Universal Design for Learning (UDL): Educator's Checklist

UDL Guidelines

Throughout my education at Michigan State and in my first years of teaching, I always prided myself on finding the needs of my students and meeting them. I thought this was the only way to make sure each student learned best and succeeded. This theory has worked for me and my students, however it is quite tedious. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has opened my eyes to a new way of meeting student needs in a more direct way. UDL has educators look for needs in one place- the curriculum. By identifying the strengths and weakness of the curriculum, I can create better and higher quality lessons. Therefore, the needs of my students have a better chance of being meet. 

When evaluating my myths and legends lesson, I realized I was meeting the needs of some of the principles, but I still had a lot of work to do. For example, I felt I did a good job offering auditory and visual information, using multiple media, activating background knowledge, and fostering collaboration and community. These are things I try to do in every lesson. I could use more scaffolding and differentiation. I will definitely use the UDL guidelines when creating lessons in the future. 

MERLOT

Evalaution of "Who Wants Pizza? (A fun way to learn about fractions)" 
Who Wants Pizza?

Quality of Content: The StAIR presents accuate concepts, models, and skills. It shared the content first before having students practice and applying, but I feel it could have explained the content more. It would be difficult for younger students to jump right into practice without learning about the concept first or seeing a model from the teacher. 

The tool starts off with basic fractions and builds on the content. It gets into adding and multiplying fractions which we do not do in 3rd grade, but it would be a good tool to challenge some of my higher students who understand fractions quickly.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching-Learning Tool: This tool uses all the stages of the learning process (Explanation, demonstration, practice, applying). It does not directly state the learning objective, but focuses on introducing fractions. Students should be able to recognize, create, add, and multiply fractions by the end of the StAIR. 

This tool would improve my teaching by providing students an introduction and practice before or during our fraction unit. I think students would learn better because they are manipulating the fractions and it is presented in more of a game format than traditional textbooks. I could have students complete this individually, in small groups, or as a whole class. The assessment is built in and provides immediate feedback for myself and the students. 

Ease of Use: For the most part, my students could easily navigate through the program. There are clear links to the assessments, next activity, and the home page. I would like for it to have a better way of displaying questions students got wrong or right. When you click "submit," it shows the correct answers and your score, but you have to go back to see if your answer matches theirs for each question. Also, on the questions near the bottom, the answer is clearly displayed on the drop down menu so students can see the answer. The layout is simple and clear.