Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as a catalyst for disciplinary understanding and innovation in an accredited programme for faculty at University College Cork, Ireland.

Much has changed in the world since we first presented this paper at the third Pan Canadian conference on UDL in October 2019, at Royal Roads University, Victoria, British Columbia. Since December 2019, the emergence of the Covid 19 pandemic has had a profound impact on life and death globally, with the result that matters of public health and well- being now impact our every thought and action. In relation to higher education, we are currently in a phase of pedagogical triage that will have long-term implications for how we teach and how students learn. Covid 19 has given us permission to take risks and to be daring and innovative in our efforts to engage our students virtually and continue to give them a meaningful, inclusive and imaginative learning experience. Technology and digital learning have come into their own and diverse ways of working and engagement are becoming the norm. Hence, the need more than ever to embrace UDL, ensuring that pedagogy has a compass point that will continue to steer us in the right direction, whether in the virtual, the blended or the face-to-face encounter. Though the case studies referred to below have been written before the Covid 19 era, their focus on universal design for learning, on teaching for understanding and innovative, investigative practice have profound implications for the future direction of teaching and learning in the disciplines. Now more than ever it is important to design for learning so that all students can feel part of an authentic, inclusive, educational experience as they learn to think through, with and in their various disciplines.

We mention the range of publications below to situate the current paper and to emphasise that UDL can be used as a catalyst across the disciplines to reform and transform practice and ensure student engagement. All disciplines can benefit from a UDL perspective, since its focus is on the student and the diversity of the learning process, rather than on course content and coverage. UDL and Teaching for Understanding (TfU) complement each other since TfU focuses on uncovering the course so that students can discover through active learning and a variety of entry points to learning that allows their intelligences and strengths to emerge . TfU is focused on exploring the big ideas of the discipline, on encouraging disciplinary thinking and on engaging students in authentic problem solving.

Over the past five years, we have been keen to show the emergence and importance of UDL in our AHEAD conference presentations (McCarthy & Butler, 2015, 2017, 2018). Such work has just culminated in the11th edition of the AHEAD online journal where we document the UDL work of two colleagues, Dr Ken Keating, School of English, and Karen Donovan, RGN, clinical facilitator, Mercy University Hospital, Cork, based on their innovative approach to the teaching of English Literature and of Nursing, respectively (McCarthy & Butler, 2020a). In our presentation at the Royal Roads conference, we began with reference to our research on the work of Dr Kevin Murphy, School of Pharmacy, (McCarthy & Butler, 2019), whose TfU and UDL approach has been documented in a detailed case study in Bracken & Novak (2019). For the purposes of this paper, we will concentrate on analysing another course portfolio central to our presentation, that of Dr Mohammed Abdulla, Department of Physiology. Another UDL case study in the teaching of Music, based on the work of Dr Rhoda Dullea, School of Music and Theatre, which formed the third reference point in our presentation, will be examined in detail in another forthcoming publication (McCarthy & Butler, 2020b). Hence, the reader can access a variety of examples of TfU/UDL design and practice from across the disciplines at UCC.

We are also keen to highlight that UDL is part of a family of pedagogies at UCC that strengthen and embed it, ensuring that UDL is enculturated in a holistic approach to teaching and learning. We are drawing in this paper on the pedagogical models of Multiple Intelligences (Gardner, 1999a) and Teaching for Understanding (Gardner, 1999b; Boix Mansilla & Gardner, 1998; Perkins, 1993, 1994, 1998; Wiske, 1998), emergent in the work of the Project Zero Classroom (1997, 1998) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. We have adopted and embedded these models in the culture of our professional development programmes since the late 1990s. Project Zero prioritises disciplinary understanding as essential to effective pedagogical design, hence its relevance in a university setting. We have further grounded these pedagogies and their disciplinary thrust in the philosophy of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (Boyer, 1990, 1997), which ensures an investigative stance in teaching and learning, aligned with disciplinary research approaches which are again central to higher education. These models will be explored in more depth in a companion paper entitled “UDL synergies at UCC: A journey through the pedagogical frameworks that have helped UDL to flourish”. It can be found in Section 8, under the conference theme of Creating osmosis between UDL and other theoretical frameworks.

Before focusing on the course portfolio of Dr Mohammed Abdulla, it is important to introduce the course portfolio method in more depth, highlighting its investigative and student-centered thrust. To add to the robust nature of our approach, we will also relate to the TfU model and its disciplinary framework, which grounds UDL principles and practice at UCC.

The Course Portfolio as a Method of Documentation and Investigation

At our institution, we have tracked the professional development of faculty using a course portfolio methodology (Cerbin 1994, 1996, 2000; Hutchings, 1998) in the second year of the accredited programme. We invite faculty in the second semester of the Diploma year to focus on one course they are teaching and challenge them to make it more inclusive and student friendly. The portfolio entries are supported by a rubric using TfU and UDL prompts that are introduced over the two years of the programme. The course portfolio method requires staff to critique their course from the perspective of its (i) Design, its (ii) Enactment (teaching interventions) and (iii) its Results (student learning). These perspectives provide the key learning goals for faculty in inviting them to critique, develop and innovate their practice for the benefit of student learning.

The power of focusing on teaching and learning in a particular course, and on the relationship of one course to another, rather than on the teacher’s practice in general, are distinctive advantages of the course portfolio. Most teaching portfolios contain samples of student work, but the ‘unit of analysis’ is primarily the teacher and the purpose of the teaching portfolio is to give a picture of the individual’s teaching effectiveness. In contrast, the course portfolio puts the spotlight on student learning as the organising principle. In our model, student learning is further grounded in a TfU-UDL pedagogy, which provides a further layer of organisation, generating the hypothesis that teaching for understanding incorporating UDL principles will lead to student learning.

The course portfolio is not so much an account of what the teacher typically does, but:

an account of what happens when he or she does something deliberately and explicitly different. It is not, that is, a report of what is but a purposeful experiment and investigation – a process, if you will, of scholarly inquiry into what might be. (Hutchings, 1998: x).

Lee Shulman (in Hutchings, 1998: 5-12) sets the conceptual stage for the course portfolio process as an act of scholarship:

Indeed, my argument is that every course is inherently an investigation, an experiment, a journey motivated by purpose and beset by uncertainty. A course, therefore in its design, enactment and analysis is as much an act of inquiry and invention as any other activity more traditionally called ‘research’ or the scholarship of discovery. (p. 5)

His focus on the course portfolio as research, as an “act of inquiry”, underlines the idea that teaching is usually constructed as a private act, where innovative acts of teaching are rarely built on and seldom reviewed by peers. Hence, the role of the course portfolio in addressing these gaps. Here, Shulman gives teaching its full context, seeing it as more than the interactions between teacher and student in a classroom setting; rather “it is an extended process that unfolds over time. It embodies at least five elements: vision, design, interactions, outcomes and analysis” (Hutchings, 1998: 6). In compounding this point, Hutchings (1998: 15-16) reiterates William Cerbin’s (1996) idea of a course, which defined the original idea of the course portfolio as a genre:

(a course is) a kind of laboratory; not as a truly controlled experiment, of course, but as a setting in which you start out with goals , then you adopt teaching practices that you think will accomplish these, and along the way you watch and see if your practices are helping to accomplish your goals, collecting evidence about effects and impact.

The influence of the TfU model, acknowledged by Cerbin (1996, 2000) is pervasive here, and indicative of TfU’s compatibility with this model, to which, indeed, it contributed in Cerbin’s very conception of a course portfolio. With the emergence of UDL as a significant pedagogy and human rights imperative in recent years, we have integrated UDL into our TfU approach, both being conceptually compatible in the first place, drawing on the diversity of student learning and the necessity of active learning for student engagement and understanding.

Teaching for Understanding: The Dimensions of Disciplinary Understanding

and Their Compatibility With UDL Principles:

The TFU pedagogical and disciplinary frameworks are two powerful lenses that we bring to bear when planning curriculum. The disciplinary framework (Boix Mansilla & Gardner, 1998; Ritchart, 1999) names four dimensions of disciplinary understanding, which provide the ‘DNA’ of every discipline:

• Knowledge: What questions do experts ask? What do they need to know about?
• Methods: How do disciplinary experts find out?
• Purposes: Why do experts do what they do? How do experts use what they know?
• Forms: How do experts communicate? What are the genres/tools of communication in the discipline?

These are the foundation blocks for how we will support students in coming to know and understand the discipline in question. These are further strengthened, in our view, by the pedagogical and disciplinary focus of UDL principles. All four dimensions are validated in a UDL approach and ask the same questions. The Knowledge dimension speaks to the Recognition networks and invites multiple ways of knowledge representation and diverse approaches if students are to maximise disciplinary understanding. The Methods dimension invokes the Strategic networks and how students as beginning experts organise and express their ideas. Students are called to action if they are to develop disciplinary expertise. Hence, lecturers need to differentiate the ways that students can express what they know. The Forms dimension is also invoked here, since students need to express themselves in a variety of genres to become authentic learners in the discipline. Finally, the Purposes dimension of understanding speaks in particular to the Affective networks, the ‘why’ of learning and the nature of student engagement. The Purposes dimension directly asks the ‘why’ question and reminds teachers that students need to be able to see how they can use and apply knowledge and why it is relevant to them, if they are to become motivated learners. Likewise, purposeful students need to move beyond the more prescriptive Forms of the summative examination and of typical questions if they are to own learning and to apply it and communicate with and about it.

Case Study: Dr Mohammed Abdulla, Department of Physiology, School of Medicine and Health, University College Cork, Ireland.

Dr Mohammed Abdulla has chosen to reflect on a Physiology module, FM2102, Bone Metabolism, Renal Mechanisms of Homeostasis and Associated Anatomy, which is taught to about 120 students in the second year of the 5 year medical degree programme at UCC. Mohammad delivers nine lectures, one tutorial and two practical sessions in the module. This contributes to around 50% of the teaching and more than 30% of the overall contribution from all cognate disciplines to this core module.

Entry 1: Course Design

Dr Abdulla’s detailed map of how UDL permeates his design and teaching of this module provides an excellent template for other faculty teaching in any discipline:

Figure 1

Module Design and UDL

Note. The TfU concept is the umbrella under which teaching in this module is designed. The graphic map shows the three principles of UDL and how they are addressed in this module. This figure is also an example of how illustrations and mind maps are used for teaching in this module.

Dr Abdulla comments above on his Design illustration and then unpacks this map and speaks to the three principles of UDL in turn:

Multiple ways of Engagement:

Students’ participation is encouraged in different ways in this module (Figure 1). For example, group discussions and activities within the classroom are used and are linked to the learning outcomes of the module. Students are also challenged through examples which would allow thinking at a higher order level, to motivate and excite them about what they are learning. Mohammed noticed that such integrative, higher order thinking about authentic examples encourages better group discussions and heightens student interest and engagement.

Mohammed encourages face-to-face meetings or online communications in addition to the classroom/lab times. He puts his email address on the first slide of each lecture and he reminds students to email him with questions. This strategy opens up discussion with students who prefer not to ask questions in front of their classmates or in face-to-face discussions. Dr Abdulla feels that this approach will also allow students the time to go through the concepts at their own pace and to think about and relate these and come back with questions or follow up comments. Mohammed makes the most of this strategy by sharing such comments and questions and the answers he devises with the rest of the class in the follow up session.

Technology was also utilised to enhance students’ participation through the use of simulation software or applications that can be accessed on computers or other digital devices such as phones and tablets. In addition to reinforcing the main concepts, these can facilitate participation from students who prefer to work alone. Equally, technology also enables team work through problem solving tasks where students work together and share information with their peers. Classroom and lab activities are supplemented with prompt and instructive feedback by Mohammed. The use of online applications such as Socrative made this an easy task, providing detailed feedback after each activity. In the case of paper-based activities, an immediate feedback is given after each task, verbally or in written form. If there are any follow- up comments out of the session time, then these are addressed in the next session or through Blackboard (VLE) announcements or email.

Finally, surveys and reflections are used in Mohammed’s sessions to enhance participation. Through surveys, students can reflect on their perception of the course and identify potential areas that require change. For example, a survey made during the course of the module revealed how students perceived the introduction of paper and online-based activities in the classroom. The survey therefore is a meaningful tool to encourage participation by pointing to diverse ways of learning that are preferred by different groups within the class.

Multiple ways of Representation:

Mohammed suggests that these should be flexible and used to support learning within the diverse nature of the class. As can be seen in Figure 1, such a variety of means of Representation was achieved by using digital material like PowerPoint, animation, videos, images and application software. These can also be modified depending on students’ learning needs. For example, providing a video along with the written text of the lecture could facilitate learning for those students who prefer to learn from videos rather than direct speech. Similarly, the use of application software provided another mode for learning that is easy and readily accessible by large numbers of students at any place or time. Apps can also be used flexibly as assessment tools; Socrative for example, with the advantage of providing immediate feedback to students compared to other forms of assessment. Demonstrations, in-class props and lab experiments were also used to represent knowledge in a variety of ways. Indeed, these facilitate more engagement, especially from students who prefer to learn by linking concepts to daily life outside the classroom. They also provide an easy way to remember the concepts and were found to enhance the teaching and learning process (Astrachan, 1998). In order to facilitate learning for students with disabilities, such as impaired vision, which requires screen reader software, or for students who prefer to learn through text, a detailed explanation of visual aids is included. This enables access to information by screen readers at the learner’s pace and also acts as a revision tool for other students.

Multiple ways of Action and Expression:

In the FM2102 module, Mohammed explains that students are given the opportunity to observe and participate in lab experiments. They collect data and analyse it and use what they have learned to explain the outcomes. This form of hands-on expression can be utilised by kinaesthetic learners in the class. There is also the opportunity to work in small groups and discuss results with the group facilitator. Students found this helpful to clear up any misconceptions and to enhance their understanding of the concepts. In addition, this exercise is also useful to introduce analytical skills prior to the students’ enrolment in final year projects. Students can actively participate and demonstrate their learning through discussions of case studies and other problem solving tasks during group work tutorials. Discussions with the facilitator can be a preferred mode of expression for auditory learners who favour verbal explanation of the concepts rather than writing about them.

Mohammed indicates that students are also encouraged to express their learning through other activities, such as drawing. For example, students were given research papers and were asked to use drawings as a stimulus to discuss how the filtrate is processed at each segment of the nephron. In another activity, students were given a problem in the form of a video or a picture accompanied by a question. They were given the time to answer the question using their smart phones, tablets or computers. This task was used to involve students who are visual learners or who prefer the digital way of expressing their learning. Students with hearing difficulty, who prefer to express learning in writing rather than verbally, could also be interested in this style. Mohammed suggests that this method could also be used as an entry point for students who are shy or for those who prefer to work individually or alone. He concludes this section by stating that making sense of learning is an important aspect of the teaching process which can be supported through UDL (Hall, Strangman & Meyer, 2003).

Entry 2: Course Teaching/Enactment

Dr Abdulla starts this entry by drawing attention to the challenges of time and hence of coverage, his initial response being to cover his lecture material within the allotted time. To rise to the challenge of TfU, which prioritises a holistic, student-centred approach, Mohammed introduces classroom activities and discussions to facilitate more interaction and understanding. This strategy worked well in a two- hour tutorial session, but was less successful in the one- hour lecture where student questions needed more time and explanation. Mohammed chose to vary his pace and to devote some sessions to student questioning and interaction. One of his interventions to address coverage and content, while still allowing time for student discussion, was to introduce detailed notes below each slide of his PowerPoint presentations, similar to what he wanted to discuss during the lecture. This was done to assist students’ preparation for the lecture and later to support student revision. The notes were supported by case studies of real life examples and a number of questions regarding each case were included with possible answers. Student feedback indicated that these notes and case studies were indeed helpful in developing student understanding and in preparation for exams.

Another solution to the coverage problem was for Mohammed to provide a recorded version of his lectures in future iterations of the course. This suggestion came from his critical friend and could act as a way of freeing up lecture time. Such recordings will be in the form of short introductions to the material covered in lectures. These will provide students with an overview of each lecture and its learning objectives and outcomes and will also save time during lectures which can be used better through student presentation, interaction or discussion.

In general, Mohammed works to use a greater variety in representation by using video, image and text, also ensuring that material is accessible to screen readers and includes captions for the hearing impaired where necessary. To increase more variety in knowledge expression, he has introduced a variety of paper exercises and a range of different apps in the classroom. These apps offer a variety of digital learning methods and also provide instant feedback to students.

Multiple forms of Action and Expression are also encouraged in this module through a variety of lab experiments where students are given opportunities to both observe and participate in lab work. During these sessions notes are recorded and students are required to analyse data and explain the outcomes of these procedures. Students work in small groups during tutorials where they discuss case studies and develop different problem solving skills. Students are given opportunities to express themselves orally as well as in written form. In other activities, they are given opportunities to present concepts in the form of drawings, or they can be presented with questions in the form of a video or a picture accompanied with a question. They are given the time to solve some of these difficulties on their phone, tablets or computers. Simulation software and other apps are also used to reinforce concepts and these are available to students on their phones, tablets or computers. This can be good to accommodate students who are too quiet to speak up in class. Students are also given the opportunity to experience peer learning as they take part in team work for case studies and problem solving skills.

Entry 3: Student Learning/Results

Mohammed has learned that an inclusive environment can be created in and beyond the classroom through the implementation of different entry points to learning and different information presentation modes, thus providing multiple means of representation of information for students. Furthermore, the use of technology can also provide multiple means of action and expression for all students. Technology encourages the possibility of providing and receiving instant feedback during a session. There is also the group interaction through the use of technology which invites students to express their knowledge. Therefore, a variety of support mechanisms could be provided through this approach by the teacher. Finally, the use of technology within the classroom setup is providing multiple ways for students’ engagement. Mohammed points out that software technology is readily accessible nowadays and can be well recruited to include more students in the learning process (Gulek and Demirtas 2005; Lavin, Korte & Davies, 2011; Lefever and Currant, 2010). It can also be a valuable tool for the teacher to evaluate students’ participation and interest within the class.

Mohammed claims that the onsite observation of activities showed a remarkable improvement in participation in the class compared to previous sessions where ‘lecturer talks and students listen’ was the case. The use of classroom activities and performances also allowed him to interact with the class and listen to their discussions. He learned to be creative and to enable the students to talk and reflect during the learning process. He also learned from students how they liked to learn a concept and achieved this only when he left his place on the podium and came down among the students to listen to their discussions. Mohammed felt that he then needed to qualitatively assess the use of classroom activities for student learning and to see if they successfully utilised them for in-depth understanding of the material. He carried out an analysis of performances over two years of the FM2102 and GM1002 modules and compared these. The comparison between the two years is based on the fact that he used these exercises in every session in the latest rendition of the course, in contrast to very few occasions in the previous years. In addition to the analysis of performance, he asked students to provide feedback regarding their experience with the present format of the lectures/tutorials.

Students’ feedback regarding classroom activities in both FM2102 and GM1002 modules indicated that it helped them to actively participate in the learning process. According to students, interactive activities enhanced their understanding of the concepts and cleared misconceptions. The exchange of information with other students and with the lecturer was also facilitated through this approach. According to the feedback, students preferred Socrative as their favourite interactive approach within the classroom. The reason for choosing Socrative over paper-based activities is because it is an easy and readily accessible web-based exercise. It allows faster response by students and immediate feedback from the teacher. It also gives a quantitative figure of class participation and performance. This means that, as compared to paper exercises, Socrative is more useful as a continuous assessment tool through which the lecturer assesses the level of understanding in real-time during the learning process. On the other hand, the paper-based exercises offer more flexibility than Socrative in terms of the nature of the activities used. For example, puzzles, cross words, mind-maps and matching questions can best fit as paper-based exercises than through Socrative. Moreover, some learners prefer to interact through text reading/writing and would therefore find paper-based activities more useful.

Portfolio Discussion and Conclusion:

Mohammed begins his final reflection with the realisation that students in his class are not the same in the way they learn: “Why should we expect them to be so when they come from different backgrounds and ages, some returning to university with a previous degree or profession?” By employing TfU and UDL perspectives, Mohammed has learned that an inclusive learning environment can indeed be created.

Dr Abdulla is keen to highlight that the emergence of technology and its daily applications should be well harnessed in teaching and learning for this generation of learners. Not only is technology attractive to them but they already use it to interact with each other in their everyday life. Mohammad infers, therefore, that we can use this available technology to promote student interaction with peers and with teachers in the classroom and involve more learners with different interests and intelligences in the learning process. If we want to utilise the concept of UDL, then the recent technologies may provide a way to overcome the obstacles facing its implementation, such as the issue of time and resources.

Mohammed has learned much from his peer Group Discussion Forum. He draws attention to potential areas for improving his teaching, such as maximising feedback. One example is the suggestion of using an application on phones to show students’ responses to paper- based activities and to project these directly on to the main lecture screen, which addresses the limitation of paper exercises in terms of providing quantitative feedback. Another suggestion he received was regarding his management of lecture time, as already discussed, and how short video recordings would address this problem. Another was about his use of an online response app (Socrative) and support for how he was using this tool and how it engaged students in real- time and measured their understanding during that time.

An appropriate way to draw the findings of the course portfolio together is to return to Mohammed’s conclusion for the Design section of his portfolio wherein he outlines a number of challenges regarding the application of UDL that still remain for those teaching this module: Although FM2102 offers a variety of ways of presenting information, receiving feedback and engaging learners, there is still the need to increase flexibility for students to express their learning in more varied ways. Currently, students’ demonstration of learning is limited to a few activities within the classroom or the lab which are not formally assessed. Furthermore, students are not officially offered choices of ways to acquire knowledge in this module. A variety of methods should be incorporated into its design. Assessment procedures also need to be more flexible. The current assessment of students’ performance relies mainly on formal examination (end of module/year) rather than other methods of assessment, such as problem solving and project assignments. The module design is also limited in terms of applying UDL concepts for students with disabilities. The course material should be provided in a variety of forms, to include lecture capture, so that students can take time to review and revise concepts. Finally, due to time constraints, the didactic way of delivering lectures in this module is still dominant. This offers limited flexibility for the introduction of major changes, such as a shift towards a flipped classroom design, which Dr Abdulla would like to see.

Conclusion

We have examined several of these portfolios systematically over the past five years and have found that UDL is indeed a catalyst for inclusive and diverse learning across the disciplines. A number of learning outcomes for faculty also emerge: they become more aware of student needs, more strategic in their curriculum planning and more conscious of the necessity to include all learners, particularly when devising assessment approaches that are authentic and transformative.

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