Universal Design for Learning at Scale with Tom Tobin

​Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for improving learning for all learners based on the science of how humans learn. It involves providing learners with multiple means of engagement, representation, action, and expression. We’ve mentioned the framework on the show from time to time, and I thought it was time to dig in a little deeper.

Naturally, I thought of inviting Thomas J. Tobin on the podcast. Tom helped found the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Teaching, Learning, & Mentoring, and he is an internationally recognized scholar, author, and speaker on technology-mediated education—especially copyright, evaluation of teaching practices, academic integrity, accessibility, and universal design for learning.

Tom is the co-author (with Kirsten Behling) of the 2018 book Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education, one of the best introductions to UDL around. And then I saw a social media post of Tom’s mentioning that he was working on a new book about UDL at scale. I had to talk to him to about that!

In our conversation, we talk about the “Plus One Principle” as a way to understand and get started with UDL, the relationship between UDL and the myth of learning styles, the value that UDL can have on student retention and student success, strategics that academic leaders (or would-be leaders!) can use to help their campuses adopt UDL practices, and more!

​You can listen to my interview with Tom Tobin here, or you can search "Intentional Teaching" in your favorite podcast app.

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Undesirable Difficulties

During our conversation, Tom Tobin mentioned a certain kind of pushback he often gets when talking about UDL. When he advocates for, say, letting students choose the modality of an assignment, maybe turning in a paper or expressing those same ideas via audio or video, instructors will sometimes question if that's making things too easy on students. Tom pushes back on that, noting that if you're "dumbing down" an assignment for the sake of UDL, you're doing it wrong. Here's Tom from the interview:

Tom draws a distinction between conceptual rigor and process rigor here, and I think it's a useful one. I had just mentioned something that Cathryn Friel had said in a previous episode on how students with ADHD navigate online courses. She noted that a little extra organization on the instructor's part can help students more quickly find what they need for activities and assignments. Would you rather have students spend 30 minutes figuring out what they should be doing or spend those 30 minutes actually doing the work? That's an argument for lowering the process rigor in a course.

Here's a metaphor for this idea that I've found useful to share in my talks recently. A few years ago I was training for a half-marathon. I went out running on a sunny Saturday morning along a forest trail that was beautiful but quite isolated. The night before, I had binged a few episodes of the zombie show The Walking Dead, and as I ran through that forest, all I could think of was the possibility of zombie attacks!

A few months later, I was traveling for work and wanted to go running in whatever city I was in at the time. There was a park that looked great for running, but I had to take a rideshare to get there and back. In both cases, I encountered an undesirable difficulty that didn't help me improve my physical health: the added stress of potential zombie attacks in the one case, and the time and expense of a rideshare in the other.

Good teaching involves creating intentional desirable difficulties for our students (conceptual rigor) but also minimizing undesirable difficulties, that is, the process rigor that gets in the way of student pursuing the actual learning goals of a course. And universal design for learning is a great set of tools for minimizing undesirable difficulties.

Thanks for reading!

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