A happy group of students study in a school library, talking and laughing.

Inclusive Design Boosts Engagement and Renewal

Date
Categories
Instructional design
Universal design for learning

The latest version of the Universal Design for Learning Guidelines can help you reduce barriers, expand your audience, and improve usability.

For the past 40 years, CAST has been at the forefront of developing assistive technology strategies to support students with diverse learning needs. Through that work emerged the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework to make learning more inclusive for all learners. In 2008, the organization released the initial UDL Guidelines as a tool for implementing the research-based practices to make learning environments inclusive, accessible, and learner centered. In July 2024, CAST completed its latest update of the UDL Guidelines, releasing version 3.0. 

Why This Matters

The writing is already on the wall: For your solution to be successful in the K-12 education market, it needs to have efficacy. The one component in common to every method of achieving efficacy is UDL. Designing a product with UDL principles from the start, can lead to better adoption, a more inclusive user experience, and higher customer satisfaction. 

UDL offers a concrete set of recommendations to better support effective teaching and learning through three fundamental principles:

  1. Ensure you have multiple means of representing information to learners
  2. Offer learners multiple means of expressing their understanding
  3. Allow for a variety of ways for educators and learners to engage with the product and its content

Designing your product for these three fundamentals increases the effectiveness of your product and helps deepen educators’ and learners’ use of it. 

Since the UDL Guidelines were first published, we’ve been using them to guide our work with clients, and all of our Learning Experience Designers have UDL credentials. We are excited for the major updates to the CAST UDL Guidelines 3.0. This new version:

  1. Emphasizes the intersectionality of who learners are and their needs
  2. Respects the importance of community and interdependence in learning
  3. Shifts all language from educator-focused to learner-centered 

What’s new in the CAST UDL Guidelines 3.0

The CAST UDL Guidelines 3.0 includes refinements to its purpose, language, and structural elements to improve the educational experience and outcomes. Here are some of the key takeaways.

Fosters More Inclusive Learning

CAST shifted away from the term “expert learners,” opting to emphasize the components of a well-rounded learner. The UDL Guidelines 3.0 now encourages a balance between individual and collective learning to respect the differences between individualist and collectivist cultures and underscore the importance of these traits for all learners.

Honors Learner Identity

Let's face it: learning is a unique experience based on an individual’s intersecting identities. Luminaries such as the Oracle of Delphi and William Shakespeare valued understanding oneself. The CAST UDL Guidelines 3.0 now recognizes this explicitly. While previous versions focused on the Why, What, and How, the updated version adds Who, to place greater emphasis on each learner’s unique identity. 

Image
A group of children sit on a floor in circle around a teacher in a school library and listen to a story.

 

Uses Learner-centered Language

The 3.0 update to the UDL Guidelines shifts from educator-focused language to learner-centered language, recognizing that learners should have agency in their experiences. This update acknowledges that various roles contribute to shaping the learning experience, moving the focus from educators to the learners themselves.

Embraces Emotional Growth 

The term self-regulation is replaced with emotional growth in the new version to move away from compliance and assimilation. Additionally, the new CAST UDL Guidelines changed developing coping skills to improving awareness of self and others to reflect a more holistic approach to emotional development. 

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A group of school children discuss a collective project at school.

 

Includes Joy and Play

Research in serious (learning) games, the role of play in learning, and emotional dispositions along with significant focus group feedback resulted in the inclusion of a new guideline for including joy and play as integral aspects of learning. Hopefully, this will encourage more product development to recognize the untapped potential play and gaming offers for learning. 

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A cheerful group of students sit outside the classroom on the grass, discussing a school project.

 

Recognizes Biases As Learning Barriers

The CAST UDL Guidelines 3.0 adds guidelines to recognize that biases can impede students’ ability to meet standards and fully participate. Educators are encouraged to reflect on their own biases and how those may affect how they design and facilitate learning experiences and how they ask learners to demonstrate their knowledge. 

Incorporates Authentic Representation

A broad change made in the UDL Guidelines 3.0 is the use of the doors, mirrors, and windows metaphor to explore and recognize diverse perspectives, emphasizing the need for authenticity. The guidelines advocate for representing a diversity of perspectives and identities accurately, ensuring that learning from others’ experiences is genuine and inclusive.

Next Steps

Review how well your product aligns with the latest version of the UDL Guidelines. Doing so can help you reach a broader audience and deepen user engagement while creating equitable learning experiences.

Clarity helps clients with this process in many ways. We can help you:

  • Identify ways of integrating cooperative learning experiences
  • Incorporate diverse perspectives and authentic voices into your content
  • Evaluate your product and market personas to consider culture, experiences, needs, and interests and identify gaps to resolve
  • Update your educator support materials to adopt learner-centered language that promotes autonomy and self-directed learning
  • Suggest instructional content that includes opportunities for reflection, emotional growth, self-awareness, and cooperative play
  • Review how your product addresses assessment and offer additional alternatives to incorporate
  • Provide resources for educators to reflect on and improve their process and practice

Connect with Clarity to learn how our expertise can help you design inclusive educational products that support all learners.