers, activists, politicians, communication specialists, designers etc… to even understand how we might address fuel
consumption to reduce global warming. We would not get very far if everyone thought about the problem from the lawyer’s lens,
but we would get far if the lawyer knew how to solve problems together with the scientists, the engineers and the politicians. We
need to attend to variability not only in people’s knowledge but also in their beliefs and values around a given topic or problem.
Fischer cites the social psychologist Donald Campbell and his fish-scale model to illustrate how distributed intelligence should
work. Campbell, writing in the 1960’s, cautioned that building a discipline like social science wasn’t going to be done by cross-
training everybody so they could be experts in many different things (e.g., statistics and biology). Rather, universities should focus
their energy on allowing people to develop their narrow specialty AND learn how to thoughtful overlap with the narrow specialties of
others, much the way each scale of a fish overlaps slightly with several others to fully cover the fish. How do we overlap
meaningfully with others on content knowledge, skills, and values and beliefs.

Bringing UDL into your
TAACCCT grant

National Center on
Universal Design for Learning
Postsecondary resources - multi-media case based learning,
webcasting and webconferencing
UDL Guidelines - postsecondary examples
UDL work around the country
UDL group just for TAACCCT grantees

Remix, Reuse, Repurpose
OERs developed through
Grantees to be More UDL.
How can you consider UDL from
the outset in your work on
remixing, reuse, repurposing?
We often don’t start with a blank slate

WCAG 2.0 success criteria are written as testable statements that are not technology-speciﬁc
Perceivable, Operable (enough time), Understandable (understandable.readable text, predictable
navigation), Robust (alternative technologies can interact with it). We are just going to focus on
perceivable in line with multiple means of representation.

WCAG 2.0. Cheat sheet

Education, in the deepest sense and at
whatever age it takes place, concerns the
opening of identities-exploring new ways of
being that lie behind our current state.
Whereas training aims to create an inbound
trajectory targeted at competence in a
specific practice, education must strive to
open new dimensions for the negotiated self.
It places students on an outbound trajectory
toward a broad field of possible identities.
Education is not merely formative - it is
transformative.
(Wenger, 1998, p.263).

Create free and friendly space for the stranger
The notion of hospitality is one that is important to bring into the learning space. Ken Kraybill, my old supervisor
wrote this about hospitality in his work with individuals experiencing homelessness. I think it applies to how we
design for learning that is transformative, especially for people trying to learn new and challenging things.
Estrangement, a sense of not belonging, is common to the experience of homelessness. People living in shelters and
on the streets often become separated from ordinary activities, relationships, and a sense of place and purpose in the
world. Literally, one becomes a stranger. The longer homelessness persists, the more deeply ingrained this
experience of disaffiliation becomes.Offering the gift of hospitality is an antidote to estrangement. In his book,
Reaching Out, Henri Nouwen defines hospitality as “creating free and friendly space for the stranger”. As such, it is an
invitation to relationship. A hospitable relationship provides a welcoming presence and creates a safe refuge from an
often impersonal, hostile world. Thus, a person in the midst of homelessness can experience a sense of being “at
home” in the context of this dependable, trustworthy relationship.Hospitality comes with no strings attached. It does
not pass judgment or make demands. Instead, it provides a space in which a person can freely explore one’s own
situation, needs, concerns, strengths, and hopes. It invites the telling of one’s own story-past, present, and future. It
allows for self-reflection and restoration. It provides the fertile ground from which seeds of hope and change can
come to light.Hospitality cannot be rushed. It requires time, patience, and kindly persistence. It sees the “bigger
picture” rather than seeking the “quick fixes”.

References
CAST UDL Guidelines retrieved on June 12 from http:// www.udlcenter.org/aboutudl/udlguidelines/
Fischer, G. & Nakakoji, K. (1992) "Beyond the Macho Approach of Artificial Intelligence: Empower Human Designers - Do
Not Replace Them," Knowledge-Based Systems Journal, Special Issue on AI in Design, 5(1), pp. 15-30. http://
l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~gerhard/papers/Scanned/1992-Beyond-Macho-Approach-KBS.pdf
Fischer, G. (1998) "Making Learning a Part of Life—Beyond the 'Gift-Wrapping' Approach of Technology" in P. Alheit, & E.
Kammler (Eds.), Lifelong Learning and Its Impact on Social and Regional Development, Donat Verlag, Bremen, pp.
435-462. http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~gerhard/papers/giftwrapping-98.pdf.
Fischer, G., Giaccardi, E., Eden, H., Sugimoto, M., & Ye, Y. (2005) "Beyond Binary Choices: Integrating Individual and
Social Creativity," International Journal of Human-Computer Studies (IJHCS) Special Issue on Computer Support for
Creativity (E.A. Edmonds & L. Candy, Eds.), 63(4-5), pp. 482-512. http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~gerhard/papers/ind-social-
creativity-05.pdf
Fischer, G. & Konomi, S. (2007) "Innovative Media in Support of Distributed Intelligence and Lifelong Learning," Journal of
Computer Assisted Learning, 23(4, Mobile Learning), pp. 338-350. http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~gerhard/papers/final-
JCAL-2007.pdf
Fischer, G. (2013) "A Conceptual Framework for Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning at Work" in S. Goggins, I.
Jahnke, & V. Wulf (Eds.), Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning at the Workplace (CSCL@Work) Springer,
Heidelberg, pp. 23-42. http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~gerhard/papers/2013/EUD.pdf.
Lave, J., and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Polanyi, Michael. (1966). The Tacit Dimension. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company.
Somech, Anit., Bogler, Ronit. (November 1999). Tacit Knowledge in Academia: Its Effects on Student Learning and
Achievement. Journal of Psychology, 133(6), 605-617.
WCAG 2.0. Quick Reference List Retrieved on June 12 2013 from http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#media-equiv
WCAG 2.0. Simplified Retrieved on June 12 2013 from http://www.slideshare.net/ciwstudy/wcag-20-simplified-
presentation
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
Wenger, E., McDermott, R., and Snyder, W. M. (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Business School Press.
Wenger, E. (2010, July). Communities of practice: A few frequently asked questions. Presented at BETreat Professional
Development Course for Leaders and Conveners of Communities of Practice, Grass Valley, CA.
Wenger, E. (2006, June). Communities of practice: A brief overview. Retrieved from http://www.ewenger.com/theory/
index.htm.

Other helpful resources
Open education resources
Open4us.org
search.creativecommons.org
http://oli.cmu.edu/learn-with-oli/see-our-free-open-courses/ STEM readiness course
UDL and Postsecondary and Technology
www.udlcenter.org
UDL Version of Curricular Options in the Digital Age
http://www.cast.org/w/page/jff/l421;jsessionid=A2134DD2AEEA3CB429B4D17587C137B3?0
UDL Postsecondary Stories
http://elixr.merlot.org/case-stories/understanding--meeting-students-needs/universal-design-for-
learning-udl/
UDL Postsecondary and Technology Community - Project Enact
http://enact.sonoma.edu/content.php?pid=218878&sid=2058378
Center on Online Learning and Students with Disabilities
centerononlinelearning.org/
CAST Composition Builder
http://ies.ed.gov/funding/grantsearch/details.asp?ID=1167
sjohnston@cast.org

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