Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Group Breakouts

A core component of our lesson plan is a group breakout activity wherein students can reflect on their lifestyle choices and sleeping habits in small groups. This activity was ideally designed to promote peer learning and give students a space to apply their personal experiences to the course content. However, applying the UDL lens to our group activity (as described by Anne Meyer, David H. Rose, and David Gordon) highlights a broad assumption that every student will talk and share their personal experiences.

Under a UDL lens, a key barrier in our group activity is social and cognitive accessibility. Students might have anxiety, language differences, or an unfamiliarity with the topic, rendering the purpose of the group activity to promote peer-learning less likely to be achieved. If a student is too nervous about how they are going to phrase their sentence to their peers about how they understand insomnia, they are spending more time in their heads worrying about executing the best sentence possible to feel socially accepted at the expense of actually meaningfully engaging with the content. UDL shows how the design of a lesson can limit the ability of students to learn, regardless of varying student limitations. Instead of forcing students to talk in-person in a formal class environment, perhaps the “fence” can be removed while still facilitating a peer-learning activity. By offering multiple means of expression or engagement, learning barriers can be reduced for the group activity. We could create a document where students could contribute anonymously. Also, we could also create a reflection guide for examples of discussion posts (or whatever participatory form of engagement). By providing options for expression and engagement, essential access to learning for those who have social anxiety or language differences, but also, for anyone. Confident English speakers and social butterflies might also benefit in their own ways to these adjustments, such as having more time to craft a response rather than giving their input on the fly in an in-person conversation. 

While our project is primarily digital, I really resonated with Kristin Kohlmeier’s recognition of personal autonomy. I think that this is a super important part of encouraging learners to be willingly engaged, or at least, based on my own experience! If I am limited to an extent by rubrics and specific preferences by professors, I find that not only am I far more likely to be uninterested in the content, but I also feel claustrophobic. If I am following a rigorous lesson plan at the expense of my control over my ability to learn and my person, I simply will not be learning! In our own lesson plan, I intend to emphasize the importance of personal autonomy.