Cover image credit: "UDL guidelines overview" by chrissie_butler is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
What?
This reflection is based on my third Massey University Teaching and Digital Education assignment that required me to design a digital teaching resource using a specific framework. I choose to use the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework (Figure 1) and principles to create an online Blended Learning (BL) course.
In designing the course I was guided by CoI elements (Table 1) and principles (Table 2). When thinking about the possible digital platforms and tools that I could use, I was influenced by the recent prominence of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework (Figure 2) within my school, and the recognition that it “has multiple substantive roots in a) theory, b) practice and c) research” (Rose et al., 2018, p. 167). In the choices that I made, I tried to take the advice from Reeve & Halusic (2009) and adopt the perspective of the adult learners so that I could identify and remove possible barriers in the design.
Figure 1. The Community of Inquiry theoretical framework
Source: Cleveland-Innes, et al., 2019.
Table 1. Community of Inquiry categories and indicators (Swan et al., 2009)
Figure 2. UDL Domains
Source: Cast Organisation
Table 2. Pedagogical approach for creating and sustaining a community of inquiry
Source: Adapted from Vaughn et al. (2013) & Garrison & Akyol (2013)
So What?
This was significant for me because it provided me with an opportunity to delve deeper into UDL and apply my knowledge and skills to design learning engagements, resources and assessments that recognize learner variability and remove possible barriers (Meyer et al., 2014). Below are some examples of UDL design decisions that I made and the associated UDL domains.
Learning Management System (LMS) & Digital Tools (Engagement, & Action & Expression)
I chose to leverage Google Workspace tools for a number of reasons. Some of these were:
Google Forms (Engagement, Representation, Action & Expression)
All teachers self-selected this BL and therefore they were, for some reason or another, already interested in the topic. To learn more about their motivations and goals, I asked questions using a range of multimedia (text, images, video and audio). Recipients could respond to questions using either text or audio.
Figure 3. Pre-course survey
Inquiry into Blended Learning (Representation)
For the What is Blended Learning activity illustrated in Figure 4, participants were provided with multiple ways to access the content.
Figure 4. What is Blended Learning
Padlet (Action & Expression)
Padlet is a multimodal tool that provides users multiple ways to share their thinking, and participants were given the opportunity to do exactly this (Figure 5). Looking at this activity I recognize that there is a bias towards text, and content is not represented in multiple ways.
For the BL lesson displayed in Figure 6, the groups could select how they were going to create and share their lesson design. A range of resources was made available, but once again, these were limited to text which highlights a barrier in the design as there are not multiple forms of representation.
Figure 5. Padlet - Multimodal tool
Figure 6. Blended Learning Lesson Design
Now What?
In reflection, it is clear that I am conscious about instruction design decisions and I feel that I am transitioning from a Novice to a Practitioner UDL designer because of experiences like this. An example of this is my improved awareness and how I recognize my bias to represent content using text. In addition to this, I need to think critically about factors that promote ongoing engagement. To do these, I plan to continue to critically reflect upon UDL experiences and access UDL content through various forms of representation so that I can one day achieve the ultimate UDL goal of helping “prepare every student, each in their own individual way, to be expert learners'' (Rose et. al., 2088, p. 179).
Bibliography & References
CAST (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2. Retrieved from http://udlguidelines.cast.org
Cleveland-Innes, M., Garrison, D. R., & Vaughan, N. (2019). The community of inquiry theoretical framework: Implications for distance education and beyond. In M. G. Moore & W. Diehl, C. (Eds.), Handbook of distance education (4th ed., pp. 67-78). Routledge.
Garrison, D., & Akyol, Z. (2013). The Community of inquiry theoretical framework. Handbook of Distance Education, 104-119. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203803738.ch7
Meyer, A., Rose, D. H., & Gordon, D. T. (2014). Universal design for learning: Theory and practice. CAST Professional Publishing.
Reeve, J., & Halusic, M. (2009). How K-12 teachers can put self-determination theory principles into practice. Theory and Research in Education. 7(2). 145-154. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1477878509104319
Rose, D. H., Robinson, K. H., Hall, T. E., Coyne, P., Jackson, R. M., Stahl, W. M., & Wilcauskas, S. L. (2018). Accurate and informative for all: Universal design for learning (UDL) and the future of assessment. In S. N. Elliott, R. J. Kettler, P. A. Beddow & A. Kurz (Eds.), Handbook of accessible instruction and testing practices: Issues, innovations, and applications (pp. 167-180). Springer International Publishing.
Swan, K., Garrison, D., & Richardson, J. (2009). A constructivist approach to online learning: The community of inquiry framework. Information technology and constructivism in higher education: Progressive learning frameworks: Progressive learning frameworks, 43-57. Information Science Reference. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-60566-654-9.ch004
Vaughan, N. D., Garrison, D. R., & Cleveland-Innes, M. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. AU Press.http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/200/300/athabasca_univ/teaching_blended_learning_environments/9781927356487.pdf
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