Universal Design for Learning

Presuming Competence By Design: A tutorial for systems, environment, curricular, and materials design in learning systems

Requirements

So now that we’ve gone through a lot of “what is this stuff, what is it not” and pontificating a bit about its virtues, let’s get into some nuts and bolts – what to look for, what to do, how to do it.

Barriers to Learning That We Can Redesign into Supports
We can think in terms of three levels of barriers in learning systems:

            Instructional Barriers
            Environmental Barriers
            System-level Barriers

With each of these, we can make design decisions or modifications that turn barriers into supports.  Let’s look at each one.

If you are a classroom teacher or instructor, you may find the section on instructional and environmental barriers most useful.

If you are an administrator, you may find the sections on environmental and system-level barriers most useful.

Instructional designers can apply each section depending on where you are working at within an organization.

 

(Note: If you are using this tutorial in your school or organization, here is an opening exercise you can use before going into the Barriers module. )