CTAD: Implementing Universal Design in Higher Education - ACPA

Curriculum Transformation and Disability:Implementing Universal Design

in Higher Education

Jeanne L. HigbeeEditor

Curriculum Transformation and Disability:Implementing Universal Design

in Higher Education

Jeanne L. Higbee Editor

Curriculum Transformation and Disability is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education. Project #P333A990015.

Copyright © 2003 by the Center for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy, General College, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.

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This publication/material can be made available in alternative formats for people with disabilities. Direct requests to the Center for Research on Developmenta Education and Urban Literacy, General College, 333 Appleby Hall, 128 Pleasant Street SE, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, 612-625-6411.

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iii Implementing Universal Design

Table of Contents

Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Jeanne L. Higbee

Understanding Universal Design and Universal Instructional Design

Creating Curb Cuts in the Classroom: Adapting Universal Design Principlesto Education ......................................................................................................................... 7Donna M. Johnson and Judith A. Fox

Developing the Curriculum Transformation and Disability (CTAD) Workshop Model ........ 23 Judith A. Fox, Jennifer P. Hatfield, and Terence C. Collins

Perceptions of Universal (Instructional) Design: A Qualitative Examination ....................... 41 Jennifer P. Hatfield

Community Colleges and Universal Instructional Design ................................................... 59 Judy Schuck and Jane Larson

Classroom Strategies

Making a Statement ........................................................................................................... 71 Mark Pedelty

Charting New Courses: Learning Communities and Universal Design ................................ 79 Rashné R. Jehangir

Interpreting and Implementing Universal Instructional Design in Basic Writing ................. 93 Patrick L. Bruch

iv Table of Contents

Using Principles of Universal Design in College Composition Courses ............................ 105Patricia J. McAlexander

Computer-Mediated Learning in Mathematicsand Universal Instructional Design ................................................................................... 115D. Patrick Kinney and Laura Smith Kinney

Universal Instructional Design in a Computer-Based Psychology Course ......................... 127Thomas Brothen and Cathrine Wambach

Best Practices and Students with Disabilities: Experiencesin a College History Course ............................................................................................. 149David L. Ghere

Universal Instructional Design in a Legal Studies Classroom ........................................... 163Karen L. Miksch

Empowering Students with Severe Disabilities: A Case Study .......................................... 171Jay T. Hatch, David L. Ghere, and Katrina N. Jirik

Universal Design of Student Development Programs and Services

Disability Services as a Resource: Advancing Universal Design ....................................... 187Karen S. Kalivoda and Margaret C. Totty

The First-Year Experience ................................................................................................ 203Jeanne L. Higbee and Karen S. Kalivoda

Residential Living for All: Fully Accessible and “Liveable”On-Campus Housing ........................................................................................................ 215Martha E. Wisbey and Karen S. Kalivoda

Implementing Universal Design in Learning Centers ........................................................ 231Jeanne L. Higbee and Shevawn B. Eaton

Universal Design in Counseling Center Service Areas ...................................................... 241Kathleen B. Uzes and Daley O. Connelly

v Implementing Universal Design

Resources and Future Directions

Universal Design and Technology .................................................................................... 251Karen S. Kalivoda and Margaret C. Totty

Technology Transformation and Universally Accessible Web Tables ................................ 265Brian Shapiro

Where Do We Go From Here? Universal Design as a Modelfor Multicultural Education .............................................................................................. 285Heidi L. Barajas and Jeanne L. Higbee

Appendices

Resources: Assistive Technology ...................................................................................... 293 Karen S. Kalivoda and Margaret C. Totty

Bibliography of Suggested Readings ................................................................................ 297

About the Authors ............................................................................................................ 313

vi Table of Contents

Introduction Jeanne L. Higbee University of Minnesota

In inclusive institutions of higher education no student should be an afterthought. Thus, it is only natural that

postsecondary disability service providers have embraced the concept of Universal Design, which proposes that spaces be planned at the outset to meet the needs of all potential users. Accommodation and inclusion are very different notions. When a student’s family is provided with a van tour of the campus while the rest of the orientation group walks, when a student is able to view a famous celebrity giving a speech in an inaccessible lecture hall by watching from a remote site via television, or when a student is noticeably absent from the classroom every time a test is given because the student needs extended time, the student is accommodated, but excluded.

The purpose of this book is to introduce readers to the concepts of Universal Design (UD) and Universal Instructional Design (UID). This collection of essays addresses learning both within and outside the classroom, recognizing the role higher education plays in developing the “whole”

1 Implementing Universal Design

person (American Council on Education, 1937, 1949; National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, 1989). Chapters authored by faculty members are intended to provide insights into teaching strategies that can be implemented in a variety of disciplines. It is hoped that these ideas will be helpful to both disabilities services staff members and faculty when exploring how to create universal learning experiences. Similarly, concepts introduced in the student affairs section of this book can be applied to multiple student services. This book is available free of charge online (www.gen.umn.edu/research/crdeul or www.gen.umn.edu/research/ctad) as well as in hard copy so that individual chapters can be downloaded for purposes of discussion and for use in faculty and staff development.

The book begins with Johnson and Fox’s introduction to the history and basic principles of UD and UID. Then Fox, Hatfield, and Collins describe the Curriculum Transformation and Disability (CTAD) model for providing professional development activities to prepare faculty

2Introduction

and staff to implement Universal Instructional Design, followed by Hatfield’s qualitative study of perceptions of Universal Design. Schuck and Larson discuss the role community colleges play in providing access to postsecondary education for all students, and particularly for students with disabilities. They explain the attributes of community colleges that facilitate the implementation of Universal Design and Universal Instructional Design, as well as the unique challenges for both faculty and student development professionals when the student body is diverse and resources are scarce. Schuck and Larson emphasize the key role professional development plays in enabling institutions to implement UD and UID.

The second section of the book consists of chapters by CTAD participants and other faculty members who have been instrumental in developing curricula that meet the educational needs of all learners. These authors describe how they have created more inclusive classroom environments. Pedelty discusses the value of going beyond the usual syllabus statement to communicate to students that he is interested in providing equal access to his classroom. Pedelty relates how addressing issues of access on the first day of class has stimulated students’ disclosure of hidden disabilities, and the impact that this communication has had on his teaching and on all students’ learning. Next Jehangir

explores the role learning communities can play in implementing Universal Design and Universal Instructional Design.

Bruch provides a theoretical perspective for implementing Universal Instructional Design in basic writing. His chapter is followed by McAlexander’s practical suggestions for teaching composition in a universally designed classroom. Kinney and Kinney describe how the use of computer-mediated learning in the mathematics classroom can eliminate the need for most individual accommodations. Brothen and Wambach discuss the use of the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI), another computer-assisted model, to teach a universally-designed psychology course. Among the strategies proposed by Ghere for teaching history are simulations that enable students to experience historical events first-hand. Ghere elaborates on how to ensure that students with disabilities do not feel excluded from these activities. Similarly, Miksch engages students in mock trials in her legal studies classroom. Finally, Hatch, Ghere, and Jirik provide a case study that demonstrates how developing accommodations for a student with multiple disabilities resulted in a more universally-designed educational environment that benefited all students.

The third section of this book focuses on student support services. Kalivoda and Totty provide a brief history of the creation of

disability services offices in postsecondary educational institutions and explore the basic functions of those offices. They describe the nine categories of essential services identified in recent research and adopted by the Association for Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD). Next Higbee and Kalivoda discuss the implementation of Universal Design principles in the first-year experience, from admissions and orientation to models for “best practices.” This chapter leads naturally to Wisbey and Kalivoda’s examination of residence life. The authors address Universal Design as a means to create welcoming living spaces and to provide inclusive social and educational programs. Similarly, Higbee and Eaton discuss both physical facilities and educational programs when considering the implementation of Universal Design in college and university learning centers. Then Uzes and Connelly apply the same principles to counseling centers and provide case studies that demonstrate that students with disabilities face the same developmental tasks as all students, but may have to overcome additional obstacles in approaching these tasks.

The final section of the book provides the reader with further resources. Kalivoda and Totty’s chapter describes the technology available to make it possible to accommodate students in a wide array of settings. Shapiro addresses web design, with

3 Implementing Universal Design

a particular emphasis on web pages that contain content in tabular form, such as the exercises for many business courses. The book concludes with an exploration of the “logical next step,” application of Universal Design to multicultural education, by Barajas and Higbee. The appendices include a list of assistive technologies, an extensive bibliography, and brief biographies for the authors.

The Center for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy (CRDEUL) and the authors of this collection would like to thank the U.S. Department of Education and the University of Minnesota General College (GC) and Office of Disability Services, and specifically David Taylor, Dean of GC, and Terence Collins, GC Director of Academic Affairs, for their support of “Curriculum Transformation and Disability,” the project that introduced so many of us to the tenets of Universal Design and Universal Instructional Design. As editor, I personally want to express my appreciation to Dean Taylor and Professor Collins, as well as to Judy Fox, Coordinator of the CTAD grant, to Dana Britt Lundell, Director of CRDEUL, and to Karen S. Kalivoda, Director of Disability Services at the University of Georgia, for encouraging me to compile this collection of essays in order to disseminate the work of CTAD more broadly. In addition, the authors and I would like to express our appreciation to Stan

4Introduction

Carpenter, Chair, and the members of the American College Personnel Association (ACPA) Media Board for their feedback. We are also indebted to Karen Bencke, Information Technology Professional in the General College, for providing the layout and cover design.

Finally, I want to express my gratitude to the chapter authors, not only for their contributions to this book, but for their efforts in developing welcoming postsecondary learning experiences for all students. And there is one last group I feel compelled to recognize, although for reasons of confidentiality I cannot name them. I want to thank the many students I have worked with over the years—you know who you are—at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (where as an inexperienced graduate student coordinating the learning services program within the counseling center prior to the advent of learning centers, I was a major source of frustration to a student who could only sit erect for a couple hours per day due to a spinal injury when I tried to use traditional methods to teach time management and note taking strategies), Western Maryland College (including my thanks to my many students with hearing impairments, to the student coping with his loss of vision, and to one incredibly talented resident assistant who taught the members of the administration and her fellow students— who would have discriminated against her

on the basis of her disability—that a person with epilepsy can be an outstanding RA), at the University of Georgia (with special thanks to the guy who could not find his way back to Athens from the Atlanta bus terminal and to the young woman who overcame incredible odds to conquer math and to find her niche at the University), and at the University of Minnesota (with thanks to both the student and the interpreter who introduced me to real time captioning on my very first day of teaching at the U). You know that I have not forgotten you and the many lessons that you have taught me!

References

American Council on Education (1937). The student personnel point of view. Washington, DC: Author.

American Council on Education (1949). The student personnel point of view (rev. ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (1989). Points of view. Washington, DC: Author.

Understanding Universal Designand Universal Instructional Design

7CHAPTER 1Implementing Universal Design

Creating Curb Cuts in the Classroom:Adapting Universal Design Principlesto EducationDonna M. Johnson and Judith A. FoxUniversity of Minnesota

Although recent legislation has improved access to higher education for college students with disabilities, somestudents continue to experience stigma when requesting and utilizing academic accommodations. UniversalInstructional Design, a relatively new model that builds disability accommodations into the curriculum andincorporates a variety of learning styles, is one strategy to level the playing field. This chapter discusses theconcept of Universal Instructional Design, describes its relationship to multicultural education and adult learningtheory, and illustrates the importance of incorporating assistive technology in the curriculum. The authors alsodiscuss the benefits and challenges of implementing Universal Instructional Design.

The passage of the Rehabilitation Act of1973 and The Americans withDisabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) has

had a profound effect on the lives ofstudents with disabilities by giving themextraordinary new access to postsecondaryeducation. In the last 10 years, thepopulation of students with disabilities oncollege campuses has increasedsignificantly. Today, 9.4% of first-yearcollege students report having a disability(Blackorby & Wagner, 1996). Yet despitethese gains in access, students withdisabilities still are less likely than their

nondisabled peers to complete theireducation, according to The NationalLongitudinal Study (Wagner, D’Amico,Marder, Newman, & Blackorby, 1992).

Students with disabilities may be lesslikely to graduate due to an antiquated view.This perspective, often referred to as themedical model, focuses on fixing theindividual with a disability rather thanchanging the environment (Gill, 1987;Hahn, 1988). The medical model stressespersonal responsibility for having adisability while minimizing personal

CHAPTER 1Curb Cuts in the Classroom

8

control. On college campuses, this approachmay be played out in the implementation ofacademic accommodations.

Traditionally academic accommodationsare provided on an individualized,case-by-case basis in which students presenttheir medical documentation to the campusdisability services office. That office thendetermines the appropriate accommodationsand provides the student with individualletters to faculty to request specificaccommodations for each course. Oncestudents demonstrate that they have adisability, defined by the ADA as (a) aphysical or mental impairment thatsubstantially limits one or more major lifeactivities, (b) a record of such impairments,(c) being regarded as having such animpairment (42 USC12101 [2]), they mustcontinue to prove that they are eligible foraccommodations and deal with the stigma ofbeing different from other students. McCune(2001) states that, like students of color,students with disabilities are often perceivedas “special admits who don’t deserve to behere” (p. 7). This stigma is oftenexacerbated when students with disabilitiesare singled out by being required to taketests in separate locations in order to beafforded extended time, to request volunteernotetakers in class, or to enter through theback of the building when that is the onlylocation of an accessible door. Arranging foraccommodations also takes students an

inordinate amount of time. Seymour andHunter (1998) studied the experiences ofstudents with disabilities in science, math,and engineering majors. Many of theinterviewed students talked about being“time-disadvantaged” and stated that thetime they spent on logistics, such asarranging for accommodations, presentedobstacles over and above the limitationsposed by their disabilities.

Providing accommodations to studentson an individualized basis is a legitimateway to meet legal access requirements.However, in a recent effort to increase theretention and graduation rates of studentswith disabilities, some educators are callingfor new models that are more “consistentwith the spirit of the ADA which mandatesthat services be provided in the mostintegrated setting possible” (Aune, 2000, p.57). One such model is the interactional,social constructivist model that “shiftsanalysis from one focusing on the disabilityitself to one recognizing the intersection ofindividual and society factors” (Jones, 1996,p. 348). According to this model, it is theresulting interaction between the individualand the environment that determineswhether the functional limitation becomes adisability (Aune).

The interactional model was illustratedin the book, Everyone Here Spoke SignLanguage (Groce, 1985). Groce described


the treatment of deaf people on Martha’sVineyard in the early 20th century. Theauthor stated that because there was such alarge deaf population and most of thehearing residents knew sign language, thedeaf Vineyarders participated freely in allaspects of life, as did their hearing relatives,friends, and neighbors. Because thecommunication barrier that ordinarilyseparates deaf people from the non-signingsociety did not exist, what is normallyregarded as a profound disability garneredlittle attention.

The Development of UniversalInstructional Design

The concepts found in the interactionalmodel are integral to the concept ofUniversal Instruction Design, a relativelynew model that encourages faculty to maketheir classes more accessible to studentswith disabilities by developing curricula thatare flexible and customizable. UniversalInstructional Design has its origins in anumber of fields. The term itself isborrowed from the architectural concept ofUniversal Design, defined by the Center forUniversal Design at North Carolina StateUniversity (1997) as “the design of productsand environments to be usable by all people,to the greatest extent possible, without theneed for adaptation or specialized design”(p. 1). Universal Design, which grew out ofthe recognition by architects that they

needed to design the built environment sothat it would be usable by all people,regardless of, for example, age or ability,was popularized by Ronald L. Mace of theCenter for Universal Design (Bowe, 2000).The principles of Universal Design, asdeveloped by The Center for UniversalDesign, are as follows: (a) equitable use; (b)flexibility in use; (c) simple and intuitiveuse; (d) perceptible information; (e)tolerance for error; (f) low physical effort;and (g) size and space for approach and use.A classic and familiar example of UniversalDesign is the curb cut. Originally designedto allow people who use wheelchairs orother mobility devices to get safely from thesidewalk to the street, the curb cut in realityis used by many groups of people, includingpeople pushing strollers or pulling luggage,rollerbladers, and elderly people.

Demographic changes in Americansociety in the last 100 years haveencouraged the development of UniversalDesign, as life expectancy has increaseddramatically. In addition, people surviveaccidents and illnesses at a much greaterrate than in the past. According to the Centerfor Universal Design, “at the end of 1994,53.9 million people in the United States(20.6% of the population) had some level ofdisability . . . and 26.0 million (9.9%) had asevere disability” (Changing demographicssection, ¶ 3). Universal Design aims to beresponsive to these demographic shifts. For


10

example, Bowe (2000) notes that UniversalDesign has been used to market homes thatallow for the changing needs of homeownersas they age. He also notes that manypersonal-use products, such as kitchenutensils and room temperature controls,have adopted the idea of making products asuseable as possible.

Federal legislation has also significantlyimpacted the development of UniversalDesign. For example, The ArchitecturalBarriers Act of 1968 required all buildings“designed, constructed, altered, or leasedwith federal funds” to be made accessible.Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of1973 made it illegal for those entities thatreceive federal funds to discriminate on thebasis of disability. The Fair HousingAmendments Act of 1988 expanded theCivil Rights Act of 1968 to include familiesand children with disabilities. TheAmericans with Disabilities Act of 1990prohibited discrimination in employment,access to places of public accommodation,services, programs, public transportation,and telecommunications (Changingdemographics section, ¶ 5).

Inclusion

The elementary-secondary educationinclusion movement also has played a majorrole in the development of UniversalInstructional Design. Inclusion, as definedby York-Barr and Vandercook (1996), means

“providing equal educational opportunity byco-creating learning communities in whichunique needs and diverse capacities arerecognized, understood, accepted, andvalued” (p. 3). Those involved in theinclusion movement have added greatly tothe discussion about changing teachingpractices to meet the needs of students withdisabilities, and, as they point out, strategiesthat work well when teaching students withdisabilities generally work well for allstudents (York, Doyle, & Kronberg, 1992;York-Barr & Vandercook, 1996). Hodgeand Preston-Sabin (1997) echo these ideas.They argue that providing reasonableaccommodations to students with disabilitiesis part of good teaching practice, and thatgood teaching practice enhances learning forall students.

Many of the tenets of inclusion, such asvaluing students’ diverse capacities, directlyapply to postsecondary education. There are,however, some important differencesbetween the models of inclusion andUniversal Instructional Design. Inclusionimplies classrooms with multi-levelparticipation, in which students participatein the same activities but at a different level,and overlapping curricula, in which somestudents may have different curricularobjectives (York, Doyle, & Kronberg, 1992).In postsecondary education, all students,with disabilities or not, must meet definedcourse objectives, although students withdocumented disabilities may receive


reasonable accommodations. Thisdistinction is an important one, as manyfaculty express concerns that they will beasked to “water down” their curriculumwhen they accommodate students withdisabilities.

Link to Multicultural Education

The elementary-secondary educationinclusion movement is just one response byeducators who are increasingly aware thatthey are serving a very diverse studentpopulation. Many progressive educatorsstrive to address their students’ differencesin race, ethnicity, class, and gender byapplying theories of multicultural education.Nieto (1996) defines one such model ofmulticultural education as a process thatcenters on factors such as teachers’expectations, students’ learning styles, andcultural variables. The rise of “DisabilityCulture,” with its roots in commonexperiences of oppression, experience, andvalues, challenges the traditional race, class,and gender model of multiculturalism andargues for a broader definition that wouldinclude disability. Unfortunately, mostpeople, including faculty, still hold to the“medical model” of disability, which definesdisability as a deficiency residing in theindividual, rather than as a differencederiving from the interaction between theindividual and society (Gill, 1987).Robertson (1994) argues for highlighting thesocially constructed nature of disability as a

way to help others better understand theconcept of disability. As more and morefaculty at the postsecondary level grow tounderstand issues of multiculturalism,people with disabilities and serviceproviders will be better able to communicatethe idea of disability as culture. Faculty thenmay be less inclined to see disability as amedical issue and more likely to address theneeds of students with disabilitiesthemselves.

Multicultural educators argue for a rangeof educational reforms. Some educatorsargue for new and multiple ways ofassessing students’ performance. Accordingto Banks (2000):

Evaluating the progress of studentsfrom diverse racial, ethnic, andsocial-class groups is complicated bydifferences in language, learningstyles, and cultures. Hence, the use ofa single method of assessment willlikely further disadvantage studentsfrom particular social classes andethnic groups. . . . A variety ofassessment procedures and outcomesthat are compatible with differentlearning, performance, work, andpresentation styles should be used todetermine if students are achievingthe levels of skills mastery needed tofunction effectively in a multiculturalsociety. (p. 12)


12

Others call for changes in the standardpedagogy of what Nieto (1996) calls “chalkand talk” to include other active learningopportunities, such as group work, cross-agetutoring, and projects. Banks (2000) pointsout that multicultural educators also need toaddress issues of classroom climate byhelping students acquire the kind of socialskills they need to work effectively witheach other. Nieto also notes thatmulticultural education values diversity,encourages critical thinking, andacknowledges students’ diverse cultural andlinguistic backgrounds. In the next sectionof this book, several faculty members (e.g.,Bruch, Pedelty) further describe therelationship between Universal InstructionalDesign and multiculturalism.

Diverse Learning Styles

Educators posit a number of differentlearning styles theories, all of which espousesome version of how people learn. Forexample, Galbraith and James (1987) arguefor a scheme that includes the followingseven perceptual modalities: print, aural,interactive, visual, haptic, kinesthetic, andolfactory. Because Galbraith and James’approach to learning styles focuses on thefive senses, it can be particularly usefulwhen considering how to teach studentswhose senses may be impaired. Higbee,Ginter, and Taylor (1991) argue thatinstructors should assess their classes’

learning preferences and then structure thepresentation of course material around thosestrengths. They say, “knowledge of learningstyles allows instructors to more effectivelyconvey information and also help reduce thelevel of frustration encountered by somestudents” (p. 9). As teaching to differinglearning styles has become accepted practicein elementary and secondary education (andto some extent in postsecondary education),the natural result has been that teachersengaged their students in a variety of ways.That concept is integral to the developmentof Universal Instructional Design. In thenext section of this book, faculty memberswill present a variety of strategies forimplementing Universal InstructionalDesign across the curriculum.

Assistive Technology

No discussion of Universal InstructionalDesign would be complete without a nod tothe development in the last few decades ofcomputers and other technologies. Thesenew technologies have given people withdisabilities unprecedented access toinformation, as well as significantlyimproved access to education. Knox,Higbee, Kalivoda, and Totty (2000) pointout that “technology will allow those withdisabilities to achieve fuller participation inthe academic venture” (p. 153). Screenreaders read aloud the text on a computerscreen, allowing students who are blind or


have low vision to access computers. Voiceinput devices that record students’ voicesand display them as text on a computerscreen allow students who have limited useof their hands or arms to produce writtentexts. Assistive listening devices, such as anFM System, provide amplified speech to ahard of hearing student through a receiverthat picks up a small microphone worn bythe instructor. Specialized software thatallows students to manipulate text in avariety of ways and provides them with avariety of study tools helps students withlearning disabilities more effectively workwith text materials. Alternative keyboardsprovide access to computers for studentswith limited hand mobility. In real timecaptioning, a transcriptionist convertsclassroom lecture or discussion into text thatis displayed on a computer monitor so thatdeaf students can participate in class whenan interpreter is not present or when thestudent does not know American SignLanguage. These are just a very fewexamples of the kinds of technologies nowavailable. Information regarding web pagedesign and the expansion of technologicaladvances that can benefit all students isprovided in the final section of this book.

The Center for Applied SpecialTechnology (CAST) has been at theforefront of encouraging the use oftechnology to expand opportunities forpeople with disabilities. CAST (2001)

defines Universal Design for Learning (analternate term for “Universal InstructionalDesign”) as “a new paradigm for teaching,learning, and assessment, drawing on newbrain research and new media technologiesto respond to individual learner differences”(Universal Design for Learning section, ¶ 1).Their framework for Universal Design forLearning encourages instructors to: (a)develop flexible means of representingmaterials, such as presenting materials inalternative formats; (b) allow students todemonstrate their knowledge in flexibleways, such as giving an oral report insteadof a written paper; and (c) engage studentsusing a variety of methods, with theunderstanding that there is no one right wayto teach. Their emphasis on flexibility andresponding to individual learner differencesresonates with the lessons learned fromlearning style theory and multiculturaleducation and is good for all students.

Applying UniversalInstructional Design in

Postsecondary Education

Silver, Bourke, and Strehorn (1998), whooriginally coined the term “UniversalInstructional Design” as it applies topostsecondary educational environments,argue that the implementation of UniversalInstructional Design would mean that somestudents will no longer need to rely soheavily on support services because the


14

support will be built into the course itself.They assert that the “Universal” in UIDimplies universal access to a course, not a“one size fits all” approach to teaching.However, it is important to point out that wecan never expect to do away entirely withaccommodating some students on a one-to-one basis; rather, the goal of UID is to lessenthe need for as many accommodations aspossible by building them into the design ofthe course, creating an environment that isconducive to learning for all students. Forexample, putting a syllabus and other coursematerials online makes a course accessiblein a number of ways. Suddenly, coursematerials are accessible to a student who isblind who uses a screen reader or downloadsthe text to be brailled. A student with alearning disability or attention deficitdisorder benefits from using voice outputtechnology to simultaneously listen to andread text, increasing comprehension of thematerial. Nondisabled students benefit aswell (Silver et al.). Those who find itdifficult to participate in class because oflanguage or cultural barriers appreciate theability to participate in an alternative, onlineclass discussion, and everyone enjoys theconvenience of accessing the materialsanytime, anywhere, or using embedded linksto conduct further research. Of course, usingtechnology is only one solution.Transforming teaching methods is the realchallenge, as illustrated in the next sectionof this book.

Benefits of UniversalInstructional Design

Because Universal Instructional Designis a remarkably inclusive model, it is mostcompatible with the spirit of the Americanswith Disabilities Act, which states thatprograms and services must be provided “inthe most integrated setting possible” (Aune,2000, p. 57). Rose and Meyer (2001) reportthat Universal Instructional Design enablesinstructors to include students withdisabilities among the diverse learners intheir classroom rather than as a separatecategory. In a universally designedclassroom, students use a variety ofmaterials and learning aids that meet theneeds of individual students. This flexibilityin materials and testing helps reduce thestigma often felt by students withdisabilities, who are often singled out asthey leave the classroom to take a test inanother location (CAST, 2001).

Researchers (e.g., Galbraith & James,1987; Higbee, Ginter, & Taylor, 1991) havelong postulated that students learndifferently depending on their individualpreferences, abilities, and disabilities(CAST, 2001). One benefit of UniversalInstructional Design is that the modeladdresses individual learner differences byproviding alternative methods ofrepresentation, expression, and engagement(CAST). For example, by utilizing


alternative means of representation, a coursemodule on homelessness could be taughtthrough a series of lectures, throughmultimedia and videos, and throughcompleting field trips or service-learningprojects with local homeless shelters. Byproviding multiple means of expression,students are given a choice in how they willdemonstrate their knowledge of coursecontent. For example, one student maychoose to demonstrate knowledge of cellbiology via a research paper, whereasanother student may choose to give an oralpresentation. By providing multiple meansof engagement, instructors seek the rightbalance in how students are engaged in thelearning process. Scaffolding and strategicinstruction (Caverly & Russell, 2002; Nist &Holschuh, 2000) may be used to provideacademic supports. For example, instructorsmay make math or chemistry formulasavailable to students during quizzes in thebeginning of a semester and then graduallytake away this support as the studentsbecome more familiar with the material.Instructors may seek to vary the amount ofnew material covered in order to ensure thatthey repeat the essential components of thecourse (Orkwis & McLane, 1998).

Just as Universal Design in architectureseeks to accommodate the widest variety ofuser needs in the built environment,Universal Instructional Design seeks tocreate alternatives to meet the wide range of

users in the classroom (CAST, 2001). Also,just as it is more cost-effective to includeramps and include accessibility into thedesign of a new building, it is also more costand time effective to consider the flexibilityof learning materials when designing acourse than in trying to provide individualaccommodations after the fact (CAST). Theexpansion in technology has createdopportunities for building inclusiveclassrooms. For example, by utilizingtechnology, students have the ability toaccess information and course materialsanytime, anywhere, in a variety of formats.A student who is blind can access lecturenotes posted on a web site via a screenreader. Students who have learningdisabilities can highlight text and read in adistraction-free environment. Students whoare deaf and generally require sign languageinterpreters have the ability to read thelecture without accommodation. Technologyalso has the ability to create communicationnetworks between people who otherwisemay have never come together by“facilitating the flow of communicationwithout the meta processes of taping,brailling, and sign language interpreting”(Knox et al., 2000, p.145).

Challenges of IncorporatingUniversal Instructional Design

Although Universal Instructional Designmay significantly impact the learning


16

environment for all students, the mainchallenge in incorporating this new model istime limitations on the part of faculty. Silveret al. (1998) found that faculty wereconcerned that the time required to redesigntheir classes to incorporate principles ofUniversal Instructional Design may beprohibitive, even though such approachesmay be beneficial in the long run. Facultymust be willing to rethink how they preparefor courses. For example, many facultylecture from brief notes rather completelectures. In order for a course to be moreinclusive, the faculty member would have tobe willing to spend more time initiallypreparing the lecture so it could be postedonline, include Power Point notes, and soon. Some faculty may not be willing tospend their time on this (Knox et al., 2000).Smith (2000) stated that academic prioritiessuch as research may take precedence overcurriculum innovation. Another challenge isthe faculty themselves. Because somefaculty serve as “gate keepers” who believetheir role is to monitor the academicreadiness of students, they may not beprepared to accept a change in status quo orteach outside of the traditional lecture(Silver et al.).

In addition to concerns about timeconstraints, many faculty members are“experts in their discipline rather than inpedagogy” (Silver et al., 1998, p. 49). It isnot uncommon for faculty to have limited

awareness of diverse learning needs, adultlearning theory, and its impact on collegestudents with and without disabilities.

Finally, faculty may not be aware of thevariety of technologies available or betrained in how to use them (Orkwis &McLane, 1998). Faculty must have access tothe appropriate software and then haveadequate training for its use to be effectivein the classroom.

Budgetary Ramifications

Although there are many benefits toimplementing Universal InstructionalDesign, there may also be budgetaryimplications. Smith (1997) indicated timelimitations on the part of faculty mayimpede the development of curricularinnovation. In a 1998 ERIC/OSEP TopicalBrief, the author stated that built-inaccommodations, while requiring asignificant amount of time initially, wouldsave time and energy in the long run. Silveret al. (1998) concurred. They noted thatalthough time was a critical factor inapplying Universal Instructional Design,such strategies would save faculty andstudents time once they became a standardpart of course design.

Limited access to technology and limitedtechnology training may also hinder theimplementation of Universal InstructionalDesign. Vanderheiden (1998) reported that


customized technology may create afinancial burden and the individuals forwhom it is created may not have therequisite training. Smith (1997) said thatthere is still a digital divide that creates“haves and have-nots” in terms oftechnology access and use. This lack oftechnological access creates a barrier tocurricular innovation and hence, to theimplementation of Universal InstructionalDesign.

Finally, because this field is emerging,Smith (1997) called for more research todemonstrate the validity and reliability ofthe model. Smith stated that until moreevidence is available, deans and departmentheads may be hard pressed to encouragetheir faculty to adopt innovative curricularmodels.

Administrative Support

Although it may require a significantinvestment of time, effort, and resources,strong and visible administrative support forany new curricular effort is crucial to itssuccess. Bourke, Strehorn, and Silver (2000)found a significant relationship betweenfaculty’s understanding of the need toaccommodate students with disabilities andtheir perceived level of support from serviceproviders and their own departments.Kalivoda and Higbee (1999) point out thatin addition to lack of knowledge and timeand budgetary constraints, some faculty may

fail to provide appropriate accommodationsbecause of perceived disapproval by theadministration. They argue that visibleadministrative support, such as providingrelease time for faculty to address specialneeds or providing adequate resources toacquire assistive technology, will helpreduce barriers to equal access for studentswith disabilities.

Anyone interested in implementing anew curricular effort such as the onedetailed in this book should plan on meetingwith key administrators early and often.Administrators can help set the parametersfor workshop participation and beinstrumental in the recruitment of workshopparticipants, perhaps by mailing out therecruitment notice directly from theiroffices. Administrators may also be able toprovide incentives such as a small stipend orrelease time for faculty and staffparticipation in a workshop. Their presenceat any workshop will lend credence to theeffort. Student affairs professionals can alsoserve as powerful allies in this work, oftenassisting in creating the link between facultyand students.

In addition to working with keyadministrators, those interested inconducting a workshop will enhanceinstitutional buy-in by conducting focusgroups with faculty, student affairs staff, andwith students with disabilities or by holding


18

informal informational sessions forinterested faculty and staff. The informationgleaned from the focus groups and othermeetings will allow for modification of theworkshop to address the specific needs ofparticipants at the institution, which will bekey to the success of the workshop. (Formore detailed information on gainingadministrative support and recruitingparticipants for workshops, please visit theCurriculum Transformation and Disabilitywebsite at www.gen.umn.edu/research/ctad)

Despite potential barriers posed by time,resources, or lack of administrative support,the benefits of implementing UniversalInstructional Design can far outweigh thechallenges. All students, not just those withdisabilities, gain when instruction isindividualized and when they are allowed tolearn and demonstrate knowledge in avariety of ways that take into considerationtheir own preferred learning styles. Facultymembers learn the advantages of creating acourse from the outset so that it is accessibleto all in as many different formats aspossible, thus reducing the frequency ofsituations in which they must respond at thelast minute, often with little or no notice, tospecific requests for accommodations,which can be very time consuming. Andadministrators can take pride in therealization that they are fulfilling the spirit,not just the letter of the law, and providingtruly equal access to a diverse studentpopulation.

References

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, P.L. 101-336, 42 US CA. 12, 101-12, 213,(West Supp. 1991).

Aune, B. (2000). Career and academicadvising. In H. Belch (Ed.). Servingstudents with disabilities (pp. 55-67).New Directions in Student Services, No.91. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Banks, J. (2000). Diversity within unity:Essential principles for teaching andlearning in a multicultural society.Seattle, WA: Center for MulticulturalEducation, University of Washington.

Blackorby, J., & Wagner, M. (1996).Longitudinal postschool outcomes ofyouth with disabilities: Findings fromthe National Longitudinal TransitionStudy. Exceptional Children, 62, 399-413.

Bourke, A. B., Strehorn, K. C., & Silver, P.(2000). Faculty members’ provision ofinstructional accommodations tostudents with LD. Journal of LearningDisabilities, 33(1), 26-32.

Bowe, F. (2000). Universal design ineducation. Westport, CT: Bergin &Garvey.


Caverly, D., & Russell, L. (2002). Bestpractices for developmental education.In D. B. Lundell & J. L. Higbee (Eds.),Proceedings of the Second Meeting onFuture Directions in DevelopmentalEducation (pp. 17-23). Minneapolis,MN: Center for Research onDevelopmental Education and UrbanLiteracy, General College, University ofMinnesota. Available:www.gen.umn.edu/research/crdeul

Center for Applied Special Technology.(2001). Universal Design for learning.[Online]. Available: www.cast.org

The Center for Universal Design. (n.d.).What is Universal Design? RetrievedMarch 6, 2002, from http://www.design.ncsu.edu:8120/cud/univ_design/udhistory.htm

The Center for Universal Design. (1997).The principles of Universal Design.(Version 2.0) [Brochure]. Raleigh, NC:North Carolina State University.

ERIC/OSEP Topical Brief. (Fall 1998). Acurriculum every student can use:Design principles for student access.Retrieved March 4, 2002 from ERICClearinghouse on Disabilities andGifted Education via http://ericec.org

Galbraith, M. W., & James, W. B. (1987).The relationship of education level andperceptual learning styles. Journal ofAdult Education, 15(2), 27-35.

Gill, C. (1987). A new social perspective ondisability and its implications forrehabilitation. In F. S. Cromwell (Ed.),Sociocultural implications in treatmentplanning in occupational therapy(pp.49-55). New York: Haworth.

Groce, N. (1985). Everyone here spoke signlanguage: Hereditary deafness onMartha’s Vineyard. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press.

Hahn, H. (1988). The politics of physicaldifferences: Disability anddiscrimination. Journal of Social Issues,44(1), 39-47.

Higbee, J. L., Ginter, E. J., & Taylor, W. D.(1991). Enhancing academicperformance: Seven perceptual styles oflearning. Research and Teaching inDevelopmental Education, 7(2), 5-10.

Hodge, B. M., & Preston-Sabin, J. (1997).Accommodations—Or just goodteaching? Westport, CT: Praeger.

Jones, S. R. (1996). Toward inclusivetheory: Disability as social construction.NASPA Journal, 33, 347-354.


20

Kalivoda, K. S., & Higbee, J. L. (1999).Serving college students withdisabilities: Application of the theory ofplanned behavior. Academic ExchangeQuarterly, 3(2), 6-16.

Knox, D. L., Higbee, J. L., Kalivoda, K. S.,& Totty, M. C. (2000). Serving thediverse needs of students withdisabilities through technology. Journalof College Reading and Learning, 30(2),145-157.

McCune, P. (2001). What do disabilitieshave to do with diversity? AboutCampus, 6(2), 5-12.

Nieto, S. (1996). Affirming diversity: Thesociopolitical context of multiculturaleducation (2nd ed.). White Plains, NY:Longman.

Nist, S. L., & Holschuh, J. L. (2000).Comprehension strategies at the collegelevel. In R. F. Flippo & D. C. Caverly(Eds.), Handbook of college reading andstudy strategy research (pp. 75-104).Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Orkwis, R., & McLane, K. (1998). Acurriculum every student can use:Design principles for student access.ERIC/OSEP Topical Brief. (ERICDocument Reproduction Service No.ED423654) [Electronic version].Available: www.cec.sped.org/osep/udesign.htm

Rehabilitation Act of 1973. P.L. 193-112.Section 504.

Robertson, B. A. (1994). Disability culture,community, and pride. Unpublishedmanuscript. Minneapolis, MN: ProjectL.E.E.D.S. (Leadership Education toEmpower Disabled Students),University of Minnesota.

Rose, D., & Meyer, A. (2001). Universaldesign for learning. Journal of SpecialEducation Technology ejournal.Retrieved November 30, 2001 fromwww.cast.org

Seymour, E., & Hunter, A. B. (1998).Talking about disability: The educationand work experience of graduates andundergraduates with disabilities inscience, mathematics and engineeringmajors. Boulder, CO: The University ofColorado.

Silver, P., Bourke, A., & Strehorn, K. C.(1998). Universal Instructional Designin higher education: An approach forinclusion. Equity and Excellence inEducation, 31(2), 47-51.

Smith, K. L. (1997). Preparing faculty forinstructional technology: Fromeducation to development to creativeindependence. Cause/Effect, 20 (3),36-44.


Vanderheiden, G. C. (1998). Universaldesign and assistive technology incommunication and informationtechnologies: Alternatives orcomplements. Assistive Technology, 10,29-36.

Wagner, M., D’Amico, R., Marder, C.,Newman, L., & Blackorby, J. (1992).What happens next? Trends inpostschool outcomes for youth withdisabilities. The second comprehensivereport from the national longitudinaltransition study of special educationstudents. Menlo Park, CA: SRIInternational.

York, J., Doyle, M. B., & Kronberg, R.(1992). A curriculum developmentprocess for inclusive classrooms. Focuson Exceptional Children, 25(4), 1-16.

York-Barr, J., & Vandercook, T. (1996). Theevolution of inclusive education.Impact, 9(2), 2-3.


22


Developing the Curriculum Transformationand Disability Workshop ModelJudith A. Fox, Jennifer P. Hatfield, and Terence C. CollinsUniversity of Minnesota

Despite significant gains in access to higher education, college students with disabilities still are less likely thantheir peers to complete their education. In response to this problem, educators participating in the University ofMinnesota’s Curriculum Transformation and Disability project designed, tested, and implemented a facultydevelopment workshop that encourages faculty to incorporate principles of Universal Instructional Design in theircourses. Midstream formative evaluation of the project shows that faculty appreciate the workshop and arebeginning to make changes in their courses, particularly around issues of information access, instructional design,and classroom climate.

As indicated in the previous chapter,the population of students withdisabilities on college campuses has

increased significantly in the last decade.The passage of the Rehabilitation Act of1973 and the Americans with DisabilitiesAct of 1990 (ADA), together, have had aprofound effect on the lives of students withdisabilities by giving them extraordinarynew access to postsecondary education. Yetretention and graduation rates for studentswith disabilities still lag behind those oftheir peers.

The reasons for this disparity arecomplex, and the research is limited. Much

of the existing research focuses on askingthe student to change (e.g., through thedevelopment of self-advocacy skills), onproviding support to the student throughservice delivery, or on examining attitudinalbarriers. Few studies examine how toeffectively teach students with disabilities inpostsecondary education. In fact, educatorsinterested in looking for solutions to theproblem of how best to serve students withdisabilities in postsecondary education oftenfind they must look to other fields, includingarchitecture, learning styles, multiculturaleducation, disability studies, and theelementary-secondary inclusion movementfor information. Only recently have

CHAPTER 2The CTAD Model

24

postsecondary educators been able tosynthesize this information and begun toadvocate for the use of UniversalInstructional Design, a relatively new modelthat encourages faculty to make their classesmore accessible by developing curricula thatare flexible and customizable.

A History of Collaboration

For well over a decade, the University ofMinnesota’s General College and theDisability Services office have workedjointly to improve the climate and servicelevel for students with disabilities. Together,these two units have sponsored a variety ofprograms aimed at improving the experienceof students with disabilities on collegecampuses. Over the years, these key unitsand their staffs have developed anatmosphere of mutual trust and have shareda common commitment to institutionalchange. Thus, when in 1999 the U.S.Department of Education, Office ofPostsecondary Education, began acceptingapplications to an exciting new grantcompetition titled “Ensuring Students withDisabilities Receive a Quality HigherEducation,” key staff at The GeneralCollege and Disability Services proposed aninnovative project aimed at working withfaculty to make their classes more accessiblethrough the use of Universal InstructionalDesign. The project, CurriculumTransformation and Disability, or CTAD,received a three-year award to create a

model demonstration project thatencourages faculty to transform theircurriculum by adopting principles ofUniversal Instructional Design.

Model Development

Working from past experience and fromthe available literature from a variety offields, project staff created a two-day facultydevelopment workshop with the goal ofdeveloping a nationally replicable workshopmodel that could be facilitated by specialistsor nonspecialists alike. The projectconducted workshops at a number of upperMidwest two-year and four-year collegesand universities. Recruitment of facultyvaried by institution, as administrators atdifferent sites chose to focus recruitmentefforts either within one department, oracross a broader spectrum of disciplines.The project primarily worked with full-timefaculty because it assumed they would havebroad and long-term impact on institutionalpractices. However, some participants heldfull- or part-time instructor, administrator, oradvisor positions. This was particularly trueat smaller institutions where staff serve in avariety of instructional and service roles.For purposes of this chapter, the term“faculty” will refer to all workshopparticipants, regardless of their rank.

Project staff designed the followinglearning objectives for all faculty: (a) buildon their own experiences, (b) learn about


relevant legislation, (c) become familiarwith and begin to apply the principles ofUniversal Instructional Design, (d) identifyspecific ways to create inclusive classroomsand programs, (e) learn about assistivetechnology, (f) learn about local resources,and (g) develop a personal action plan.

CTAD Curriculum

Teaching Methods

Project staff intentionally designed thetwelve-hour, two-day workshop to be aninteractive experience, incorporating lecture,small and large group discussion,application activities, and exercises.Facilitators strive to model good teachingpractices and incorporate elements ofUniversal Instructional Design wheneverpossible. For example, all faculty receive anotebook of materials at the start of theworkshop, which includes printouts of allPowerPoint slides. Termed a “naturalsupport” because it provides assistance to allfaculty regardless of their disability status,these printouts allow faculty to more fullyengage with the materials being presented,rather than hurriedly copying down whatappears on the screen. With this naturalsupport, a person with a disability who isunable to take notes will not have to ask foran individual accommodation; it’s alreadythere.

Day 1 Workshop Agenda

Understanding disability. In this openingsection of the workshop, facilitators providefaculty with a brief overview of disabilitytypes and discuss issues specific to hiddendisabilities. Facilitators also introduce the“interactional model” of disability, whichargues that rather than being viewed as adeficiency in the individual, disabilityshould be considered a difference. Underthis model, disability resides not within theindividual but derives from the interactionbetween the individual and society (Gill,1987). Facilitators of this section endeavorto draw out faculty’s previous experienceswith students with disabilities andknowledge of available resources.

Exploring legal issues. This sectionbriefly explores the three major lawsaffecting postsecondary educators: Section504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, theAmericans with Disabilities Act of 1990,and, indirectly, the Individuals withDisabilities Education Act, or IDEA (1994).Facilitators discuss the impact of each ofthese three major laws and introducedefinitions of disability, reasonableaccommodations, and mandated services.Faculty work through a scenario that asksthem to apply their knowledge of the lawand disability to a specific case relevant topostsecondary education.


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Listening to student perspectives.Student voices are an integral part of theworkshop. Presenting them early in theworkshop allows both facilitators andfaculty to refer back to the students’comments throughout the workshop. Whenit is feasible, facilitators recruit a group ofcollege students or recent graduates withdisabilities and facilitate a discussion abouttheir experiences in postsecondaryeducation, followed by a question andanswer session with the faculty. Because itis sometimes not feasible to assemble a livepanel of students, facilitators occasionallyuse a videotape of students with disabilitiesdiscussing these same issues.

An introduction to UniversalInstructional Design. This section illustratesthe architectural concept of UniversalDesign through a series of slides of welldesigned architectural features such as doorlevers; signage containing text, symbols, andBraille; adjustable laboratory and classroomtables; and power-assisted doors. Afterreviewing universally designed features inthese slides, faculty tour the building inwhich the workshop is held and identifyadditional examples of universally designedfeatures.

Next, faculty learn to apply thesearchitecturally-based concepts to theinstructional environment to produceUniversal Instructional Design. Askingfaculty to apply architectural principles to an

educational context seems, however,awkward at best, so facilitators introduce aset of “Principles” to help workshop facultyexplicitly apply the model to their particularclasses. The Principles, which are meant tobe seen as guidelines more than as adefinitive list, were synthesized fromChickering and Gamson’s (1987) “SevenPrinciples for Good Practice inUndergraduate Education” and NorthCarolina State University’s “Principles ofUniversal Design” (1997). They are asfollows:

1. Create a classroom climate that fosterstrust and respect.

2. Determine the essential components ofthe course.

3. Provide clear expectations andfeedback.

4. Explore ways to incorporate naturalsupports for learning.

5. Provide multimodal instructionalmethods.

6. Provide a variety of ways fordemonstrating knowledge.

7. Use technology to enhance learningopportunities.

8. Encourage faculty-student contact.


These are, at first glance, practices thatall good teachers follow. They also apply toall students, with or without disabilities.However, it is important to note that mostpostsecondary faculty are hired because theyare content experts, not necessarily goodteachers. Even those with the best intentionsmay lack sufficient resources or training inhow to be good teachers, and theseprinciples engender useful discussions aboutteaching and help faculty to articulate bestpractices in their own disciplines. Much ofthe remainder of the workshop focuses onapplying these principles.

Applying the Principles of UniversalInstructional Design. In this section, facultybegin to apply two of the principles ofUniversal Instructional Design to their owncourses. First, facilitators lead facultythrough a discussion about classroomclimate, or what makes a classroomwelcoming, such as establishing groundrules for class discussion, honoring culturaldifferences, and attending to the physicalneeds of students. Each participant writes oradapts a disability access statement suitablefor use in a course syllabus. Next,facilitators introduce the idea of “essentialcomponents” and guide faculty through aseries of questions designed to help themarticulate the outcomes they expect for theirstudents by defining what is essential abouttheir course, and what may be important, butnegotiable. For example, a “timed essay”exam, which asks students to produce brief,

coherent answers in finished prose understrict time limitations, may be seen as anessential component of a journalism ornewswriting class. In a composition class,however, where the aim is to developstudents’ critical writing, reading, andthinking abilities, resulting in a series oflonger papers produced outside of class, thatsame timed essay may be considered animportant skill, but not an essential one.Having identified this, the compositioninstructor may feel more comfortableproviding an accommodation such asextended test time or a quiet testing space tostudents requiring these accommodations forthe timed essay. The journalism facultymember, on the other hand, may choose tohave a discussion with the student and thestudent’s disability specialist in order todetermine how best to provideaccommodations without altering theessential requirements of the course.Facilitators in this section stronglyencourage faculty to maintain high academicstandards in their courses while consideringsome flexibility in assignments consideredimportant but not essential.

Day 2 Workshop Agenda

Learning about assistive technology.Facilitators introduce faculty to a wide rangeof assistive technologies, both low andhigh-tech, that might be useful for collegestudents with disabilities. When possible,faculty get to practice with or see a live


28

demonstration of these technologies. Facultyreceive additional reference materials, suchas guidelines for creating accessible webpages and lists of technological resourcesavailable on their campuses. This sectionprovides faculty with the tools to address thePrinciple of Universal Instructional Designthat asks them to use technology to enhancelearning opportunities.

Investigating local resources. Ideally, thefacilitator of this section is the disabilityservices provider at the workshop site. In aquestion and answer session with thisservice provider, faculty learn about policiesof their own Disability Services office,available resources, and the demographicsof their particular student population.Faculty are encouraged to think ofthemselves as part of a triangle of supportthat includes students, faculty, and thedisability service provider.

Working with case scenarios. Thissection gives faculty a chance to integrateand apply much of the knowledge they havegained in the preceding sections. In smallgroups, faculty work through a series ofcases involving students with disabilities inpostsecondary classes. The facilitator thenasks the groups to share their ideas witheach other.

Applying Universal Instructional Design,continued. The facilitator of this sectionguides faculty through a discussion of theremaining Principles of Universal

Instructional Design. Faculty are encouragedto share their own experiences with eachother as they talk about ways to provideclear expectations and feedback to theirstudents, as well as ways to increase contactwith their students. The facilitator then leadsa discussion about ways to employ naturalsupports, which are thosenonaccommodation-based supports facultycan provide to all students, such asproviding class notes to all students,whether or not those students havedisabilities. Finally, the facilitator leadsfaculty through a discussion of how andwhen to employ multimodal instructionalmethods in the classroom and how to designa course so that students may demonstratetheir knowledge in a variety of ways.

Creating an action plan. In this final, briefsection, faculty distill what they havelearned and develop a series of concrete“next steps” to guide them as they begin tomake changes in their courses. Facultybriefly note the three most importantchanges they plan to make in their owncourses, how they can request follow-upassistance, how they might share what theyhave learned with their colleagues, and whatbarriers or impediments they foresee. Thefacilitator asks each faculty member toshare, briefly, one item from the action plan.

The above discussion is intended only toprovide an overview of the workshop. Forinformation on how to obtain a complete setof workshop materials, including


facilitator’s notes, PowerPoint slides,videotapes, and handouts, please visit theCurriculum Transformation and Disabilitywebsite at www.gen.umn.edu/research/ctad

Workshop Participants

At the close of the project’s second year,73 faculty, administrators, and student

services personnel had participated in CTADworkshops. The majority (76.7%, n=56) ofparticipants were tenured or tenure trackfaculty; 13.7% (n=10) were non-tenure trackinstructional faculty; 5.5% (n=4) wereadvisors, and 4.1% (n=3) served in anadministrative capacity. Tenured and tenuretrack faculty were targeted because theyhave both longevity and curricular

Figure 1. Distribution of Disciplines in Which Faculty Teach

_______________________________________________________

Disciplinary area n %a _______________________________________________________

Business 4 5.9

Education 6 8.8

Health/human services 6 8.8

Humanities 8 11.8

Language arts 9 13.2

Math/computer science/engineering 8 11.8

Science 10 14.7

Social science 17 25.0 _______________________________________________________

aPercentages were calculated based on total number of faculty who had instructional duties (n=68).


30

responsibility. Targeting them was seen asan opportunity for greatest impact at theheart of the teaching and course designprocess. Many of the advisors andadministrators also had some instructionalduties. Social Science was the most commondiscipline in which faculty taught; however,there was an appropriate balance of otherdisciplines as well (see Figure 1). Fifty-fivepercent of the faculty were women and 45%were men. Faculty had a wide range of jobexperience and averaged 13.5 years(SD=10.09, Mdn=11, Range=1-43 years) intheir current field. Faculty were fairlyevenly distributed in terms of theirexperience working with students withdisabilities: 24% had worked with fewerthan 6 students with disabilities in theircareer; 17% had worked with 6 to 10; 17%

had worked with 11 to 15; 16% had workedwith 16 to 30; and 26% had worked withmore than 30 students with disabilities.

Program Evaluation

A variety of methods were used to gatherdata for formative and summative programevaluation, including workshop evaluationforms, participant interviews andlongitudinal progress reports. What followsis a brief summary of formative andsummative evaluation results from thesedata sources.

Formative Evaluation

After each workshop, all faculty wereasked to fill out a questionnaire asking fortheir feedback regarding their workshop

11.5

22.5

33.5

44.5

55.5

6

Yr 1: Pilot,1/00

Yr 2: 1stworkshop, 8/00

Yr 2: 2ndworkshop, 8/00

Yr 2: 3rdworkshop,

12/00

Yr 2: 4thworkshop, 1/01

Yr 2: 5thworkshop, 1/01

Workshop (in chronological order)

Ave

rage

ove

rall

ratin

g(s

cale

: 1=v

ery

poor

-6=e

xcel

lent

)

Figure 2. Average overall workshop content rating from pilot and year 2 workshops.


experience. Data from these evaluationswere used to improve the workshopcurriculum. The workshops were regardedvery favorably by faculty in the first (i.e.,pilot) workshop; however, over timecurriculum revision efforts have resulted inan increasingly well-received facultydevelopment program. This trend isillustrated in Figure 2, which depicts theaverage ratings given by faculty over the 10workshop content segments.

Furthermore, as illustrated by Figure 3,year two faculty were more likely to believethat workshop participation was a valuableexperience, that presentation of material wasappropriately balanced, and that informationpresented was relevant to their needs. Theywere somewhat more likely to think thatpresentations and lectures were clear andeasy to follow.

Figure 3. Reactions to workshop experience from pilot and year 2 sites

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

5

Found participation inworkshop to be

valuable

Thought informationpresentations/lectureswere clear and easy to

follow

Thought thatinteracting with otherparticipants made the

workshop morevaluable.

Workshop evaluation item

Ave

rage

item

res

pons

e (s

cale

1=s

tron

gly

disa

gree

-5=

stro

ngly

agr

ee)

Yr 1: Pilot, 1/00Yr2: 1st workshop, 8/00Yr2: 2nd workshop, 8/00Yr2: 3rd workshop, 12/00Yr2: 4th workshop, 1/01Yr2: 5th workshop, 1/01

Found participation inworkshop to bevaluable

Thought presentationof material wasappropriatelybalanced withapplication activities,discussion, andlecture

Thought informationpresentations/lectureswere clear and easyto follow

Found informationpresented to berelevant to needs

Thought thatinteracting with otherparticipants made theworkshop morevaluable


32

In general, faculty indicated a highappreciation for the information presentedand the interactive and “hands on” nature ofthe workshops. One person’s statement froma workshop evaluation sums up the positiveregard for the workshops:

What I left with is the most valuableand that is the wider view regardingdisabilities, a more positive outlookon various approaches to use, arenewed sense of “what I should bedoing,” tons of useful knowledgeregarding the law, access issues, andwhat [my campus] has to offer.

Summative Evaluation

In order to capture the impact ofworkshop participation, several datacollection activities have been implemented.First, longitudinal progress reports havebeen sent out three times per year to allparticipants. These progress reports containopen-ended questions asking faculty toreport changes they have made on the job asa result of workshop participation. Second,interviews with self-selected faculty havebeen conducted several months after theirparticipation in the workshop. Theinterviews are designed to explore in moredetail faculty’s reactions to their workshopexperience. At the end of the second projectyear, longitudinal progress report data wereavailable from 60 faculty (58 instructors and2 advisors), and interviews had beenconducted with 8 faculty (7 instructors and 1advisor).

The primary outcomes of interest havebeen the degree, both in quality andquantity, to which faculty have modifiedtheir instructional practices and takenmeasures to improve the classroom climate.From progress report and interview data,CTAD appears to have impacted faculty’sactions, attitudes, and awareness. Whatfollows is a discussion of this impact withinthe framework of the Universal InstructionalDesign principles, which were presentedearlier in the chapter. A brief discussion ofCTAD’s impact on participatingadministrators will also be presented.

Modification ofInstructional Practices

Instructional practices refer to the meansby which faculty impart knowledge tostudents. There are two importantcomponents of instructional practice: (a)information access, or the degree to whichcourse content is equally accessible to allstudents; and (b) instructional design, or theways in which faculty engage students in theteaching-learning process. Faculty canimprove in both of these areas by practicingthe following principles of UniversalInstructional Design: (a) provide clearexpectations and feedback, (b) explore waysin which to incorporate natural supports forlearning, (c) implement multimodalinstructional methods, (d) provide a varietyof ways for demonstrating knowledge, and(e) use technology to enhance learningopportunities.


Information access. Faculty tookmeasures to promote information access in avariety of ways. In the progress reports, 31%(n=18) of faculty indicated making at leastone modification to course materials in wayssuch as providing copies of lecture notesand overhead or PowerPoint information,reformatting course materials, and providingaudiotapes of lectures. For example, oneparticipant noted:

I am now more aware of theindividual needs of students in myclasses. I have arranged for notetakers who will copy notes for mysight impaired students who find itdifficult to read my “whiteboardnotes.” I previously had my notesavailable on the computer (powerpoints slides with written info). I amhaving our printing services makelarger print copies of selectedhandouts.

Another participant indicated that: “Lecturenotes have been made available to allstudents with the intent that this will helpthose that have a disability as well as allother students who may choose to access theinformation.” This participant appears tohave been motivated by UID notions thatpromoting access for students withdisabilities can benefit all students. Anotherparticipant observed how promotinginformation access for a student with a

disability was appreciated by other studentsfor whom the modification was not directlyintended:

I also distributed handouts for alloverheads and computer projectionsthat I demonstrated in class. This,essentially, was an accommodationfor [a disabled] student, and to helpstudents who might have moredifficulty with simultaneouslyprocessing visual and verbalinformation. Most students in theclass, however, commented at onetime or another on the helpfulness ofall the handouts.

Another participant noted the specificbenefits of electronic information access forall students:

I have one student that has difficultyin reading and writing, thus, I haveprovided all my classes with mypower-point lecture notes in advance.Students are able to access my lectureoutline through the web. By providingmy lecture outline in advance, thisallows students to do more discussionin class, and allow more time writingdown examples given in class.

Information access can also be promoted byslight modifications to lecture orpresentation style, as reported by one facultymember:


34

For example, with a deaf student, Itried to limit my use of vague termsand pronouns, such as “this” and“that.” The deaf student needed to usean interpreter. When I pointed tosomething and said “this,” I wasusually pointing to something else ornothing at all by the time the deafstudent understood the interpretation.By being more specific, the studenthad a better understanding of myreferences, and I’m sure thespecificity was beneficial to the restof the class.

Many faculty (36%, n=21) also promotedinformation access through the use oftechnology. Most accessible technology useinvolved making course materials availableelectronically or taking measures to ensurethat current course websites were accessibleto a diverse range of abilities; 31% (n=18)of faculty made course materials availableelectronically by posting their syllabus tothe web or providing online or disk copiesof lecture notes, assignments, and examreview materials. Some faculty (n=7, 12%)mentioned that they had either tested theircurrent websites for accessibility or that theywere more attentive to accessibility issueswhen designing or redesigning websites.Several faculty who were interviewedmentioned that the CTAD workshops madethem more aware of how technology usecould promote equal access to thecurriculum. For example, when talking

about accessibility of course components forstudents with disabilities prior to CTAD,one faculty member said “I wasn’t thatinterested in putting my syllabus on the webbecause I didn’t really think about how thatmay help students with disabilities.”

Faculty also made course content moreaccessible by using multimodal methods forinstruction and assessment. In their follow-up progress reports, many faculty explicitlymentioned attending to students’ diverselearning modalities; 21% (n=12) noted thatthey had made changes such as balancingthe modes in which information ispresented, allowing alternative modes bywhich students can demonstrate knowledge,or including more multimedia in theclassroom. For example, one participantnoted a much greater use of visual stimuli,such as overheads, videos, use ofwhiteboard, and various props. Anotheracknowledged “trying to hit a concept frommany directions . . . on the web, in lecture,on CDROM, in groups, etc.” A third said sheoffers a wider range of activities in class thatplay to different students’ learning styles.“We are tackling some material in newways,” notes one participant, “with studentsdoing presentations rather than listening tome lecture and we will see how that works.”

Participant responses from both thefollow-up reports and interviews evince thatfaculty appear to be more “aware of how anaccommodation for a student with a


disability can be beneficial to most studentsin a course” and more aware of howimportant it is to “have more of a grab bagof ways to both communicate [information]and to ensure that it is beingcommunicated.” UID principles have helpedfaculty to see value in pre-planning andbuilding up a stock of well organized coursematerials that would be on hand whenever astudent might need them. For example,when talking about the provision of classnotes, one participant said:

I hadn’t thought of it as, you know,that’s a good reason for doing it. Ithought, well making notes availableto students is a nice thing, but I hadn’tthought of it as Universal Design, inthe event that I should come across astudent with a disability who mightneed them.

The CTAD workshops have appeared toresult in many faculty taking less for grantedand thinking more critically aboutinformation access. For example, onefaculty member, in light of heightenedawareness promoted by CTAD workshopparticipation, noted that he was

concerned that some of thetechnologies that we are using, we arekind of getting into some videostreaming things, and again myconcern with that is that in the eventthat it should have to go to a person

that can’t hear or has difficultyhearing, what then?

Instructional design. Faculty indicatedthat they had taken measures to redesigninstruction in order to more effectivelyengage students in the teaching-learningprocess.

In their progress reports, 26% (n=15) ofrespondents indicated making at least onemodification to their testing and assessmentpractices. Because extended time is acommon accommodation for many studentswith disabilities, and because many studentswho do not have disabilities also strugglewith issues of test anxiety, many faculty whomade testing and assessment modificationschose to administer shorter, more frequenttests so all students would have adequatetime to finish. For example, one participantsaid:

We went from 4 to 6 exams so thatthe material on each exam representsa smaller chunk of the course, thusmaking it easier to prepare for exams.And the number of items on eachexam has been reduced from typically10 to 6-8, which allows students moretime to answer each question andreduces the anxiety that they mightotherwise feel.

A few faculty indicated that they had madeprogress in developing alternative means by


36

which students could demonstrateknowledge. For example, one facultymember said:

I also started giving weekly shortanswer written quizzes in addition tothe writing intensive papers andmultiple choice tests. My hope is thata student’s grade does not all fall onmultiple choice tests or written work.There are a number of different typesof evaluation measures to matchdifferent students’ strengths.

Finally, one faculty member took measuresto provide more clear expectations by“providing students with a detailed list ofobjectives, location of the instruction in thebook, and representative problems to studyfor exams.” The faculty member noted thatthis was done “in response to students withlearning disabilities indicating that clearerexpectations as to what to study for onexams, and where to find that material,would be helpful.”

Fourteen percent (n=8) of facultyindicated making at least one modificationto course assignments in ways such asrestructuring feedback, tailoringassignments to individual student needs orproviding alternative assignment options,and relaxing assignment deadlines. Forexample, one participant reported:

I have offered assignments in multipleformats—print, web based, andverbal. I have become more attentiveto different learning preferences thatmay result from physical or otherdisabilities. I give assignments thatmake available alternative ways ofdemonstrating knowledge.

Another participant noted that she has “beenmuch more aware of the various needs of thestudents and tried to address those needs”and consequently “changed the design ofcertain assignments to hopefully better meetthe needs of each student.”

Many faculty (n=13, 22%) also said thatthey had modified their instruction orinstructional philosophy in some moregeneral way. For example, one facultymember reported tailoring “the class to fitthe individualized needs and interests ofeach student [and] moving away fromlecture and discussion formats to more of aworkshop mode.” Other faculty reportedproviding more structure, support, andfeedback. One faculty member did this bycreating “a class e-mail list, which reviewsthe week’s lecture material and offerssuggestions for writing topics andencourages student responses online” andanother did this by explaining herexpectations on the syllabus so that studentswould have “a good idea of the workloadissues up front.” Some faculty indicated a


better ability to more critically examine thesuccess of instructional strategies, asexemplified by one response:

I have approached the project ofteaching with much higher sensitivityto the presence of different physicaland cognitive learning styles andabilities in the classroom. This hasresulted in an ongoing discussionover the course of the term aboutclassroom strategies, how they areworking for the individuals and theclass as a whole, and ongoingdiscussions about individualstrategies for getting the most out ofthe class’s activities.

Some faculty even included UID principlesin course content. For example, one facultymember reported, “Telling my new classesabout universal design including allstudents’ recognition of how they learn best.I have had several students come talk to me,two of whom contacted disability servicesfor evaluation as a result of this classdiscussion.”

Measures to Improve theClassroom Climate

Workshop faculty appear both to have aheightened sense of awareness regardingstudents’ needs and to be better equipped towork with students with disabilities in theclassroom. In their follow-up progress

reports, many faculty (n=17, 29%) indicatedhaving made specific accommodations forstudents with disabilities since theworkshop; in the past year, 37 facultyindicated that at least one student with adisability had been enrolled in theircourse(s). Twenty-six percent (n=15) offaculty noted an increase in their awarenessregarding the needs of students withdisabilities or a better capacity to work withstudents with disabilities. In an interview,one participant said that since the workshop:

I have been working more closelywith our Office of Disability Servicesand particularly I think I’ve been alittle faster to recommend students tofind a tutor when I seem to recognizethat they are having problems in class. . . . I seem to be more aware and beable to pick out a student that isstruggling and be able to realize thatit’s not the content— there issomething else here that is probablycausing this.

Another participant mentioned a newfound awareness for how the socially-basedpedagogy in her class—a method shepreviously “always thought of asempowering”—might indeed be “hard forsomebody who has some kind of socialanxiety disorder, or even just a shystudent . . . or a student from another culturewho is self conscious about their Englishlanguage use.”


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One third (n=19) of faculty indicated intheir follow-up progress reports that theyeither had taken steps to encourageinteraction between themselves and theirstudents or had taken steps to create aclimate that fosters trust and respect. Somereported that they had increased their effortsto encourage disability disclosure byincluding or updating disclosure andaccommodation statements on their syllabusor verbally expressing that they supportneeds of diverse learners. For example, onefaculty member said:

I asked students on the very first dayof class to let me know if they hadany types of impairment (eitherdocumented or undocumented) whichcould influence their participation inthe class. Many students whoexperience communication anxietyand test anxiety came and talked tome—this was a great way to open upthe class for dealing withcommunication anxiety.

Other faculty helped make studentsaware of university support services by, forexample, making “a point at the beginningof the semester to verbally inform studentsabout disability services available at ourcampus” or informing students “that thereare university resources for testing of LD’s”for “students who are concerned that theymay have a learning disability.”

Conclusion

The Curriculum Transformation andDisability Project has designed, tested, andimplemented an ambitious program offaculty and staff development, with the goalof creating a core of educators capable ofusing the Principles of UniversalInstructional Design in course developmentand course delivery. These Principles ofUniversal Instructional Design have shownpromise in illuminating facultyresponsibility in making courses more fullyaccessible and have begun to find their wayinto courses and faculty practice.

Midstream formative feedback shows theworkshop to be welcome in our professionaldevelopment of educators in differentdisciplines and in different institutionalsettings. The promise of strong impact oneducators who take the time to participate inCTAD workshops is beginning to emerge.

References

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990,P.L. 101-336, 42 US CA. 12, 101-12,213, (West Supp. 1991).

The Center for Universal Design. (1997).The Principles of Universal Design.(Version 2.0) [Brochure]. Raleigh, NC:North Carolina State University.


Chickering, A. W., & Gamson, Z. F. (1987,March). Seven principles for goodpractice in undergraduate education.AAHE Bulletin, 3-7.

Gill, C. (1987). A new social perspective ondisability and its implications forrehabilitation. SocioculturalImplications in Treatment Planning inOccupational Therapy, 49-55.


Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.20 U.S.C. 1400-1485 (1994), asamended by 20 U.S.C.A. 1400-1487(West 1977).

Rehabilitation Act of 1973. P.O. 193-112.Section 504.


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Perceptions of Universal (Instructional)Design: A Qualitative ExaminationJennifer P. HatfieldUniversity of Minnesota

This chapter reports the results of a qualitative study of the impact of Curriculum Transformation and Disability(CTAD) training on the work of eight participants.

In order to instigate a shift in theexperience of undergraduate studentswith disabilities, Curriculum

Transformation and Disability (CTAD), aModel Demonstration Project sponsored bythe U.S. Department of Education, hasundertaken the continuing professionaldevelopment of faculty, administrators, andadvisors. Since January 2000, 147 faculty,administrators, and student servicespersonnel from colleges and universities inthe Upper Central and Lower Great LakesRegion have participated in CTADprofessional development workshops.Workshop curricula, founded uponprinciples of Universal Instructional Design(UID), have been designed to facilitateunderstanding of disability issues andimplementation of accommodations as partof the regular curriculum (for more on UIDand the CTAD program, see chapters 2 and3).

Program evaluation data show thatparticipants have been modifyingcurriculum, instruction, policy, and practicein accordance with UID principles.However, attitude theory suggests that it isimportant to examine the attitudes behindthese actions (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980;Bourke, Strehorn, & Silver, 1997; Chubon,1992; Kalivoda & Higbee, 1998). Such anexamination lends useful informationregarding the general merit of this relativelynew instructional philosophy. For example,Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior (as citedin Kalivoda & Higbee, 1998) posits thatactions are a function of three belief andattitude constructs. First, a person’s action iscontingent upon personal beliefs regardingthe degree of control he or she has over thataction. In the context of applying UID, aperson might therefore be influenced by thedegree to which he or she feels the

CHAPTER 3Perceptions of UID

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principles can be applied in practice. CTADParticipants have obviously applied UIDprinciples to modify curriculum andinstruction, but without further inquiry, thethought processes behind these actionsremain unknown. Participants could haveacted out of a sense of obligation rather thanout of beliefs that implementing UID isgenerally feasible. A person’s action is alsodetermined by the semantic valence he orshe attributes to performing the action. If aperson feels that UID principles have littlemerit, he or she may have negative orneutral feelings about applying theprinciples, and therefore will not beintrinsically inclined to practice theprinciples. Finally, according to the theory, aperson’s action is influenced by personalbeliefs regarding “the presence or absenceof social support for engaging in the[action]” (Kalivoda & Higbee, 1998, p. 14).A person may feel that UID is a useful andpracticable model, but might be deterredfrom using the principles in practice due toflak received from colleagues oradministration.

Attitude theory suggests that adescription of how UID principles haveintersected with participants’ pedagogicalphilosophies and personal backgrounds canadumbrate the future of this approach. If thisapproach is not well-received, malleable,and applicable to a variety of situations, howenceinte with possibilities can it be? If this

approach is easily subject to theoreticalcriticism, perhaps it may be a passing fad,not to be built upon or perseverant in theface of competing approaches. This chapterwill qualitatively examine these issues anddescribe the appeal (or lack thereof) thatUID principles held for a group of CTADworkshop participants.

At the outset, it was postulated thatparticipants’ reactions to UID and resultantpost-workshop actions would be a functionof pre-workshop “real-life context”. It wasalso postulated that outcomes would not beuniform across participants, both because ofthe wide array of options for actionsuggested by workshop curricula andbecause of the potentially complexinteractions between participants’interpretations of UID, pre-workshop livedexperiences, and innumerable psychologicalcharacteristics such as personality, affect,and motivation.

Method

Data Collection

In order to gather qualitative, summativeinformation about the short and long termimpact of CTAD, a study was designed tocollect in-depth conversational data aboutparticipants’ experiences with the CTADproject. Data were collected usingsemi-structured interviews (i.e., open-endedconversations prompted by a structured set


of questions) designed to allow participantsthe opportunity to reflect on theirexperiences and perceptions of CTAD andits principles. Specifically, intervieweeswere asked to share anecdotes and personalexperiences regarding their work withstudents with disabilities prior to CTADworkshop participation as well as thechanges they had made as a result ofworkshop participation. Interviewees werealso asked to discuss their attitudes towardUID principles and the kinds oftransformations that these principles may ormay not imbue. The interview protocol isdisplayed in Figure 1.

Participants

Interviewees self-selected into the studyby responding to an e-mail message from theproject director alerting them of theopportunity. All volunteers were firstinterviewed approximately six months afterworkshop participation, and a second timeapproximately one year after workshopparticipation. At the end of the secondproject year, interviews had been conductedwith eight participants (seven faculty andone advisor) from three different publicinstitutions of higher education in theMidwest: an urban research University, asmall liberal arts college, and a smallcollege specializing in science andtechnology education. The intervieweescame from diverse backgrounds, coveringthe disciplines of science, history,

economics, art, writing, foreign language,and the social sciences, and ranging in jobexperience from 6 to 31 years.

Data Analysis

A case study approach was used toanalyze the interview transcripts from theeight participants. Other available data fromthese participants (i.e., pre-workshopsurveys and post-workshop activity reports)were consulted at times to complement,verify, or add additional context to emergingthemes from the interviews. The objective ofthis inquiry was not simply to capture “merefrequencies or incidence” of behaviors, butrather, to examine “operational links”between participants’ pedagogicalphilosophies and experiences, personalbackgrounds and characteristics, andexposure to UID principles. Due to theexplanatory nature of this objective, the casestudy method was chosen because of itspotential to help build both richexplanations about how UID principles werereceived by CTAD participants andconjectures about why they were received inthe ways they were.

Although some might criticize the use ofcase study methods because “they providevery little basis for scientific generalization”(Yin, 1989, p. 21), this criticism is a mootissue for this study. The intent of thisinquiry is not to make population statementsabout how UID principles might be


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Figure 1. Interview Protocol for CTAD Participants

Content area Interview prompt*

Anecdotes and personal experiences Prior to going through the CTAD training, how would you describe your level of awareness about and types of interactions with students in your classes who have disabilities?

Describe some specific challenges or successes you have experienced in teaching students with disabilities. What in particular was challenging or successful for you and the student?

Has any aspect of CTAD training made you think any differently about your interactions with students who have disabilities in terms of teaching and level of curricular accessibility?

Prior to CTAD, how would you describe your course components/curriculum in terms of its level of accessibility for students with disabilities? What in particular made it accessible or not?

Value and impact of CTAD After participating in CTAD training, have you implemented any changes in your course as a direct result? If you did, what are they, and what in particular about CTAD made you decide to make these changes? If you did not, why have you decided not to make any specific changes to the course? Were there any specific barriers which prevented you from implementing planned changes? If you are not making changes now, do you think you might make changes over the long term?

In general, what aspects of curricula in your discipline do you perceive as accessible or not to students with disabilities? Did CTAD training impact your views about this in any way?

What is your perception of (or attitude toward) the application of principles of Universal Instructional Design (UID) and Disability Culture as it specifically relates to the courses you teach, and more broadly to curricula your discipline?


Figure 1 continued. Interview Protocol for CTAD Participants

Content area Interview prompt*

Value and impact of CTAD What kinds of “transformation” do you think are facilitated, (or not facilitated), by CTAD principles? For example, one principle was the notion of challenging traditional views of “accommodation” with notions of “UID”—what is your perspective on this as it relates to your practice/research? What kinds of transformation could result from this "challenging"?

Beyond the initial CTAD training this year, what do you plan to do in the future related to these concepts? Will you continue to work with CTAD principles or with the CTAD training team?

Perceived impact of CTAD in different contexts

How would you describe the climate on your own campus and in your department related to the instruction of students with disabilities, particularly in terms of CTAD principles like UID?

What kinds of resources and support (departmental and campus) exist for these students? What barriers exist for students and for faculty/administrators in supporting them?

*For interviewees whose job duties were not strictly related to instruction, language in the interview prompts was modified to reflect their job function.

received, but rather, to examine the degreeto which case study evidence supports orrefutes the theoretical proposition that UIDprinciples can facilitate curricular orprogrammatic design.

A fatal flaw in doing case studies is toconceive of statistical generalizationas the method of generalizing theresults of a case. This is becausecases are not “sampling units” andshould not be chosen for this reason.

Rather, individual case studies are tobe selected as a laboratoryinvestigator selects the topic of a newexperiment. Multiple cases, in thissense, should be considered likemultiple experiments (or multiplesurveys). (p. 38)

Data analysis followed proceduressuggested by Miles and Huberman (1994).Analysis was grounded in a semioticanalytic approach (Feldman, 1995) and


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focused by the primary proposition thatCTAD impact has meaning within a person’scontext and history. In the analysis, specificattention was paid to the following contexttopics: disability awareness, historicalfrustrations and roadblocks when workingwith students with disabilities;accommodation style; pedagogical style; anddilemmas in curriculum and instruction.Coded transcripts were used to generate aninterpretive case summary sheet for eachinterviewee. The next step was to reread thetranscripts looking specifically for contentrelated to CTAD impact. This content wasused to characterize each interviewee’sreaction to UID. The context topic and UIDreaction characterizations were broughttogether in an attempt to more fully describeparticipants’ reactions to UID by explaininghow UID principles had intersected withparticipants’ pedagogical philosophies andpersonal backgrounds to produce, or notproduce, behavioral or affective outcomes.

Results

Faculty reactions to UID appeared toapproximate one of several types. There was“enlightenment,” where UID principlesseemed to facilitate solutions to (oradvances in solving) an existing problem.There was the “cold shoulder,” where themodel met with more skepticism and foundscant place to rest and grow into practice.Finally, there was the “revelation,” where

the model appeared to open a frontier ofpedagogical opportunities either byintroducing a completely new concept or byputting definition to current instructionalpractices that had previously beensublimated and intuitive. Three casesrepresentative of the typologies thatemerged in data analysis are presentedbelow followed by a case summary of theone student services interviewee.

Case 1: Enlightenment

John is a professor of history andeconomics at an urban Midwestern researchuniversity. He teaches mostly freshmanstudents in a college that has a history ofproviding supportive and responsivepedagogy to a student body that is diverse interms of race, ethnicity, socio economicstatus, and disability status. At the time ofthe first interview, John had been teaching atthe postsecondary level for 15 years, and inthat time indicated that over 30 studentswith disabilities (of whom he had beenaware) had passed through his classroom.

John’s reaction to UID principles couldbe characterized by enlightenment. Hetalked mainly about UID principles in termsof one specific application, namely the wayin which technology could be used toincrease curricular access. There was alsosome element of revelation in his reaction,because UID principles did mollify someskepticism and reveal to him the benefit of


using technology in instruction. However, heseemed to better approximate theenlightenment theme because, in terms ofbehavioral and affective outcomes, a “lightbulb turned on” resulting from theconfluence of a specific pre-existent“dilemma” and exposure to UID principles.

John reported having a high degree ofdisability awareness, which he attributed tohis wife and the college he attended as anundergraduate. His wife had over 20 yearsof experience working with students withdisabilities as a physical therapist, and hereported that he had “learn[ed] a lot by justlistening to her talk about either issues theparents had or issues the school had orwhatever surrounding handicappedstudents.” He also attributed his awarenessto the college he attended, which was aforerunner in promoting equal access so“what [he] assumed was normal, wasunique” at the time.

In working with students with disabilitiesin the past, he indicated taking fairlycommon measures, like giving studentsmaterials before class and administeringexams in separate rooms. He seemed to havethought mainly about modifying currentmaterials rather than changing how theywere delivered (i.e., content versus media).In general, he seemed to have a very openand receptive attitude about working withstudents with disabilities, and expressed awillingness to “do whatever work was

necessary,” even in light of fear orskepticism. Furthermore, he was also verywilling to communicate with students aboutwhat they might need and took the time towork with students to ensure that theyunderstand content.

In some ways, in the past he seemed tobe operating from the traditional notions ofaccommodation. He talked about providingspecific accommodations to specificstudents, rather than describing coursecomponents that had worked well for thestudents with disabilities who had passedthrough his classroom. The modifications tocourse materials were made specifically inresponse to students with disabilities. Interms of exams, he did indicate that:“additional time was never a problembecause I really don’t have time limits onmy tests anyway.” Also, his words did echoUID when talking about how he presentedsome information in class:

When I am showing a map ordiscussing a map I am explaining it inmore detail. This ends up benefitingall students in the class, but I thinkI’ve done a fairly good job ofaccomplishing that so that a blindperson who can’t see the map stillunderstands whatever the teachingpoint is.

In terms of classroom climate, hispractice aligned with tenets of UID. He was


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attentive to students’ needs whenconfronted, though he seemed to lack acertain proactiveness. When talking aboutworking with students with disabilities,much of his discussion was reactive. Hewould be confronted with a student, or theneed to accommodate, which wouldstimulate receptiveness, rather than hisattentiveness prompting him to approachstudents.

John discussed a few issues with whichhe had been concerned: one related todisability access and another related tocourse materials. First, although he wasgenerally satisfied with the degree to whichhis courses were accessible to diverselearners, the question of how to successfullyreach blind students in one of his classes hadremained a conundrum. This course reliedheavily on visual information in the form ofcharts and graphs, and he had not yet founda way to express the information to blindstudents. Even after CTAD, the question ofhow to represent this information in othermodes still remained, so UID did not makeits impact here. UID made its impact on thetails of the other dilemma with which Johnwas struggling: namely, the quest to find abetter, less Eurocentric textbook. He wasdrawn toward the UID principle thatadvocates using technology to enhancelearning opportunities, saying that “the ideaof Universal Instructional Design has reallyappealed to me and particularly, at this pointthe way I envision it is through using

technology.” He went on to say that he hasbeen “a little slow to jump on thetechnology bandwagon” because in the pasthe felt like technology was simplyredundant—“a new toy to deliver the samestuff.” In the past, he also was even underthe “misconception that putting things onthe computer might actually make it lessaccessible to students with disabilities.” Henoted that the notion of buildingaccommodations into the course itself, inconjunction with the technologydemonstrations in the workshop worked to“[open] up an advantage of technology that Ihadn’t really been aware of.” Theintersection between past curriculumdevelopment issues and UIDconceptualizations became evident when hediscussed how he was planning to includeweb-based assignments in one of hiscourses, the idea for which he attributedpartly to “CTAD and the idea of making thisall more accessible” and partly to his questfor a “balanced world history book.” Whenasked whether he had previously consideredusing the internet to supplement a textbook,he said:

The light bulb turned on after those[above two things]. I was trying tofigure out other ways to do it and Ihadn’t really been thinking in termsof the internet or technology. So thatlight bulb didn’t go on until after this[putting CTAD knowledge andcurrent dilemma together].


Case 2: Cold Shoulder

Jerry is a science instructor at an urbanMidwestern research university. Like John,he also teaches mostly freshman students ina college that has a history of providingsupportive and responsive pedagogy. At thetime of the first interview, he had beenteaching for 10 years. In that time heindicated that between 6 and 10 studentswith disabilities (of whom he had beenaware) had enrolled in his courses; however,he also noted that “in one way, all of them”are disabled to some degree, reflecting amore progressive notion of disability rootedin individual difference rather thanindividual deficit theory.

His experience with CTAD wasgenerally positive, but he reported two“issues” or observations about the programin general related to its novelty status and itstheoretical relationship to prior curriculartrends he had seen throughout the years.These “issues,” in conjunction with his moreprogressive pedagogical style, appeared toresult in a cold shoulder reaction to UIDprinciples.

Jerry seemed to be quite aware ofresources available for students withdisabilities, which he attributed to time andexperience. He reported a “very difficult”past experience when a student with a visualimpairment had enrolled in his class.

Because both he and the student were notaware of the available resources, he felt likehe was “trying to re-do a whole bunch ofthings that had already been done.” But,with this experience and others, he came tolearn that, for example, “there are serviceswhere you could take your lab book and getit converted into Braille.”

When talking about past interactionswith students with disabilities, Jerry, likeJohn, seemed to have been more receptivethan advocating. He did indicate someuncertainty in terms of the appropriatenessin approaching and offering help to peoplewith disabilities, and, like John, he struggledwith how to make his course accessible tostudents with visual impairments. In theclassroom, he appeared to have both actedfrom traditional notions of accommodationwhere standard and prescribed actions aretaken, and more progressive notions wheredynamic actions are taken in response to thevoice of the student with a disability. Hisapproach to instruction seemed very flexibleand unconventional within the traditions ofhis scientific discipline. He seemed to bevery much led by students in the walktoward providing an equal opportunityeducation; for example, he said: “I amalways fine with plan B. you know, ‘what doyou want to do? OK well we can’t cut aparta pig, what should we do instead?’ and thenI usually am saying ‘propose something’.”


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He went on to talk about how he wasstruggling, trying to balance pedagogy insupport of learning with pedagogy insupport of tradition. When talking aboutproviding students alternatives to labactivities, he went on to say: “and that iswhere the different committees at theUniversity say: ‘Well that is not a labactivity.’ And that is where [anotherinstructor] hit the wall too in a few thingsthat he was doing . . . and you just kind ofshake your head and say ‘bureaucracy’.”

In many respects, Jerry already seemedto be incorporating UID principles in hispedagogy before CTAD. He realized that“students change all the time so youractivities have to change in some way.” Hisinstructional flexibility supported a varietyof ways in which students coulddemonstrate knowledge. Providingmultimodal instructional methods alsoseemed to play a key role in his pedagogy,as exemplified by his statement that “you hitthe same topics in different ways I think.You hit on the web, you hit it on avideotape, you hit it orally, you hit itvisually, you hit it tactically in the lab.”Jerry also actively worked on determiningessential components, as exemplified in hisstatement that “a general theme of each year[is that] I teach less and less . . . [which]means that each year I am trying to pick outwhat is most important.” Finally, he wasalso very adept in the use of technology,which he used heavily in instruction.

Furthermore, unlike John, even beforeCTAD Jerry saw technology’s potential forimproving access to education for studentswith disabilities.

This faculty member, progressive inmany ways, had an interesting reaction toUID. Although he did say that, possibly as aresult of CTAD, “more and more and moreredundancy is what I’m seeing,” no lightbulb appeared as it had for John. Jerry sawUID as “a new player, you know, one player.You have other players, too. You haveconceptual change, you have problemsolving, you have cooperative learning, youhave concept mapping, you have UniversalDesign.” He was more skeptical of UID, andinstead of seeing it as a new bandwagonupon which to jump, he seemed to have ascientist’s reservation, distrusting a newtheory until it has been proven. When askedwhether he felt that UID was “an old playerwith a new name,” he went on to say:

I don’t even know what the old playeris. Is the old player education? I thinkso, I think that’s the old player. A newplayer, Universal Design, is still anew concept or a new tool to throw inthere and see how it works. Just likeopen classrooms were big in the 60s.Did they work? No, they went away.The tool went away.

His skepticism toward UID appeared also tobe a function of a view that teaching, and


our knowledge about how to teach, is anevolving process and not an absoluteendpoint. This was evident when he went onto say:

Universal Design might stay, youknow constructivism, probably not, Ihope not, something better will comealong. Likewise, am I going to beteaching the same way 40 years fromnow, 30 years from now? I hope not, Ihope something better comes along.

In terms of pedagogy and curriculumdesign, Jerry marched to his own beat. Eventhough he did indicate struggling with someissues, like how to effectively engagestudents with visual impairments and how tobalance the tension between “old school,new school” pedagogy, UID principlesappeared to have no place upon which toalight (as they had for John), even fleetingly,in Jerry’s mind. Rather, to him, UIDprinciples were but another fruit to beobserved in his journey through the forest, afruit simply left to ripen on the branches oftheory and of little need to him, alreadysustained by current practice: his own beat,his pedagogical predilection to have“students do things in their strengths.”

Case 3: Revelation

Margaret is a professor of Humanitiesand French at a small Midwestern liberalarts college. At the time of the first

interview, she had been teaching for nineyears and in that time had been aware ofbetween 11 and 15 students with disabilitieswho had enrolled in her courses.

Margaret’s reaction to UID principleswas very enthusiastic, and embodies therevelation type of response. In the past, shehad relied heavily on Disability Services toprovide accommodations for students withdisabilities, but UID principles helped revealher role in creating an equal accessclassroom. For Margaret, UID principlespromoted a way of thinking about accessthat is contrary to the notion ofaccommodation. As a result, she reported abroad array of behavioral and affectiveoutcomes.

Unlike John and Jerry, Margaret wasperhaps more of a novice in working withstudents with disabilities, though she didn’treport having encountered fewer students inthe classroom than had Jerry. When askedabout her level of disability awareness, sheadmitted that it was “fairly low . . . in termsof knowing that students had a particulardisability, but not really knowing how toaccommodate them unless I got informationfrom Disability Services.”

Margaret’s approach to accommodationwas very traditional and reactive, rather thanproactive. For example, she said that: “whendisability services would contact me with astudent who had a disability we would try


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to, you know, find a substitute way for thatstudent [to do an activity].” She talked abouthaving been “fairly successful in trying tofind alternative testing, ways to take tests forstudents with dyslexia, for example, justgiving them extra time or putting them in adifferent room.” She also talked about how,in response to specific students withdisabilities, she had provided tape-recordedlectures or made modifications to thephysical environment.

In some ways, Margaret appeared to bemore of a “clean slate” than Jerry or John, interms of her receptivity to UID principles.She received UID principles veryenthusiastically, saying that it was “just sortof the idea of Universal Design,” which laybehind the myriad ways in which she hadchanged her course since participation in theworkshop. Unlike John, who honed in on theuse of technology to enhance learningopportunities, Margaret made use of manyprinciples. She incorporated natural supportsfor learning by “making printed materials inadvance” for her classes, and building up areserve of these materials. She had becomemore flexible and creative in terms ofinstructional methods and assessmentpractices. For example, she indicated thatshe was doing “more active, moreperformance-based things in class”, doing“more in class presentations as a basis ofevaluation,” and evaluating students “onsome less formal levels . . . ways for them to

show that they have learned something . . .[other than] high powered written tests.”She had also started to use more peercollaboration in the classroom as a way to“give [students] extra opportunity andreinforcement” in the learning process. Thiscreated another instructional mode andperformance feedback mechanism. She alsomentioned the positive effect that UIDprinciples had on the classroom climate andhow she now thinks differently “in terms ofinteractions with students, in terms ofmaking, or trying to improve, the comfortlevel of [her] students.” Even though, priorto CTAD, she felt that she “had always beensomewhat good at creating a good classroomclimate,” after the workshop the UIDprinciples helped further bolster classroomclimate by promoting a classroomcommunity where “everyone [has] aresponsibility within the class,” andpedagogy plays to students’ strengths andmoves toward a more collaborativeendeavor where students work together, andwith the instructor, to develop knowledgeand understanding.

For Margaret, UID principles appeared tobe rather transformative. When talkingabout how her notion of accommodation hadchanged, she said that UID principles helpedmove her from “that idea of ‘well, there isthis one student that I have to figure outwhat to do with’” toward the moreprogressive idea of “restructuring the whole


class.” Her reservations about “the idea ofrestructuring the whole course toaccommodate one student” were mollifiedby “the idea of Universal InstructionalDesign [which] really changes the way thatyou can think about [course restructuring].”Furthermore, the principles seemed tooperate as a pedagogical heuristic—atoolbox to help improve instruction—asevinced by her statement that:

I have a little 3 by 5 card on mycomputer now with a list of all theUID strategies that I can use. Youknow, and there is a list of like 15things that I can do, like criteria andbase learning, putting all materials onreserve, testing in the same manner asteaching and things like that.

In applying UID, Margaret was seeingpositive results in her own classroom as wellas the model’s potential appeal for herdiscipline. She noted how “some of thoseprinciples are very similar to what’s goingon in language pedagogy these days,” butthat “some of the aspects of what we doaren’t working quite well yet.” She went onto say how she hoped that as she learnedmore about UID she would be able todovetail UID principles with currentmovements in language pedagogy. With thisvision in mind, she felt that UID “isdefinitely going to influence us positively inthe future.”

Case 4: An Advisor’s Perspective

Edward is an advisor at an urbanMidwestern university in a unit that serves apopulation of students diverse with respectto race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, anddisability status. Although Edward doeshave some teaching duties, his primary roleis as an academic advisor. He also has donesome work as an advocate for students withdisabilities. At the time of the first interview,he had been advising students forapproximately eight years. He indicatedhaving a high degree of disabilityawareness, although he did indicate thatCTAD had “piqued my curiosity to look intolearning disabilities a little bit more.” In thepast he had primarily worked with studentswith physical or sensory disabilities.

Edward described how several UIDprinciples could be used by student servicespersonnel and administration to lessen thebarriers for students with disabilities inpostsecondary education. He described howhis advising unit had taken actions toenhance the institutional climate for studentswith disabilities by incorporating moredisability information in admissions andorientation materials and student servicestraining. He described how he wasattempting to work with universitygovernance in order to increase theaccessibility of the disability documentationprocess. He also mentioned how theadministration should work to determine the


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essential components of general and specificdegree requirements.

Edward talked about being frustrated bystudents who might not disclose theirdisability: students who get “into trouble[and have] never told me of a learningdisability until they are in trouble.” He notedhow characteristics of the institution and ofthe student both contribute to non-disclosure. Students with disabilities maycome to postsecondary education lackingself advocacy skills because someone elsehad “made sure that they had got all of theiraccommodations in K-12.” Students may getto college thinking that it is a fresh start, thattheir disability will not pose barriers, andthat “everything is going to be magicallydifferent.” Nondisclosure may further bepropagated by postsecondary policy, whichrequires that a disability be documentedbefore services can be provided but does notrequire that the postsecondary institution beresponsible for documentation. Edwardnoted how this is especially problematic forstudents with learning disabilities, who mayneed current documentation in order toreceive services. If this documentation doesnot come from the high school, the financialburden of testing and documentation willfall upon the student, and many studentssimply can’t afford the testing. In order toaddress issues of student-institutionrelations and institutional climate that mightpreclude students from disclosing their

disability, Edward noted how, sinceparticipating in the workshops, he and otherstudent services staff have been

looking at things we can do in termsof working with [DisabilitiesServices] and admissions along thelines of sending out information . . .[coming] up with a parent’s package. . . something . . . to parents saying ifyour child is diagnosed with an LDmake sure that you go to the highschool to get a copy of the file and thepaper work and forward it to theoffice for students with disabilities.

As well as talking about easing thetransition into postsecondary education, healso talked about how measures were beingtaken to improve the institutional climate forstudents with disabilities. He noted how thestudent services staff in his unit has

had a frank discussion that ourdefinition of culture was too narrow,and we work hard to make this placeas comfortable to students who areracially and ethnically different fromthe dominant culture, and we do agood job, but we do have a fairnumber of disabled students andwonder if we are doing the samething.

Furthermore, he noted how “since CTAD[we have] set up kind of a special training


for staff with disabilities services where wereally spent a better part of the day withthem . . . all morning discussing variousservices.”

In order to increase student access toaccommodation, through his membership ona university governance committee, he wasalso exploring ways to incorporate naturalsupports for disability documentation. Henoted how there are “competent people” oncampus who could provide testing fordisability, but that currently the university is“farming it all off campus,” hence creatingmore roadblocks for students withdisabilities.

Edward also noted some concern overthe inflexibility of policy and procedure ininstitutions, programs, or departments. Henoted how some degree requirements justmight not make sense for students withcertain disabilities and how UID principlescould be used by administration to makeprograms more flexible and accessible in thesame way that the principles are used byfaculty to make courses more flexible andaccessible.

Edward’s case demonstrates how someUID principles can be used in the studentservices context to design or modifymaterials, communications, and policies andprocedures. He did note, however, that“Universal Design is a little bit harder toincorporate” in advising. He did seem to

believe that the principles had merit; he wasjust struggling with how they couldspecifically be translated into practice forstudent advising. He talked about how heand other advisors were using UIDprinciples when engaging in course scheduleplanning with students to “put all students inclasses their first term that would betterguarantee that they would be successful.”However, he did go on to say how thisapproach met with conflict from otheradministration. There were certain coursesin the college for which there was animplied “one rule fits all” approach in termsof when the courses should be taken in astudent’s career. Following UID and beingflexible in course scheduling had beendifficult for advisors because they weregetting conflicting messages fromenrollment management personnel who wereconcerned that advisors were recommendingstudents away from certain classes thatneeded to be filled.

Edward appeared to be seeking out otherways in which UID could be applied toadvising. He noted how he and otheradvising staff were “trying hard” to findother ways UID could be incorporated inadvising. But, he went on to acknowledgethat some of this difficulty could be due tothe nature of the advising model used in hiscollege. He said that “the difference betweenbeing in the classroom and utilizingUniversal Design and working in advising,


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which is 99% a one-on-one activity, is inadvising you have the opportunity to reallytreat each student . . . as a uniqueindividual.” He clearly regarded the UIDmodel in a very positive light, noting howthe principles would definitely have anapplication if the college were to move to agroup advisement model. He did feel thatUID had a place in advising, but that itsplace had not yet been fully realized. Hesaid that he would look for “UniversalDesign in advising” at professionalconferences and in the literature, noting thatmaybe “just hearing [Universal Design]presented in a different way will pop offsome flashlight enlightenment.”

Conclusion

Based upon participants’ reactions toUID, it appears that this model does holdpromise as a viable approach to curricularand programmatic design. Despiteindividual differences in job duties,discipline, personal and pedagogicalphilosophies, and instructional challengesmost participants were attracted to someaspect of UID. Only one of the eightparticipants interviewed exhibited the coldshoulder reaction to the model. However,this person was skeptical of UID notbecause of the basic fundamental tenets ofthe model, but because to him, UID wassimply “a new word for an old thing [i.e.,good teaching].” It appears that participants

were motivated to apply UID principles outof personal beliefs that the instructionalmodel is truly useful and generally feasible.Although many of the participantsinterviewed had already been teaching in amanner aligned with UID, this did notdiminish the appeal that UID principles heldfor them.

There was little indication thatvituperation of UID principles by otherfaculty or administration had interfered withintentions to use the model in practice.However, most of the interviewees did workin a relatively progressive and supportiveatmosphere. One interviewee noted herobservation that the way in which UID isarticulated can make a difference in how itis received by other faculty. She noted that:

When you can talk to [other faculty]about Universal Design . . . andprinciples of curricula transformationto promote accessibility to everybody. . . they are much more open to theprinciples than when you frame thediscussion as ‘you have aresponsibility to make your classaccessible to students with a range ofdisabilities.’

This person’s experience talking with otherfaculty who had not participated in theCTAD program indicated that many facultymay hold misperceptions aboutaccommodation that could ablate the appeal


of UID for curricular transformation.Indeed, literature suggests that many facultyand administrators lack knowledgeregarding students with disabilities and theaccommodation provision (Aksamit, Morris,& Leuenberger, 1987; Bigaj, 1995; Foster,Long, & Snell, 1999; Hart & Williams,1995; Leyser, Vogel, Wyland, & Brulle,1998; Williams & Ceci, 1999). Furthermore,some research has shown that faculty maybalk at providing accommodations if theeffort they must expend in making theaccommodation exceeds the benefit(Bourke, Strehorn, & Silver, 1997; Kalivoda& Higbee, 1998). It thus appears that, ingeneral, faculty and administrator attitudetoward UID may be most positive when themodel’s promise for improving educationfor all students is first emphasized, followedby articulations of the specificsubpopulations for whom it holds benefit.

References

Ajzen, I. (1985). From intentions to actions:A theory of planned behavior. In J. Kuhl& J. Beckman (Eds.), Action-control:From cognition to behavior (pp. 11-39).Heidelberg, Germany: Springer.

Aksamit, D., Morris, M. & Leuenberger, J.(1987). Preparation of student servicesprofessionals and faculty for servicinglearning-disabled college students.Journal of College Student Personnel,28, 53-59.

Bigaj, S. J. (1995). Accommodationstrategies for postsecondary studentswith learning disabilities: A survey offaculty attitudes and use. Unpublisheddoctoral dissertation, University ofConnecticut, Storrs, CT.

Bourke, A., Strehorn, K. C., & Silver, P.(1997, March). Tracing the links in thechain of accommodation: A study ofUniversity of Massachusetts’ facultymembers’ provision of accommodationsto students with learning disabilities.Paper presented at the annualconference of the American EducationalResearch Association, Chicago, IL.

Chubon, R. C. (1990). Attitudes towarddisability: Addressing fundamentals ofattitude theory and research inrehabilitation education. RehabilitationEducation, 6, 301-312.

Feldman, M. S. (1995). Strategies forinterpreting qualitative data. ThousandOaks, CA: Sage.

Foster, S., Long, G., & Snell, K. (1999).Inclusive instruction and learning fordeaf students in postsecondaryeducation. Journal of Deaf Studies andDeaf Education, 4, 225-235.


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Hart, R. D., & Williams, D. E. (1995).Able-bodied instructors and studentswith physical disabilities: A relationshiphandicapped by communication.Communication Education, 44, 140-154.

Kalivoda, K. S., & Higbee, J. L. (1998).Influencing faculty attitudes towardaccommodating students withdisabilities: A theoretical approach.Learning Assistance Review, 3(2),12-25.

Leyser, Y., Vogel, S., Wyland, S., & Brulle,A. (1998). Faculty attitudes andpractices regarding students withdisabilities: Two decades afterimplementation of Section 504. Journalof Postsecondary Education andDisability, 13, 5-19.

Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994).Qualitative data analysis: An expandedsourcebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Williams, W. M., & Ceci, S. J. (1999).Accommodating learning disabilitiescan bestow unfair advantages. TheChronicle of Higher Education, 45,B4-B5.

Yin, Y. K. (1989). Case study research:Design and methods. Newbury Park,CA: Sage.


Community Colleges and Universal DesignJudy SchuckUniversity of Minnesota

Jane LarsonMinneapolis Community and Technical College

Community colleges are committed to serving all segments of society through open access admissions, allowingequal and fair access to all students. The diversity of community colleges makes Universal Design’s “one size doesnot fit all” approach very compelling. At the same time, community colleges face significant challenges infulfilling the promise of Universal Design (UD) and Universal Instructional Design (UID) because of thisdiversity and the limited resources available to both students and institutions. This chapter presents a descriptionof community college students, their diversity and challenges in accessing higher education, as well as theopportunities and challenges colleges encounter in the implementation of UD and UID.

When we consider the history andmission of community colleges, itseems particularly fitting to

include this chapter in a book on UniversalDesign (UD). In fact, we could view thecommunity college model itself as ametaphor for this inclusive approach todelivering education. If we change thequestion an architect first asks in universallydesigning a building, “Who are the peoplewho will need to access this building?” to“Who are the people who will need toaccess this education?” we get some idea ofwhat the founders of community collegeshad in mind.

Community colleges were formed in theearly 20th century with the goal of providinga gateway to opportunity for many youngpeople who otherwise would have beendenied access to higher education (Phillippe& Patton, 2000). Although the earliest juniorcolleges may differ from today’scomprehensive community colleges, thisgoal of access still remains central to thecommunity college mission. This mission ischaracterized by a commitment to servingall segments of society through anopen-access admissions policy (i.e., openenrollment) that offers equal and fairtreatment to all students (Vaughan, 1999).Whether young or old, affluent or

CHAPTER 4Community Colleges and UID

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economically disadvantaged, new to collegeor returning after time out, planning toenhance basic skills or transfer to ultimatelyearn a graduate degree, students who attendcommunity colleges are seeking anenvironment that has been designed toaccommodate them. Such an environmentcalls for a flexible and inclusive model ofdelivering education and makes UD’s “onesize does not fit all” approach particularlycompelling.

In this chapter, we will first present adescription of community college students,addressing both their diversity and thecharacteristics that make it more difficult forthem to access higher education. We willthen consider the features of communitycolleges that facilitate the implementation ofUniversal Design and UniversalInstructional Design (UID) as well as thespecial challenges community colleges facein its implementation.

Characteristics ofCommunity College Students

For the students who enroll in them,community colleges are often the firststudent experience in accessing highereducation, a first experience in education inthis country, or a return to school afterseveral years of absence. Communitycolleges serve students of all ages and ethnicand cultural heritages, students with life and

time conflicts, and students possessing agreat range of skill levels. Communitycolleges also serve as the entry point tohigher education for many students withdisabilities. More adult students thantraditional-age students are likely to accesseducation in the community in which theylive. Students who are still in high school, orwho have left school before the age of 18,also access community colleges throughconcurrent enrollment during high school.Only 32% of community college studentsare between the ages of 18 and 22, oftenconsidered the “traditional” college age.Forty-six percent of students are 25 years orolder; 32% are age 30 years or older. On theother hand, 4% of students are under the ageof 18. Across the nation the average age ofstudents attending community colleges is 29years (National Center for EducationStatistics, as cited in Phillipe & Patton,2000).

Ethnic and cultural diversity varies withthe community being served. Nationally,over 30% of community college enrollmentis comprised of students representingminority groups. This number is growing;minority student enrollment increased from25% in 1992 to over 30% in 1997.Meanwhile, at four-year colleges, minorityenrollment increased from 21% to 24%during the same period. In 1997 students ofHispanic origin represented 11.8%; Blackstudents, 11.1%; and Asian students, 5.8%.


Today, more Native American and Hispanicstudents attend community colleges than allother postsecondary institutions combined(National Center for Education Statistics, ascited in Phillipe & Patton, 2000).

Nearly two-thirds of community collegestudents attend college less than full time,compared to only 22% at four-year colleges.More than 80% of students work either fullor part time, and 50% work full time. Manystudents under the age of 18 enroll part timeas concurrent college students while stillattending high school. Many students haveadditional responsibilities for raisingchildren and caring for relatives (NationalCenter for Education Statistics, as cited inPhillipe & Patton, 2000).

Open enrollment means that studentsenter community college with a large rangeof skill levels and preparedness, fromstudents at remedial levels to those alreadyhaving degrees. Thirteen percent of collegestudents report that English is not theprimary language spoken at home. Morethan half of all students report that neither oftheir parents had attended a postsecondaryinstitution (National Center for EducationStatistics, as cited in Phillipe & Patton,2000).

The community college system is alsothe entry point for a majority of studentswith disabilities. Community colleges servea higher percentage of students with

disabilities than any other sector of highereducation (Henderson, 1998). Over 50% ofthese students report a disability that affectslearning (Henderson), and many bringadditional complexities to the educationalenvironment. Because community collegesserve as an initial higher educationopportunity for students new to this countryor a second chance for those who havepreviously failed, many of these studentsmay have newly-acquired disabilities ordisabilities that have gone previouslyundiagnosed. They may also have multipledisabilities or additional challengesassociated with the other facets of collegediversity already mentioned.

Because of the diversity described above,it is not possible to describe a typicalcommunity college student, but thefollowing examples are representative ofstudents who attend community colleges:

1. Fatima is 25 years old. She has livedin the United States for less than a year and,other than taking introductory classes inEnglish as a Second Language (ESL), shehas not attended school in this country. Herfirst contact with college is through theadmissions, assessment, and orientationprocess. Her assessments indicate that sheneeds to complete ESL classes before she isready for college level work. She alsoappears to have an undiagnosed hearingimpairment.


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2. Craig is 41 years old. For the past 20years he has been employed in farming butis no longer able to work because of a backinjury. He is married, has three children, andis very motivated to be employed again. Heis undecided about a new career. He reportsthat he liked farming: it was hands-on work;there was variety in what he did all day; andhe admits that he was not “much of astudent” when he was younger. He attendedone year of college after high school, butwas not successful and dropped out.

3. Shawna is 19 and has not yetgraduated from high school. She has anIndividualized Educational Plan (IEP)because of a learning disability and is takingtwo classes at the community college as partof her transition program. As a high schoolstudent, she has had parents who have beenvery involved in her education and haveadvocated for her. This is the first time shehas been independent in school.

These examples reflect the multiplechallenges faced by students at a communitycollege. The student with a disability oftenfaces other challenges such as learningEnglish, supporting a family, and learning tonavigate a system that is new and unfamiliar.

Characteristics That EnhanceUD Implementation

By their very design, communitycolleges have many characteristics that

make them a setting in which UniversalInstructional Design can flourish. Anemphasis on teaching, small classes,hands-on and experiential learning,flexibility in designing and changingcurricula, and meeting students where theyare—all these features facilitate theimplementation of UID.

At the heart of UID is the emphasis onflexible instruction and reflective teaching.Many of the strategies employed under theUID rubric could be considered “just goodteaching” (Hodge & Preston-Sabin, 1997);in fact, UID has been described as “acomplement to the more flexible andinnovative approaches to higher educationthat are currently proffered” (Silver, Bourke,& Strehorn, 1998, p. 48). Because acommitment to teaching is an integral partof their mission, community colleges are aparticularly good fit with UID. Unlikeprofessors in most universities, who areoften not trained to teach and who areexperts in their own disciplines rather thanin pedagogy, community college facultymembers are hired for their pedagogicalskills. They are also recognized andrewarded for good teaching and are notfaced with the research and publicationdemands that generally are placed uponfaculty in other institutions of highereducation. Community colleges also havethe advantage of small class size. Althoughapplying UID principles certainly enhances


instruction in all classes, it may requiremore creativity to utilize such recommendedapproaches as cooperative learning, multiplemeans for students to demonstrateknowledge, and experiential learning inlarge classes than in small classes. In fact,experiential and hands-on learning is centralto much of the technical and vocationalinstruction in comprehensive communitycolleges. It is hardly necessary to encourageor train faculty in programs such as cabinetmaking, information technology, or practicalnursing to offer labs, field trips, practica, orother forms of experiential learning whenthese experiences form the core of thecurriculum.

A related advantage that technical andvocational curricula offer in theimplementation of UID is that in mostcourses the identification of essentialcomponents and technical standards hasalready been accomplished in order to meetcertification and licensure requirements.This identification, which is so critical in theexecution of Universal Instructional Design,is especially important in open enrollmentinstitutions if they are to fulfill theircommitment to serving students of varyingability levels without compromisingstandards.

Flexibility is another characteristic of thecommunity college academic environmentthat enhances the implementation of UID.

Flexibility in design and delivery ofinstruction is a central tenet of UID (ERIC/OSEP, 1998) and a core principle ofcommunity colleges (Phillippe & Patton,2000), which are designed to be responsiveto the needs of students and the communitiesfrom which they come. Consequently, theprocesses for making necessary changes tothe curriculum are generally lesscumbersome and can be completed in ashorter period of time than those found infour-year colleges and universities.

Finally, one of the most importantattributes that aids in the realization of UIDin community colleges is their goal to meetstudents where they are, not where theinstitution might wish them to be. UniversalInstructional Design is based on the premisethat as long as standards are notcompromised, the academic environmentcan be changed to meet the needs of diversestudents (Center for Applied SpecialTechnology, 2001), rather than requiringthese students to change in order to fit into astatic mode of instructional delivery.Community colleges often address this goalof meeting students where they are throughtheir ESL and developmental or remedialeducation programs. Most communitycolleges test incoming students and requirecompletion of prerequisites before studentscan take advanced classes (Phillippe &Patton, 2000). A recent study of remedialeducation in community colleges revealed


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that a majority of the institutions surveyedrequire assessment for all students and 75%of those institutions also require placementinto remedial courses (Shults, 2000). Theaim of these policies is not to keepunqualified students out, but to give themthe tools in remedial classes that they needto succeed in their ultimate goals, whichmay include degree programs and highlytechnical vocational training (Phillippe &Patton, 2000).

Special Challenges

Although community colleges have manycharacteristics that facilitate theimplementation of UID, they also faceunique challenges that can make itsimplementation especially difficult. Thesechallenges derive from both the diversity oftheir student population and from a lack ofresources.

The student diversity that is one of thegreatest strengths of community collegesalso poses one of their greatest challenges.In spite of the best efforts of skillful teachersand advisors, it is often difficult andsometimes impossible to provide access,without compromising standards, to all ofthe students who may enroll in a particularcourse in an open enrollment institution.They may simply lack the prerequisite skillsor have too many external conflicts in theirlives to be successful in their academicpursuits. This diversity does not affect just

the academic program in communitycolleges; it poses challenges in the deliveryof student services as well. For studentservices to be universally designed, theymust be accessible to the same wide rangeof students that instruction must reach,including students who may be veryunsophisticated about higher education. Thisis particularly true in delivering disabilityservices. When beginning college, manystudents with disabilities may have troubledetermining how to access assistance evenwhen the college has published and postedinformation on disability services. Whatmay seem intuitive to others may not be tothe student who comes from a high schoolwith a different form of service delivery,who has never taken on the role ofself-advocate, who speaks English as asecond language, or who did not have adiagnosed disability at the time of lastattendance in school.

Also related to the overall challengeposed by a diverse student body is thechallenge posed by the large numbers ofeconomically disadvantaged and olderstudents who access community collegeswithout even a basic level of computerliteracy. Findings of a recent survey of morethan 100,000 students at 245 communitycolleges revealed that the cost of computersfor education is a major problem for 20% ofthese students. A significant percentage ofsurvey respondents—including 30% ofnoncredit students—also reported that they


had never used the Internet (Phillippe &Valiga, 2000). Given that manyrecommended UID strategies, such asproviding materials in multiple media andcreating digital, networked learningenvironments (Center for Applied SpecialTechnology, 2001), assume a basic level ofcomputer competence, this lack of exposureand access to computers presents aformidable obstacle to be addressed.

In addition to the challenges inherent inan extremely diverse student body, the othermajor challenge that faces communitycolleges in the implementation of UID is awidespread lack of both staff and financialresources. Professional development is a keycomponent in any institution that wishes toadopt Universal Design and UniversalInstructional Design. Even in colleges whereteaching has been the top priority, many ofthe principles on which UID is based will benew to a significant number of facultymembers, and all faculty will benefit froman interdisciplinary exchange of strategiesthat promote access. In some disciplineswhere essential components have not yetbeen identified, training and time will beneeded for departmental review of theirentire curriculum.

The resources needed to accomplish thisprofessional development effort are oftennot available in community colleges. In anideal situation, members of the disabilityservices staff can provide the training. Yet,

in many of the smaller colleges, there is nodisability services office. Services arecoordinated by a single person who alreadyfulfills many roles, and the additional role of“trainer” may not easily be assumed. Thealternative to providing in-house training,hiring external consultants with expertise inUID, requires financial resources that areeither lacking or already committed to othertraining that is mandatory, not merelydesirable (e.g., compliance with theAmericans with Disabilities Act [ADA]).Although this competition for scarcefunding is a widespread problem throughouthigher education, it is particularly acute incommunity colleges, which traditionallyreceive lower per-student funding thanfour-year colleges and universities (S.Nemitz, personal communication, May2001).

A further challenge in providingcommunity college faculty with training inUID is devising ways to reach the largenumber of adjunct faculty. In the academicyear 1996-1997, 66% of the faculty inpublic community colleges was employedon a part-time basis (Phillippe & Valiga,2000). As with the funding needed for UIDtraining, there are many competing demandsfor the time needed when the training mustreach so many part time instructors.

Still another challenge in finding staffingresources for UID implementation isinherent in the very structure of community


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colleges—the lack of an upper division.Many strategies that help make class contentmore accessible, such as SupplementalInstruction or tutoring, can be effectivelyimplemented by juniors and seniors orgraduate teaching assistants in four-yearinstitutions, but are more difficult toaccomplish in two-year community colleges.

Finally, the lack of financial resourcesmentioned above not only impedes theprovision of staff training in UID, but it alsoseverely inhibits community colleges fromutilizing technology to its fullest degree.Just as many of their students have not beenable to afford access to computers prior toenrolling in school, the community collegesthemselves have had great difficulty findingsufficient funding to acquire the state-of-theart technology needed to realize the fullpotential of UID.

Conclusion

By their very nature, community collegesare educational institutions that provide agood fit with Universal Design andUniversal Instructional Design. Theirmission of access and their core values ofdiversity and flexibility create anenvironment in which UD and UID canflourish. At the same time, communitycolleges that seek to implement UD and UIDwill be faced with many challenges. In spiteof these challenges, this model holds greatpromise as an approach that community

colleges can adopt to enhance theircommitment to providing access whilemaintaining excellence.

References

Center for Applied Special Technology.(2001). Universal design for learning.Retrieved January 25, 2002, from http://www.cast.org/udl/

ERIC/OSEP. (1998). A curriculum everystudent can use: Design principles forstudent access. (Topical Brief).Retrieved January 25, 2002, from http://www.cec.sped.org/osep/udesign.html

Henderson, C. (Ed.). (1998). Collegefreshmen with disabilities: A statisticalprofile. Washington, DC: AmericanCouncil on Education.

Hodge, B., & Preston-Sabin, J. (1997).Accommodations—Or just goodteaching? Westport, CT: Praeger.

Phillippe, K., & Patton, M. (2000). Nationalprofile of community colleges: Trendsand statistics (3rd ed.). Washington, DC:Community College Press.

Phillippe, K., & Valiga, M. J. (2000, April).Summary findings. In Faces of thefuture: A portrait of America’scommunity college students. RetrievedJanuary 25, 2002, from http://www.aacc.nche.edu/faces/


Shults, C. (2001, June). Remedialeducation: Practices and policies incommunity colleges. (Research Brief).Retrieved January 25, 2002, from http://www.aacc.nche.edu/Content/ContentGroups/Research_Briefs2/Remedial.pdf

Silver, P., Bourke, A., & Strehorn K. C.(1998). Universal Instructional Designin higher education: An approach forinclusion. Equity and Excellence inEducation, 31(2), 47-51.

Vaughn, G. (1999). The community collegestory. Washington, D.C.: CommunityCollege Press.


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Classroom Strategies


Making a StatementMark PedeltyUniversity of Minnesota

After participating in the Curriculum Transformation and Disability (CTAD) workshop, the author beganpresenting a concerted oral accommodation and access statement on the first day of class. The results wereimmediate and positive, as illustrated with three examples. The author argues that individual accommodations, likethose illustrated here, are an essential part of the process of developing Universal Instructional Design (UID)courses.

My participation in the CurriculumTransformation and Disability(CTAD) workshops yielded

numerous benefits. The most significantoutcome was a course remodeled withUniversal Instructional Design (UID)principles in mind. With UID and access asthe goal, I completed a fairly radical remakeof my Introduction to Cultural Anthropologycourse. I turned what was a course mixingmini-lectures, multiple modes of studentwriting, performance, oral presentation, andindependent field research projects to a lablargely based on student research projectstailored to their individual and collectiveneeds, abilities, and interests. What could bemore universal than curricula designed byand for students in collaboration with theirinstructor?

However, perhaps the most importantcourse modification to come out of myparticipation in the workshops was also thesimplest and easiest to institute. In fact, itonly took a few minutes. I added an oralstatement to my written syllabus statementconcerning disability, accommodation, andaccess issues. Although I had putaccommodation statements in previoussyllabi, I had never thought to perform anoral accompaniment in class. Part of thereason is that I find repeating syllabi pageby page to be a fairly perfunctory ritual. Asa result of this general antipathy for thetypical syllabus introduction, I had neverbefore thought to orally reinforce the writtenaccommodation statement. The CTADworkshop motivated me to do so, withpositive results.

CHAPTER 5Making a Statement

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The results of the oral announcementwere immediate and profound. In previoussemesters I often had to wait weeks beforediscovering that a student neededaccommodation. The written statementsimply was not sufficient. However, inseveral of the courses I have taught sinceadding the announcement, students haveapproached me that same day to tell meabout their particular needs and, in a fewcases, to request accommodations. I havebeen reminded that the seeminglyinsignificant act of articulation makes all thedifference. More of a text based learnermyself, I often forget that for many peopleinformation is not relevant until put intooral, and perhaps even dialogic, form.

This chapter is about the oralaccommodation statement I now perform inmy classes. After a short description of thatperformance, I will describe three caseswhere it has made a difference. I will thendiscuss the ancillary benefits of making thestatement. The goal is not simply to arguefor the inclusion of an oral statement, butalso to examine the role of accommodation,in general, as it relates to UniversalInstructional Design (UID). I suggest thatminor acts of accommodation, such as thosedescribed here, help us move closer to theultimate goal of creating courses withuniversal access.

The Statement

My typical method for presenting thesyllabus is to give students an “opensyllabus” quiz on the first day of class. Thequiz questions relate to the most essentialelements of the syllabus and get students inthe habit of using it as a working document.A quiz question concerning theaccommodation statement can helpemphasize the point.

However, nothing is as useful as oralperformance in getting across a point,especially when the rest of the presentationis more text based. The move from text totalk signals that something important isabout to be announced. With that in mind, Idecided to add a short statement after wediscuss the open syllabus quiz. Rather thanrepeat the written statement, I put down mysyllabus for an impromptu lecture on thepoint. I said something like the following:

I want to say a few words aboutaccess. I think that it is very importantfor all students to have completeaccess to the course. Sometimes thereare aspects of a course that make itdifficult for some students to fullyparticipate. For example, studentswith disabilities may needaccommodations so that they willhave the same level of access to thecourse as other students. I encourage


you, if you have a disability thatrequires such an accommodation, toapproach me after class, visit officehours, or contact me immediately sothat together we can make sucharrangements. Also, if you have notvisited Disability Services to receivea letter certifying and explaining yourdisability, you should do so as soon aspossible. You will find them veryhelpful. If you have never beendiagnosed with a learning disability,but have reason to believe that youhave a learning disability, I encourageyou to visit Disability Services to betested and, if so, receive the help youneed and deserve to have full accessto your college education. Everystudent has a right to full educationalaccess and I want to do whatever isnecessary to make certain that yougain such access in this course. Pleaseread the syllabus statement for furtherinformation, including the campusaddress for Disability Services.

As is true in much of teaching, theperformative act of delivering the statementis more important than its specific content. Imake a point of presenting theaccommodation invitation with a level ofinflection, eye contact, and projection thatgoes beyond that which I typically use fordelivering course content.

I have been struck by the amount ofattention students pay to the statement. Theglossy-eyes and distant stares that normallygreet introductory syllabus presentationsgive way to rapt interest. Either this issue isof intrinsic interest to the students or thestatement works as intended, raising studentawareness of and interest in access issues. Itis probably a bit of both. Regardless of thereason, the statement has worked to asurprising degree. I am pleased to havediscovered the importance of the oralperformance, while at the same time I am abit embarrassed that I did not think of doingit earlier in my teaching career. If it were notfor CTAD, I might never have bothered.

Student Impact

The statement produced immediateresults. In the first case, a student with avisual impairment asked me to change thecolor of my PowerPoint font from blue toblack. It was a subtle change, and extremelyeasy to execute. However, it was remarkablein the sense that rarely before had a studentasked me for accommodation after the veryfirst class meeting. Usually, students wouldwait to feel comfortable with me beforemaking such an approach. In other words,the statement worked; it produced a moreimmediate sense among the students that Iwas approachable, particularly when it cameto questions of access, diversity, and equity.


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I might have written off that very cursoryexperience had I not continued to experiencethe same response in subsequent classes.The next semester, a student came up to me,thanked me for making the statement (a sadcommentary on students’ low expectations)and told me about his particular learningdisability. It would be inappropriate toprovide further details for reasons ofanonymity, but suffice it to say that theinvitation produced the intended resultsonce again.

The student presented his DisabilityServices letter after the next class meetingand we discussed potential accommodations.Because I do not use timed tests and allowstudents to choose from a variety of methodsto communicate their learning, there was notneed for significant accommodations.However, my awareness of his disability andthe relationship we began to establish as aresult bore obvious fruit. The student didwell in the course.

A third and final case took place during acourse involving field study in Mexico. Imade another pitch concerning the need forall students to have full access to the course,including the experiential field components.I did not want any students to encounterobstacles to the field experience. Forexample, we were planning on climbing apyramid at Teotihuacan and reading a shortstory from the summit. In addition to trying

to ascertain the accommodation needs ofindividual students, I designed the statementto appeal to students who might begrudge amodified course schedule. Hopefully, if theywere aware that there could be studentsamong them requiring other options, theymight be less resistant to group changes.

A student approached me that day, notingthat he had limited mobility and severalhealth conditions that I should be aware of.Once again, it would be inappropriate toelaborate. However, it is fair to say thatmore learning was made possible thanks tothe student’s helpful approach. Hespecifically cited the oral statement as hismotivation for doing so. Would he haveclimbed the pyramid if I had not made thestatement? Would he risk health andlearning for sake of participation in anactivity for which there were definitecollective alternatives?

We met at the base of the pyramid, in adelightful garden that was more conduciveto discussion anyway. Those who desired toclimb would have plenty of time to do solater. I have adopted that as my metaphor forthe issue of accommodation, in general, andthe importance of making the oral statement,in particular. I imagine generations ofstudents struggling to climb overeducational barriers, simply because I neverbothered to invite them to talk to me aboutobstacle-free alternatives.


As a result, I have begun to think of itnot as a statement, per se, as much as anopen invitation. The oral performanceprovides a more personal and humaninvitation to the student to engage incollaborative discussion. Not one of thethree students mentioned here had anobvious disability. I would have remainedunaware had they not approached me. Basedon comparative experience, I doubt any ofthem would have approached me based onthe written statement alone. The resultingdiscussions have produced not onlyindividual remedies, but also permanentcourse modifications in the spirit of UID.

Universal Design and Access

I have discovered several other benefitsto the oral performance of theaccommodation statement. For example, ithas helped me deal with the occasionalgratuitous or manipulative use of disabilityclaims. We would like to believe that thisnever happens, but I have experienced itthree times, each time involving AttentionDeficit Disorder (ADD). On each occasion,students who were off task during class haveshouted something like, “But I’ve gotADD!” when asked to get back to classwork.

My response to such a statement wouldbe the same, regardless of whether or not Imade the oral statement. I later take thestudent aside and suggest that the student

should visit Disability Services, if he or shehas not done so already, and I discusspotential accommodations with the student.As might be expected for students whopresent their disability in that public andvocal fashion, they often do not follow upwhen encouraged to do so. Either thesestudents are not dealing well with their ADDor ADHD (i.e., Attention DeficitHyperactivity Disorder) and are not lookingfor the help they need, or, in certain cases,they may not even have been diagnosed asADD or ADHD, but are instead making anextremely bad joke out of a very seriouslearning problem. This is the sort ofdisingenuous and manipulative act thatcauses other students and faculty to questionthe validity of some learning disabilities(LD) attention deficit diagnoses and makesthe lives of those struggling with disabilitieslike LD, ADD, and ADHD that much moredifficult (Williams & Ceci, 1999).

This is certainly not to say that ADD andADHD claims should be dismissed. To thecontrary, the general constellation ofbehaviors that we in the United States havedefined as ADHD are also evident in othercultural contexts, albeit there is greatvariability in terms of how childrenexhibiting such “behaviors are evaluated andmanaged” (Brewis, Schmidt, & Meyer,2000, p.826). It is a serious problem forthose who experience it. However, thestudents in question use public exclamation


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of their condition to excuse extremelydisruptive behavior. Having established thatI am open to matters of accommodation bypresenting the introductory statement, I feelon much more solid ground when dealingwith these potentially gratuitous uses of veryserious disabilities later in the course.

On a related point, making theintroductory statement helps to establish arelationship of trust with students withdisabilities. Many students harbor a well-founded fear that they will be treateddifferently in class if they reveal theirdisability to the professor. There arenumerous pedagogical benefits to that sortof trust. For example, I challenge studentsconstantly, asking them to take risks andstretch in order to learn. Without trust, thatis difficult to achieve. Students think that Iam picking on them. They invent reasonswhy I would select them in particular. Forexample, students with disabilities mightthink that it has something to do with theirdisability. The relationship of trust firstforged by the initial statement and contactwith the student facilitates this later work. Ido not have to be overly concerned thatstudents will think of my challenges assomething related to their particular abilitiesor some perceived lack thereof.

The most interesting and unanticipatedbenefit of the statement, however, is theeffect it has upon the general studentpopulation. As mentioned above, nearly all

students demonstrate inordinate attention tothe statement, regardless of whether or notthey have a diagnosed disability. Part of thismay be the nature of my performance. As Imentioned earlier, I indicate by verbal andphysical cues that the statement is of specialimportance. However, I believe that it goesbeyond that. I teach in a developmentaleducation program. That means that studentsare often stigmatized by their placement inmy classes. They often see it as punishmentfor past academic failures and, therefore,they view me as judge and jury. In short,they are wary of me.

The statement begins to chip away at theexecutioner’s mask students project uponme. They interpret my statement concerningaccommodation as an indication that Imaintain a positive orientation towardstudent success in general. The statementthus sets a positive tone for the course andallows me to start establishing a relationshipof trust with the class as a whole.

Accommodation and UID

The meaning of the accommodationstatement goes beyond the fairly limitedintent denoted in the words (i.e., to findreasonable accommodations for studentswith disabilities). The accommodationstatement performance connotes deepermeanings, particularly in a developmentaleducation setting. It reaches all students atsome level, presaging, acknowledging, and


speaking toward potential feelings ofdiscrimination and resistance, whilepositively signifying the instructor’s intentto make the course universally accessibleand adaptable to students’ needs andproclivities.

The outcomes of the three examples ofaccommodation described above may helpillustrate the point. After changing myPowerPoint fonts, I was that much moreaware of the need for clearer text andredundant methods for delivering essentialinformation. Similarly, after beingapproached by the field study student, Ireconstructed the field assignments so thatthe basic core of the experience could beaccomplished regardless of physicalabilities. Now those particularaccommodations will no longer benecessary, because they have been built intothe course. Just as the curb cut evolved froma disability-based accommodation to adesign used for a range of access purposes,so too, these seemingly small courseaccommodations can accrete to producemore robust and accessible coursesbenefiting all students.

The same was true of the third case. Thestudent taught me how to better teach otherswith his particular disability. I learned inpractice what I had read in theory: thatstudents with that particular condition needextra time. Instead of my typical, oftenfrenetic teaching style, I began to develop a

more sedate approach, to the benefit of allstudents. Particularly when dealing withstudents with the learning disability inquestion, I now sit, often silently, for longperiods, and generally mirror their pace ofcommunication, so that our conversation canproduce meaningful results. Instead ofsimply expecting students to accommodatemy own, often dysfunctional means andmethods of communication, I reciprocate byadapting to and accommodating theircommunication and learning styles as well.

The difference between being slow, inthe colloquial definition of the term (i.e.,“slow” as in “lacking intelligence”) anddeliberate was made particularly clear to mein that case. The student in questionproduced perhaps the best work in the class,not despite his different mode of learning,thinking, and communicating, but becauseof it. He made me more aware of theproblem many people like me have, that ofgoing too fast. Although there can beconundrums involved (e.g., how does oneteach courses where students in the sameclass require both faster and slower-pacedcommunicational modes?), simply askingthese difficult questions can lead toinnovative and effective solutions.

Conclusions

As these fairly basic examplesdemonstrate, minor accommodations canlead to greater access for all students. In


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other words, accommodation is notnecessarily a developmental step that needsto be surpassed in order to achieve the morelofty aims of UID. Rather, accommodationis part and parcel of the process of workingtoward what is ultimately an impossiblegoal: universal access. Just as considerationsof accommodation gave rise to UniversalInstructional Design in the field ofDisability Studies, so too, careful attentionto questions of accommodation byindividual instructors may aid in thedevelopment of courses that respond betterto a diverse range of students’ proclivitiesand abilities.

Accommodation is the possible processthat helps us continue working towarduniversal curricular access. In fact,accommodation is a prerequisite forteaching any student. We constantly askstudents to adapt to our universe. In otherwords, we ask them to accommodate ourway of communicating and thinking asteachers, and adapt to our instructionalneeds, interests, and idiosyncrasies. We mustin turn learn to adapt to students’ needs,interests, and desires, accommodating themso that effective learning can take place.Teaching always involves adaptation andaccommodation. That process can beginwith a simple statement.

References

Brewis, A., Schmidt, K. L., & Meyers, M.(2000). ADHD-type behavior andharmful dysfunction in childhood: Across-cultural model. AmericanAnthropologist, 102(4), 823-828.

Williams, W. M., & Ceci, S. J. (1999,August 6). Accommodating learningdisabilities can bestow unfairadvantages. The Chronicle of HigherEducation, B4-B5.


Charting a New Course: LearningCommunities and Universal DesignRashné R. JehangirUniversity of Minnesota

This chapter will examine the manner in which learning communities can serve as an effective vehicle forincorporating Universal Design into courses that are already thematically tied together. Clearly Universal Designcan be incorporated successfully into individually taught courses. Learning communities, however, present theadditional dimensions of affective connections, peer support, cooperative learning outcomes, and facultycollaboration that naturally lend themselves to the tenets of Universal Instructional Design (UID).

Any college or university catalog orliterature includes images andlanguage suggesting that students

who attend this institution are special. Theymay be especially bright, in the top 10% oftheir high school classes, especially talentedin a broad range of extracurricular activities,or simply special because each one will betreated not as a number but as a uniqueindividual. Interestingly enough, when thesestudents arrive on campus and in ourclassrooms, the term “special” takes on awholly different meaning. “Specialpopulations” is the common catch phrase foradult students, students of color, studentathletes, multilingual students,developmental students, and, of course,students with disabilities.

Because language shapes thought andnomenclature, it is important to considerhow terminology can perpetuate the labelingthat we are seeking to remove from ourclassrooms and communities. Terms likespecial populations serve only to add to the“othering process” (Anzaldua, 2001) withwhich students are already struggling. I amnot suggesting that we assume that everyoneis the same, but rather that the students bringwith them a wealth of knowledge that allowsus to celebrate differences rather than viewthem as deficient, lacking, or incomplete. Inthis vein, Universal Instructional Design(UID) suggests that imbeddingaccommodations into curricular structurebenefits not only students with disabilities,but all students (Silver, Bourke, & Strehorn,1998).

CHAPTER 6Learning Communities

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Like the implementation of UniversalInstructional Design, participation inlearning communities can facilitateachievement among all students. GoodsellLove (1999) argues that the growth inlearning communities is the result of tworecent shifts in higher education. The first isa shift from teaching to learning (Barr &Tagg, 1995) and the second a “shift fromviewing knowledge as an acquisition ofinformation to the social construction ofknowledge” (Goodsell Love, p. 6).Similarly, UID complements flexible andinnovative approaches to postsecondaryeducation such as cooperative learning andcomputer-assisted instruction (Silver et al.,1998). Both approaches expand the studentlearning experience; they equally challengeteachers to reexamine their own biases andreturn to the role of learner themselves.Consequently, these teaching approachesnecessitate a type of interdependencebetween instructors and students and a focuson “student learning rather thansubject-matter teaching” (Evenbeck,Jackson, & McGrew, 1999, p. 55).

Finally, the intent of these approaches isto create access to learning. There is atendency to equate accessibility withsimplicity in the same way as it is oftenassumed that access and excellence aremutually exclusive. Accessible educationacknowledges the diversity of today’slearners and uses the strengths of thisdiversity to create environments that make

learning attainable and excellent. UniversalInstructional Design presents a means ofridding ourselves of a divided curriculumand replacing it with a learning space thatcapitalizes on the learning styles of allstudents. The collaborative environment oflearning communities can be a good fit forimplementing an inclusive curriculum.

What Is a Learning Community?

There is a large body of literature onlearning communities and their outcomes.Increased student involvement,interdisciplinary learning, retention,improved quality of thinking andcommunicating, a superior ability to bridgethe gap between academic and socialworlds, and an avenue for facultydevelopment have been attributed tosuccessful well-developed learningcommunities (Elliot & Decker, 1999;Goodsell Love, 1999; Lenning & Ebbers,1999, Tinto, 1998). Lenning and Ebbers’review of the literature identified threespecific ways that the term learningcommunity is used:

Most commonly, learning communityrefers to a curricular approach thatlinks and clusters classes around aninterdisciplinary theme and enrolls acommon cohort of students. Second,in technology circles, learningcommunity refers to a way to linkstudents and faculty through the


Internet. Third, in internationalcircles, learning community describeslinking people from differentcountries. (p. ix)

Other definitions reflect criteria for learningand teaching:

A learning community centers on avision of faculty and students—andsometimes administrators, staff andthe larger community—workingcollaboratively towards shared,significant academic goals inenvironments in which competition, ifnot absent, is at least de-emphasized.In a learning community, both facultyand students have the opportunity andresponsibility to learn and help teacheach other. (University of Miami,1998, as cited in Goodsell Love,1999, p.1)

The intent of learning communities is tocreate a space for dialogue and connectionsbetween disciplines and ideas, but also toextend the intellectual into the socio-culturalexperience of students. Tinto argues thatmost learning communities have “two thingsin common, shared knowledge and sharedknowing” (1998, p.171). It is thisrelationship of collaborative, experiential,and active learning that blurs the linebetween the classroom and the outsideworld, thus setting the stage forinclusiveness and democratic thinking.

Thus, learning communities present a safespace to incorporate Universal InstructionalDesign. There are many differentcomponents and approaches to developing asuccessful learning community. For thepurposes of this chapter I will focus on twoaspects: cooperative learning and facultycollaboration. The three critical componentsfor curricular development using UIDinclude providing a flexible means ofrepresentation, a flexible means ofexpression and a flexible means ofengagement (Orkwis,1998). The followingparagraphs will explore how learningcommunities can be particularly effective atimbedding these components into theclassroom.

To provide a context for the examples Iuse, it will be helpful to understand theframework for the multicultural learningcommunity in which I teach. This learningcommunity contains three classes: a socialscience course titled Multicultural Relations,a first year composition course, andCreativity Art Lab. Students registering forthis community were required to register forall three classes concurrently. This learningcommunity has been designed to helpstudents examine issues of diversity fromdifferent lenses. Using the materials fromthe disciplines of writing, art, history,sociology, and psychology, the learningcommunity as a whole will focus on aninterdisciplinary examination of differentways of knowing and examining the diverse


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world we inhabit. While each class in thecommunity has its own focus, the threecourses relate to each other and the facultyteaching them encourage students toexamine issues of diversity and criticalthinking and to explore connections anddistinctions between some of these ways ofknowing.

Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning has long beenassociated with group or team-basedlearning and is a natural fit for the learningcommunity environment. The most criticalcomponents of this approach involvepositive interdependence among students,shared leadership, individual accountability,development of social skills, and groupprocessing (Johnson, Johnson, & Smith,1991a). Placing students in situations thatencourage face to face (i.e., promotive)interaction and shared resources not onlyenhances critical thinking skills, but alsoheightens affective connections betweenstudents (Johnson, Johnson & Smith; Stage,Muller, Kinzie, & Simmons, 1998). Thisblending of social and cognitive componentssets the stage for the incorporation of UID.

Flexible means of representation requirespresenting materials in multimodal ways.This challenges instructors to presentinformation in accessible formats whileacknowledging that access for one student’slearning style may pose barriers for another

student (Orkwis, 1998). In cooperativelearning communities, presenting materialsin multi-modal formats is required not onlyof the instructor, but also of the students. Inthe social science course I teach within themulticultural learning community, one of thecourse requirements is student presentations.Students are required to work in smallercooperative groups and present or leadclassroom discussion on a variety of topicsranging from race, class, and gender tohomophobia and ableism. Most students arenot practiced at preparing presentations andcan be quite nervous. If being a studentteacher is intrinsic to participating in alearning community, then it behoovesinstructors to both model and train studentsto learn how to present information inflexible ways.

One semester a group of students usedoverhead transparencies or flip charts topresent an overview of their arguments andthen each took turns explaining the conceptsto the class. Given the comfort level that hadbeen established, the remaining studentaudience was quick to point out theirconcerns. “The writing on the overhead istoo small,” or, “You are going too fast and Ican’t find the page you are referring to,please tell me the page number before youbegin reading.” Other students asked formore background on specific readings ratherthan jumping straight into definitions orterms.


The advantage of the learningcommunity format is that the students’ timetogether both in and out of their linkedclasses creates a camaraderie, and hence atrust for honest dialogue and critique. In thisparticular scenario the students learned tobecome adept at asking for means ofrepresentation that reduced perceptual andcognitive barriers.

Instructors within a learning communityhave the advantage of captured time. Theirstudents see each other and engage witheach intellectually and socially more oftenthan non-learning community studentssimply on the basis of time spent in linkedcourses. This time plays a critical role inallowing students to gain ownership of theirlearning experience and view themselves as“members of a distinctive learningcommunity” (Lenning & Ebbers, 1999, p.29). Pascarella and Terenzini’s (1991)extensive research on the collegiateexperience suggests that although a singlecollege course can become a true learningcommunity, it is not likely to happen,primarily because of lack of sufficient timetogether as a class and because lecturingtends to be the dominant mode ofinstruction.

Flexible means of expression can comeabout within the design of the learningcommunity itself. In learning communitiesthat cluster courses around a theme ormetaphor, the nature of the disciplines

themselves demands flexible means ofexpression. Because the learning communityin which I teach is comprised of my socialscience course, a first year compositioncourse, and a performance-based arts course,expression through student presentation,written word, and performance createopportunities for students to communicatetheir ideas in multiple ways. However, thisis only the first layer. As one examines thelimitations of any one means of expression,one can see that creating flexible means ofexpression within each course is also criticalto student success.

Earlier I mentioned the use of studentpresentations in my classroom. Of course,there are challenges with that particularmode of presentation. Clearly, verbalexpression is not accessible for students for“whom speech is not a viable presentationmethod” (Orkwis, 1998 p.3). Yet,demonstrating an understanding of centralconcepts in the social sciences and learningto dialogue and debate about how theseconcepts relate to the lived experience areessential components in my course. As aresult, I have tried two strategies toincorporate UID without compromising theessential components of the course. First,students in cooperative groups can break upthe responsibility of the presentation. Astudent who is more comfortable withvisuals such as images or graphics mighttake the lead on that aspect of thepresentation, while one who is more


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comfortable with organizing text may focuson creating a written outline, and a thirdmember may serve as the reporter or presentthe information to the larger class. Thisapproach allows students to draw onindividual strengths for collective gain. Asstudents familiarize themselves with thedifferent tasks, they can be encouraged totake on roles they may have been lesscomfortable with at the start of the semester.Another method that encourages dialogue isvia e-mail or web-based chat rooms that arelimited to students enrolled in the learningcommunity. Both methods suggest means ofreducing motor barriers to expression.

Cognitive barriers to expression alsoneed to be considered. Explicit strategies arereferred to as providing students “with aseries of steps to prepare and execute”(Orkwis, 1998, p.2) an assignment.Scaffolding is “a temporary support forlearning that is gradually reduced as thestudent develops confidence with the newcontent or skills” (Orkwis, p.2). Thesecognitive strategies are especially relevantin a learning community where students arebeing encouraged to learn via sharing andcooperation rather than an individualisticcompetitive model that is often morefamiliar to them.

As a community, faculty and studentsneed to come together to create a set ofground rules for classroom behavior, debate,

and healthy disagreement. This set of rulesmay be something to which we continue torefer until the students can incorporate theseideas into regular communication. The samecan be said of small learning groups;throwing students into groups withoutexplicit instructions on sharing workload,individual accountability, and participationcan be detrimental to the success of thecommunity. With specific assignments,different instructors within the communitymay create a variety of ways to providescaffolding. In my course, students get adetailed outline on how to write their firstpaper. For the second paper they create anoutline together in the classroom. In thecomposition course, students write drafts foreach paper and may also engage in peerediting. Consequently, students aresimultaneously engaging in flexible meansof presentation, expression, and engagementin each of the three courses while examiningissues of diversity and oppression fromdifferent lenses. Given that thismultimodality exists both within and acrossthe three courses, it can often serve as a roadmap for students who are trying to discernwhat types of learning are most beneficial tothem.

Providing flexible means of engagementchallenges us to create an environment thatallows all students the opportunity to beconnected to their learning. We seek to findbalance between support and challenge,


between novelty and familiarity, and aim toappeal to students who are at differentplaces in their academic journey (Orkwis,1998). It seems like an impossibleundertaking. Yet, consider that in this typeof learning community the same cohort ofstudents is interacting with each other inthree or more common classes. If the sharedcurriculum has provided space forcooperative dialogue, reflection, andprocess, the stage is set for engagement.Trust is also critical to flexible means ofengagement.

In the multicultural learning communitythat I have described, sharing of oneself viawriting, discussion, or performance isinherent to the experience. To share one’swriting with peers is often as anxietyprovoking as doing a presentation orperformance. “To disclose one’s reasoningand information, one must trust the otherindividuals involved in the situation to listenwith respect. Trust is a central dynamic ofpromotive interaction” (Johnson, Johnson,& Smith, 1991b, p. 36). In the learningcommunity environment, trust plays a rolein the encouragement of both flexible meansof expression and engagement. Withoutfeeling supported by peers and instructorsalike, students are unlikely to take risks thatencourage new learning and construction ofknowledge. Thus, to arrive at a place whereflexible means of engagement can besuccessful, we as instructors need to modelthe very behavior we seek from our students.

In presenting material, we need to considerthe extent to which we might apply novelapproaches to our own teaching.

In the multicultural learning community,the students were expected to write acreative, imaginative, historical short storyabout multicultural America. Theassignment asked students to imagine whatit might have been like to come to theUnited States, or to be here interacting withnew immigrants. In the spirit of cooperation,students were invited to bring in copies oftheir story drafts to share with each other.This exercise required students to not onlyreveal their writing ability, but also to sharea very personal perspective on theimmigrant experience in America. I felt thatit was important to model how challenging itcan be to both share of oneself and also totake in constructive criticism. One way toprovide a template for this activity was to dothe assignment myself and allow students tocritique my work. This was an attempt tonormalize constructive criticism and providean environment that was both supportiveand challenging. Students also receivedfeedback on this assignment through processand sharing, via individual meetings withpeers and instructors, and in writing. Manystudents used some aspect of the short storyas a theme in their performances for the artscourse, thus linking their learning andfinding new avenues to gain and expressknowledge.


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All of the strategies addressed above canbe applied to the individual classroom.However, the collaboration and planningthat is critical to learning community designis well suited to the process students andinstructors would naturally engage in whencreating UID based classrooms.

Faculty Collaboration

Boyer argues that the “new Americancollege” needs to reexamine its priorities,the most germane of which includeclarifying the curriculum, creating a sense ofcommunity on campus, and connectingstudents to the real world beyond the wallsof the academy (Coye, 1997). If classroomsare to provide extensions into the real worldand shape citizenship and community,collaboration among instructors may be asensible place to start. If it is fair to say thatour students have been educated within anindividualistic, competitive model oflearning, the same can be said of those whoteach. Both learning communities andUniversal Instructional Design push us tothink outside the parameters of ourdisciplines and the pedagogical structuresinherent to them.

The process of being a participant intraining for UID and collaborating withfaculty within my learning communityhighlighted the connection between the twoapproaches:

1. Planning ahead: Teaching and learningin collaboration with others necessitatestime for planning and process. Teachingcohorts must share their curriculum and alsohave time to discuss shared goals and visionfor the learning community. This means thatchoosing textbooks and sharing syllabi andclassroom activities can include attention toflexible means of representation, expression,and engagement. This type of preplanningallows for several instructional perspectivessuch that preparation for multiple means oftesting or other forms of demonstratingknowledge, for presenting syllabi and text inalternate forms (e.g., books on tape) can bemade available for prospective studentsearly on.

2. Articulation of objectives and fit: UIDencourages faculty to examine the essentialcomponents of their curriculum. The intentis to challenge us to pinpoint the criticalobjectives of the course and to examine thepurpose behind the teaching activities weuse. Do the teaching activities fully reflectthe course objectives and do they serve thepurpose they were intended for? Teaching ina learning community demands that facultyexamine these very questions, but alsoprovides a forum for shared learning anddiscussion with colleagues. This processinvolves specifying instructional objectivesand examining the fit between therepresented disciplines allowing for theincorporation of strategies and approaches


to teaching that most benefit students.Instructors can then customize a curriculumthat reflects both “academic and social skillsobjectives” (Johnson, Johnson, & Smith,1991b, p. 60) with attention to the range ofstudent abilities.

3. Examining student needs: Faculty whoteach within learning communities report amuch greater appreciation of the first yearexperience. Since each teacher has apersonal and unique approach to students,each interacts with the students differentlyand experiences different aspects of astudent’s personality. Sharing theseexperiences provides each faculty memberwith valuable insights into the possiblereasons for a student’s behavior andacademic performance. (Strommer, 1999)

Thus, faculty collaboration not only allowsfor multiple ways of evaluating studentperformance, but can also incorporatescaffolds like time-management activitiesthat help students acclimate to a collegeworkload. Learning community faculty maycoordinate their assignment due dates toprevent excessive overlap. In addition, theymay “reinforce the topics and expectationsof each other’s courses” (Goodsell Love &Tokuno, 1999, p. 10). It can be helpful tohave regular meetings to discuss studentprogress and brainstorm means ofincorporating UID depending on student

needs. Having a sense of students’ learningstyles can play a role when assigningstudents to small base groups for classroomactivities. Faculty awareness of peer groupdynamics can augment modeling socialskills and supportive learning.

4. Practicing what we preach: Learningcommunity collaboration creates collegiallearning groups for faculty in the same wayas their classes create communities oflearning and being for their students. It is aplace where cooperation builds trust and thisallows for “coplanning, codesigning,copreparing, and coevaluating curricularmaterial” (Johnson, Johnson, & Smith,1991b, p.117). Shared learning and teachingmakes us more aware of our own learningpreferences and how this may bias or shapeour teaching pedagogy. The nature ofcollaboration and collective accountabilitymay encourage faculty to try new UIDapproaches and examine the accessibility ofeach other’s curriculum. “The commitmentof physical and psychological energy toachieve the goals of improving one’sinstructional expertise is heavily influencedby the degree to which colleagues aresupportive and encouraging” (Johnson,Johnson, & Smith, p.116). A shared spacefor discussing problems and sharingsuccesses can heighten our experiences asteachers and benefit all the students weserve.


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5. New directions: As with all newapproaches, having a forum to discusscurriculum access is important. Althoughfaculty collaboration within a learningcommunity can provide space for ongoingincorporation of UID, it can also presentopportunities to contribute and constructnew knowledge on the subject—wesometimes call this research.

Case Study

I will conclude with a brief case studydescribing the experience of a student with adisability participating in a learningcommunity. The case study does not addressall types of disabilities, nor is the intent tosegregate the experience of students withdisabilities from that of other learners.Rather, I hope this example illuminates thebenefits of a learning community as avehicle for implementing UID principles.

When asked, David said that he felt thathe was part of the deaf culture, but being ina hearing classroom he was also part of ahearing culture. Students who are non-nativeEnglish speakers may be more tentativeabout their class participation. David’sprimary language is American SignLanguage and he was less likely toparticipate in larger discussions. However,within his small collaborative group he wasfar more involved and even took on the roleof lead presenter. In a reflective learning log,David had an opportunity to express his

thoughts without an interpreter. Describing adiscussion about race and identity issues, hewrote “ I felt really good about the classesdiscussing why we go through this withinour life. It did teach that I wasn’t the onlyone who went through it, even though otherstudents had different colors than me.”Another multiracial student wrote of thesame discussion “We were able to justexpress our own views and experiencesregarding race. It surprised me that their[sic] were not limits put on how much wecan get into detail. Traditionally, I don’tthink that this is common.”

I chose this example to illustrate theextent to which a collaborative learningenvironment can create trust that isnecessary for students to expressthemselves. Providing an opportunity toreflect on racial identity issues both in classand in a reflective writing assignment wasbeneficial to David, but also to otherstudents who may or may not have beencomfortable speaking up in class. Inaddition, the cohesive environment of threeclasses allowed students to feel a sense ofbelonging to the community and awillingness to take risks in their learning.This is true for students of multiple learningstyles.

The last decade has seen a shift inapproaches to social diversity on ourcampuses (Levine, 1991). Curricula have


begun to reflect the various manifestationsof power differentials and worldviews thataffect our students and our teaching. As wemake efforts to acknowledge, value, andcelebrate the multiple means of knowingthat are shaped by the race, culture, age,gender, and ethnicity of our students, weneed to also take note of the extent to whicha culture of ableism excludes not onlystudents with disabilities, but also studentsfrom the aforementioned groups. Bowe(2000) urges us to become aware of our own“culture’s teachings and how those affectyou as an educator” (p.5). The same can besaid of the teachings of your discipline. Howhave these models affected your approach tolearning and teaching? Universal Design andthe learning community design offer usmodels through which to examine thesequestions and also to view the classroomexperience from the lens of others.

References

Anzaldúa, G. (2001). En rapport, Inopposition: Cobrando cuentas a lasnuetras. In P. Rothenberg (Ed .), Race,class, and gender in the United States:An integrated study (5th ed.) (pp.595-601). New York: Worth.

Barr, R. B., & Tagg, J. (1995). Fromteaching to learning—A new paradigmfor undergraduate education. Change,27(6), 12-25.

Bowe, F. (2000). Universal Design ineducation. Teaching nontraditionalstudents. Westport, CT: Bergin andGarvey.

Coye, D. (1997). Ernest Boyer and the newAmerican college: Connecting thedisconnects. Change, 29(3), 20-30.

Elliot, J. L., & Decker, E. (1999). Garneringthe fundamental resources for learningcommunities. In J. Levine (Ed.),Learning communities: New structures,new partnerships for learning(pp.19-28). Columbia, SC: NationalResource Center for The First-YearExperience and Students in Transition,University of South Carolina.

Evenbeck, S. E., Jackson, B., & McGrew, J.(1999). Faculty development in learningcommunities: The role of reflection andreframing. In J. Levine (Ed.), Learningcommunities: New structures, newpartnerships for learning (pp.51-58).Columbia, SC: National ResourceCenter for The First-Year Experienceand Students in Transition, University ofSouth Carolina.


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Goodsell Love, A. (1999). What are learningcommunities? In Levine, J. (Ed.).Learning communities: New structures,new partnerships for learning. (pp.1-8).Columbia, SC: National ResourceCenter for The First-Year Experienceand Students in Transition. University ofSouth Carolina.

Goodsell Love, A., & Tokuno, K. A. (1999).Learning community models. In J.Levine, (Ed.), Learning communities:New structures, new partnerships forlearning (pp. 9-17). Columbia, SC:National Resource Center for TheFirst-Year Experience and Students inTransition, University of SouthCarolina.

Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., & Smith, K.A. (1991a). Active learning:Cooperation in the college classroom.Edina, MN: Interaction.

Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., & Smith, K.A. (1991b). Cooperative learning:Increasing college faculty instructionalproductivity. ASHE-ERIC HigherEducation Report, 4. Washington D.C.:The George Washington School ofEducation and Human Development.

Lenning, O. T., & Ebbers, L. H. (1999). Thepowerful potential of learningcommunities: Improving education forthe future. ASHE-ERIC HigherEducation Report, 26 (6). WashingtonD.C.: The George Washington School ofEducation and Human Development.

Levine, A. (1991). Editorial: The meaning ofdiversity. Change, 23(5), 4-5.

Orkwis, R. (1998). A curriculum everystudent can use: Design principles forstudent access. ERIC/OSEP TopicalBrief. ERIC Clearinghouse ondisabilities and gifted education. (ERIC/OSEP # E586). [Electronic version.]Available: http://ericec.org

Pascarella, E. T., & Terenzini, P. T. (1991).How college affects students: Findingsand insights from twenty years ofresearch. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Silver, P., Bourke, A., & Strehorn, K. C.(1998). Universal Instructional Designin higher education: An approach forinclusion. Equity and Excellence inEducation, 31(2), 47-51.


Stage, F. K., Muller, P. A., Kinzie, J., &Simmons, A. (1998). Creating learningcentered classrooms: What doeslearning theory have to say?ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report26 (4). Washington D.C.: The GeorgeWashington School of Education andHuman Development.

Strommer, D. W. (1999). Teaching andlearning in a learning community. In J.Levine (Ed.), Learning communities:New structures, new partnerships forlearning (pp. 39-49). Columbia, SC:National Resource Center for TheFirst-Year Experience and Students inTransition, University of SouthCarolina.

Tinto, V. (1998). Colleges as communities:Taking research on student persistenceseriously. Review of Higher Education,21(2), 167-177.


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Interpreting and Implementing UniversalInstructional Design in Basic WritingPatrick L. BruchUniversity of Minnesota

This chapter offers an interpretation of Universal Instructional Design as an extension of recent politicalphilosophy and critical theories of justice. It discusses the transformative implications of Universal InstructionalDesign for understandings of developmental writing instruction, describing the author’s own efforts to implementa multi-modal approach to the teaching of writing.

In a society that values equality anddiversity, the concept of a universallydesigned curriculum captures a broadly

shared ideal. Indeed, education scholarshipin the United States might be read as anongoing debate about our successes andfailures in creating neutral, universalcurricular contexts in which different peoplecan learn together. Ideals of universalityhave typically assumed that curricula canescape the relations of power and privilegethat shape public life. Dominant strands ofcurrent social theory and politicalphilosophy challenge this way of thinkingabout what we should be working for as wedesign curricula and policy. In this chapter, Ioffer an interpretation of Universal

Instructional Design (UID) informed by thiscontemporary thinking about justice. I thenhighlight the implications of thisinterpretation of UID for the teaching ofwriting, discussing my own effort toimplement a writing curriculum compatiblewith UID.

Contemporary Social Theory

In her recent study of politicalphilosophy, Iris Marion Young (1991)highlights transformations in ideas of justicethat have resulted from the social theoriesand group movements that emerged in the1960s and 1970s. For Young, feminist,anti-racist, gay rights, disability rights, and

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other movements drew attention to theshortcomings of those definitions of justicethat were understood to be universal in thesense of being timeless and independent ofspecific contexts. As an alternative topursuit of “a self-standing rational theory . . .independent of actual social institutions andrelations” (p. 4), the social groupmovements highlighted the need forunderstandings of justice that were able torecognize and address unintendedconsequences of seemingly or actuallyneutral policies and practices. As Youngexplains, rather than searching for auniversality good for all people and alltimes, contemporary critical theories seejustice as rooted in specific social andhistorical contexts. Here, rather than be anabstract principle that stands outside ofexperience, justice depends upon “hearing acry of suffering or distress or feeling distressoneself” (p. 5). Where more traditionaltheories valued detachment and distance,current theories like Young’s areparticipatory and process oriented.

Building on Young’s arguments about theneed for a more contextual and processualunderstanding of universal justice, Fraser(1997) has recently drawn attention to thedynamic relationship between two domains,the material and the cultural, in the currentsocial and historical context. For Fraser,listening to the experiences and voices ofmarginalized social groups suggests that

injustice operates in different ways on thesetwo conceptually distinguishable, thoughoverlapping planes. The first understandingof injustice is material. Here, attention toinjustice focuses on unequal distribution ofthings like income, property ownership,access to paid work, education, health care,leisure time, and so on. The secondunderstanding of injustice is cultural andsymbolic. Here, injustice refers to “culturaldomination . . . nonrecognition . . . anddisrespect” (Fraser, p. 14). These forms ofinjustice often overlap. Physical disability,for instance, is often related to economicdisenfranchisement. But the conceptualdistinction is useful because it helps drawattention to the fact that economicenfranchisement may not, alone, remedy theunjust relations attached to disability incurrent institutions. Persons labeled asdisabled may still be culturallymarginalized, misrecognized, anddisrespected.

What is useful about disentangling theseoverlapping planes of injustice, then, is thatby doing so we are equipped with a morerobust vocabulary for talking about injusticeand suffering in our midst. Thus equipped,we are better able to recognize the need formultiple and perhaps seeminglycontradictory remedies for injustice. For, asFraser highlights, where emphasis on thematerial view leads people to appreciateinjustices rooted in the political-economic


structure of society and encourages them toadvocate for material equality—remedyinginjustice by redistributing goods andabolishing group difference—the culturalview recognizes the injustice ofmisrecognition and disrespect and thus leadsits proponents to advocate remedyinginjustice through recognition andrevaluation of group specificity. Contendingwith both material and cultural obstacles toequal treatment within significant publiccontexts like schooling, an adequateconceptual foundation for transformingcurriculum must bring togetherredistribution and recognition.

Summarizing the essential insight thatthese movements have helped to generate,Catherine Prendergast (1998) has recentlyargued that, in order to overcome injusticessuch as White privilege and male privilege,“it will not be simply enough to add womenand people of color and stir. Withoutsignificant changes to the profession andpedagogy, women and people of color willcontinue to wind up on the bottom” (p. 50).What is needed are redefinitions of what itmeans to participate in social practices likework and schooling so that part of thepurpose of participating in such practices isto change the practice itself. Within such aview, the universality and thus justness ofour practices becomes participatory—theyare always in the process of being redefinedas we continuously learn more about how

our practices relate to material or culturalinjustice. Instead of creating a system thatapplies to any situation, universality meansworking within concrete contexts to enablemore people to participate more fully indefining inequities and better alternatives.

Although Prendergast’s (1998)recognition of the need for transformation of“the profession and pedagogy” (p. 50)usefully applies current thinking aboutjustice to the educational context, sheconcludes her study by explicitly refusing toaddress classroom issues, pointing to thecompromises that, within acceptededucational discourses, such attentiondemands. She concludes that although “atthis point articles dealing with compositiongenerally incline toward some pedagogicalimperatives,” in order to be true to herevidence “[that] not only is an agenda ofsocialization insufficient forenfranchisement but that it might bedetrimental to enfranchisement” (p. 50), shecan only reemphasize that “we need torecognize that our rhetoric is one whichcontinually inscribes our students asforeigners” (p. 51). If school curricula are toput into practice recent theories ofmulticultural justice, they must betransformed to provide marginalized groupsmeaningful opportunities to participate inand transform educational and otherinstitutions. Our curricula will have toprovide a means for expressing and valuing


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cultural difference in ways that make groupdifference one of the purposes of knowledgeforms like literacy, rather than the foreignelement that pollutes literacy. In the absenceof such respect and recognition,redistribution fails to fulfill its promise.

Universal Instructional Design

Fulfilling the promise of redistributivemeasures will involve more fully connectingsuch remedies to culturally orientedremedies. Growing out of architecture, afield of knowledge in which the connectionsbetween material and cultural issues areuniquely visible, Universal Design (UD), inits affirmation of critical revisionaryfeedback, potentially responds well to ourneed for new models of participating inknowledge. Universal Design as aprofessional movement grew out ofemerging awareness within architecture ofunintended consequences of design featuresthat were thought to be impartial.Specifically, persons with disabilities madebuilding designers aware that their designswere unjust both in terms of the materialaccess they made available and in terms ofthe cultural and symbolic messages they sentto persons with disabilities and to thosetemporarily able bodied. Buildings withstairs at each entrance, with doorknobs orother mechanisms that require particularkinds of dexterity not possessed by all, orother features that make the buildings verydifficult for some persons to use, materially

obstruct equal access. Additionally, suchstructures send cultural messages about whois expected to participate in public life andwho is capable of citizenship, messages thatunjustly misrecognize and disrespect certainpersons.

Universal Design holds great promisewhen translated to curriculum design if weremain aware of the central critical capacitythat, in practice, UD has placed at the centerof the design process—listening to theexperiences of those who use the structure,observing the degree to which the structurefacilitates equal participation, andcontinuously revising. In this sense, I seeUniversal Design as operationalizing acontingent understanding of the term“universal” consistent with the politicalphilosphies I described in the previoussection of this chapter. Universal names anideal and a process rather than a realizedoutcome or a fixed state of affairs. Seeinguniversality as a process values participationand discourages those privileged by currentstructures from ignoring the obligation tolisten, learn, and revise. That revisionsresponsive to particular undesirable effectsof designs also enhance the usability ofstructures in unintended ways is a bonuseffect that should help counter argumentsagainst constant revision.

In my view, Universal Design offerseducators a chance to design curricula fromthe position of listener rather than all


knowing expert. As Young (1997) hasargued, listening plays an important role inidentifying and transforming injustice:

with careful listening able-bodiedpeople can learn to understandimportant aspects of the lives andperspective of people withdisabilities. This is a very differentmatter from imaginatively occupyingtheir standpoint, however, and mayrequire explicit acknowledgment ofthe impossibility of such a reversal.(p. 42)

The lesson here for me is that at its best, thedesign of structures aspires to universalaccess through listening and learning abouthow different people understand theirexperiences in them. With respect to thisimportant process, it seems that curriculardesigners may have an advantage overbuilding designers because our structuresare much more flexible and easily revisable.Thus, there is no reason that curricula needto replicate the situation where buildingsmeet the letter of laws mandating access butfail to fulfill the spirit of equity.

Connecting UIDto Composition Studies:

Redefining Writingas Literacy Work

So far, I have offered an understanding ofUID as a way of applying the insights of

contemporary theories of justice toeducation. This connection provides a wayto practically extend resources developedover the past 30 years within compositionstudies. It holds promise for addressingissues familiar to compositionists and forbroadening attention to issues of access thatcompositionists have largely ignored. At theheart of the emerging attention to disabilityis a recognition on the part of compositionscholars that assumptions about thephysical, emotional, and cognitive normhave negatively impacted the structures wedesign—our curricula, our profession, andpedagogies.

But composition teachers have tended toseparate issues of distribution from issues ofrecognition. Scholars have recentlyconcentrated attention on the overall failureof redistributive pedagogies that narrowlyconceived universality as universal access toa valued set of conventions. Prendergast’s(1998) characterization of such efforts aspotentially “detrimental to enfranchisement”(p. 50) and Fox’s (1993) recent argumentthat “access through language pedagogy . . .is an unqualifiable failure” (p. 42) both drawattention to the professional tendency totheorize about recognition whileemphasizing assimilation in the classroom.The injustice of redistributive pedagogies isless about the limitations of a valued dialectto provide the economic access it promises,though there is that. Additionally, theemphasis on assimilating valued


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conventions creates an educational contextof disrespect in which those who are thebeneficiaries of conventions are able to goon without questioning the ways that thestructures they are operating within unjustlyprivilege them. Transforming the teaching ofwriting in ways that implement the kind ofUID I have discussed holds promise forbetter serving students with disabilities aswell as all others, because all are, ultimately,underserved by curricula that concentratesolely on either issues of distribution orissues of recognition.

Applying UID to the teaching of writingmeans transforming the curriculum toameliorate cultural and material obstacles toeducational equity. Materially, I amspeaking of how the class itself operates—the physical layout of activities, the materialdesign of handouts, texts, the environmentof the classroom, how much time is spent indifferent ways, and so on. Culturally, I amreferring to questions about the identitiesstudents are assumed to have or expected toinhabit by the curricula of the class. As aconceptual framework, UID draws attentionto the interrelation of these cultural andmaterial issues. They both become the focusof critical reflection and potential revision inpursuit of the goal of equity.

The practice of UID has resulted inchanges in the way that I understand what Iwant students to learn, in the assignmentsthat I give, and in the classroom activities

through which we work on assignments.UID provides a framework for shifting ourattention from literacy as a stable skill thatwe want to impart to a more participatoryformulation of writing as a matter ofsimultaneously doing and shaping in pursuitof equality and difference. A term that, forme, names this understanding of whatstudents learn in writing classes is literacywork. In writing classes students learn toparticipate in and reflect on the variouskinds of work that literacy does. They learnto appreciate that language use is a practiceof relating to others and to reflectivelynavigate those relationships.

Applying the insights of UID to writingclasses, the idea of literacy work defineswriting as a reflective and revisionarypractice. That is, when one writes onesimultaneously accomplishes the immediateconcrete goal of communicating in aparticular context and at the same time, oneexpresses ideas about communication in thatcontext. As one student, Asante, phrased thisinsight in a paper for a recent class, “by mewriting this paper in this way, I amcommunicating my thoughts aboutcommunication to you, but yet a lot ofpeople may not see it this way at first.” Inother words, writing includes bothparticipation according to currentconventions and reflection on thoseconventions and the relations of equality anddifference they are part of.


As mentioned earlier, a key principle thatUID offers to writing teachers is criticalparticipation and revision. The material andcultural issues faced when serving anygroup are so multifaceted and complex, andthe ways that students receive and interpretteachers’ messages are so unpredictable, thatno design for a class can address all issuesand concerns beforehand. Instead, themessage of UID is multiple formatssupplemented by participatory feedback andredefinition. No single curricular mode canachieve universality and serve all studentsequally, so classes must be built to worktowards contingent universality of servingthe students that are actually there.

The role of student feedback is essentialhere. In one recent class, for example, Ilearned an important lesson about mypractices for introducing new assignments.My method was to extensively describe thenew essay assignment on paper, including adiscussion of the rhetorical practices Iwanted students to recognize and work on,why, and how. My introduction to thesummary assignment read like this:

Academic writing is a set of practicesfor participating in conversation withothers. One of the most important ofthese practices is summarizing. Thisfirst project is focused on readingcarefully and writing good, strong,summaries. Strong summaries tell

your readers what others in the“conversation” you are joining havebeen saying. Strong summariesconvince readers that your view of theconversation has some merit. A strongsummary convinces readers that youshould be listened to and creates acontext for you to add your piece tothe conversation.

In an effort to appeal to a broad audience, Icontextualized the assignment by linkingsomething I thought students would identifywith, conversation, to academic writing. Ialso offered an in-class overview andprovided students with examples to use asmodels of successful responses that couldinspire them in thinking about how theymight respond to the assignment. When Iasked students for questions, there werenone.

When I requested feedback from studentson their progress after about a week, onestudent reported that she had been stuckbecause she wasn’t sure if she understoodthe assignment “correctly.” Althoughconcerns with “giving the teacher what hewants” influence all students, the fact thatthis student had a learning disability thatrequired a very direct and linearunderstanding of tasks like writing had madethe situation paralyzing for her. In ourdiscussion, I asked her what she thoughtabout the assignment and she said that she


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thought she could take the authors one at atime and tell readers what they say. Wediscussed what she thought each of theauthors was trying to say and made notesabout why she understood them as she did.When I assured her that her understandingwas fine she was relieved and said that shewas thrown off by my introductorydiscussion.

I responded to this problem byredesigning the way I introduce newassignments to be much more focused onhow the students understand the assignmentrather than how I understand it. I nowinclude much more student-generateddiscussion of how they understand whatthey are being asked to do and how theyanticipate getting to work. One activity thathas been very helpful in this regard issimply taking five minutes to let studentswrite the assignment in their own words andthen share them. Because I want students tothink about the cultural work involved inwriting as well as the practical work, I havebroken down this process so that studentsbegin by sharing their versions of theassignment in a small group with two orthree others. I ask them to share theirversions and to talk not so much aboutwho’s right or wrong, but about the differentkinds of cultural work done by the differentkinds of writing that each in the groupimagine doing. My role as teacher whilethese conversations are happening evolves

over the course of the term. Early on in thesemester I circulate in the groups helpingstudents develop a vocabulary for talkingabout the work writing does, theconsequences of writing in different ways.As students develop confidence inaddressing this issue, my role shifts towardshelping groups maintain focus and work outdifficulties that arise. As a classroompractice, the exercise teaches that rather thanbeing right or wrong, different kinds ofwriting do different kinds of work. Some ofthese kinds of work, such as stating anddefending an opinion, are more highlyvalued in some contexts than others.

In addition to operating as materialtransformations that provide broader andfuller access, such curricular redesigns thatevolve from student participation in thedesign of the class raise and contend withcultural obstacles to equitable access aswell. On one level, an activity like the onedescribed above creates a context of greaterrecognition for students like the one whoinspired the change, but also for manyothers. It creates an opportunity for eachstudent to make an understanding of theassignment that recognizes their needs.Further, it creates a context for beginning tograpple with the cultural work that writingdoes. For example, in one of the groups I satin on as students were discussing theirunderstandings of the “strong summary”assignment, two students began to disagree


when one African American studentcompared her understanding of theassignment to another, White, student’sunderstanding by saying that she wanted tomake her opinion “plain rather than hidden.”The other student responded that a summaryshouldn’t have an opinion at all. To whichthe first responded that, for her, a summaryis “my view of how I see them.” At thispoint, I intervened to remind the studentsthat the object of sharing was not to decidewho in the group was right or wrong, but totry and clarify different understandings andthe different kinds of work they do. Thisencouraged the two students to share theirviews of the work that their own and eachothers’ interpretations do. Martha explainedthat she believed her way of understanding asummary would let readers decide how tounderstand the texts she discussed, using heropinion or not. Mary explained that shebelieved her way would let readers decideby leaving herself out and just saying whatthe authors said. Another student here joinedin to add that Mary’s would, then, be whatMary believed the authors said, which bothMary and Martha agreed to. The value that Ihope comes of such exchanges is makingeach of the students more familiar with howtwo fundamentally different ways ofunderstanding writing understandthemselves and each other. It clarified thatone kind of work writing strives to do is tohelp readers make informed decisions forthemselves and that there are different

opinions of how best to facilitate this. Itprovided a basis for each of the students toread and write in a more informed way.

An unexpected outcome of this newactivity was that allowing students to take asignificant hand in interpreting theassignment required that I clarify for myselfthe learning objectives and acceptableparameters of responses. In other words, theactivity made me more fully reflect onmultiple ways of demonstrating learning. Ina writing class, flexibility is restricted by thefact that students must write. But the formof that writing is a point of negotiation withprofound material and cultural implications.Sarah was most comfortable using writing tocommunicate stable meanings. Otherstudents I have encountered find that tryingto limit themselves to one way ofunderstanding what are invariably complextexts or issues is constraining and demandsthey limit their writing to acceptable partialversions. In negotiating with students aboutthe range of fully credible responses to thesummary assignment, I have had to thinkabout what abilities I want students to workon and demonstrate. For me, what matters isthat students learn to read carefully and tohelp readers see both how they interprettexts and why they think their interpretationsare credible in an academic setting. Thismeans linking their summaries directly towhat authors say. I think that if students dothat, their writing will serve them well in


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many academic and public situations. As Ihave learned from student suggestions ofhow they understand and approach theassignment, this does not demand a thesisbased, paragraph oriented, linear, traditionalschool essay.

An option that one student suggested forherself has become a formal alternative onmy assignment sheet. This student wasuncomfortable with the idea that she wasbeing asked to be an expert on the variouspositions making up a conversation that shewas previously unfamiliar with. She decidedto write out a conversation between theauthors that would show readers how sheunderstood their positions. For her, theimaginary context would tell her readers thatshe was offering one, tentative interpretationof how the authors’ opinions related to eachother. My assignment sheet now suggeststwo broad options for completing theassignment as follows:

Option 1: Find a common thread thatemerges across the conversationwe’ve been reading and write anessay in which you present anddiscuss this common thread bysummarizing how at least 3 of thesources relate to it. Feel free to bringin your own experiences or your ownsenses of the issues, but be sure toconcentrate on offering a substantialreview of the perspectives offered by

each of the authors you discuss,explaining how they each relate to thecommon thread.

Option 2: Write a dialogue betweenfour of the authors we’ve read inwhich they continue the conversationthat their essays are a part of.Incorporate into what each authorsays your understanding of their viewof the issues. Have each speaker usesome direct quotes from their piecesto explain what they mean. In thedialogue, each person should talk atleast three times, each time speakingat least 85 words. Try to capture someof the voice and style of each of thespeakers in what you have them say.

Overall, these curricular transformationsshift the emphasis from simple assimilationof conventions to a participatory recognitionof the contingency of those conventions andtheir effects. I say “participatory” in order tocall attention to the essential insight ofUniversal Design that those who inhabitstructures have important roles to play inremaking those structures. In terms of awriting class that implements this concept inits instructional design, students areexpected to learn that part of the purpose ofwriting is to call attention to aspects of thestructure of writing that “many people maynot see” as Asante, my previously quotedstudent, phrased it. They are learning as well


that as writers part of their job is toparticipate in creating alternative designs fortexts. Students in such a class are learningabout literacy work by doing the work ofliteracy. They are interanimatingredistributive and recognition-orientedremedies to educational injustice.

References

Fox, T. (1993). Standards and access.Journal of Basic Writing, 12 (1), 37-45.

Fraser, N. (1997). Justice interruptus:Critical reflections on the“postsocialist” condition. New York:Routledge.

Prendergast, C. (1998). Race: The absentpresence in composition studies.College Composition andCommunication, 50 (3), 36-53.

Young, I. M. (1991). Justice and the politicsof difference. Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press.

Young, I. M. (1997). Intersecting voices:Dilemmas of gender, politicalphilosophy, and policy. Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press.


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Using Principles of Universal Design inCollege Composition CoursesPatricia J. McAlexanderThe University of Georgia

While debates rage over the best way to teach college composition, Universal Instructional Design principlessuggest that there is in fact no single best way; students’ individual learning strengths and motivation requireindividual approaches, whether or not students have learning or physical disabilities. This article suggests someways that composition teachers can adapt their teaching to individual learners while following a mandatedcurriculum and engaging students in common classroom activities.

As a college composition teacher, Iknow that first-year students oftendread freshman composition and,

even more, the “developmental”composition courses that are often alsorequired for “underprepared” writers. Bothtypes of composition course have fairlystandard content. A typical description, thisone of a developmental composition course,reads, “Covers elements of effective style,careful proofreading, logical organization,and convincing development of expositoryand persuasive essays” (The University ofGeorgia Undergraduate Bulletin 2001-2002,p. 425). Nevertheless, debates have raged incomposition journals about the best ways toteach this material. Should assigned writing

topics be personal or political? Should thereading on which the student essays arebased be creative and literary or analytical?Should the organization of student essays betightly structured or at least sometimescreatively “loose”? Should the class includeformal grammar lessons, or should grammarinstruction be mainly through commentaryon student essays? Most articles dealingwith such questions suggest that there isonly one “right” answer—the author’s, ofcourse.

Yet the right answer is “all of the above.”As more students attend college, diversity—not only of races and ethnic groups, but alsoof learning styles and motivation—is now

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more than ever the norm. And ascomposition instructors become increasinglyused to modifying their teaching methodsfor students with disabilities, they realize thegeneral truth that a single method ofteaching will not suit all students. It is notsurprising, then, that we find a growingadvocacy of individual approaches tostudents as embodied in the concept ofUniversal Instructional Design (UID).

For several years now, researchers haveinvestigated individual learning strengthsand motivation. One influential study, forexample, identified seven specificperceptual modalities, preferred senses thatan individual uses in the process of learning.Common modalities described were “print”(i.e., learning through reading and writing),“visual” (learning through observation withemphasis upon pictures or visual patterns),“interactive” (learning through participationin groups), and “auditory” (learning throughlistening, for example, to lectures or tapes)(Galbraith & James, 1985). We also findstudies of motivation. Part of motivation isbased on students’ sense of what they canachieve. As Cross (2001) has often pointedout, “Students must believe that, withappropriate effort, they can succeed” (p. 7).Another aspect of motivation is based on astudent’s goals or values—what he or shethinks is the point of the learning process.Biggs (1988) reviewed three differentlearning approaches based on this element inmotivation—surface (found in students who

emphasize the pragmatic—i.e., getting thedegree), deep (found in students who havean intrinsic interest in the task), andachieving (which may be found inconjunction with either of the other twoapproaches in students who want to makethe highest possible grade) (pp. 186-187).

Students have often been advised to beaware of both their individual learningstrengths and the nature of their motivation.For example, in the textbook Lifeskills forthe University (2000), Ginter and Glauserprovide an inventory to help studentsanalyze their learning styles (p. 67) andrecommend that they “take advantage of[their strong] modalities and strengthen theweaker ones” (p. 59). As for motivation,Biggs argues that students should be awarenot only of their specific “cognitiveresources” but also of their “intentions” (p.187). A bulletin board outside one universitylearning center gives students representativeadvice relating to both aspects ofmotivation—”Think positively”; “Considerthe benefits of completing the task”; “Setspecific goals”—while Ginter and Glauser’stextbook emphasizes that “students . . . areresponsible for maintaining [their]motivation” (p. 31).

But if college students are often advisedto take responsibility for their own learning,federal legislation on disabilities has been amajor force that stresses the responsibilityof teachers and institutions as well. Teachers


and institutions are legally bound to modifyinstructional procedures to compensate forvarious disabilities. At the college level, forinstance, institutions are to provide specifiedstudents with educational aids normally notavailable or permitted, such as taperecorders to record lectures, tapedtextbooks, and word processors for essayexams. The students might also be providedwith tutors, note takers, proofreaders,private rooms for tests, and specialcounselors. Teachers of these students areoften required to modify testing techniquesfor these students. Depending upon theirdisability, the students are allowed extratime on tests or given alternate types of tests(e.g., oral instead of written). Specificteaching strategies are often suggested aswell. For example, a letter from a learningdisabilities specialist to a compositionteacher concerning one of the teacher’sstudents who has a learning disability (LD)states, “Whenever possible, verbalinformation should be supplementedvisually, e.g. with graphs, diagrams, and/orillustrations” (personal communication,December 10, 1999). Thus, under theinfluence of federal law, the educationalprocess has become more and more tailoredto the individual learning abilities and needsof a particular population of students.

However, such modifications, whengiven to students with the “invisible”problem of learning disabilities, are notalways considered fair. Indeed, many critics

of the American educational system chargethat it is mainly the children of middle classparents who are diagnosed with learningdisabilities; their parents have the moneyand incentive to have them tested. One suchcritic is Gerald Coles (1987), who arguesthat LD legislation serves the interests of thestatus quo—the government, schools,middle class parents—any agency with aninterest in preserving the social (i.e., class)order.

The debate over the fairness ofmodifications for students with learningdisabilities has been particularly heated inthe field of postsecondary developmentalcomposition, where questions have arisenabout the relationship between LD writersand non-LD but “underprepared” writers.The characteristics of the two groups areoften similar. Both types of students mayhave spelling and grammar errors, confusingorganization, sparse development, and lackof audience awareness, along with problemsof motivation and attention. Yet, no matterhow similar the problems of these students,the legislation on learning disabilitiescreates an either-or situation: either astudent has learning disabilities and islegally entitled to certain modifications, orthe student does not, and is not.

How can a student be identified ashaving learning disabilities in a subject arearather than a theoretically more easilyimproved “weakness”? In Errors and


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Expectations (Shaughnessy, 1977), thegroundbreaking study of students she called“basic writers,” Shaughnessy suggests thatthe writing problems of the students in herremedial program at the City College ofNew York (CCNY) could be explainedsimply by their background:

Certainly were such errors to appearin the papers of academicallyadvantaged students, . . . there wouldbe good reason to explore thepossibility of an underlying disorder.But where students have had limitedexperience in reading and writing,they cannot be expected to makevisual discriminations of the sort mostpeople learn to make only after yearsof practice and instruction. (p. 174)

In the years following, however, writingteachers have become less certain of thatposition. Today, Jeff Elliott, AssistantDirector of Stephen F. Austin StateUniversity’s Academic Assistance andResource Center, expresses the thoughts ofmany in a posting on a Basic WritingListserv: he questions how one candistinguish “between students who havenever had an opportunity to develop criticalthinking and writing skills . . . and thosestudents who have some disability whichmakes the development of those skillsdifficult” (April 5, 2001).

I believe that it is right to givemodifications to students who have beentested and diagnosed with disabilities(McAlexander, 1997). However, I alsorecognize that doing so for them and not forothers may discriminate against thoseothers. Thus it seems not only just but alsological that the concept of UniversalInstructional Design has arisen, encouragingteachers to adjust their teaching strategies,where possible, to the learning styles,interests, and abilities not just of studentswith disabilities, but of every student.

With specific content usually mandatedfor a composition course and commonactivities needed to engage the class as awhole, how can a composition teacher adapthis/her teaching to each individual learner?As the Universal Design of Learning (UDL)website points out, teachers can providematerial that is personally relevant toindividual students, offer a flexiblecurriculum that appropriately challengeseach student, and give studentsindividualized feedback (Center for AppliedSpecial Technology, 1999-2000). Here aresome ways that college compositionteachers may employ this advice.

Providing PersonallyRelevant Material

1. As much as possible, assign readingsthat engage student interests. I think we all


agree that the best kind of motivationsprings from intrinsic interest in the subject(Biggs, 1988, p. 218), and that students willbe more motivated to write if they areresponsive to the readings on whichcomposition topics are based. Appealing tostudent interests does not mean that ateacher must assign a hodgepodge ofindividual reading assignments; students inmost classes turn out to have interests incommon. As educator-psychologistHamachek (1995) states, “It doesn’t takelong for a classroom to develop its ownunique personality,” depending in part “onthe students and how . . . their particular mixof backgrounds and experiences blendtogether” (p. 545). Thus, instead of rigidlyplanning all reading assignments for a classbefore even meeting it, teachers might waitto see what interests their students have incommon and how the class personalitydevelops. Then they can select readingsfrom a textbook accordingly—or order aspecial book. When I had a class thatincluded many athletes, I assigned the briefnovel A Short Season, the story of footballplayer Brian Piccolo (the movie Brian’sSong is based on this book). Because thenovel was not read until mid-term, I wasable to order it once the class had begun.The students really enjoyed this book.

2. Give a variety of topics on thereadings. Through conferences, studentdiscussions, and questionnaires, determine

the direction of individual student interestswithin the group. Then, for each writingassignment based on a reading unit, offer avariety of topics that appeal to theseinterests. For example, A Short Season dealsnot only with sports, but also with racerelationships, illness, and family conflicts;topics can focus on these different themes.All the students in the class assigned thisnovel selected one of the suggested topics towrite on. However, if a student does not finda topic that works for him or her, the teacherand student can discuss the problem andtogether develop a new topic.

3. Use the Internet for material.Traditional hard texts are not the onlysources for material on which writing can bebased. Now the Internet provides an infinitesource of information, allowing a teacher tobroaden the range of sources a student mightdraw from and to do so more spontaneously.A popular comparison-contrast topic I havegiven asks students to describe travel plansto two places they want to go and then selectthe preferable plan, using the Internet forinformation. Students who wrote on thistopic found detailed information on modesof travel, places to stay, and availableactivities in the two possible locations, aswell as on the cost for the two trips. Theirinterest in the topic and their enjoyment ofInternet research led them to find solid,detailed information.


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4. Use popular television shows andarticles in current newspapers andmagazines as material. Often such sources(as well as the Internet) can be used for themost timely and controversial topics. Topicson television shows that young people watch(e.g., “Boston Public,” “Dawson’s Creek,”“Everwood,” “Felicity,” “Gilmore Girls,”“The Real World,” “Road Rules,” “SeventhHeaven”), on new technologies (e.g., theadvantages and disadvantages of cellphones), or local and state issues that affectstudents (e.g., raising the driving age,imposing curfews), often arouse strongstudent feeling and interest.

Offering an Appropriate Levelof Challenge

1. Give students a choice of writingtopics with varying levels of difficulty. AsCross (2001) points out, students must feelthat they can succeed, at least to somedegree. Thus it is important for compositionteachers to offer topics that relate not only toa variety of interests, but also to a variety ofabilities. For students who prefer the usually“easier” personal topics to topics involvingreading analysis, offer topics that combineboth approaches, such as “Compare yourgrandmother to the grandmother in MaryHood’s ‘How Far She Went’.” For studentswho have problems with essay structure,provide some topics that set up anorganization plan (e.g., give specific points

on which to compare the two grandmothers);for more creative or advanced students, offermore analytical topics and leave thestructure open. Teachers may need to guidestudents in their selection of anappropriately challenging (as well asinteresting) topic.

2. When possible, offer alternative essayformats. This is particularly appropriate ifthe composition course is oriented tobusiness or technical writing. In suchcourses, students might use graphs, charts,and other illustrations as a supplement to thewritten text. Those who prefer the visualmode do very well with such figures, indeedsometimes creating more and betterillustrations than print-oriented students.(However, in one such class, I had to reminda young woman who felt insecure withgrammar and mechanics that she neededmore “sentences” along with her excellentcharts and graphs!) Also, the use of headingsand bulleted lists gives students withorganizational weaknesses more options formaking their writing plan clear to the reader.

3. Use teaching strategies that appeal tovarious learning styles. For example, whiletraditional lectures appeal to the auditorymodality, charts, diagrams, and outlines onoverheads appeal to the visual modality,handouts to the “print” modality, and groupdiscussions or peer review to the interactivemodality.


4. Accept varying writing styles as longas the communication is appropriate andeffective. To show that writing styles canvary, teachers might give samples ofdifferent types of writing and discuss howdifferent styles can be effective in varyingsituations. There are stories of teachers whorecognize and reward just one style ofwriting, often to the detriment of theirstudents. A colleague of mine was criticizedin her freshman composition class for herdirect, to-the-point writing style. A highachiever, she never got over this experience.She went on to earn a doctorate ineducational psychology, but always feltinadequate as a writer.

5. If a student needs extra time tocomplete the often departmentally-requiredin-class essay, let the student finish the essayoutside of class. Only students diagnosedwith learning disabilities are eligible to taketests and write in-class essays in ouruniversity’s LD Center, where they can haveextended time. I let other students who needmore time come to my office to finish thatlast body paragraph and conclusion. Onsome campuses the opportunity to completepapers beyond the limits of a 50 minuteclass period is made available through thelearning center.

6. If a student finds writing in theclassroom distracting, try to find anotherplace where the student can write. One of

my students would sit staring at her almostblank sheet of paper all period, writing onlyone or two sentences. A deep thinker, shetold me that she just could not concentrateon her ideas in the classroom, yet she didnot qualify for modifications that wouldallow her to use a private room in ouruniversity’s LD Center. I found an officedown the hall from the classroom where shecould write her essays, and she provedherself one of my best writers. (Luckily theoffice was available, and luckily not manyof my students have had this problem!)

7. Allow all students to use wordprocessors, even for in-class essays.Whatever the level of the student’s writingdevelopment, word processors help greatlywith writing; they are particularly useful tostudents with poor handwriting and spelling.Yet when writing in-class essays in non-computer composition courses, students whohave not been diagnosed with a learningdisability generally must write by hand.When possible, I send non-LD students whowish to compose on the computer to nearbyuniversity computer labs to write their in-class essays. But when this is not possible, Ihave students write by hand in class; thenafter I check the often messy, crossed out,arrowed-about handwritten versions,students type the essay at home. They turnthe handwritten essay in with the typedversion so that I can see that the typed essayis basically the same essay as the one


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written in class, and I ask them not tochange grammar and mechanics except forspelling, so that I can see areas in whichthey need instruction. This way, I have therequired “in-class” essay, and all studentsuse a word processor. Not only are theessays more legible, but also the wordprocessor file version can be used if thestudents revise the essay.

It is interesting to note that when I applythese methods to in-class essays, manystudents eligible to write on the computersin the university’s LD center choose to writetheir essays in the classroom with the otherstudents.

Giving Individualized Feedback

1. Be available to consult with studentsas they write. Some students prefer to writewithout asking the teacher any questions.Others, however, need the teacher’sencouragement and advice, whether withindividual sentences or with organization orcontent. It is helpful for such students, whenwriting in class, to be able to consult as theywrite, while those doing out-of-class essaysmay want to drop in to the instructor’s officeto ask questions. Such in-progressconsultation provides an excellent, if oftenbrief, individualized teaching opportunity.The Socratic method—asking studentsquestions about their content—can evokebetter specific details as well as a clearer

organization plan. Student questions on thegrammar and mechanics of individualsentences give the teacher an opportunity topresent a quick individual grammar lesson tosupplement the more formal lessons oftengiven in composition classes. And workingon problems with organization with theteacher provides models of the thoughtprocesses involved in setting up essaystructure.

2. After grading an essay, schedule one-on-one conferences to discuss each student’sessay and specific strategies for revision.Such “conferencing,” which generallyinvolves a longer encounter, furtherindividualizes instruction while giving theteacher an opportunity to learn a student’sinterests, abilities, and background. Thereare many good books and articles on the artof conferencing, but basically I find it aconversation in which a student collaborateswith a teacher on an essay revision andthereby learns more about writingtechniques. Part of this collaborationinvolves the teacher playing the role ofreader in order to increase the student’saudience awareness; part of it involves theteacher offering specific advice. The focusof this advice will vary greatly from studentto student: for a more advanced writer, theconference may focus on style; for a weakerwriter, it may focus on such basic elementsof writing as setting up a thesis. A teachermight also employ specialized teaching


techniques in a conference. In one case, Ihad a student whose written sentences wereincoherent. I asked her to read her paper outloud, recorded her so that she herself couldliterally hear the incoherence, and then hadher record, in more informal language, whatshe meant. I gave her the tape, and sherevised the sentences more as she hadactually spoken them into the recorder. Atthe college level, teachers might cancel oneor two class meetings to give time for suchpersonal conferences.

3. Encourage individual tutoring sessionsand, if a learning or writing center isavailable, advise students to go there alsofor tutoring. These tutoring sessions will bemuch like the conferences described above,but may not deal with the revision of anessay. Rather, they may simply giveindividual lessons on such specific writingproblems as dangling modifiers, commasplices, or wordiness.

4. In some situations, offer peer reviewsessions as part of the class. If the class hasan appropriate level of writing ability, self-concept, motivation, and social interaction,peer review sessions can be an excellentsource of individualized response to essays(McAlexander, 2000). Having fellowstudents respond to one’s writing, alongwith responding to the writing of fellowstudents, develops greater awareness of thereader as well as of one’s own writing

weaknesses and strengths. Peer review willbe particularly effective for students withinteractive learning styles.

Conclusion

Although some of these teachingtechniques may involve changes in theoverall structure of the compositioncurriculum, most of them, I think, work wellwithin the framework of standardcomposition courses. Some teachers mayfear that such individualization in teachingwill undermine student responsibility forlearning or lower standards. These fears areungrounded. After all, students still need todo their part; further, many of the describedindividualizing techniques have been usedfor years, and even when they are not used,students still achieve at different rates andlevels. In my mind there is no doubt that theapplication of Universal InstructionalDesign principles to the teaching ofcomposition will result in more students—gifted, average, weak, “disabled”—improving their writing while enjoying theprocess.

References

Biggs, J. (1988). Approaches to learning andto essay writing. In R. R. Schmeck(Ed.), Learning strategies and learningstyles (pp. 185-228). New York: Plenum.


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Center for Applied Special Technology(CAST) Website (1999-2000). Retrievedon May 30, 2001 from http://www.cast.org

Coles, G. (1987). The learning mystique: Acritical look at learning disabilities.New York: Pantheon.

Cross, K. P. (2001). Motivation: Er . . . willthat be on the test? [The Cross PapersNumber 5]. Mission Viejo, CA: Leaguefor Innovation in the CommunityCollege and the Educational TestingService.

Galbraith, J., & James, W. (1985).Perceptual learning styles: Implicationsand techniques for the practitioner.Lifelong Learning, 8, 2-23.

Ginter, E. J., & Glauser, A. S. (2000). Life-skills for the university and beyond. (2nd

ed.). Dubuque, IA: Kendall-Hunt.

Hamachek, D. (1995). Psychology inteaching, learning, and growth (5th ed.).Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

McAlexander, P. J. (1997). Learningdisabilities and faculty skepticism.Research and Teaching inDevelopmental Education, 13(2),123-129.

McAlexander, P. J. (2000) Developmentalclassroom personality and response topeer review. Research and Teaching inDevelopmental Education, 17(1), 5-12.

Shaughnessy, M. P. (1977). Errors andexpectations: A guide for the teacher ofbasic writing. New York: OxfordUniversity Press.

The University of Georgia undergraduatebulletin 2001-2001 (2001). Athens, GA:The University of Georgia.


Computer-mediated Learning inMathematics and UniversalInstructional DesignD. Patrick KinneyWisconsin Indianhead Technical College

Laura Smith KinneyNorthland College

Interactive multimedia software is creating new opportunities for mathematics educators to implement UniversalInstructional Design to meet the needs of all students. The software delivers the course content, providesimmediate feedback, and allows students to work at their own pace and from remote locations. The instructor isfreed up from lecturing and is available to work with students individually or in small groups as needed.Instruction of this type, referred to as computer-mediated learning, allows students of varying ability levels to meetthe course standards in a way that provides flexibility in terms of pace, modes of learning, and location.

This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (DUE 9972445).

Students in introductory collegemathematics courses are increasinglybecoming a diverse group of learners.

Historically, most introductorypostsecondary mathematics courses havebeen taught using the lecture format, inwhich the instructor provides directinstruction. Rosenshine and Meister (1987)noted that direct instruction usually includes(a) presenting new material in small steps,(b) modeling of the procedure by the

teacher, (c) thinking aloud by the teacher,(d) guiding initial student practice, (e)providing systematic corrections andfeedback, and (f) providing expert models ofthe completed task. Instructors may alsoengage students in discussions and use someform of collaborative or group work.

For many students, however, lectureclasses do not adequately meet their needsfor a variety of reasons. For example,

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listening to lecture may not be the preferredlearning style for a particular student. Thereis evidence that instruction that allowsstudents to learn using their preferredlearning styles can lead to improved studentoutcomes (Higbee, Ginter, & Taylor, 1991;Lemire, 1998). Also, traditional lectureclasses often fail to fully meet the needs ofstudents with disabilities, even wheninstructors do their best to provideappropriate accommodations.

Computer-mediated Learning

In recent years, computer-mediatedmathematics courses incorporatinginteractive multimedia software haveincreasingly been used to offer students analternative to lecture courses. Gifford (1996)defines computer-mediated learning as alearner-centered model oftechnology-mediated instruction. Thecomputer-mediated courses discussed in thischapter incorporated software fromAcademic Systems (AcademicOnline 2000,2000) and reflect the implementation modelused at the General College at the Universityof Minnesota. The software: (a) presents theconcepts and skills using interactivemultimedia; (b) embeds items requiringstudent interaction within the instruction; (c)includes provisions for the development ofskills; (d) provides immediate feedback,including detailed solutions after the secondattempt on an item; (e) offers online quizzes;and (f) includes a course management

system that tracks students’ progress andtime on task.

In a computer-mediated classroom theinstructor, who does not lecture, is able tomove about the room during the entire classperiod to provide individual or small groupassistance to all students as needed. Becausethe instructor does not lecture, the instructorcan work with individual students for longerperiods of time than is usually possible inlecture classes. When interacting withstudents, the instructor may clarify anexplanation of a concept provided by thesoftware, aid in troubleshooting errors in thedevelopment of procedural skills, anddiscuss with students their progress so thatthey remain on track. The coursemanagement system provides detailedinformation about each student’s progress.This enables instructors to quickly identifythe students most in need of assistance.

The reviews of research ontechnology-mediated instruction haveconsistently found that instruction of thistype can have positive effects on studentlearning (Becker, 1992; Khalili &Shashaani, 1994; Kulik & Kulik, 1991;Niemiec, Samson, Weinstein, & Walberg,1987). In mathematics courses fromprealgebra through college algebra, thetechnology of choice is interactivemultimedia software. Software that isinteractive allows students to control both


the pace of their learning and the navigationpath. Najjar (1996) reviewed the researchrelated to interactivity by Bosco (1986),Fletcher (1989, 1990), and Verano (1987)and concluded, “Interactivity appears tohave a strong positive effect on learning” (p.131). Multimedia is the use of text, graphics,animation, pictures, video, and sound topresent information (Najjar).

In computer-mediated classes, studentscontrol the pace that they move through thesoftware, although they are expected tocomplete lessons according to a schedule.The ability to control the pace benefitsstudents who only need a brief review orwho acquire the material quickly because itallows them to proceed through theinstruction and assignments more rapidlythan in a lecture class. For other students,considerably more time may be needed toprocess the material than is usually providedin a lecture course. The computer-mediatedstudent can spend as much time as desired tostudy the mathematics on each screen, tonavigate backwards to review previousmaterial, and to take notes. Characteristicsof mediated learning such as these areparticularly important to students withlearning disabilities.

Immediate feedback is another importantcomponent of interactive multimediasoftware. The research related to feedbackindicates that feedback is important to the

development of student self-regulation andself-efficacy (Hattie, Biggs, & Purdie, 1996;Kluger & DeNisi, 1996). Kluger and DeNisifound that feedback should be specific to thetask, corrective, and done in a familiarcontext that shapes learning. In the mediatedlearning model, students receive feedbackthat is specific to each task that they attemptwhen using the software. If a studentanswers incorrectly on the first attempt, thesoftware provides feedback that points thestudent in the right direction. This allowsstudents to review their work and reattemptthe item. If a second incorrect response isentered, the software provides a detailedexplanation. In addition to the feedbackprovided by the software, students oftenreceive feedback from classmates when theywork together informally, as well as fromthe instructional staff.

Student’s Selection ofComputer-mediated or

Lecture Instruction

Students’ responses to surveys,questionnaires, and focus groups (Kinney,2000) indicate that they enroll incomputer-mediated and lecture courses for avariety of reasons such as (a) they prefer tolearn through multimedia rather thanwatching and listening to an instructor; (b)they find multimedia more visual than whatinstructors can typically write on the board;(c) they prefer to learn independently, rather


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than having another person show themeverything; (d) they can control the pace ofthe instruction and receive individualassistance as requested (Kinney, 2000); and(e) they find that multimedia, with itsinteractivity and immediate feedback, holdstheir attention better than a lecturer. Manyof these students discussed negativeexperiences in high school with lectureinstructors, citing poor explanations of thematerial, ineffective classroom managementskills, and not treating students in arespectful manner. For some students,computer-mediated instruction is attractivesimply because it allows them to avoid thepossibility of another negative experience ina lecture mathematics class.

Students who enroll in lecture classesconsistently expressed several reasons forpreferring lecture (Kinney, 2000). Theyprefer to learn by watching an instructorpresent the material and being able to askquestions during the presentation of thematerial; they valued the human interaction.They also pointed out that they frequentlybenefit when another student asks theinstructor a question and they are able tolisten to the instructor’s response. Studentsin lecture courses prefer these types ofinteractions over the opportunity for moreindividual attention in a computer-mediatedcourse.

It is clear from offering bothcomputer-mediated and lecture mathematics

courses that both instructional formatscontribute to meeting the needs ofmathematics students. In a recent semester,student’s performance in the computer-mediated and lecture courses showed nosignificant difference on common finalexams (Kinney, 2001a). What is important,especially in traditionally “high risk”courses like mathematics, is to providesstudents with a variety of options.

Universal Instructional Design

The concept of Universal InstructionalDesign (UID) suggests that as instructionaldesign decisions are made to meet the needsof any particular student, it is worth lookingfor a solution that may benefit all students.The mathematics program at the Universityof Minnesota General College offers bothcomputer-mediated and lecture mathematicscourses in Introductory Algebra andIntermediate Algebra. Students are allowedto self-select into the instructional formatthat they believe will best meet theirlearning preferences. To assist them in theirdecision, students take an inventorycontaining items related tocomputer-mediated and lecture instructionand discuss their options with their advisor.

In an attempt to provide students with thewidest range of instructional materials andaccess to those materials, all students areprovided with the textbook and softwarefrom Academic Systems (AcademicOnline


2000, 2000) and a study guide. The studyguide, developed by faculty and staff,contains (a) the objectives for each section,(b) the location of the instruction related toeach objective in the textbook, (c)instructional supplements to add to or clarifythose in the textbook, (d) exercises in thehomework set related to each objective, and(e) the answers to each problem. Allstudents, whether enrolled incomputer-mediated or lecture classes, areable to use the software in the mathematicslearning center and where they live if theyhave a personal computer (PC) and Internetaccess.

The use of these instructional materialsbenefits students in several ways. First, ifstudents miss a class for any reason, theycan study the material for that class usingthe software in the mathematics learningcenter or possibly at home. This may beimportant to students who are ill forextended periods of time, have work orfamily conflicts, or have a disability that attimes makes it difficult to physically get toclass or interferes with their ability to learn,perhaps due to the effects of medicationwhile in class. Second, students enrolled inlecture courses may be able to access thesoftware for an additional presentation ofthe material, which may be useful if they didnot fully understand the presentationprovided by the lecturer or if they wouldlike to work some additional problems

where they receive immediate detailedfeedback. This opportunity can beparticularly helpful to students withacquired brain injuries (ABI) and otherdisabilities that impede retention ofknowledge. Third, the study guide allowsstudents to concentrate on learning thecontent, rather than spending time trying tofigure out what they are expected to learnand identifying where to find the relevantinstruction. The time saved can beparticularly important to students withlearning disabilities because they oftenrequire more time to process the materialthan other students.

This approach also benefits students withAttention Deficit Disorder (ADD) andAttention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder(ADHD) who may easily be distracted andhave difficulty making complexconnections. Using this method, thesestudents can focus their attention on themathematics.

The Principles of UIDas an Assessment Tool

On instructor evaluations in a recent pilotstudy, students were asked to evaluate theirlearning experiences by answering eightitems based on the principles of UID(Kinney, 2001b). Traditional instructorevaluation items do not always apply tocomputer-mediated instruction and they may


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not address topics that contribute tosuccessful and positive learning experiencesfor students. The goal of the GeneralCollege mathematics program is to providestudents with an opportunity to studymathematics that is consistent with theprinciples of UID, whether incomputer-mediated or lecture courses.Overall, student responses in the pilot studywere favorable and provided usefulsuggestions for identifying areas in themathematics program that can be improved.Next, the eight items administered tostudents are provided along with a shortdiscussion of how we are attempting toincorporate each principle into themathematics program.

1. “The instructional staff created aclassroom climate that fostered trust andrespect.” Establishing good communicationwith students contributes to students feelingrespected, and establishes trust betweenstudents and faculty. Communicationincludes verbal interactions betweeninstructors and students and writteninformation such as the course syllabus.Instructors communicate more thanmathematics when presenting lessons orworking with students individually. Theyoften implicitly communicate their ownattitudes towards mathematics, what itmeans to learn mathematics, and theirexpectations about the pace and level ofmastery that their students should achieve.Thus, it is important that what is

communicated to students encourages themto continue attending class and working tobe successful, even when they may dislikemathematics or are struggling. A classroomthat fosters trust and respect may encouragestudents with disabilities to let the instructorknow what facilitates their learning. Theclassroom should also encourage students toask questions, share potential solutions, seekassistance as needed, including using officehours, and contribute to students viewingattending class as a positive experience.

2. “The instructor clearly identified theknowledge and skills students must attain tocomplete the course successfully.” Thestudy guide was written in part to identifythe knowledge and skills that students mustattain. In many textbooks, the authorincludes a heading called “objectives” andthen simply lists the topics to be covered inthat section rather than actual objectives.Few students actually read these so-calledobjectives, let alone know how to use themto guide their studying. The objectives in thestudy guide, and links to the relevantinstruction and related problems, areintended to make the instructor’sexpectations clear to the students.Instructors are expected to provideinstruction that assists students in achievingthese objectives and students are informedthat the quizzes and exams are linkeddirectly to these objectives. This approachcan be particularly helpful to students withlearning disabilities, ADD, ADHD, and ABI,


who often need more time than otherstudents to process the material, because itallows them to focus on learning thematerial rather than determining theinstructor’s expectations and where toaccess useful materials.

3. “The instructor provided clearexpectations and feedback.” Theexpectations for the course are contained inthe study guide, which includes a detailedcourse syllabus, assignment schedule, anddue dates for all assignments, quizzes, andexams. Another mechanism for providingclear expectations is daily reminders writtenon the board at the beginning of class.Instructors may also communicate theirexpectations when working with studentsindividually in class, during office hours,and by e-mail.

Feedback is provided to students on allassignments, which includes homework,checkpoint questions, quizzes, and exams.Daily checkpoint questions are a single itemon a recently covered concept or skill andare given in class for group work. Studentsare encouraged to communicate withclassmates about their strategies andsolutions when completing checkpointquestions, which enable them to receive peerfeedback. The instructor is also available toprovide feedback to students as theycomplete checkpoint questions. Studentsalso receive feedback on two mid-semesterreports. These reports are sent to the student

and advisor and provide information aboutthe student’s progress in the course. Aninstructor may request that the advisorintervene if the student is not performing upto expectations academically, needsassistance in developing better study skills,or is aware of other issues that may beadversely affecting the student. For studentswho are reluctant to ask questions in alecture class, such as students who havemissed classes due to their disabilities anddo not want to feel like they are “holding upthe class” by asking questions, thecomputer-mediated courses offer theopportunity for extended periods ofindividual assistance and feedback from theinstructor.

4. “The course materials (software, book,study guide, handouts, etc.), theinstructional staff, and the course designwere effective in supporting your learning.”Students are able to select the primary mode,computer-mediated or lecture, in which theyprefer to learn mathematics. For students inthe lecture courses, the software acts as anancillary resource that supports theirlearning in the event they missed class, werenot clear about the content covered that day,or simply find that an interactive multimediapresentation of the material aids theirlearning. The software can be used by allstudents in the mathematics learning centerand where they live by students with apersonal computer (PC) and Internet access.The study guide supports student learning


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by providing all of the course objectives,references to the instruction in the textbookand corresponding problems in the exerciseset for each objective, and includes answersto all problems. This supports students’learning by making clear what they areexpected to learn and enabling them toquickly and easily access the desiredmaterial. All students may receiveone-on-one tutoring in the mathematicslearning center during regular businesshours.

5. “The course materials and designprovided opportunities to learn in a way(s)that fit your learning style.” Students mayenroll in either a computer-based or lecturecourse and take an inventory to assist themin making their decision. All students areprovided with an interactive multimediasoftware package, a textbook, and a studyguide. Lecture instructors make frequent useof various representations—words,algebraic, tables, graphs, and pictures—toassist students in understanding the conceptsand skills. In the computer-mediatedcourses, students receive a multimediapresentation of the concepts and skills invarious modes of representation. Theanimation and graphics, along with students’ability to control the pace and navigationpath, provide students with a learningexperience that is very different than lecture.

6. “There were enough different ways todemonstrate your knowledge of the subject

and earn that grade that you deserved.”Traditionally, students have been asked todemonstrate their knowledge throughhomework exercises, quizzes, and exams.The resources and time available to studentsvaries for each of these categories.Homework assignments, for example,encourage students to use any availableresource, including working with classmatesand tutorial assistance, and usually have notime limits other than that they are to becompleted by a set date. Exams have timelimits, unless a student with a disability hasappropriate documentation, and often theonly resource that students may use is acalculator. A mastery approach on exams,which we currently do not use but areconsidering if the current software ismodified, would allow students more thanone opportunity to demonstrate theirknowledge. Furthermore, when usingcomputer-mediated instruction, the teachercan opt to give extended time on tests to allstudents.

Students may also demonstrate theirknowledge through innovative approachessuch as checkpoint questions and learninglogs. Checkpoint questions, as discussedearlier, are currently incorporated into theprogram. An additional approach underconsideration involves learning logs, whichgive students further opportunities toexpress their ideas and demonstrate theirunderstanding through writing. Generalguiding questions are given to students to


help them organize their work for aparticular problem in the format“introduction—main body—reflection.”Learning logs encourage students to explore,question, and clarify their own mathematicalthinking and reasoning and facilitate writingacross the curriculum. A rubric focusing onthe mathematical process can be designedfor evaluating learning logs.

7. “The technology used in this classhelped me learn the subject matter.” Bymaking interactive multimedia softwareavailable to all students, students no longerare reliant on the instructor for apresentation of the content. For somestudents, the most important aspect of thesoftware is the multimedia presentation,interactivity, and control of pace. For otherstudents, it is simply that they have controlover their learning rather than the instructor.Students also have greater flexibility interms of time and location of their learningbecause the software can be used incomputer-mediated classrooms, themathematics learning center, and at home.

The mathematics faculty and staff are inthe process of incorporating the webplatform WebCT into the regular day classesand distance education classes as a means tofacilitate communication. Chatrooms, forexample, allow students to ask classmatesquestions about the mathematics covered ineach lesson and the homework assignments.For students with disabilities, a variety of

technology products are available, includinga software program called Zoomtext thataids visually impaired students when usingthe course software.

8. “The course design and instructionalstaff encouraged student-instructional staffcontact.” In the computer-based courses theinstructor provides individual or small groupassistance to students throughout the class,thus providing more individual faculty-student contact than generally is possible inlecture courses. E-mail and office hours,along with a classroom that fosters trust andrespect, also encourage faculty-studentcontact.

Summary

The availability of interactivemultimedia software, for use in computer-mediated courses and as additional resourcefor students in lecture courses, is providingnew opportunities for redesigningintroductory mathematics courses andprograms. The principles of UID are worthreflecting on as programs change to meet theneeds of all learners to the greatest extentpossible. For many students, includingstudents with disabilities,computer-mediated learning providesstudents with greater control over the paceand navigation of their learning, a morevisual and interactive approach to learning,and more flexible times and locations forlearning than lecture. The principles of UID,


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however, do not suggest that programseliminate lecture classes because manystudents still prefer to learn mathematicsthrough lecture. UID does suggest thatsolutions for some students, such asproviding opportunities to learn throughinteractive multimedia software, beincorporated into a program so that it maysupport all students.

References

AcademicOnline 2000 [computer software].(2000). Mountain View, CA.: AcademicSystems Corporation.

Becker, H. J. (1992). Computer-basedintegrated learning systems in theelementary and middle schools: Acritical review and synthesis ofevaluation reports. Journal ofEducational Computing Research, 8,1-41.

Bosco, J. (1986). An analysis of evaluationsof interactive video. EducationalTechnology, 25, 7-16.

Developmental Interactive MultimediaMathematics (DIMM). Funded by theNational Science Foundation (DUE9972445).

Fletcher, D. (1989). The effectiveness andcost of interactive videodisc instruction.Machine-mediated Learning, 3,361-385.

Fletcher, D. (1990). The effectiveness andcost of interactive videodisc instructionin defense training and education (IDAPaper P-2372). Alexandria, VA: Institutefor Defense Analyses.

Gifford, B. R. (1996). Mediated learning: Anew model of technology-mediatedinstruction and learning. MountainView, CA: Academic Systems.

Hattie, J., Biggs, J., & Purdie, N. (1996).Effects of learning skills interventionson student learning: A meta-analysis.Review of Educational Research, 66,99-136.

Higbee, J. L., Ginter E. J., & Taylor W. D.(1991). Enhancing academicperformance: Seven perceptual styles oflearning. Research and Teaching inDevelopmental Education, 7(2), 5-10.

Khalili, A., & Shashaani, L. (1994). Theeffectiveness of computer applications:A meta-analysis. Journal of Research onComputing in Education, 27, 48-61.

Kinney, D. P. (2000). [Student responses tosurvey, questionnaire, and focus groupquestions identifying reasons forstudents’ enrollment in computer-mediated and lecture courses].Unpublished raw data. Minneapolis,MN: University of Minnesota.


Kinney, D. P. (2001a). A comparison ofcomputer-mediated and lecture classesin developmental mathematics.Research and Teaching inDevelopmental Education, 18 (1),32-40.

Kinney, D. P. (2001b). [Instructorevaluations based on the principles ofUniversal Instructional Design].Unpublished raw data. Minneapolis,MN: University of Minnesota.

Kluger, A., & DeNisis, A. (1996). Theeffects of feedback interventions onperformance: A historical review, ameta-analysis, and a preliminaryfeedback intervention theory.Psychological Bulletin, 119, 254-284.

Kulik, C., & Kulik, J. (1991). Effectivenessof computer-based instruction: Anupdated analysis. Computers in HumanBehavior, 7, 75-94.

Lemire, D. S. (1998). Three learning stylesmodels: Research and recommendationsfor developmental education. TheLearning Assistance Review, 3(2),26-40.

Najjar, L. J. (1996). Multimedia informationand learning. Journal of EducationalMultimedia and Hypermedia 5(2),129-150.

Niemiec, R., Samson, G., Weinstein, T.,Walberg, H. (1987). The effects ofcomputer-based instruction inelementary schools: A qualitativesynthesis. Journal of Research onComputing in Education, 20, 85-103.

Rosenshine, B., & Meister, C. (1987). Directinstruction. In M. J. Dunkin (Ed.), TheInternational Encyclopedia of Teachingand Teacher Education. Oxford, UK:Pergamon.

Verano, M. (1987). Achievement andretention of Spanish presented viavideodisc in linear, segmented andinteractive modes. Unpublished doctoraldissertation, University of Texas,Austin, TX.

Zoomtext [computer software]. (2001).Manchester Center, VT: Ai Squared.


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Universal Instructional Design in aComputer-Based Psychology CourseThomas Brothen and Cathrine WambachUniversity of Minnesota

In this chapter we describe a general psychology course that is consistent with Universal Instructional Designprinciples and illustrate it with several case studies of students with disabilities. We show how all students’ needsare met with the normal interventions of our personalized system of instruction (PSI) model. We conclude that PSIcourses can effectively accommodate the needs of students with disabilities and make “accommodation” simplypart of what occurs in class on a regular basis.

In a series of articles, Twigg (1994a,1994b, 1994c) suggested that thetraditional lecture classroom is a learning

technology that is simply out of date. Twiggadvocated a new national learninginfrastructure in which students learn moreindependently, test and enhance theirlearning with each other in cooperativelearning communities, and work without therigid time constraints of the traditionalacademic term. Twigg’s description ofhigher education today as a “teachinginfrastructure” rather than a “learninginfrastructure” applies most clearly to thetraditional classroom. The viability of ateacher centered educational system is evenmore problematic since passage of the

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990(1991). That act requires educationalinstitutions to develop policies foraccommodating students with disabilities.Accommodations typically are expected tobe consistent with a definition of disabilitythat encourages individuals with disabilitiesto “seek adaptations to their needs andaspirations rather than simply adjustingthemselves to the demands of apredominantly nondisabled society” (Hahn,1985, p. 101). This expectation complicatesmatters for educational institutions, whichhave adapted to it in various ways (c.f.,Fairweather & Shaver, 1990; Hodge &Preston-Sabin, 1997).

CHAPTER 10Computer-Based Psychology Course

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Most commonly, larger institutions havea disability services office that mediatesrelationships between faculty and studentswith disabilities. That office works withstudents to certify that their need foraccommodation is legitimate and helpsstudents decide what instructional featuresare necessary to facilitate their academicperformance. Then the office sends officialrequests to faculty to provide the suggestedaccommodations. A study of 485 facultymembers’ actions to provideaccommodations (Bourke, Strehorn, &Silver, 1997) showed that the more difficultthe accommodation was for faculty toimplement, the less likely it was to bedelivered. There are also indications thatrequests for accommodations, especiallydifficult ones, cause skepticism andconcerns about fairness among instructors(Williams & Ceci, 1999), especially when itcomes to disabilities less “obvious” thanvision, hearing, or mobility impairments(McAlexander, 1997).

Part of the problem is that instructors donot know how to respond to requests foraccommodations. Writers offering guidance(e.g., Chang, Richards, & Jackson, 1996;Knox, Higbee, Kalivoda, & Totty, 2000;Lissner, 1997) are working to fill this gapwith practical suggestions about workingwith students, applying technology totraditional classes, and dealing with thelegal issues that sometimes arise. But forinstructors, the letter they are likely to get

from the disability services office mightsimply say “Extended time on tests (timeand one half is recommended)” and littleelse. This might be an easy accommodationto make but may not adequately address thestudent’s problem and may evoke concernsabout fairness to other students. If the goalis to facilitate student learning, often muchmore needs to be done and it is not readilyclear just what that might be.

Silver, Bourke, and Strehorn (1998)address accommodation in a new way withthe concept of Universal InstructionalDesign (UID). They advocate placing“accessibility issues as an integralcomponent of all instructional planning” (p.47) and suggest that faculty adoptinstructional practices such as thosedescribed in Chickering and Gamson (1987)and McKeachie (1999) as a way to provideaccommodations. To us, this implies makingsome basic changes in the enterprise ofhigher education. But first collegeinstructors need new models of instructionthat meet the needs of students withdisabilities and also benefit other students.

In this chapter we describe our UIDmodel and present case studies of studentswith disabilities in a general psychologycourse we designed to meet the needs ofdevelopmental students (Brothen &Wambach, 2000a). Our purpose here is toshow how a course specifically designed toimprove students’ academic performance


may be consistent with UniversalInstructional Design principles toaccommodate the needs of students withdisabilities effectively. We teach our class inthe General College, the “open-access,”developmental education unit of theUniversity of Minnesota, and currentlydeliver the course via the Internet withWebCT courseware (see Landon, Bruce, &Harby, 2001 for a description andcomparison of WebCT with othercourseware packages).

The Personalized Systemof Instruction

Bloom’s (1976) formulation of themastery learning model requires students toachieve mastery over subject matter beforeprogressing to a new unit. A highlydeveloped and researched version of themastery learning teaching method from thefield of learning psychology is Keller’s(1968) Personalized System of Instruction(PSI). Several reviews and meta-analysesover the years (Keller, 1974; Kulik, Kulik,& Bangert-Drowns, 1990; Kulik, Kulik, &Cohen, 1979; Robin, 1976; Ryan, 1974)have found superior student learning in PSIcompared to traditional forms of instruction.Our UID model is based on PSI.

Written Materials

PSI emphasizes written materials ratherthan lecture as the major teaching activity.

Instead of presenting information to studentsorally, instructors select and createappropriate reading materials, createbehavioral objectives and study questions,and prepare multiple forms of tests thatmeasure student progress and providefeedback. Lectures are sometimes used inPSI but the conclusion of numerous researchstudies is that they add little to studentlearning (Brothen & Wambach, 1999; Semb,1995).

We base all assignments in our course onthe structure of the 18 chapter textbook.Before they read each chapter, studentscomplete an “electronic flashcard”psychology vocabulary developmentcomputer exercise. This exercise requiresexact typing of terms or key words missingfrom 20 randomly selected definitions takenfrom those printed in the study guide.Students get two points for all 20 correct,and can repeat the exercise unlimited times,getting a new set of items each time theyrepeat any exercise or quiz. Then they readtheir text, guided by study questions thatthey write answers to and turn in for twopoints. Next they do a 10 item computerizedcompletion exercise that requires them to fillin a key word for a “main point” phraserandomly selected from the textbookchapter. Students are to use their books andcan do this exercise unlimited times. Theyreceive three points for getting all 10correct, two for nine correct and one foreight correct. They must get a mastery score


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of at least eight correct to be able to takequizzes. Their last task for each chapter is totake a 10 item proctored multiple choicechapter quiz. The items are randomlyselected from a pool of over 100 that varyfrom easy to very difficult. Their best scoreof five tries counts toward their grade. Tohelp them determine if they are ready for thequiz they can take practice quizzes alsoselected randomly from a large pool ofitems. They get two bonus points for gettingall 10 correct and one for nine correct.Immediately after they finish all exercisesand quizzes, WebCT presents students withinformation about what material they needto study further before they try again. Ourresearch shows that over the term, studentsimprove their ability to be successful onquizzes (Brothen & Wambach, 2000b).

Small Unit Mastery

PSI courses are broken down intomanageable units that students are to masterbefore they move on. Mastery is determinedby successful completion of short unit teststhat provide feedback to unsuccessfulstudents so they may review the appropriatematerial before trying again. We measurelearning by students’ final performance on anumber of small, repeatable exercises onsmall (i.e., one chapter) units. We encouragemastery in two ways. First, students mustget 8 of 10 correct on the challengingcompletion exercise before continuing the

chapter. Students cannot successfullycomplete this exercise in a reasonable timewithout having studied the chapter. Second,to make mastery more likely, studentsreceive feedback on their performance andhave the option to repeat exercises andquizzes.

Our exercises and quizzes deliverfeedback consistent with Kluger andDeNisi’s (1996) Feedback InterventionTheory (FIT). FIT describes how feedbackshould be structured and defines feedbackinterventions as “actions taken by (an)external agent(s) to provide informationregarding some aspect(s) of one’s taskperformance” (p. 255). The FIT approachdemands that feedback must be (a) specificto the task, (b) corrective, and (c) done in afamiliar context that shapes learning. First,general, nonspecific feedback (e.g., “Yougot 70% correct.”) is much less performanceenhancing than task information feedback(e.g., “You got an item incorrect on thedifferences between classical and operantconditioning, see page 312”). Second,corrective feedback should be tailored tohelp the individual student improve. Thisimplies that the feedback must be deliveredby a responsive person who knows thestudent or by “intelligent” computers thatcan judge and track the student’s responses.Third, the task feedback should beembedded in course activities. That is, asstudents do coursework they should be


receiving feedback on it. Our studentsreceive feedback on all their exercises andquizzes as soon as they finish them.

Self-Pacing

In PSI courses, students pace themselvesthrough the material, finishing assignmentsas they are able. Flexibility is a cornerstoneof the method and is based on the realizationthat students have many other obligationsand learn at different rates. This is especiallytrue for adult students with careers andfamilies and the increasing number oftraditional undergraduates with heavyoutside work schedules as well as forstudents with disabilities.

Personalized but not IndividualizedInstruction

Finally, undergraduate tutors havetypically scored tests and helped studentsunderstand what their deficiencies are andwhat they need to do to deal with them.Tutors help to personalize PSI. This isdifferent from individualized instruction inwhich each student pursues a differentlearning plan (Semb, 1995). In typical PSIcourses all students have the same body ofcontent to learn; tutors are available to helpthem learn it. Our teaching assistants workwith students individually and our research(Brothen & Wambach, in press) shows thatour computer assisted model can fulfill mostof tutoring’s many dimensions. Our staff is

central to the operation of our instructionalmodel. It consists of two professors assignedpart time to the course, a full time coursecoordinator, and several undergraduateteaching assistants who completed thecourse in a previous semester with A grades.

Elsewhere (Brothen & Wambach, 2000a)we describe the research program we havecarried out with our computer assisted PSImodel. We describe below two studies overtwo semesters in which we have exploredhow students with disabilities respond to ourmodel. In this chapter our report of theseinvestigations is descriptive rather thanexperimental; we believe it illustrates theadvantages of PSI in meeting the goals ofUID.

Study I

We conducted the first case studies in anearlier version of the course model(Brothen, Hansen, & Wambach, 2001).Participants consisted of students enrolled insix sections of the course that met three dayseach week with two other days reserved foropen lab during a 15 week spring semester.Students did all their computer work in acomputer classroom containing 35workstations and six quiz computers locatedat the back of the room (Brothen, 1992). Outof 210 initially enrolled students, a total of187 finished the course by taking the finalexamination.


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Methodology

We told students the first day of classthat we would be studying their courseprogress. All read and signed an informedconsent form giving us permission for theconfidential use of their course data andacademic progress data on file at theuniversity. On the first day of class studentscompleted a Big 5 personality questionnaire(John, Donahue, & Kantle, 1991) as part ofa course assignment. We recorded students’scores on the Big 5 traits of agreeableness,conscientiousness, extraversion, openness tonew experience, and neuroticism along witheach student’s cumulative completed creditsand cumulative grade point average (GPA)for this study.

For each chapter students did threecomputer exercises (i.e., vocabularyexercise, completion exercise, progressquiz) that were self-paced with no timelimits. They accessed them with a coursedelivery system (Brothen, 1995) thatrandomly selected items from chapterdatabases, recorded scores, and recordedtime spent on each exercise in log files forsubsequent analysis. We used thisinformation to monitor student progressduring the semester. Because completingexercises and amassing points is moststrongly related to course success, timespent working is crucial. We selected forintervention both students spending too little

time working and those spending a greatdeal of time but not accomplishing much.

In this study we present student progressdata and other observations to detail theprogress of the three students we will callRalph, Terry, and Rene, who were identifiedby the university’s Office of DisabilitiesServices as requiring accommodationsduring the academic term of this study.These students brought letters to us duringthe first week of classes requesting specificaccommodations. We describe how theynegotiated the course and how they illustrateour UID model.

The Students

Students registering for the course hadcompleted from zero to 106 semester credits(M = 20.24, SD = 17.19) with cumulativeGPAs ranging from zero to 4.0 (M = 2.81,SD = .72). There were 57 computerexercises to complete in the course, 3 foreach of 19 textbook chapters. The 187students who took the final exam completedfrom 6 to 57 exercises (M = 50.76, SD =10.82) and they spent from 176 to 3,209total minutes completing these exercises (M= 1,326, SD = 501). Our three students withdisabilities completed all 57 exercises infrom 787 to 2,319 min. The correspondingcompletion times for the other 77 studentswho completed all 57 exercises ranged from669 to 2,277 minutes (M = 1,433, SD =


400). Students completing the finalexamination received scores ranging from37 to 96 (M = 66.59, SD = 11.32). Wepresent comparison data and casedescriptions for our three studentssubsequently.

Student #1. Ralph was a large, friendly,and vocal student whom everyone on thestaff came to know in a short time. Hisscores on the Big 5 all fell within onestandard deviation of the class means. Theletter from his Disabilities Servicescounselor said very little about himspecifically. The first, third, and fourthparagraphs simply identified him andprovided general information about whom tocontact for further information. The secondparagraph read:

Accommodations for students withdisabilities are individuallydetermined with input from thestudent, instructor, and the Disabilityspecialist. Your input in this processis important, as the accommodationsshould in no way compromise theessential elements or objectives ofyour curriculum. [Ralph] and I areanticipating that the followingaccommodations would bereasonable: Extended time on tests(time and one half is recommended).

The lack of specific information in thisletter is not unusual given that students have

input into how much they are willing todisclose about their disability. PerhapsRalph’s experience in previous coursesshowed that extra time was all that herequired. Perhaps it was the onlyaccommodation possible in his previouscourses. Or, perhaps it was the only thing hewould “admit” to needing. Our approach toRalph was no different than for any other ofour students; we monitored how he handledthe work and responded accordingly.

Of our three students with disabilities,Ralph spent the longest time working oncomputer exercises—2,319 min for thesemester. Although this was a high total, itwas far from the highest of all our students.The staff did notice very early in the termthat Ralph was spending a lot of time on andhaving difficulty with his computerexercises (see Table 1). However, at thispoint early in the term Ralph was apparentlypreparing adequately outside of classbecause even though he struggled on hisfirst quiz attempts, his final quiz scores forboth Chapter 1 and the Appendix were 9 outof 10. He did spend more time than theaverage student on quizzes. The Chapter 1quiz on which he received a 9 took him 12min. The Appendix quiz on which hereceived a 9 took him 20 min. Most studentsfinish quizzes in 8 min or less. From thisdata it appeared that our built-in extra timeaccommodation was working well forRalph.


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But even though he was attending classregularly and ultimately doing well onquizzes, Ralph began falling behind early inthe semester, often because he was spendingso much time completing exercises,particularly completion exercises, whichrequire students to fill in key words. Wenoticed this and assigned one of ourundergraduate teaching assistants to workwith him. While working with Ralph, ourassistant soon noticed that he seemed toknow the material, but had difficulty readingcomputer exercise items and findinganswers for items in the text. He oftenstruggled with individual words andmumbled them when reading a phrase outloud to the assistant. This led us to suspectthat his disability was related to reading andaffected his out of class work as well as hiscomputer exercises. We called hisDisabilities Services counselor to report thatthe extra time was only part of what Ralphneeded and that help with reading items wascrucial. The counselor revealed that Ralphhad what she described as one of the mostsevere cases of dyslexia her office had everencountered.

For the first 6 weeks of the course, Ralphbasically did the exercises the way werecommended, completing vocabulary andcompletion exercises and quizzes beforemoving on to the next chapter in the text.However, about the 6th week, Ralph took aquiz for Chapter 4, and then did not take a

quiz again for over a month, concentratingon doing the other chapter exercises. Theopinion of the assistant working with Ralphwas that he was no longer reading andpreparing outside of class, and was trying todo the pre-quiz exercises without carefullyreading the book. For this reason, he wasspending even more time on completionexercises than he was previously.

With about a month left in the course,Ralph realized that he only had a few weeksto finish quizzes for 14 chapters. Because hehad completed nearly all of the vocabularyand completion exercises, most of his day inthe classroom was spent reviewing forquizzes with one of our assistants, takingquizzes, studying feedback, and retakingquizzes. In general, his goal was to receive aminimum score of 7, which is a C. To finishthis many quizzes in a month would be avery difficult for any student, much less fora student with a reading disability.

After discovering that Ralph’s requestfor additional time was due to a readingdisability, we regularly provided a reader forhis quizzes. He would often become “stuck”on a word in a question, or he would justskip words that he could not read, and try tofill in the blank using the context of thequestion, a survival skill that had probablyserved him well in the past. However, forour multiple choice quizzes that ask studentsto make some very fine discriminations, that


strategy does not work. We discovered thatsimply providing Ralph with more time tocomplete quizzes would not help. If he didnot recognize a word, it did not matter howlong he looked at the question. Providinghim with a reader was by far the moreeffective strategy.

In addition, we wanted to induce Ralphto practice the exercises to develop fluency(cf., Johnson & Layng, 1992). Because ittook him so much longer to completevocabulary exercises where he had to searchfor a word and type it correctly, we told himthat if he received two 19s on a vocabularyexercise, we would give him full points, justas if he had received a 20. As we expected,Ralph became faster at doing them. Hecompleted his last nine chapter vocabularyexercises in an average of 13.1 mincompared to an average of 28.8 min over thefirst 10 chapters. Ralph received a B- finalgrade for the course.

Student #2. Terry was an older returningstudent who appeared anxious enough onthe first day of classes for us to notice. Hisscores on the Big 5 fell within one standarddeviation of the class means onagreeableness, conscientiousness, andextraversion. But he scored nearly twostandard deviations above the mean onopenness and more than two on neuroticism.His letter from Disabilities Services wasmuch the same as Ralph’s except that it

mentioned the nature of his disability aswell as requesting an accommodation. Theletter stated, “He is being treated for achronic illness that limits his ability tomanage anxiety and maintainconcentration.” It requested that he “beallowed to take a break during class ifnecessary to manage his anxiety.”

Because students can enter and leave ourclassroom at any time, Terry did not requirean accommodation to take breaks. Terry’sletter also indicated that he needed anondistracting test taking environment. Wediscovered that although Terry may havebeen anxious, he was actually not easilydistracted, but incredibly focused in theenvironment we created for our students.Terry spent the least time completingcomputer exercises of our three studentswith disabilities and received the mostpoints. He followed our recommended studytechnique to the letter, doing the exercises inthe sequence noted above, restudying beforerepeating an exercise, and repeating earlierchapter exercises if he was having troubleon later ones. When asked at the end of thesemester about following ourrecommendations, he said that he did not setout to follow them but simply did them in amanner he thought was logical.

From the beginning, Terry used thecompletion exercises to build fluency. Onthe difficult neuropsychology chapter he did


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six of them before taking a quiz, andreceived 10s on five of the quizzes, in aslittle as two min each. He took threequizzes, restudying his text after the firsttwo, and the highest score he received was anine. After the third try he did anothercompletion exercise for Chapter 2, and thentook another quiz and received a 10. Thisbecame a pattern for Terry. If he did not geta 10 on his first quiz attempt, he would domore completion exercises and then retakethe quiz. Even though Terry took severalcompletion exercises for each chapter, hedid not spend a great deal of time on them.By the last chapters he took only one or twobefore achieving the maximum quiz score.

Our strategy for Terry was to stay out ofhis way because it appeared that the PSIstructure was working fine for him withoutany special intervention. We tried to beencouraging and asked if he had anyquestions; he rarely did. We noticed fairlyearly that he had a strategy that was workingwell for him, and we let him work on hisown. It became a game for Terry to see if hecould get a 10 on his first try on each quiz,and we joined in by asking him if it was hisfirst try when we would see that he receiveda 10. Out of 19 chapters, Terry scored 10 onhis first try on 11. The only points Terrymissed all semester were four points on hisfinal exam and he received an A final gradefor the course.

Student #3. Rene was a small, fragile,shy individual who could easily gounnoticed in a large class. Her scores on theBig 5 fell within one standard deviation ofthe class means on agreeableness,conscientiousness, extraversion andopenness. But she scored two standarddeviations above the mean on neuroticism.The reason for her appearance anddemeanor was only hinted at in her letterfrom Disabilities Services. It containedbasically the same “boilerplate” as the othertwo and described her disability as one“which impacts concentration and speed ofthought.” The letter requested “1.5 test timeand a non-distracting test environment.”

Rene spent 2200 min working on thecomputer exercises in the classroom,missing 4½ weeks of class time due toserious illness. Throughout the semester shewas in and out of the hospital for what wasapparently highly invasive medicaltreatment. She was very test anxious and forthe first few chapters did an enormousnumber of completion exercises beforetaking quizzes. After doing fairly well on thefirst quiz she took for Chapter 1, a score ofseven, she did nine more completionexercises before taking another quiz. Shehad very high expectations and when shewas unhappy with a quiz score, shecontinued to practice to the point of usingher time inefficiently.


After Rene missed 3 consecutive weeksof class early in the semester due to herillness, she contacted us via e-mail andasked for help. This gave us an opportunityto work with her on more efficientstrategies, which was necessary due to theamount of time she missed. Werecommended that she resume her work onChapter 8 because the reading and studyguide assignments were current for thatchapter. She did only two completionexercises, both with scores of 10, in 42 min.She then took all five of her quizzes,studying feedback and asking questionsbetween each time she took one. Her finalscore on this chapter was an eight (theequivalent of a B letter grade).

Rene continued this pattern for the restof the semester, doing a few completionexercises for each chapter, taking quizzes,studying feedback, and taking quizzes again.She worked on chapters as they wereassigned and on earlier chapters as she hadtime. She was not afraid to ask for help, andif she struggled on a chapter she would askone of the staff to ask her questions aboutthe material between her quiz attempts. Shefinished with only two quizzes below ascore of eight—those chapters she took afterher last episode in the hospital when she wasstill on heavy medication. She told us thatshe was having trouble organizing herthoughts the same way as she could when

she was not medicated, but she also wasbehind and knew that she needed to catchup.

We provided a lot of support to Rene andtried not to add to the severe stress sheappeared to be undergoing. We encouragedher when she was in the classroom, wereavailable to answer her questions, and whenshe received a low score we offered to workwith her. She used open lab times frequentlywhen we could spend more time with herone-on-one. We allowed her to turn in herstudy questions late for no penalty duringthe time she was in the hospital and simplytried to maintain an environment in whichshe could be as relaxed as possible andperform her best. Rene received an A finalgrade for the course.

Discussion

The three students described above allperformed well in the course. The PSIformat allowed the instructors and staffconsiderable flexibility in meeting theirlearning needs. In a traditionally taughtpsychology course, one that was based onlectures, two midterms, and a finalexamination, it would have been moredifficult to discover and respondappropriately to their needs. For example,Ralph would have been given more time totake tests, but that would not have addressedhis underlying reading issue. Recording the


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examinations on audiotape might haveworked for Ralph, but this was not requestedby him or his disabilities counselor andwould have been very difficult toimplement. Because we had the opportunityto watch Ralph work, we could designaccommodations that were more effectivethan those requested. Many sympatheticinstructors would have recognized Rene’shealth problems and given her opportunitiesto make up missed examinations. In fact,university policy requires faculty to makealternative arrangements for students whohave legitimate reasons for missing class.Our class did not have scheduled dates fortests so Rene did not require a specialaccommodation to complete her work.Terry’s problem with anxiety would havebeen more perplexing to many instructors.Although psychology teachers would likelyview an anxiety disorder as a legitimatedisability, many instructors would beskeptical, and resist the notion that aseparate exam should be scheduled for thisreason. The need to accommodatepsychological disabilities is the mostcontroversial part of the American’s withDisabilities Act (Higbee, Kalivoda, & Hunt,1993). And, in our PSI course, Terry did notrequire anything from us. The issue ofaccommodating vaguely defined disabilitiesis further illustrated in the next study.

Study II

In this study we focus on theperformance of a student we will refer to bythe pseudonym of Jerry. To highlight issueswe encountered with Jerry, we will alsodescribe a student who approached oursense of the ideal, whom we will call Ben.The students were enrolled during the springof 2001. The course was offered using theWebCT course delivery system. WebCTallowed students to complete many of thecourse exercises outside the classroom,which was not possible with the previouscourseware. WebCT also allowed us to placetime limits on some exercises. Time limitsencourage students to be better preparedbefore they attempt exercises. Whenstudents spend less time on each exercisethey are likely to attempt more exercises,consistent with our goal of encouragingmore practice and opportunities forfeedback.

The Students

Jerry is a student athlete. The Office ofAthletic Academic Counseling carefullymonitors the performance of studentathletes. That office also provides a varietyof learning assistance services, andsupervises mandatory study sessions forstudent athletes. The learning specialists inthe office have long term contact with


individual athletes and develop a deepunderstanding of them as students andpersons. The Athletic Departmentcounselors and learning specialists seekfeedback from instructors about studentprogress that they use to create interventionsfor these students. Many students now havelearning disabilities identified at earlierstages of schooling, so more student athletesarrive on campus with disability diagnoses.Also, as more schools have developedsophisticated athlete support services, morelearning disability issues among studentathletes are being identified at the collegelevel. It was through Jerry’s AthleticDepartment learning specialist that welearned that Jerry has a learning disabilityand we should expect to receive a letterrequesting an accommodation. That was asmuch information as the Learning Specialistcould tell us without breachingconfidentiality.

It took Jerry several weeks into thesemester to bring us his letter from theOffice of Disabilities Services. In themeantime we noticed that he was notmaking good use of his time in class. Insteadof focusing on computer exercises, he wouldsit next to fellow athletes and whisper.When approached he would giggle andpretend to get back to work. He wasaccomplishing little, and quickly fallingbehind.

In contrast to Jerry, Ben, our idealstudent, stayed focused in class. He workedquietly at the exercises and steadilycompleted work with close to 100%accuracy. He appeared each day at thebeginning of his scheduled class period andleft at the end having accomplished all heneeded to do while in class. He did nocomputer exercises outside of class, butcame to class obviously having done hisreading and studying. We spoke with Benoccasionally about his accomplishments andabout information from the class he foundinteresting, but at no point did we need togive him advice on how to become moresuccessful. He knew what to do.

Several weeks into the semester, Jerrygave the staff a letter from disabilityservices. The letter requested that Jerry taketests in a nondistracting environment and begiven extra time to complete them. Our firsthypothesis was that Jerry has a readingdisability. To pursue this hypothesis, one ofour staff members began talking with Jerryas he completed exercises. She observed thatJerry mispronounced many words and didnot know the meaning of common words.We came to suspect that Jerry had a veryweak general vocabulary and poor priorknowledge, which made it difficult for himto comprehend what he read, much lessretain it. Unlike Ralph, who had troubledecoding words, Jerry could decode words,but did not understand them.


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In contrast, Ben appeared to have anexcellent vocabulary and good priorknowledge. We discovered that he had anACT Composite score of 26, suggesting hehad a good mastery of the high schoolcurriculum and good general intelligence.His ability and prior knowledge allowed himto complete the work of the courseefficiently.

As we worked with Jerry it became moreapparent that he was an intelligent youngman who was capable of learning when heexpended the effort. As he mastered morevocabulary he was able to use itappropriately and generate originalexamples of course concepts. We discoveredthat he was faced with several seriousdecisions in his life, and was demonstratingeffective problem solving as he made thesedecisions. We began to wonder if Jerry’slearning disability was actually a deficit inprior educational background combinedwith lack of effort in the past. As Jerrybegan to experience more success in thecourse he responded by spending more timeboth in the classroom and outside of classworking on computer activities.

Students’ Performance

First, Jerry did more completionexercises (83) and spent more time on them(M = 27.2 min) than Ben (43, M = 13.0min). The difference in number wasprimarily because Jerry was getting lower

scores (M = 6.25 out of 10 possible) thanBen (M = 9.72) and had to repeat them toreach the mastery level of 8 correct. It wouldbe reasonable to argue that Jerry’s need formore time caused his low scores becausemany times he reached the 30 minute timelimit before answering all 10 questions.However, in our experience, studentstypically take longer if they do not preparewell and we see the same pattern in many ofour students without disabilities. Jerryeventually did what most of those studentsdo; he put in more time and did the exercisesmore times, completing all 19 chapterssuccessfully. His distractibility could alsohave played a role in that we often observedhim talking to other students when he shouldhave been working to finish within the timelimit. He solved this problem on his own bydoing more than half of his completionexercises during nonclass hours, many ofthem late at night.

Second, Jerry took fewer progressquizzes (46), scored lower on them (M =5.65), and spent more time on them (M =23.4 min) than Ben (65, Ms = 8.62; 4.5min). The difference is primarily that Benrepeated quizzes until he got the highestscore he could, getting 17 high scores of 10and 2 of 9 on the 19 chapters. Jerry oftenquit when he got what seemed to him adecent grade. He got 13 high scores of 7, 5of 8, 1 of 9, and no 10s even though he hadattempts left on most of the chapters. Ben


was generally better prepared for progressquizzes, getting no scores below 6 (i.e.,passing) while one third of Jerry’s scoreswere below 6.

Third, Ben’s and Jerry’s completion andquiz scores differed in another way. Jerry’sscores were higher when he spent moretime, while Ben’s were lower. We correlatedtime spent with score on each exercise andquiz. The correlations for Jerry’s completionand quiz scores were +.414 and +.356respectively while Ben’s were -.422 and-.369 (all were significant beyond the .05

level). Apparently, Ben spent more timewhen he was trying unsuccessfully to find orremember some material. Jerry began tospend more time on quizzes when wepersuaded him that it would be helpful foran assistant to read quiz items to him. Wedid this to keep him focused. For example,we did not allow him to bring his cell phoneto the quiz computers. It also allowed us todeal with vocabulary as we did for Ralph inour earlier study and define words that werecritical to his understanding of the questionbut not key psychological terms on whichhis mastery was being tested.

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Figure 1. Completion Quiz Comparison Student 1 and Student 2.


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Finally, Ben and Jerry differed in the waythey approached the course. Ben was almost“machine like” in his approach. Heproceeded exactly as we suggested andworked steadily on task. Jerry delayedgetting started and fell behind early. Hestayed behind for most of the semester butcaught up to Ben after Spring break. Figures1 (Completion Exercises) and 2 (ProgressQuizzes) show both student’s progressgraphically. The size of the “bubbles”correspond to students’ scores squared toshow differentiation better. Dots representquizzes below the threshold for points. The

bubbles are arrayed on a matrix of chaptersand days of the semester.

Ben’s progress is basically linear withone gap early in the semester and one atSpring Break. Smaller bubbles precedelarger ones on the chapter axis showing thathis scores generally improved on subsequentattempts. His progress is consistent with thatof the highest performers in our classes overthe years such as Terry’s in Study 1. Jerry’sprogress is more erratic. His chapter scoressometimes decreased on subsequentattempts due probably to inadequate restudy.

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Figure 2. Progress Quiz Comparison Student 1 and Student 2.


He sometimes completed completionexercises for more than one chapter on thesame day before taking a progress quiz,thereby losing focus on the earlier chapter.And he attempted numerous chapterexercises and quizzes on the last few days ofclasses in an attempt to improve earlier lowscores as shown on the bottom right of thefigures.

In a traditional psychology class, Benwould have earned good grades on hisexaminations. Jerry would have been giventhe extra time requested to complete theexaminations, but time and a half isprobably an underestimate of the time herequired. It often took Jerry 20 min tocomplete 10 items. At this rate it would havetaken him 100 min to complete 50 items, acommon number of items for a mid-semestertest. Typically an instructor would allow 50min for a test of this length, and moststudents would be done in 30 min or less.Time and a half would be 75 min, far shortof what Jerry would need.

Taking a test in a less distractingenvironment, the second accommodationrequested for Jerry, might have allowed himto complete the exams more quickly.However, it would not have addressedJerry’s more serious problem of beingdistracted during class and while studying.Because our teaching method allows theinstructor to observe students’ work habits,

we could intervene during class to help Jerrystay focused and learn to use his time moreeffectively.

Figure 1 says volumes about thedifferences between Ben and Jerry. Ben hadthe attitudes and skills he needed to performwell immediately, Jerry had to acquire thoseattitudes and skills as he gained experiencewith the course. Multiple attempts atexercises allowed Ben to achieve a highlevel of mastery of the course material.Multiple attempts at exercises and attentionfrom the staff gave Jerry the motivation toput in the long hours he needed to spend topass. By the end of the term, Jerry knewwhat was needed to succeed and he earned agrade of B in the course.

Conclusions

PSI is a mastery learning model thatfosters superior student learning comparedto traditional forms of instruction. Webelieve that one of the reasons it is effectiveis that it is responsive to student needs,providing important progress feedback tothem and their instructor (cf., Wambach,Brothen, & Dikel, 2000). Ourcomputer-assisted model (Brothen &Wambach, 2000a) allows us to monitorstudents quickly and efficiently so that wecan make appropriate interventions.

The flexibility of our method allowsmost students with disabilities to complete


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the course without special treatment.Students with disabilities can receiveassistance within the classroom setting inthe same environment in which otherstudents receive assistance. For example,any student could request help reviewing achapter, or discuss quiz-taking strategies.Although our students with disabilitiesreceived more consistent and intenseassistance, the type of help was available toall. For example, a teaching assistantreading test items to Ralph or Jerry was notat all unusual. Nearly every class day saw astaff member sitting with students takingquizzes who had been having trouble withquizzes. We did this for second languagestudents as well as for thoseunderperforming on quizzes because theymade the typical strategic errors studentsmake on exams (e.g., rushing,“second-guessing” themselves, or pickingthe first alternative that seems reasonablewithout reading further). Staff sitting andworking with students was a common sightas was our talking to them about theirprogress and how they were approachingtheir work.

Nothing in our classroom activitiesthemselves distinguishes students withdisabilities from any other student. Althoughtwo of the students in Study 1 scored highon the Big 5 neuroticism scale, which wasconsistent with the accommodations theyrequested, other students were unlikely to

notice anything different about them. Theydid not take their exams in a different place,they did not require a student volunteer totake notes for them, or require any of thespecial technological interventionsdescribed by Knox et al. (2000). Of course,new circumstances might require somethingmore. We have, for example, had individualsprovided in the past by Disability Servicesto read screens for students who are blindand we have had to configure the room forwheelchairs and Seeing Eye dogs. But ourexperience over the past several years hasbeen exactly the same as the one describedhere. Students with disabilities have workedalong with other students, albeit takinglonger and so on, with similar results. Weconclude from this that most students withdisabilities can adapt to course requirementsand that our PSI model for UniversalInstructional Design gives them theopportunity to do that quickly andeffectively.

Instructors utilizing PSI will find, as wehave, that this form of UniversalInstructional Design makes“accommodation” simply part of what theydo on a regular basis. We believe PSI hasbeen good for us and for all of our students.

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Best Practices and Studentswith Disabilities: Experiencesin a College History CourseDavid L. GhereUniversity of Minnesota

This chapter describes a variety of teaching techniques, modes of presentation, and methods of evaluation utilizedto implement Universal Instructional Design in a college history class. The use of classroom simulations isexplained in detail. Examples of different types of simulations are provided and their educational benefitsdiscussed. Four disability groups are discussed, merging the author’s experience with recent research on learningdisabilities, impaired hearing, visual impairment, and physical disabilities.

Thirty years ago, when I was anundergraduate preparing for a career ineducation, I was introduced to the

Inquiry Method for teaching social studies.One of my instructors emphasized thevarious benefits of the pregnant pause afterasking a question. Calling on the firststudent to volunteer allows the otherstudents to ignore the question and remainuninvolved in the class discussion whilethey await the correct answer from one ofthe stars of the class. However, theinstructor could wait to see who hasvolunteered and then decide whether tochoose one of them or to involve another

student who has not volunteered. Allstudents in the class must consider thequestion and be mentally involved in thediscussion, because they may be called uponto answer it. The student thought processduring the pregnant pause will tend toheighten the curiosity and enhance thecomprehension of all students in the class. Italso maintains attention to class material andenhances the students’ retention of thatinformation. If the question is worth asking,then it is worth the time for students to thinkabout the question and consider theiranswer.

CHAPTER 11Teaching History

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These long pauses after questions alsobenefit students with disabilities. Studentswith various learning disabilities need timeto consider their answer or summon thecourage to volunteer. Students withaugmentative communication devices needtime to volunteer and type in their answers.The pause after questions alsoaccommodates the delay in the transmissionof sign language to students with hearingimpairments. One student who was deafrepeatedly seized the opportunity to displayher understanding and knowledge of classmaterial because she was conscious ofmisperceptions about her intelligence inother classes. Other students with hearingimpairments have been more restrainedwhile still benefiting from an enhancedthought process and greater involvement inclass discussion. Students who are blind orhave learning disabilities have shared withme that this questioning technique allowedthem to be more active in the classdiscussion and kept them interested in classmaterial. The key is that this questioningtechnique benefits all students and allowsthe classroom involvement of students withdisabilities to be nearly equivalent to that ofother students.

Universal Instructional Designin a History Class

The Inquiry Method is but one of manyteaching strategies that can engage studentsin the learning process. However, it is

important to recognize that any one methodfor the presentation of content material thatpromotes learning for some students willpresent barriers for others. Similarly, anyone method of expression or teacherassessment of student knowledge andcomprehension will advantage somestudents and disadvantage others. Studentsare best served when a variety of teachingtechniques, modes of presentation, andmethods of evaluation are utilized. Thisserves to address the differences betweenstudents in learning style, skill level, anddisability by providing alternative means ofaccessing information and demonstratingcompetencies. A multifaceted approachlimits the advantage or disadvantage thatany one student experiences with any onemethod, providing all students with a betterunderstanding of the material and a fairerevaluation of their knowledge.

Dissemination of Knowledge

Historical material can be conveyed in avariety of means: textually throughpublished books, historical documents, andhandouts; visually through maps, charts,graphs, and diagrams; and orally throughlecture, class discussion, and small groupinteraction. Presenting the material in avariety of means accommodates the learningstyles of all students as well as providingalternate means for students with disabilitiesto access the knowledge. Also, students,through lack of interest or understanding,


may not recognize significant aspects of amap, chart, or diagram, which are obvious tothe instructor. If instructors explain the keypoints in detail, they focus the attention andincrease the understanding of all thestudents in the class. In addition, theinformation is provided to the student whois sight impaired or to the student who needsinformation presented in multiple sensorychannels.

Placing course materials on a websitemakes them more accessible to all studentswhile facilitating the use of appropriatetechnology (e.g., text readers, enlargedprint) by students with disabilities. Syllabi,course calendars, assignment guidelines,review sheets, topic outlines, and discussionquestions can all be placed on the website aswell as the documents, quotations, maps,charts, graphs or diagrams that will bedistributed as handouts or displayed on theoverhead projector. Background material forclass activities could be online, enabling allstudents, but particularly those withdisabilities, to be better prepared and moreinvolved in those class activities.Establishing a chat room on the websitefacilitates student-to-student andstudent-to-teacher communication and couldbe the mechanism for collaboration ongroup assignments, conducting peerassessments, or promoting study groups.Access to instructors is further improved forall students through the use of e-mail.Commonly, students are less nervous than in

face-to-face meetings, they have time toconsider what questions to ask, and they cancommunicate when it is most convenient forthem.

Assessment of Knowledge

History exams traditionally consist ofmultiple choice questions and timed essays,which favor some students and disadvantageothers based on the student’s learning style,skill development, or disability. Removingunnecessary constraints to the students’ability to demonstrate their knowledge andunderstanding is beneficial to all studentsand enables the instructor to more accuratelyassess both their effort and relative successin mastering the course content. Essayexams with generous time limits wouldallow all writers to more fully express theirideas, whether they are thoughtful, nervous,meticulous, or gifted writers, or have adisability. Providing review sheets andannouncing the essay topic in advanceallows all students to focus their studyefforts, greatly reduces test anxiety, andenables the instructor to demand work ofhigher quality. When quality work is notproduced, the reason for the failure, lack ofability or lack of effort, is more clearlyapparent and the appropriate solutions moreobvious to both instructor and student.

The student’s historical knowledge andunderstanding can be evaluated usingvarious methods and techniques. In addition


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to the traditional multiple choice and essaytests, instructors could assess studentknowledge and understanding through avariety of other means: oral presentations,class discussion, targeted questions, peerassessments, free writing, journaling, andinvolvement in class activities. Utilizingmultiple methods of evaluation provideseach student with a variety of differentopportunities to demonstrate theirknowledge and understanding of the topic.These broadly based assessments provide amore accurate evaluation of the students’mastery of the course content than their skilllevel in a particular type of examination.

Simulations:Combining Dissemination and

Assessment of Knowledge

Classroom simulations add flexibility tothe curriculum that facilitates access for allstudents. Simulations provide an activelearning alternative to other methods ofpresentation and create a variety ofopportunities for student expression andteacher assessment. Within the simulation,content is provided in a textual formatthrough handouts; verbally through teacherpresentations, small group negotiations, andclass discussion; and visually through maps,charts, and diagrams on handouts,overheads, and power point presentations.Students can express their ideas verbally in

small group or class discussions, by writingin short reaction papers or journalingassignments, or visually through graphs,charts, or maps.

Many teachers assume that students withdisabilities would be both academicallydisadvantaged and socially embarrassed inthe active and cooperative learningsituations created by simulations. Yet,research indicates that active learningmethods increase student involvement in theclass and provide more opportunities forstudent contributions to class discussion(Christenson, Ysseldyke, & Thurlow, 1989;Greenwood, Delquadri, & Hall, 1984). Thisresults in higher academic achievementwhile directly addressing many of thebarriers cited above for students withdisabilities. These conclusions are supportedby research during the past two decadesassessing the effectiveness of cooperativelearning methods in teaching students withdisabilities (Foster, Long, & Snell, 1999;Johnson & Johnson, 1982, 1984; Scott,1990; Martino & Johnson, 1979). Thesestudies have demonstrated that cooperativelearning activities promote communication,mutual understanding, and friendshipsbetween students with disabilities and thosewithout, and that both groups achieve higheracademic achievement through cooperativelearning experiences. In my own experience,the student with the most challenging arrayof disabilities frequently emerged as the


class star in the cooperative learningsituations provided by classroomsimulations.

Types of Simulations

Classroom simulations can be designedto achieve various educational goals byincorporating a variety of teachingstrategies. All simulations involve thestudents in active learning situationsrequiring some level of role playing. Theseroles can be very specific as an historicalindividual; more general as a representativeof a country, region, or state; or very genericas a decision maker assessing the historicaloptions. Simulations provide the backgroundmaterial necessary for each student toevaluate the various decision options in thehistorical situation, and to play the roleassigned. Sometimes a reward system isutilized to create a situation, which fosterscompetition between groups andcooperation within each group. In these“game” simulations, students must articulatetheir position, negotiate with other students,and compromise when necessary to reach aconsensus decision or political bargain thatachieves their goals. Other simulationsemploy maps to convey information to thestudents, to designate various territorialoptions, and to ultimately display studentdecisions. Three specific examples ofsimulations and their integration into ahistory class are summarized below.

Farming is a role playing simulation inwhich pairs of students decide which cropsto plant and livestock to raise on their 160acre farm for a three year period from 1872to 1874. All students start with the sameamount of cash, but they have three differenteconomic arrangements that greatly affecttheir ability to be successful over the threeyear period. One third of the students arehomesteaders on the Great Plains, one thirdare tenant farmers in the Ohio valley, andone third are sharecroppers in the South. Atthe end of each year, the teacher announcesthe return on investment for each type ofcrop or livestock and the student teamscalculate how much profit they have toinvest in the following year. This simulationacquaints students with the basic economicsof farming, the vagaries of farming“success,” and the farmer’s dependence onweather and national markets. Thecomparison of the relative success ofhomesteaders, tenant farmers, andsharecroppers in the simulation stimulates aclass discussion of the social effects of thesediffering economic arrangements.

The Slavery Issue: 1848 is a gamesimulation addressing the political optionsconcerning the issue of slavery in the yearspreceding the American Civil War. Fivepositions were advanced by various politicalleaders to resolve the issue of slavery in theterritories: total abolition, the WilmotProviso, Popular Sovereignty, extension of


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the Missouri Compromise line, and theCommon Property doctrine. Students,playing the role of senators from particularstates, must negotiate with each other toreach a group decision. Student senators areawarded points based on the popularity ofthat group decision in the state or regionthey represent. Students become familiarwith the diverse positions and argumentsconcerning the issue of slavery, providingbackground knowledge for a betterunderstanding of the Compromise of 1850,Bleeding Kansas, and the Dred Scott case.

The Congress of Vienna is a mapsimulation focusing on that conference,which established the political anddiplomatic situation in Europe for the halfcentury following the Napoleonic Wars,1815 to 1871. Utilizing an outline mapdepicting major provinces and principalitiesin central Europe, student triads decide howto reestablish the balance of power inEurope; what territorial rewards will begiven to each victorious country; and whatfactors must be considered in making thosedecisions. This process acquaints studentswith the conservative goals and decisions ofthe diplomats at the Congress of Vienna,while familiarizing them with the locationsof the series of subsequent liberal andnationalist revolutions that attempted tooverturn these decisions. Students alsodevelop an understanding of the diplomaticrelationships and knowledge of thegeographic locations relevant to the

diplomacy and wars involved in theunification of Italy and Germany.

Benefits of Simulations

Research has identified major benefits tothe utilization of simulations and interactivegames in an educational context, whichrelate directly to the difficulties experiencedby students with disabilities. Druckman(1995) found that simulations andinteractive games fostered student interest inthe specific topic and historicalcircumstances associated with thesimulation. Additionally, involvement in thesimulation stimulated student curiosityabout related subject matter. Studentsdeveloped more positive attitudes toward thegeneral subject matter than with moreconventional methods. Furthermore,students’ retention of course materialincreased significantly as a result of theirincreased involvement in the activity. Otherresearch studies confirm the increased levelof interest, greater student involvement, andlonger retention of course material(Bredemeier & Greenblat, 1981; Randel,Morris, Welzel, & Whitehall., 1992; Sharan,1980).

The very nature of classroom simulationsand interactive games requirescommunication, but in an enjoyable andrelatively nonstressful situation. Theresulting increase in student interactions canfacilitate the development of interpersonal


skills in all students while directlyaddressing some of the social needs ofstudents with disabilities. Sharan (1980)determined that team learning methodsfostered relationships with group members,promoted student involvement, increasedcognitive learning, and promoted theconstruction of meaning. Students are morewilling to communicate while involved inthese classroom activities than in moretraditional situations (Bredemeier &Greenblat, 1981). Druckman (1995) foundsimulations “effective as vehicles forteam-building,” encouraging participation ina social learning process that conveys newconcepts and ideas to students whileexposing them to teamwork activities (p.184).

Simulations provide students withgreater opportunities to display their varioustalents and abilities, whether in the contextof the simulation or through the multitude ofpossible assignments and projects associatedwith the simulation. They prompt livelyclass discussion and require critical thinkingskills as students reconsider prevailingassumptions and adopt new perspectives.Simulations can serve as an opening activityto introduce a unit or as a closing exercisefor students to demonstrate their knowledgeand understanding of course material. Theycan provide the stimulus for a number ofindividual student or group research projectssuch as investigating the historicalbackground of the situation, identifying the

factors that promote or inhibit a resolution,contrasting the simulation with actualdecisions, or assessing the influence ofparticular individuals or groups in the finaloutcome.

Classroom simulations involve studentsin active learning situations that facilitate avariety of cooperative learning methods andare well suited for students with disabilitiesSimulations are often utilized to providestudents with an experiential knowledge ofconcepts that are not easily or fullycomprehended through traditional teachingmethods. They are most effective when theactivity is relatively short (e.g., 20 to 35minutes) and immediately followed by adiscussion of the knowledge andunderstanding conveyed by the simulation.They are most beneficial when designed tofocus on a narrow range of educational goals“where very specific content can be targetedand objectives precisely defined” (Randel etal., 1992, p. 269). Role playing activities canbe designed to “involve students in an activelearning situation that may teach themspecific skills” (Glenn, Gregg, & Tipple,1982, p. 209).

Students withLearning Disabilities

Students with learning disabilitiesconstitute the largest group of students withdisabilities at the college level. Resnick andKlopfer (1989) suggested the need for new


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teaching methods and instructional materialsto develop students’ thinking ability,increase their motivation, and assess theirlearning. They argued that students mustplay an active role in generating knowledgeby integrating new information into theirexisting knowledge base, which studentsthen employ to think, reason, and learn infuture situations. Harris and Pressley (1991)warned that this constructivist approach maybe less appropriate to students with learningdisabilities who are typically passive andunmotivated learners who, withoutguidance, may be more prone tomisunderstand concepts and constructinaccurate knowledge. Simulations providea structured method for constructivistlearning by providing historical background,an organized learning process, decisionmaking options, and teacher direction.

Carnine (1991) and Ellis (1993)advocated focusing teaching strategies andinstructional materials for all students ondeveloping higher order thinking processes.They argued that an emphasis on theacquisition of factual knowledge inhibitsinnovative teaching techniques, cooperativelearning methods, and metacognitivestrategy training. They observed thatdeveloping higher order thinking ability instudents with disabilities was as importantas the acquisition of basic contentknowledge. Rieth and Polsgrove (1994)discussed three models for creating acurriculum for students with learning

disabilities. Their goals included enablingstudents to better process information,improving their coping and problem-solvingskills, developing their interpersonal skills,and enabling them to establish socialsupport networks. Classroom simulationspromote all four of these goals and could beeffectively utilized in any of the threemodels discussed.

Writing is often a particular challenge tocollege students with learning disabilitiesand a multi-stage process approach is mosteffective for teaching that group of students(Schnapp, 1997). The experiential learninginvolved in a simulation is conducive to avariety of writing assignments ranging fromjournals to reaction papers to summaries topeer evaluations. Collaborative groups canbe used very effectively in the draftingprocess, enabling students to exchangeviewpoints, organize their ideas, and presentthem in coherent sentences and paragraphs.This method is designed to improve studentinterpersonal skills, enhance student interestin the topic, and reduce student anxietyabout the assignment (Schnapp). The sharedexperience of the simulation also provideseach student an expertise with which tocritique a journal, reaction paper, orsummary of other group members.

Students with Impaired Hearing

Reviewing recent research, Foster et al.(1999) concluded that despite


comprehensive support services, studentswith hearing deficits faced a uniquechallenge in accessing classroomcommunication. First, there is a delay of 5 to10 seconds between when the teacher stopsspeaking and the interpreter finishes signing.Typically, the instructor has called onanother student before the student withimpaired hearing has an opportunity torespond to a question. Second, studentsutilizing speech reading are disadvantagedwhenever visual contact is broken by theinstructor, such as when writing on theboard or moving about the room. Third,when the instructor is displaying objects,performing tasks on a projected screen, orreferring to a map, chart or diagram,students often must choose whether to watchthe interpreter for the words being spoken orto watch the instructor and screen for thevisual information. Finally, “deaf studentsare rarely included in informal exchangesamong hearing students regarding instructorexpectations, study tips, and unspoken rulesfor class behavior and organization” (p.226).

The results of Foster et al.’s (1999)research with students at Rochester Instituteof Technology revealed the similaritiesbetween the educational needs and desiresof hearing students and those who are deaf.Based on quantitative and qualitativeanalyses, both groups of students had verysimilar perceptions about educational

environments, course materials, and classparticipation. They listed very similarfeelings, positive and negative, about classcommunication, and their assessment of theease of communication in the classroom.Differences in perceptions about classcommunication focused on the ability of theinterpreter or the mannerisms of the specificinstructor. Both groups also reported beingactively engaged in learning, but studentswith hearing impairments felt less a part ofthe campus community. Both groups thoughtthey benefited from a slower instructor paceand active teaching methods that promptedmore involvement in the class and facilitatedease of communication. However, studentswith a hearing disability were less inclinedto think that the teacher’s pace in presentinginformation was appropriate and facilitatedtheir understanding.

Many of the recommendations from thisstudy correspond closely with the concept ofUniversal Instructional Design, theaccommodations in the history class, and theuse of classroom simulations. First, thesimilarities between the educational needsof hearing students and those with hearingimpairments should be emphasized. Second,teaching practices should be identified thataddress the needs of students with hearingdisabilities while enhancing the learning ofall students. Third, the selection ofinstructors should focus on their willingnessto adapt their teaching style and methods to


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promote the inclusion of all students.Several other recommendations addressedpractical procedures and strategies foraccommodating deaf students, improvingstudent access to communication, anddisseminating course materials. Simulationsaddress the needs of students with impairedhearing and promote their interaction withother students, while enhancing the interest,active involvement, and learning of allstudents.

Students withVisual Impairments

Participation in the classroom andunderstanding of course material is limitedfor many college students with a visualdisability “by a lack of correspondencebetween visual and auditory modes ofpresentation” (Waksler, 1996, p. 99).Instructors often make short references orincomplete commentary to materialpresented visually, making it extremelydifficult for students with visualimpairments to follow the discussion andunderstand the teaching points. Sightedstudents suffer similar confusion, if they arenot looking at the visual representation, orcannot see important details clearly, or donot understand what details are beingreferenced by the instructor. Teachingtechniques designed to provide a barrier-freeclassroom presentation for a student who isvisually impaired promote clarity inpresentations for all students (Waksler).

Students with visual impairments havethe most difficulty in fully accessing allaspects of the presentation of historymaterial. A student who is blind can listen toclass lecture and discussion, but misses thematerial written on the board or displayedon the overhead as well as any meaningfulgestures or facial expressions of theinstructor. Textbooks can be ordered inBraille, but the student who is blind missesthe content conveyed through maps,pictures, graphs, charts, and diagrams unlessprovided with raised renderings of thesematerials. Limited visual impairment may beaccommodated through image magnificationor printing materials with an enlarged font.Providing copies of handouts or overheadtransparencies prior to their use in classenables visually impaired students tobecome familiar with these materials. Thenwhen the instructor refers to these materials,the student will better understand theinstructor’s key points and the relevance ofthose materials.

Students withMobility Impairments

Physical disabilities are frequently themost obvious and often the easiest toaccommodate. With rare exceptions,classrooms, laboratories, libraries, and studyareas are accessible to students usingwheelchairs and the placement and design ofdoor handles, elevator buttons, drinkingfountains, and so on are gradually changing


to facilitate access by students with othermobility impairments. Depending upon thestudent’s specific impairment,accommodations may be as simple asseating placement in the classroom,modification of the student’s desk, typedanswers rather than handwritten ones,computer assisted diagrams rather than handdrawn, and alternatives to “fill in the circle”answer sheets. Many students who havedifficulty manipulating their hands andfingers request extra time for taking exams.Although this accommodation seems veryappropriate to the situation, it would beunnecessary if all students enjoyed thebenefit of exams without time limits. Thespeed with which the student identifies theanswer is irrelevant in a history course andtimed exams serve only to distort theevaluation of the student’s knowledge andunderstanding.

Mobility is typically not an issue in usingsimulations except for the initial seatingarrangements (i.e., assigning groups andmoving desks). Simulations are usuallydesigned to create small group dynamics(e.g., discussion, negotiation, andresolution) between two to six students inclose proximity to each other. Somesimulations involve the entire class andrequire some interaction between studentwork groups in different parts of theclassroom. The movement required in theseinstances may disadvantage a student withimpaired mobility, but this situation can

usually be accommodated easily. Having thestudent sit centrally in the classroom wouldfacilitate direct communication with othergroups as well as ease their movement whenquiet negotiations are preferable. Thestudent could be assigned a role in thesimulation that does not require movement,but that might limit the learning opportunityand would be less beneficial than anaccommodation that allows the student toexperience all aspects of the simulation.

Some students with mobilityimpairments, as well as those with learningdisabilities or sight impairments, are moreadept at spoken than written language. Inclassroom simulations, students generallyexpress their ideas orally in the small groupactivities and class discussion, providingteachers with additional opportunities toevaluate their knowledge andcomprehension. Students could also serve asthe spokesperson for the simulation group,accommodating students with writtenlanguage limitations while providing muchneeded and rarely offered opportunities forpublic speaking to all students.

Conclusion

Many scholars investigating variousdisabilities have called for the developmentof teaching methods and techniques thataddress the needs of students withdisabilities while benefiting the learning ofall students. Resourceful history teachers


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can design their courses to maximize theaccess to learning of all students, therebyminimizing the need for individualaccommodations. By using the pregnantpause, posting materials on the course website, and implementing collaborativeexperiences like class simulations, historyteachers can engage all students actively inthe learning process. Classroom simulationsprovide numerous opportunities forinteraction and cooperative learningactivities to support this UniversalInstructional Design. Simulations addressmany of the needs of students withdisabilities while enhancing the learning ofall students.

References

Bredemeier, M. E., & Greenblat, C. S.(1981). The educational effectiveness ofsimulation games: A synthesis offindings. Simulation & Gaming: AnInternational Journal, 12, 307-332.

Carnine, D. (1991). Curricular interventionsfor teaching higher order thinking to allstudents: Introduction to special series.Journal of Learning Disabilities, 24,261-269.

Christenson, S. L., Ysseldyke, J. E., &Thurlow, M. L. (1989). Criticalinstruction factors for students with mildhandicaps: An integrative review.Remedial and Special Education, 10(5),21-31.

Druckman, D. (1995). The educationaleffectiveness of interactive games. In D.Crookall & K. Arai (Eds.), Simulationand gaming across disciplines andcultures (pp. 178-187). London: Sage.

Ellis, E. S. (1993). Integrative strategyinstruction: A potential model forteaching content area subjects toadolescents with learning disabilities.Journal of Learning Disabilities, 26,358-383.

Foster, S., Long, G., & Snell, K. (1999).Inclusive instruction and learning fordeaf students in postsecondaryeducation. Journal of Deaf Studies andDeaf Education,4(3), 225-235.

Glenn, A. D., Gregg, D., & Tipple, B.(1982). Using role-playing activities toteach problem solving: Three teachingstrategies. Simulation & Gaming: AnInternational Journal, 13, 199-209.

Greenwood, C. R., Delquadri, J., & Hall, R.V. (1984). Opportunity to respond andstudent academic performance. In W.Heward, T. Heron, D. Hill, & J. Trap-Porter (Eds.), Focus on behavioranalysis in education (pp. 58-88).Columbus, OH: Merrill.

Harris, K. R., & Pressley, M. (1991). Thenature of cognitive strategy instruction:Interactive strategy construction.Exceptional Children, 57, 392-404.


Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1982).The effects of cooperative andindividualistic instruction onhandicapped and nonhandicappedstudents. Journal of Social Psychology,118, 257-268.

Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1984).Building acceptance of differencesbetween handicapped andnonhandicapped students: The effects ofcooperative and individualisticinstruction. Journal of SocialPsychology, 122, 257-267.

Martino, L., & Johnson, D. W. (1979).Cooperative and individualisticexperiences among disabled and normalchildren. Journal of Social Psychology,107, 177-183.

Randel, J. M., Morris, B. A., Welzel, C. D.,& Whitehall, B. V. (1992). Theeffectiveness of games for educationalpurposes: A review of recent research.Simulation & Gaming: An InternationalJournal, 23, 261-276.

Resnick, L. B., & Klopfer, L. E. (1989).Toward the thinking curriculum: Anoverview. In L. B. Resnick & L. E.Klopfer (Eds.), Toward the thinkingcurriculum: Current cognitive research(pp. 1-18). Pittsburgh, PA: Associationfor Supervision and CurriculumDevelopment.

Rieth, H. J., & Polsgrove, L. (1994).Curriculum and instructional issues inteaching secondary students withlearning disabilities. LearningDisabilities Research & Practice, 9(2),118-126.

Schnapp, L. (1997). Writing success for thepostsecondary student with learningDisabilities. National Association forDevelopmental Education SelectedConference Papers, 3, 41-43.

Scott, T. J. (1989). The effects ofcooperative learning team vs.traditional classroom/resource roominstruction on handicapped student selfesteem and academic achievement.Unpublished doctoral dissertation,Boston College, Boston, MA.Dissertation Abstracts International,50(10), 3145-A.

Sharan, S. (1980). Cooperative learning insmall groups: Recent methods andeffects on achievement, attitudes, andother ethnic relations. Review ofEducational Research, 50, 241-272.

Waksler, R. (1996). Teaching strategies for abarrier-free classroom. Journal ofExcellence in College Teaching, 7 (2),99-111.


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Universal Instructional Designin a Legal Studies ClassroomKaren L. MikschUniversity of Minnesota

This chapter was generated after the author attended the Curriculum Transformation and Disability (CTAD)workshop and implemented Universal Instructional Design (UID) principles in her Law in Society course. Thechapter begins by describing an accessible web page. The author then discusses the use of mock trials in whichstudents can play a variety of roles that fit their individual learning styles. The chapter concludes with a discussionof how to broaden course and student service content to include disability rights.

I had the opportunity to attend the firstCurriculum Transformation andDisability (CTAD) workshop in January

2000. It helped me to reflect on how I couldmake my courses and services moreaccessible. I teach legal studies classes tofirst and second year undergraduate studentsin a developmental education program. Ialso act as a pre-law advisor. This chapterwas generated from my experiencesimplementing Universal InstructionalDesign (UID) in my courses and advising.

Designing a course and pre-law webpage was my first step in implementing a“learning support” and will be discussed inthe initial section of this chapter. I will thendiscuss how I redesigned my participationassessment and how I utilize mock trials sothat students can play a variety of roles that

fit their individual learning styles. Thechapter concludes with a discussion of howto broaden course and student servicecontent to include disability rights.

Designing and Incorporatinga Web Page to Providea UID Learning Support

After attending the CTAD training, Idecided that I wanted to create a universallydesigned course web page (Miksch, 2001).In order to create an accessible web page Ifirst went to the Bobby web site. Bobby is afree service provided by the Center forApplied Special Technology (CAST, 2001)to help Web page authors identify and repairsignificant barriers to access by individualswith disabilities. Bobby will run a

CHAPTER 12UID in Legal Studies

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diagnostic program on your web page andgive you tips to make it more accessible. Itwill also “approve” your web site if youincorporate UID principles.

Next, I thought about the purpose ofhaving a course web page. I realized that thedisability accommodations that I have madefor students in the past are also just goodteaching practices. In the past, I have madecopies of my power point lecture slides as areasonable accommodation for a studentwith a disability. In universally designingmy web page, I decided to include copies ofmy power point lecture slides on my webpage so all students could access my notes. Ipost the notes weekly and many studentshave told me they use my lecture slides inorder to check their notes for completeness,clarification, and spelling errors. Studentsno longer miss the big picture because theyare madly trying to write down definitionsand details.

I have started posting my assignments, aplagiarism and proper documentation guide,and other helpful handouts on publicspeaking and how to read cases on the webpage, in addition to giving students a papercopy. This assists all students, includingstudents with learning and psychologicaldisabilities. If students need to start anassignment early, they can do so. Tutors inthe Writing Center also have access to theassignment guides and find them useful inunderstanding what I expect of my students.

Posting a course syllabus to a web page notonly assists students currently enrolled, italso provides helpful information toadvisors and prospective students aboutcourse content, goals, and the instructor’steaching style. After I realized that otherstaff and prospective students benefitedfrom the increased information, I added asection for students interested in attendinglaw school. The new section provides linksto online information as a way tosupplement the pre-law workshops that Iconduct. As my web page has grown, Icontinue to go back to the Bobby web sitefor design suggestions to make sure theinformation is readily accessible by allprospective users.

Assessment of ParticipationThat Respects

Divergent Learning Styles

An important goal of Law in Society isfor students to gain better oralcommunication skills and hone their abilityto think critically. When I implemented UIDI wanted to make sure that I was taking intoaccount diverse learning styles whenassessing participation. I have learned a lotfrom my students and colleagues about howto teach legal concepts in a first yeardevelopmental education course. As Higbee,Ginter, and Taylor (1991) advocate, Ipresent the information utilizing methodsthat are congruent with my students’


learning styles. Reading cases, hearinglectures, and reading and listening toSupreme Court oral arguments complementsprint and aural learning styles. Debates,mock hearings, and trials are excellentmethods for interactive learners. Visuallearners’ comprehension of material isenhanced by timelines, maps, videotapes,and power point slides. Finally, performativemovement during the mock trial reacheskinesthetic learning styles.

Prior to attending the CTAD training, Iassessed classroom participation mainly viadebates, small group presentations to theentire class, and large group discussions.Although I want to maintain participation asa requirement for the course, I also want torecognize that there are a variety of ways forstudents to engage with the material andprovide their unique perspective to all of usinvolved in the course. My syllabus nowreads:

Your participation in class is highlyvalued. Our class will be a collectiveeffort in which our efforts tounderstand law and society willdepend on the exploration of anumber of perspectives andviewpoints. I recognize that not allstudents feel comfortable speaking infront of large groups of people. Classparticipation therefore includes avariety of ways to contribute to the

course development, including:meaningful contribution to classdiscussions, small group work,debates, presentations, e-mailcommunication, office hourdiscussions, reviewing drafts of otherstudent’s work and providing usefulwritten and/or oral comments.

I assign a mock trial in my classes andparticipation is a major portion of the grade.For the assignment, I write a fact pattern andwitness statements based on a current U.S.Supreme Court case. Students choosewhether they want to play the role of anattorney or a witness. Working together insix to eight person teams, students spendthree weeks preparing the trial and thenconduct a jury trial in class. In rethinkingthe mock trial to make sure it is universallydesigned, I have developed the assignmentso students can play a variety of roles that fittheir individual learning styles. For example,visual learners can create charts and powerpoint slides for use as visual aids during thetrial. This also enables jury members whoare print and visual learners to better followthe case. Visual aids also assist studentsplaying the role of an attorney to organizeopening statements and to rememberimportant case names. Witnesses, especiallythose who must remember a key dollarfigure, also may use visual aids. In the past Imade accommodations for students with alearning disability and allowed the use of


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notes. Now, all witnesses can use visual aidsif they want help remembering a key fact.

Mock trial is an effective way to learnabout the U.S. legal system, work on oralcommunication, and enhance criticalthinking. The majority of students rate themock trial as the assignment that best helpedthem meet course goals on end of semesterevaluations. Interactive and kinestheticlearners excel in the mock trials and oftengain confidence that enhances their largegroup participation and written work. Printlearners also provide a key skill by digestingthe written information in the case packet.Aural learners follow the mini-lectures that Iconduct on argumentative strategies andprovide constructive feedback to teammembers on delivery of opening and closingstatements and witness testimony. In theirpeer assessment forms of their own and eachother’s participation, many students remarkthat each team member played a different,yet key role in preparing the case.

I continue to work on designing the mocktrials so that different forms of participationare assessed and valued. Students areassessed by me and by each other on howwell they work with other team membersand not just on the actual trial performance.I have noticed that students who are initiallynervous about the public speakingcomponent of the course are much moresuccessful and report a more positive

experience now that I have incorporatedmore UID principles into both theassignment and assessment of the mocktrial.

Broadening Content toInclude Disability Rights

I also assessed the content of my classesto ensure they are universally designed. AsJames Banks (1993) and Ronald Takaki(1993) have advocated, integratingmulticultural education into course contentis an effective way to make courses moreinclusive. I want to integrate disability rightsinto my courses and agree with Geneva Gay(1995) that there are multiple appropriateways to teach in a multicultural manner.Initially I incorporated a separate section ondisability rights and am now rethinking theway in which I teach to incorporate UIDprinciples.

When students see themselves reflectedin the curriculum, they are more engagedwith the underlying subject matter of thecourse (Takaki, 1993). To this end, I haveincorporated more information on peoplewith disabilities in all of the social scienceclasses that I teach. The legislative history,major federal laws, and seminal casessurrounding disability rights are part of CivilRights content of the Law in Society class.However, now rather than segregatingdisability rights to a separate section of the


course, we discuss the emergence of equalprotection and evolving definitions of legalequality. Within this discussion, disability isdiscussed and analyzed along with race andethnicity, gender, class, age, and sexualorientation. Disability is not relegated to aseparate “ism, “ but seen within the contextof a major Civil Rights issue.

I also decided to incorporate disability,race, class, sexual orientation, and genderissues as they relate to education law. I havefound that education law and policy is anissue that all students relate to and offers away for them to engage with course content.Students read a number of cases, includingBrown v. Board of Education (1954), andlearn about laws, such as the Americanswith Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA, 1994/1997), that govern education. For example,when we discuss education law, we read theprovisions in Section 504 of theRehabilitation Act of 1973 (1994) and TitleII and III of the ADA that apply to highereducation and prohibit discrimination on thebasis of disability. There are a number ofarticles and publications that providedetailed information on Section 504 and theADA that assisted in my curriculumdevelopment (Blanck, 1998; Council onLaw in Higher Education [CLHE], 2000;Rothstein, 2000; Tucker, 1996).

Including disability rights content alsoreinforces my syllabus statement regarding

disability accommodations. Furthermore,students who may have misinformationabout psychiatric or learning disabilitieslearn important information and together weshatter some of the stereotypes aboutaccommodations (e.g., students are faking it,makes course too easy, etc.). Perhaps mostimportantly, we discuss the Individuals withDisabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1994and how it differs from the ADA. Studentswho had IDEA accommodations when theywere in high school need to know that,unlike in primary and secondary schools,when they enter higher education the onus ison them to register with the college oruniversity disability services office andcontact individual instructors to obtainreasonable accommodations. Withoutunderstanding this distinction, and thattesting may no longer be free, many studentsmay incorrectly believe they areautomatically eligible for accommodationsreceived in high school.

Discussions about disability culture andthe movement for disability rights have ledto a number of benefits. My perception isthat students are more willing to self-disclose learning and psychiatric disabilitiesto me during office hours than they werewhen disability issues were not integratedinto my courses. Hopefully this change isalso due to less stigma being attached tobeing labeled “learning disabled” or havinga psychiatric disability. In past course


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offerings where I focused primarily onissues of equality surrounding race, class,and gender, some students dismissed theissue as “discrimination that used to happen,but doesn’t anymore.” With the inclusion ofdisability and sexual orientation integratedinto our discussion of equality, it is moredifficult to dismiss inequality as just ahistorical problem. Students are also able tosee more of a link between themselves asindividuals and the legal system, a majorgoal of Law in Society.

Conclusion

Since incorporating UID principles in myclasses, I have had several students bring meletters detailing the accommodations theyrequire. The students notice that the mostcommon accommodations (i.e., copies oflecture notes and additional time onassignments) have already beenincorporated into the course design tobenefit all students. I explain that I haveattempted to incorporate more learningsupports into the course with the goal ofinclusive pedagogy. The mock trial, which isthe best way I have found to teach studentsabout the U.S. legal system, seems toincrease course retention now that I haveincorporated multiple ways to participate.Most importantly, integrating disabilityrights issues into the Civil Rights andeducation law sections of the course contenthas provided a valuable learning experience.

In attempting to meet Sonia Nieto’s (1994)challenge to move from tolerance toacceptance in multicultural education,hopefully more students are seeingthemselves reflected, respected, andaffirmed in the curriculum.

References

The Americans with Disabilities Act of1990, 42 U.S.C. §§ 12101 to 12132(West 1994 & Supp. 1997).

Banks, J. (1993). Multicultural education asan academic discipline: Goals for the21st century. Multicultural Education,1(3), 8-11, 39.

Blanck, P. (1998). Civil rights, learningdisability, and academic standards.Journal of Gender, Race & Justice, 2,33-58.

Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483(1954).

Center for Applied Special Technology(CAST) (2001). Bobby home page, [On-line], Available: http://www.cast.org/bobby/

Council on Law in Higher Education(CLHE) (2000). Disability law forcampus administrators: Meeting theneeds of students. [Online] Available:www.clhe.org


Gay, G. (1995). Bridging multiculturaltheory and practice. MulticulturalEducation, 3(1), 4-9.


Individuals with Disabilities Education Act,20 U.S.C. §§ 1400-1485 (1994), asamended by 20 U.S.C.A. §§ 1400-1487(West 1997).

Miksch, K. Home page for Karen Miksch.[Online]. Available: http://www.gen.umn.edu/faculty_staff/miksch/

Nieto, S. (1994). Moving beyond tolerancein multicultural education. MulticulturalEducation, 1(4), 9-12, 35-38.

Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. § 701(1994).

Rothstein, L. (2000). Higher education andthe future of disability policy. AlabamaLaw Review, 52, 241-270.

Takaki, R. (1993). A different mirror: Ahistory of multicultural America.Boston: Little, Brown.

Tucker, B. (1996). Application of theAmericans with Disabilities Act (ADA)and Section 504 to colleges anduniversities: An overview anddiscussion of special issues relating tostudents. Journal of College &University Law, 23, 1-41.


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Empowering Studentswith Severe Disabilities: A Case StudyJay T. Hatch, David L. Ghere, and Katrina JirikUniversity of Minnesota

This chapter provides a case study of the empowerment of a student with multiple and severe disabilities. Weoutline accommodations provided in three college courses, describe classroom events that contributed to thestudent’s success, and provide the student’s own insights into her situation. We conclude that instructors must bethoughtful about what constitutes the essential elements of their courses and creative about how students canacquire and demonstrate knowledge in order to remove the instructional barriers that prevent students withdisabilities from being successful in college coursework. Removing these barriers empowers students withdisabilities to achieve their academic potential by building self-confidence and developing a realization that theresponsibility for success is shared by the students, the instructors, and the institution.

Data suggest seriouslydisproportionate barriers both toaccess and to success in higher

education for persons with disabilities (U.S.Census Bureau, 2001). That thedisproportionate success results in large partfrom inadequately designed curricula andskeptical or hostile attitudes of faculty is nolonger a matter of conjecture (Foster, Long,& Snell, 1999; Hill, 1996; Kalivoda &Higbee, 1998; Seymour & Hunter, 1998;West, Kregel, Getzel, & Zhu, 1993). In thischapter we present a case study of Kate, astudent who, because of her severe andmultiple disabilities, easily could have beenpushed to the edge of the classroom and the

entire college experience. We show insteadhow Kate became fully integrated into threecourses (one in world history taught byDavid Ghere and two in biological sciencetaught by Jay Hatch), won the respect of herteachers and peers, and gained a strongsense of self-confidence and empowermentthat resulted in her becoming an outstandingstudent. We also describe how she helped usto recognize the elements of UniversalInstructional Design (UID) that are crucialto the academic advancement of studentswith severe disabilities (Bowe, 2000;Higbee, 2001; Silver, Bourke, & Strehorn,1998). Some of these elements alreadyexisted in our courses, while others had to

CHAPTER 13Empowering Students

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be invented to accommodate Kate and arenow available to every student.

We begin by describing Kate’s array ofdisabilities, followed by separate caseaccounts of the world history course and thebiological science courses. In these caseaccounts, we describe what accommodationseach of us made, how theseaccommodations and other course practicesfacilitated Kate’s integration into eachcourse, and how Kate responded to theintegration. We conclude with a briefanalysis of what we believe to be crucialelements of curricular modification that willempower students with severe disabilities tosuccessfully achieve their academicpotential.

This case study is unusual in that itssubject, Kate, is also one of its authors. Westrongly believe that the advancements madehere and the knowledge gained resultedfrom intellectual contributions involving allthree of us. Kate’s participation as an authoralso brought a level of accuracy andauthenticity to the writing that would nothave existed otherwise. Finally, Katethought it important to be identified both assubject and as author; hence, we do notemploy a subject pseudonym.

Kate’s Challenge

Kate was a challenge, a delightfulchallenge. In our combined 35 years of

teaching, we have never encountered a moredaunting prospect or a more successfulconclusion. Both of us have had personalexperiences with friends or acquaintanceswho have disabilities, and these experiencespreconditioned us to view the potential ofstudents with disabilities very positively. Weeach have had a number of successfulexperiences accommodating such studentsin our classes. Yet, confronted with the arrayof Kate’s disabilities, each of us wondered ifwe could have any positive impact on herlearning.

Kate has severe and multiple disabilitiesthat affected motor control, sensoryperception, communication, and learning.She is unable to walk or have completecontrol over her head and arm movements.Her motor disabilities cause her speech to bevirtually unrecognizable. She speaks bytyping words into an augmentativecommunication device with a syntheticvoice output. Weak muscles make itnecessary for an assistant to support her armwhile she swings it slowly but deliberatelyto strike the keys. Typing is a very slow andarduous task; thus, real-time conversation isa very slow and sometimes frustratingprocess. Kate also is legally blind. She haslimited short-range vision but a form ofdyslexia affects even that capability bysometimes rearranging and distorting thosethings that she can see. The combination ofuntrustworthy vision and weak muscles


means that Kate cannot control themovement of her wheelchair physically orelectronically and has to rely on an assistantto move anywhere. Poor muscle control alsoresults in uncontrollable drooling and avariety of guttural noises made duringattempts to swallow excessive saliva. Oftenthese noises exacerbate communicationproblems and initiate a level of irritability inclassmates, some of whom interpret thenoises as discourteous, juvenile giggling.

Finally, Kate has a “central processingdifficulty” that interferes with word findingand retrieval, which makes it appear that shehas memory problems and causes her to goabout problem solving in an unusual way.Kate explains it this way.

I’m beginning to realize that I thinkdifferently than a lot of people. I thinkin associative webs. I do notmemorize well. I have to have lots ofinformation and a thoroughunderstanding of the concept ortheory in order to remember it. I needto know much more than otherstudents just so I can remember therequired information. The typicalteaching method of simplifying thingsis a disaster for me. When I don’tunderstand something, I need moreinformation not less.

Despite our doubts concerning ourabilities to adequately address Kate’s needs,

we both were determined to make ourcourses positive educational experiences forKate. We each met with Kate to discusswhat specific accommodations would beeffective and set out to determine how wecould implement those accommodations inour courses. We hoped Kate would learnfrom her experiences in our courses; we hadlittle notion of how profound the experiencewould be for all three of us.

The World History Course

Kate enrolled in a ten-week freshmanworld history class covering the period from1750 to the present. One simpleaccommodation was to have examsadministered by the staff at the University’sOffice of Disability Services so that Katecould use their magnification equipment andhave questions read out loud if necessary. Ialso provided Kate with copies of classnotes and map transparencies so that shecould review them prior to class, and thus bebetter prepared to understand classpresentations and be more involved in classdiscussions. The world history classincluded four classroom simulations, activelearning exercises that require students toassess the options available to historicalfigures, reach some decisions, and thenexplain or critique those decisions. Iprovided Kate with simulation materials inadvance so that she could prepare and savevoice messages on her communication


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device for possible use during thesimulation. These materials are now postedon a course website for the benefit of allstudents in the course.

Kate’s presence prompted me to makegreater use of techniques and methods that Ialready attempted to practice in theclassroom. I routinely contrast opposingviews or evidence by writing them onopposite ends of the blackboard, and I varymy tone of voice and speech patterns toemphasize different points. Also, I try toverbally provide detailed explanations of theimportant aspects of material beingpresented visually. The physical movement,the voice changes, and the detailedexplanations helped all students to followthe logic of class lecture and discussion, butit was particularly beneficial for Kate due toher limited vision. Also, my questions inclass are followed by long pauses before Iselect the person to answer the question.This allows all students to consider thequestion, facilitates involving more studentsin the discussion, and provides broaderindications of student comprehension of thematerial. In this instance, it also providedKate with the time necessary for her toanswer questions.

Long before ever learning of the conceptof UID, my teaching goals includedpromoting the widest and deepestacquisition of course material and providing

students with the greatest opportunity todemonstrate their knowledge andunderstanding. Detailed review sheets wereprovided and essay topics were announced aweek before each exam. This had the dualbenefit of enabling students to focus theirthoughts and energies while increasing thequality of work that could be expected bythe instructor. In addition, whendemonstrating their mastery of coursecontent through written essays, studentswere given generous amounts of time, thuspromoting and rewarding thoughtfulanalysis rather than writing speed. Thesepractices enhance student learning whileenabling instructors to evaluate eachstudent’s effort, knowledge, andunderstanding with more precision. Whilethey were implemented to benefit all thestudents, these practices contributed toKate’s success in the course and limited theneed for special accommodations.

A significant breakthrough was achievedduring the first classroom simulation thatoccurred at the end of the second week ofclasses. In this simulation, Congress ofVienna, students were divided into groups ofthree and provided with outline maps ofcentral Europe depicting the boundaries ofFrance, Prussia, Austria, and Russia as wellas smaller countries and principalities incentral Europe. Each group had to decidehow to reward the victorious countries withterritory, reestablish the balance of power


between the major powers, and reinstallautocratic governments following theNapoleonic Wars. The two students groupedwith Kate were friendly, but seemeduncomfortable and uncertain about how toinclude Kate in the simulation. As they werediscussing a possible territorial decision,Kate selected a prerecorded message and themechanical voice from her communicationdevice said, “Austria would not like that.”Her two startled partners waited for Kate totype a further comment and were rewardedwith a clear explanation of the dilemmaposed by the simulation. Kate quicklyemerged as the leader of the discussiongroup for the rest of the class period.

The simulations allowed Kate todemonstrate her capabilities in ways thatwould never have happened in a typicallecture-style classroom. Kate’s high scoreson exams and papers would have beenlargely unknown to her classmates, and hersevere physical disabilities would havegreatly limited her involvement in mostclasses. Yet, in the context of the simulation,the “tinny’ voice of Kate’s communicationdevice caught students’ attention throughoutthe classroom. They were aware of heractive involvement in her group and hercontributions were evident in the classdiscussion that followed the simulation.Kate was paired with a different set ofstudents in each of the three subsequentsimulations. Having observed Kate in that

first simulation, these new partnersimmediately involved her in the discussionsand waited eagerly for her contributions. Ineach case, Kate participated fully in theactivities and her active involvement couldbe heard by others in the classroom. By theend of the quarter, everyone knew that thestudent with the most “medical” disabilitieswas also the most intellectually capablestudent in the class.

Kate is a unique student, possessing atruly gifted intellect and a determination tosucceed. However, her success in the worldhistory course was also dependent upon abody of class procedures, courseassignments, and teaching methods thatenabled her to demonstrate her ability.Throughout most of her previouseducational experience, she had not had theopportunity to display her capabilities.Many teachers, staff, and administrators hadassumed an intellectual deficit based uponKate’s physical disabilities and her inabilityto participate in typical class interaction.When Kate had done well on standard testsand papers, many had assumed that othersmust have written the papers and answeredthe test questions for Kate. In this worldhistory class, Kate’s acquisition ofknowledge was promoted, her activeinvolvement was fostered, and her masteryof the content was accurately evaluated.Kate achieved success because theinstructional design barriers were removed


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that had previously prevented her fromdemonstrating her ability. All studentsregardless of their intellectual or physicalabilities should be allowed to demonstratethat ability without having to overcomeneedless barriers created by instructionaldesign.

The Biological Science Courses

Kate enrolled in two biological sciencecourses one year apart. The first was asmall-enrollment (i.e., 35 students)environmental science course and thesecond was a larger enrollment (i.e., 100students) general principles course thatincluded a laboratory component. For theenvironmental science course I made severalof the same accommodations that Dave didin the world history course. All studentsreceived a detailed study guide at thebeginning of the course. This guide includedall of the exercises and study questions thatwere worked on and discussed in class, aswell as examples of tests from previousquarters. I made the additional lectureinformation (tables, graphs and otherillustrations) available to Kate at least oneweek in advance. This way Kate couldformulate responses and her own questionsahead of time, program them into hercomputer, and participate in class much asother students did. I had already madein-class tests only 20% of the grade, with avariety of formal and informal writingassignments and a group project making up

the remaining 80%. As an accommodationto Kate, I gave all students the option oftaking in-class tests similar to those in thestudy guide (i.e., a mix of short-essay andobjective questions) or completing overnighttake-home essay exams. Both exam typestested exactly the same learning objectives.These were the accommodations that Katesaid ahead of time were the most important.She needed to know in detail from the startwhat was expected of her so that she couldset up her support system and lay out a workschedule that would allow her to stay up todate in the course. She needed to know thatthere was at least the possibility that shecould meet each course requirement, one ofwhich was class participation. In retrospect,this seems only fair and reasonable for anystudent.

There was one course requirement thatKate thought she might have troublemeeting: the group project. Because of herreal-time communication difficulties, Katewas not accustomed to working in a group,especially during class time. To helpfacilitate the initial group work, I assignedKate to a group with an older, experiencedstudent who had done a great deal of groupwork inside and outside of academia. I alsosuggested to the group members that, as theydiscussed project issues, they mightperiodically pose “yes” or “no” questions toallow Kate to participate in a timely way. Asthe group work proceeded, fellow studentsrealized that Kate possessed considerable


intellect and that she brought an unusuallyfocused clarity to what she wrote. Both myconcerns and Kate’s about her ability tosuccessfully complete the project workfaded quickly. Still, there was the vexingproblem of the final class presentation of theproject’s outcome. No one, including me,expected Kate to present before the class. Itwas not a requirement for anyone. Therequirement was that each member of thegroup had to contribute to the project in ameaningful way that was acceptable toeveryone in the group. Nevertheless, whenthe day for presentations arrived, Kate wasat the front of the room with the rest of hergroup. They presented a Jeopardy quiz showon the Siberian tiger. While other membersof the group read the answers, Kate used thevariety of voices available on her voicesynthesizer, like Bubbly Betty and FreakyFrederick, to supply the question, “What isthe Siberian tiger?” The entire presentationwas superb and it received the only standingovation in memory.

Not quite one year later, Kate asked meif I would help her with a courserequirement issue. The University ofMinnesota requires all students to completea foundation course in biological sciencethat has a significant laboratory component.Kate was eager to take the general principlescourse, but she thought the laboratorycomponent might be inappropriate for her.After all, she reasoned, the purpose of a labis to get students to manipulate things with

their hands and make direct observations,and “I cannot do that.” My immediatereaction was, “Not so, you’ve alreadyproven that you can do science as well asanyone, better than most.” However, as Ithought about exactly what we required ourstudents to do in the laboratory, I began tothink that Kate might be right. In the past wehad had students with sight impairments,students with hearing impairments, studentswith motor impairments, and students with avariety of learning disabilities truly engagedin our laboratory exercises. But we hadnever attempted to engage someone withKate’s array of impairments.

I thought the question of Kate’sinvolvement was complicated enough that Iarranged for a meeting with Kate, hermother, her personal assistant, her counselorat the University’s Office of DisabilitiesServices, a representative from the state’sServices for the Blind and VisuallyImpaired, and our college’s laboratorycoordinator. After brief introductions, themeeting began with a prepared statementfrom Kate delivered via her voicesynthesizer. Kate made it clear that she didnot expect to “slide by” in any course; onthe contrary, she wanted to have the samechance as any other student to learn aboutbiology. Her concern, based on previousexperiences in science labs, was that:

I would be expected to do everythingeveryone else did in the same way


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they did it and it would not work. Inthe past, I always felt like I failedrather than the system failed. I need tohave clear learning objectives andclear expectations of what I have todo, and those expectations should notchange later on. Jay’s environmentalscience class was one of the firsttimes in science when I got toparticipate with what I could[emphasis added] do. Having had thatclass with Jay, I know we can workout the lecture part, but I am stillworried about lab because I don’t seewell and I don’t move well; and if thelab is based on those skills, I’m introuble because I can’t do them.

By the end of her statement, I realized howfar askew my thinking had been. The realpurpose of an introductory level laboratoryexperience is not to have studentsmanipulate things with their hands or evento have them make direct observations. Itsreal purpose is to impart to each student astrong sense of how the process of scienceworks; a student gains insight into howscientists discover knowledge. All at themeeting agreed that Kate could achieve suchan insight and that she should participatefully in the laboratory exercises. Thelaboratory coordinator and I would workwith Kate to determine exactly how shewould engage in the process.

That day I gave Kate a copy of thelaboratory manual and asked her erstwhilereader, her mother, to go through it with herand write out a list of accommodations thatKate thought would be necessary for eachlab. The overall accommodations included(a) time outside of lab to write out answersto questions on the worksheets (we nowoffer this option to all students), (b)someone to do the physical manipulations ofthe experiments and someone to record data(the lab is collaborative and students workin pairs anyway), (c) large versions of someof the visual materials (most of the materialswere available electronically and could beenlarged; all materials are now), (d)availability of some of the computersoftware we use in the lab for home use (weobtained permission to do so), and (e) a quizformat other than multiple choice (weworked out a way for Kate to do multiplechoice by allowing her to answer a questionwith a short essay if she could not retrievethe information in the multiple choiceformat).

Kate also told us how she couldparticipate in virtually every lab. Herstrength was in understanding concepts,making connections, and makingpredictions. She could come to lab preparedto make contributions based on herknowledge. For example, in the mitosis (celldivision) lab, she suggested she could cometo lab prepared to explain to others how to


obtain a representative sample of dividingcells and why it was important to have arepresentative (i.e., random) sample. As Iread through the five pages of how shewould participate, I realized that Kate wasalready deeply engaged in the labexperience. She was well on her way tomeeting the central learning outcome of alaboratory experience: having insight intothe process of doing science.

I was confident that Kate could be anintegral part of the lab and that herexperiences there would be true learningexperiences. I also concluded that, eventhough Kate would be working with a labpartner, she would need a personallaboratory assistant. This assistant wouldverbalize to Kate exactly what her labpartner was doing and would recordmeasurements and observations into thecomputer when it was Kate’s turn to do so.Kate made it clear that she also needed tohave agreed-upon alternatives fordemonstrating accomplishment of certainobjectives in the event that she could notmeet them in the same way as otherstudents. The laboratory coordinator and Iwrote out these alternatives and providedthem for Kate one to two weeks in advanceof each lab exercise. For example, instead ofviewing a life stage and identifying it in thelife cycles lab, the task became “be able toask the ‘appropriate question’ about a lifecycle that would permit a sighted person todiscover what stage was being viewed.”

Sometimes Kate used these alternatives,sometimes not, but having them availableput her at ease in the laboratory so that shecould concentrate on doing what she knewshe could do. Lastly, I provided additionalbackground information about variousconcepts being learned or applied in thelaboratory. This last accommodation helpedmeet Kate’s associative learning needs.

Of course, not everything went smoothlyin the laboratory. It took time for Kate’spersonal laboratory assistant to work out areasonable system for communication and toget over “trying to help too much.” The timetaken for communication tended to put Kateout of synchrony with the other students,thus segregating her from the rest of theclass. Ultimately, we discovered it was bestto keep up with the other students and let thecommunication lag. Kate was processing farmore than she could let us know while labwas in session. The proof came in herwritten responses on the take-homeworksheets and in her oral(voice-synthesized) presentation about lifecycles.

Kate’s analysis of her laboratoryexperience was very informative andencouraging. She acknowledged havinglearned a variety of things about biology andabout how science works, but moreimportantly she learned a great deal aboutherself. She wrote:


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Most of what I learned was that it [mylab work] was a partnership witheverybody working toward the samegoal, my successful completion of thelab. I learned that if we triedsomething and it didn’t work, thateverybody, not just me, wasresponsible and it was a systemfailure not a personal failure. Ilearned I could use my strengths anddo the same activities but in asomewhat different manner, like inidentifying the life cycles. And if Ihave the data, I’m good at analyzingit. I also learned some things aboutsocializing with other people. I evenlearned to feel safe enough to sharemy sense of humor.

Here are some things I think areimportant. I never tried to use mydisabilities to get out of hard work. Iexpected to work hard. I expected totry things that would stretch mycapabilities. As long as I was trying, Ididn’t expect to be blamed whenthings didn’t work. That gave me a lotof freedom to try new things that Ididn’t know beforehand if they wouldwork out. Sharing responsibility for afailure was very new to me and a veryremarkable concept. I didn’t expecteverything to be perfect and it wasn’t,but it wasn’t solely my responsibilityto make things work.

Constructing a learning environmentwith shared responsibilities for success wasthe most important accommodation wemade, and it was not until I read Kate’sevaluation of her experience that I evenrealized we had made it.

The Take-Home Messages

We do not know how many students withmultiple severe disabilities have had thekinds of discouraging and disenfranchisingexperiences that Kate did in her high schooland early college tenure, but we suspect it isa high percentage. Such experiences erecttheir own barriers to seeking furthereducation. For the few who press onward topursue higher education (32.6%), very fewfind the will and the opportunity to completea college degree (9.4%) (U.S. CensusBureau, 2001). Our case study of Kateshows that such an outcome need notprevail. True, Kate is highly intelligent and avery hard worker, but even in sum theseattributes were insufficient to overcome thebarriers erected by curricula that weredesigned by and for those with few or nomedically recognized disabilities. Thus, it isreasonable and prudent to conclude thatcollege curricula must be modified in waysthat will be inclusive of and invitational tostudents with severe disabilities. We alsoconclude that the modifications must gobeyond simple accommodations, likealternative testing modes or conditions,


multiple modes of access to coursematerials, adequate time for all to completeassignments, and so on.

As we have since discovered, theprinciples of Universal Instructional Designcan guide us in making the kinds ofmodifications that will be truly inclusive ofstudents with severe disabilities (Bowe,2000). As Higbee (2001) points out, the firststep in developing a universally accessiblecurriculum is to determine its “essentialelements.” We need to ask ourselves:

1. What is it that our students must beable to do by the conclusion of this courseand what is it that they must know?

2. Why must they be able to do it orknow it? Here we have to be very critical ofour answer.

3. In what ways can a studentdemonstrate that she or he knows theinformation or can do the task? Here iswhere we have to rely on our creativity andthe creativity of others. For most learningobjectives, there is more than one validmeans of demonstrating what one knows orcan do. Often, as illustrated by Kate, thestudent can be the best resource fordetermining these alternative ways.

This is exactly what we did in part as weattempted to discover what Kate should beexpected to do in our courses. For example,

the study of history generally includesmemorization of many dates, importantpersonages, and events. But what is the realimportance of knowing these things? Whatis the essential element here? The historyteacher hopes that the student ultimately willbe able to understand how and why eventsunfolded the way they did. In the worldhistory course, students moved on to thislevel when they worked through thesimulations. They demonstrated what theyknew factually and, at the same time,learned to refine their ability to criticallyanalyze history. In Kate’s case, theopportunity to demonstrate her knowledgeand analytical abilities in this way wascrucial. It not only provided the instructorwith an additional way of evaluating herachievement, it provided a means by whichKate became an integral part of the class.The same thing happened with the groupproject in the environmental science courseand with the collaborative laboratoryexperience in the general biology principlescourse.

Kate had the opportunity to capitalize onher strengths and so was not faced withhaving to do things that she could not do (animportant tactic, see Preston-Sabin, 1997).This approach allowed her to take part in allof the essential elements of the courses.Thus, Kate felt fully included and fulfilledintellectually because she accomplished thesame learning outcomes that other students


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did (and in Kate’s case better than most). Itwas very important to Kate, and it is veryimportant to the integrity of collegecurricula, that the level of academic rigor ina course not be compromised in an effort toaccommodate a student with disabilities. Ifwe are thoughtful about what constitutes theessential elements of our courses andcreative about how students can acquire anddemonstrate knowledge, there need be nosacrifice of rigor in designing universallyaccessible courses.

Thoughtfully following the principles ofUniversal Instructional Design also placesteachers in the position of already having“accommodated” virtually any student whoenrolls in their courses. The stress and theinconvenience of last-minuteaccommodations, which burdens bothteachers and students, are eliminated.Because Universal Instructional Designprinciples incorporate well-establishedprinciples for good teaching, UID coursesbecome better courses all around. Ourcourses are much improved, and we havediscovered that virtually all studentsappreciate having alternative ways toacquire and demonstrate knowledge.

Another very important discovery of thiscase was the sense of empowerment thataccrued to Kate as she engaged in thesecourses. In all three courses, Kate’sself-confidence in her ability to achieve herpotential rose markedly. As she became an

integral part of group achievement, shelearned that she could participate in andsignificantly contribute to group work,something she previously had believed shecould not do. In the biology lab in particular,she learned that the onus for success was nothers alone but was shared by her and thosewho designed and delivered the curriculum.This realization, coupled with theavailability of alternative ways ofdemonstrating her knowledge, gave her theconfidence to explore new ways of learning.As her self-confidence and array of learningtools increased, she finally felt empoweredto design her own unique and verychallenging major: “public policy and theethics of inclusion of minorities.” Katecurrently is completing her senior year witha cumulative grade point average of 3.9. Sheplans to attend graduate school in the areasof history of science and public policy.Kate’s future is hers to determine and that isas it should be.

References

Bowe, F. G. (2000). Universal design ineducation: Teaching nontraditionalstudents. Westport, CT: Bergin &Garvey.

Foster, S., Long, G., & Snell, K. (1999).Inclusive instruction and learning fordeaf students in postsecondaryeducation. Journal of Deaf Studies andDeaf Education, 4, 225-235.


Higbee, J. L. (2001). Implications ofUniversal Instructional Design fordevelopmental education. Research andTeaching in Developmental Education,17, 67-70.

Hill, J. L. (1996). Speaking out: Perceptionsof students with disabilities regardingthe adequacy of services and willingnessof faculty to make accommodations.Journal of Postsecondary Educationand Disability, 12, 22-43.

Kalivoda, K. S., & Higbee, J. L. (1998).Influencing faculty attitudes towardaccommodating students withdisabilities: A theoretical approach. TheLearning Assistance Review, 3 (2),12-25.

Preston-Sabin, J. (1997). Angela:Capitalizing on individual strengths. InB. M. Hodge & J. Preston-Sabin (Eds.),Accommodations—Or just goodteaching? (pp. 82-83). Westport, CT:Praeger.

Seymour, E., & Hunter, A. (1998). Talkingabout disability: The education andwork experiences of graduates andundergraduates with disabilities inscience, mathematics, and engineeringmajors. Boulder, CO: The University ofColorado.

Silver, P., Bourke, A., & Strehorn, K. C.(1998). Universal Instructional Designin higher education: An approach forinclusion. Equity and Excellence inEducation, 31 (2), 47-51.

West, M., Kregel, J., Getzel, E., & Zhu, M.(1993). Beyond section 504:Satisfaction and experiences of studentswith disabilities in higher education.Exceptional Children, 59 (5), 456-467.

U.S. Census Bureau. (2001, March).Americans with disabilities: 1997.Retrieved October 8, 2001, from U.S.Census Bureau Access: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/disable/sipp/disab97/ds97t3.html


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CTAD: Implementing Universal Design in Higher Education - ACPA