What is the Universal Design for Learning (UDL)?
The UDL is a framework that helps educators to develop learning environments that are suitable for all students, regardless of their abilities. When you design your courses using the UDL, as well as catering for those students with different and diverse needs, you are often also making it easier for other students. It is based around three principles:
- Provide multiple means of engagement - The "why" of learning
- Provide multiple means of representation - The "what" of learning
- Provide multiple means of Action and Expression - The "how" of learning
(Nelson, 2021; CAST, 2018; Scanlon et al., 2018; Evmenova, 2018; Arduini, 2020; Ralabate, 2011; Edyburn, 2005; Levey, 2021; O'Neill, 2021)
This is the preferred design option for Moodle development at Chisholm Institute. As part of our e-learning champions program, members are taught, encouraged and supported to use the UDL for developing online resources for students with Moodle as the LMS.
Multiple means of engagement
Creating more independence
By having each unit available on Moodle, the course will be more readily available to the trainees. They can be self-guided through the units rather than relying on the trainer to make each unit available. There will have to be some rules around how many units they should be working on at any one time, but it will also allow them to be more independent learners
Making it relevant
At the moment, the units use a number of different scenarios for the unit activities and examples. A change in the tone of the language, and providing relevant examples will allow the trainees to relate the activities to the everyday tasks in their workplace. By making it relevant, trainees will be more inclined to work through the resources and see how they can utilise the skills in their daily work routine.
Provide choices for engagement with the learning materials
Allowing the students to determine which of the provided resources they want to engage with, whether it be reading the full PDF and utilising a screen reader if necessary, viewing the screencast videos, or delving into some LinkedIn learning or Microsoft tutorials.
Provide a variety of discussion forums
This is one of the hardest areas to engage students in. In the past, I have used a Facebook group, messenger groups and What's App so that the students within a class can connect outside of the regular times and also work on assessments. I have found these quite successful and students will answer other student's questions, engage in conversation on a class topic, post relevant news articles, and share any employment opportunities that they find. Unfortunately, using social media outside of Moodle does not meet the Institute's Respectful Workplace Behaviours guidelines.
Coming up with some relevant and interesting topics should help to engage the trainees to partake, and having some of the trainers share their own tips and tricks for a particular topic could encourage trainees to share as well
Multiple means of representation
Chisholm Institute has a standard template that is used for most courses and units. The layout flows down the screen, has colours that provide a good level of contrast, and consistency between courses and units. The same template is applied to all courses so that there is consistency between units, courses and disciplines.
Current PDF document
The current resource for this unit is a resource purchased from Watsonia Publishing titled Cert III - Excel for the Workplace. Chisholm Institute has access to the Watsonia Publishing EngineRoom Desktop™, which has the ability to select chapters to put together a relevant resource. The trainees are sent a PDF version of this resource via email.
The full manual has 320 pages, but it can be split into two volumes for ease of delivery. The file is over 45mb with the two volumes being approximately half this size each. While it works mostly fine with the Read Out Loud view in Acrobat Reader DC, there are a few sections that have small columns side by side that are read across the page left to right, which is not picked up by the screen reader. It doesn't appear to have Tags, but reads ok. Acrobat DC has an accessibility setup that users can use to determine what Accessibility feature can be used with the document.
Moodle Books
Based on discussion with the e-learning champions mentors, it has been decided that Moodle Books would be the best tool to use with the Watsonia Publishing resource.
The Moodle Book activity is like a multipage website that has a table of contents that can be used for navigation. It allows you to include and format text, incorporate heading levels, add multimedia elements, embed interactive content such as H5P, and because the content is stored in Moodle, it is easy to update. We already own the rights to the content and it is easy to just copy/paste the information from the original format into a Moodle Book. I have checked with our Copyright officer and he is in agreement that this is valid under our licence agreement with the publishers, and that I should include a copyright notice stating that we have permission to use the resources.
Videos
I have made some short screencast videos that cover the basics of Excel, adding formulas and creating charts. These can be used standalone or as part of a collection of resources. The videos are currently stored on my YouTube channel and there is a playlist created for the Excel ones. The playlist will be linked in the unit Moodle.
Other resources or considerations
Chisholm staff and students have access to LinkedIn learning via our library. These cover lots of different topics in varying degrees of difficulty. I will be providing some links for those that want to be challenged or just want the information presented in a different manner.
For complicated topics, the glossary tool can be used to provide definitions and examples.
For all resources, ensure that they are clear, use appropriate fonts and sizing, and that the language is appropriate for a certificate III level course.
Assistive technology
Students do not need to identify whether they have a disability that may affect their learning and as such, many don't. If a course is designed using the Universal Design for Learning principles, students should be able to access the learning and assessment using the Assistive Technologies that they prefer to use (Ziegler & Sloan, 2017).
Multiple means of Action and Expression
For TAFE purposes, this is the assessment stage. As previously mentioned, the unit of competency on the TGA website outlines the skills and knowledge that is required for assessment purposes.
For this particular unit, BSBTEC302 Design and produce spreadsheets, the student must demonstrate the following:
Performance Evidence
The candidate must demonstrate the ability to complete the tasks outlined in the elements, performance criteria and foundation skills of this unit, including evidence of the ability to:
- plan, design, produce and finalise a spreadsheet on at least four occasions.
In the course of the above, the candidate must produce spreadsheet documents that align to document purpose and appropriate to target audience
- design spreadsheets using:
- formulas and functions with:
- addition, subtraction, division, multiplication
- brackets
- design spreadsheets that address a range of data and organisational requirements
- use software functions to create spreadsheets that adhere to organisational requirements relating to style and presentation
- use relevant help functions to rectify document issues
- produce spreadsheet document in appropriate format for review, including ability to create and modify intermediate-level charts that analyse the dataset.
Knowledge Evidence
The candidate must be able to demonstrate knowledge to complete the tasks outlined in the elements, performance criteria and foundation skills of this unit, including knowledge of:
- key elements of formatting of spreadsheets appropriate to workplace documents, including the ability to calculate:
- sum totals
- averages
- counts of values
- key features of spreadsheet applications, both cloud-based and non-cloud based
- key features of organisational guidelines on spreadsheet design and use
- organisational requirements for ergonomics, work periods and breaks, and sustainability in relation to spreadsheet production.
Assessment
The assessment criteria for this unit does not allow for a lot of scope in regards to using different methods of determining whether a student is competent. The performance evidence requires four spreadsheets to be creating that demonstrate the listed items. We would recommend Excel for this, but the unit does not specify which brand of spreadsheet is to be used.
The knowledge evidence is usually assessed using reports or questioning and there is some flexibility in this area. Knowledge can be demonstrated via a Word document or PDF, video, presentation, website, or even an audio recording.
Activity or course completion
The Chisholm standard template includes the Activity Completion Block for completion of assessments, but you can add another Activity Blocks to record progress for activities as well.
The screenshots below demonstrate the dashboard for Chisholm's Moodle as well as the standard layout of our unit template.
