For seven years, I have taught an online course on inclusion for general education teachers. The goal of the course is to help teachers accommodate students with disabilities in their classrooms.

At the heart of my course is the concept of universal design for learning (UDL), which proposes that learning should be multimodal in order to accommodate various learning styles. I assign readings from Rose and Meyer’s Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning.

In a nutshell, UDL relies on three principals:

1. Information should be presented in multiple formats (lectures, texts, audio, video, kinesthetic activities)

2. Students need flexible options for demonstrating what they have learned, through writing, presentations, skits, PowerPoints, art projects, models, etc.

3. Learning experiences should have flexible ways of engaging students so that they are interested and motivated.

A few weeks ago, I realized that I may not be as good as I should be about modeling UDL. I am involved in Yaro Starek’s Blog Mastermind program. Whether he realizes it or not, Yaro has implemented these principles extremely well. Each weekly lesson has a text web page and an audio recording, so students can read, listen to his audio, or both. The audio lessons are mp3 files, so students can load it on an iPod or other player and listen on the go.

The most helpful elements of Yaro’s course are case study videos in which he analyzes a student’s blog, pointing out design and content elements that are effective and ones that can be improved. Using a screen capture program, he talks through his analysis and moves around on the blog marking and highlighting elements on the screen, giving a visual and auditory one-two punch. I know that I learn more from these presentations than I would reading a text description. (Yaro does need to caption or provide transcripts to make his case studies accessible to those with hearing impairments. A deaf student has pointed this out, and I think a solution is on the way.)

As I realized these lessons were so powerful for learning, I was also embarrassed to admit that I really don’t practice the first principle of UDL in my own class. I link to a couple of videos and one simulation, but the rest are my articles or links to others’ web sites. Pretty static and blah, compared to Yaro’s lessons.

I teach my class every six weeks and sometimes have sessions that overlap, making a big overhaul of my course difficult. Therefore, I have decided to improve my course in incriminates. My first goal will be to make audio recordings of all readings. I have a speech impairment which rules out my recording my own voice reading. I am going to convert the text into high quality text-to-speech and save them as mp3’s using NextUp’s TextAloud. I will see what students think of that format. If they are put off by the synthetic voice, I hire someone who has a pleasant voice to read the texts for me.

I am curious about how others use multiple formats in online courses. What works for you? Do students with different characteristics prefer different formats? Do younger students expect multimedia because they have grown up with it? Please leave a comment and share your experiences and opinions.

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