2005 NCTI conference Breakout Session
 Implications of Universal Design for Learning and Innovation
Universal Design (UD) is an educational framework that increases accessibility of learning for all students. The learning goals are the same for all, but the means by which these objectives are achieved recognize the different styles and capabilities of students. Most of the attention given to UD has been in the language arts. More recently, increasing attention is being paid to the area of STEM education (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). This session features a discussion on how technology affects UD, research on the development of digital text for mathematics, and the value of incorporating the principles of UD into STEM education.
Jim Clovis (Moderator), President, InnOvis Associates, Inc.
David Rose, Founding Director and Chief Scientist of Cognition and Learning, Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST)
Dave Schleppenbach, Chief Executive Officer, gh, LLC
Jim Clovis (Moderator), President, InnOvis Associates, Inc.
Clearly, we need a bridge between the field of special education and the field of science and technology. People with learning disabilities are required to think differently and, while that connects to important current ideas in science, still we will need new thinking to enable people with learning disabilities to more effectively learn through technology.
David Rose, Founding Director and Chief Scientist of Cognition and Learning, Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST)
He will focus on learning math and science in the brain.
As we know, language is not a simple general category. There are differences between hearing and seeing words, between calculation and letter matching. When you generate verbs, the brain is doing something different from what it does when it generates nouns.
The same is true of what happens in the brain in math and calculations—and there are differences in brain function when doing calculations in large problems and small problems. Research has shown that tasks we once thought were the same mental operation are not. Also, the opposite is often true: research has shown that some tasks we used to think were very different, are actually approached similarly by the brain.
What are the ways in which we differ? And how can Universal Design in Learning accommodate these differences? We have to try to present information in different ways. For some learners, text is bad. For others, video is ineffective.
Three things Universal Design asks:
- How do we present information?
- How do we ask students to interact with information? How do we ask them to express what they know?
- How do we engage students?
Two examples are the textbook and the university course.
The virtues of print are that all readers have the same information. But that virtue is also a limitation. Text is one-size-fits-all, and it is not very representational. For example, look how a dyslexic student reads a text as opposed to how a regular student reads it. Text requires a strategy—how do you connect with prior knowledge, how do you retain what you need, and so forth.
A student with dyslexia will focus more on the text and less on pictures, because they have been taught that the text is where the real information is. These habits create design problems: to get dyslexic students to look at images, textbook design needs to be re-thought so that a student with dyslexia uses visuals to understand information. Sometimes small things can make a major difference in reaching students with differences.
How can we “universally design” images? Images represent themselves, help strategically, and are often affectively well constructed for students who are different. One more complication in design is that many students don’t know how to move between text and images.
Making these design decisions well will require mentoring, examples and scaffolding, and feedback.
We can build better books digitally. We can build books that have multiple ways of supporting the students. A book that has the right amount of support may be configured like a good computer game.
NIMAS, the national instructional materials standard, was defined in IDEA. Two years from now, publishers will make an XML version.
Lectures are very inaccessible to most students. They have representational limitations for both blind and deaf students. They have cognitive barriers: in a lecture, which moves on through time, information can be lost. They have sequential barriers. But these problems have begun to be addressed: lectures have changed. Now, lectures can be videoed and put on the web, where they are available for review.
Dave Schleppenbach, Chief Executive Officer, gh, LLC
See: www.gh-mathspeak.com, and www.gh-accessibility.com
How can we use XML and particularly UD XML for certain students?
NIMAS is fundamentally a file format designed as a storage system. The questions NIMAS tries to answer include: How can we make it easier to generate braille online? Can we use the same intervention materials in a talking book for an ELL and a special education student?
Synchronized multimedia synchronize the different modes of a presentation. A book can be read out loud so that people can read along together, using devices like synchronized speech, sentence highlighting, and other features.
Because you do not know how the student will assimilate the information, and because it will be most effective if the student can choose how to assimilate it, products must separate the presentation and the meaning.
Math also can be ambiguous. For example, in “3x = y,” it is implied that 3 is multiplied by x. In the same way that technology can provide clues for reading, it can provide clues in math. It can lead learners to understand how to read an equation. Mathspeak books do this to increase access to math and science for print disabled students. Math and science are incorporated into digital talking books and NIMAS.
Discussion:
Question: Are there books that are better to turn into the digital format?
Response: Students have different preferences about how information should be laid out. Code can accommodate preferences; using code, you can make several different layouts. In print, you can only choose one.
Question: In school trainings, do people want to use the Universal Design version of the text?
Response: Publishers will be obligated to have material in this format, which is why NIMAS format is already starting to appear in the field. They don’t want NIMAS to be seen as final answer but they do want publishers to realize that they can do better with NIMAS—they can deliver information in different ways. Because publishers are consumer-driven, if you ask for it they will generally say, yes, we have it. If a teacher or a school wants a book in NIMAS format, they should ask the publisher for it.
Question: How does this process work?
Response: You contact the publisher, get the file and convert it to another. The process is commercially viable and publishers are becoming enthusiastic about selling their products in this format. NIMAS is designed for elementary through high school, but some colleges want to adopt it for secondary education. Again, the process is fuelled when the consumer asks the publisher.
Question: Are there standards or protocols of graphic information in math, for example, in trigonometry?
Response: Unfortunately, because it is a complicated area, some standards have not been so quick to develop. There are standards for tactile graphics but no universally accepted standard. For example, we don’t have to present a graph all at once. We can, however, teach students how to look at a graph by adding scaffolding into the material. Textbook adoption is often not able to cope with electronic media—there is a disconnect.
David Schleppenbach: An attitudinal change needs to happen where people understand that electronic material is not just evaluative, that eventually it will be the core product.
David Rose: The core driver to this idea is NCLB, where schools have to deliver results, not books. Because it has become critical to deliver results, the strategy should be to shift focus on results instead of talking about materials.
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