Universal design is a nice way to describe basic principles to consider when designing things, including architecture, software, and courses. Almost everything should consider the demographics of potential users and ensure that
whatever is being designed can work for as many as possible. It is likely that 100% universality is impossible to reach, compromises are always necessary for a number of reasons, but when possible, feasible, and reasonable, the goal should be strived for.
Various people have talked about how the principles can be applied to course design, and a good overview can be found on UW's
site.
Universal is linked closely with accessibility and inclusivity.
In our world, universal design, the 'what' is closely linked to the actual processes that surround the 'what'; namely, the 'how'. There is no point having great x, if the x is messed up during delivery.
Summary thoughts...
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At the end of the day everyone should stand a reasonable chance, perhaps with additional aids, perhaps not, to get the intended value at a reasonable level of equitable effort and comfort. It is possible to think about common issues in a course design and deal with them without
great fuss. However, retrofiting can be really problematic and appear unreachable. We recommend that when courses have a major re-design, which should take place every 3-5 years, the courses address key requirements like accessibility and universal design concepts.
For example, roughly 10-15% of the male population suffers colour blindness and there are different types and degrees of colour blindness to think about. In a class setting, this can often arise with charts, diagrams and images where ambiguity can arise. In the majority of cases, it is not
a case of all colours being the same, there is still some distinction in some dimension. To address the issues, single coding is not recommended where colour and something else is used to provide visual separation. This can be the textures, formats, and in some cases pointers and
text - e.g., a pointer with useful information to something that would be ambiguous.
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In the mid 1990's as we were developing blended technology for the classroom, we quickly discovered sweet spots for line size, font size, font type, and style. For example, fonts at the time, in the specific context, had to be 18 point bold sans-sarif.
And any lines had to be a certain width. The students had to be able read, with appropriate contrast and clarity what was on the screen. The same issues exist today and the same decisions need to be made. Thinking about universal design makes it
easier for the student to see and understand what the instructor is doing and it can also include how things things are done and not just the what. For example, quickly wiping work off the board before students can actually understand it is not good. Quickly overwriting and
scribbling on the board is also not good. Moving quickly to the next point before making sure that the students got a key learning point is not good. These latter examples of practice likely penalize many students, while helping the instructor ensure that they
get their mark distribution; only a few will actually follow along quickly enough to ace it. Those who have ANY kind of learning issue will suffer and fill in the left hand side of the distribution. It is not that they cannot learn, it is that they cannot learn at the speed you think they
should be learning and it seems to us that many instructors believe that the average student should learn at the speed at which the instructor learns and once again, we remind instructors that assuming the average student is like them, is a poor assumption.
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That is not all. Universal design implies multiple means of engagement, multiple means of representing, and multiple means of action and expression. All of this implies, by the way, that you are going to be teaching less, focusing on the core, foundational ideas. You will
have to trim 1/3 of the course in all likelihood. This is good because you will have to figure out what is important as learning outcomes and focus on it; teaching it less, but teaching it better.
- Not done yet. Universality also implies things like being fair, consistent, transparent (when you should be, need to be, transparent). It means being reasonable and using mature, good judgement in the areas you have discretion over.
- You need to consider the who, what, where, when, why, and how aspects of your course. No aspect escapes.