With growing diversity there is a need for a more inclusive environment to ensure differences are respected and everyone in the classroom feels respected and honored. This has increasing assumed importance as we find people from different backgrounds, sharing different values share the same classroom space. Every individual's needs are different and catering to everyone's need is important. Planning inclusive lectures does just that. It involves careful selection of words used to provide examples, careful choice of technology etc.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a set of principles for curriculum development that gives all individuals equal opportunities to learn. It is designed in such a way that it can be made accessible to all students irrespective of their learning styles, physical or sensory disabilities. The three fundamental principles of UDL are effective ways to representation, effective ways of engagement and effective ways of expression.
The specific guidelines I have implemented to make my classroom climate inclusive are
- Established relevance of the course in a broader and/or societal context - As Research is a key component of any scientific process this strategy helped students learn the significance of research and how its done. This was a very forward looking approach as students would pursue research as their career or use its principles in professional life ahead.
- Provide opportunities for students to learn about each other - This was done by making students sit in groups and have an interactive classroom setting. Every lecture the groups changed to ensure every students in class got to learn something new about their classmates. this helped create a friendly environment where students felt comfortable and learnt better.
- Talk to students about how they learn best and how to adopt compensatory strategies- owing to the exhaustive course content, this becomes particularly important as students seek ways to remember facts and processes. Students were taught various strategies to memorize and learn the course material, which was subjective to the type of course material. This also helped students to become self-directed learners as they untapped different learning pedagogies.
- Set high standards and communicate the confidence that each student can achieve them - I think this is very crucial for student success. Motivating them to achieve something outside their comfort zone pushes them to achieve things they never thought they could. Being very new to research methods students viewed every assignment to be a milestone and constant motivation and support helped them to ease that nervousness and feel comfortable with the subject.
- Use a variety of strategies to represent information - this is especially important as some students learn better when the information is presented visually in the form of videos or demonstration. Inculcating multiple ways to present information helped students learn better. Use of presentations and visually showing them how to search for relevant articles helped students and made them feel confident in whatever they were pursuing.
- Allow students to accumulate grade points in a variety of ways - this is important as not all students are good at writing a literature review. Therefore students were offered different ways to represent the same information. They were allowed to use concept maps and tables to represent the information and then eventually write a literature review. This scaffolding helped them learn better and accumulate grades irrespective of their shortcoming.
To summarize, UDL has helped me gain an insight into how teaching can be tailored to needs of the students and made accessible to all just by few changes. These minor steps can bring a big change in the ways students learn and help instructors create an environment which reinforces learning. As more and more diversity becomes apparent in all walks of life, universal design for learning becomes the cornerstone for catering this diverse population.