Universal dessign for learning (UDL)

               

                Nowadays, Universal Design of Learning is getting more and more important. Universal Design of Learning has the purpose of making learning available for everyone, which means that everybody has the own way of learning and every class has some barriers that keep some students off the process of learning, so UDL is about destroying this barriers and making possible that everybody can learn with the same possibilities.

                Universal design of learning explains that each student has their own strengths, needs and interest, so with UDL we try to give each child what they requisite. This kind of education means making a universal education so everyone can learn.

                The idea of UDL is really nice but, how do we implement it? Like everything in education the answer is simple, it is all about the curriculum. But this curriculum is not easy at all because if we are trying to please every student and we have said that every student is different, it gets quite complicated. The students need to be participles of de knowledge, of the abilities and strategies and be enthusiastic of the process of learning; to get this the curriculum needs these three things. With this kind of education it is essential a flexible curriculum and it’s also essential that the teacher has to know what the student needs, prefers… and also the teacher has to promote multiple intelligences. This curriculum has to motivate and help ALL the students, this curriculum will end up helping every student.

                This curriculum has four parts:

•       The goals: what do we want? What are our aims? Which barriers are we facing?  Who can I motivate my students? These goals have to be present in the next parts.
•      The methods.
•      The material.         à these three can't be static
•      The assessment.

                How can we destroy the barriers? Using the three principles of de UDL:

      1.       Multiple means of representation: We have to teach the content and the information using multiple media.  For example, use graphics, highlight the most important words, explain the complex vocabulary…

     2.       Provide multiple ways to act and express: help the students to demonstrate what they have learnt in different ways.

     3.       Multiple ways of engagement: provide different ways of participation, let the kids learn from their mistakes, let them share knowledge, promote autonomy …

                   With these three principles every student is able to progress and they will keep their interest, most important, they’ll start enjoying learning that should be our most important goal as teachers. If every day is different in school, kids are going to enjoy school and the concept school as boring would disappear. Every day should be a challenge for the students and finally if we get this, we may get the students to love learning.

                   You can watch this video to get more information: