UDL reflections

The best part about this week's homework for me was that my experience of the homework embodied its message. As someone who identifies as more of a visual learner than an auditory one, I found myself feeling wary of the podcast. I did all of the readings before forcing myself to go to the CAST website and turning on the listening portion of the homework. Much to my surprise, I found the podcast extremely engaging and enlightening, and learned more about UDL from listening to it and taking notes than I did from reading the assigned articles.

The fact that this week's homework included one of the core principles of UDL, "multiple means of representation," made the experience UDL come alive to me! Based on my experience, sometimes the best way of learning something is accessing the same information through multiple media. By reflecting on which medium works best for them, students can learn about their individual learning style. Moreover, this week's assignment was a great example of the UDL principle of means not being conflated with ends. It was clear that the goal of the assignment was to learn about UDL, but the goal did not discriminate based on learning style. Someone with dyslexia who could not read the articles assigned would still be able to learn about UDL by listening to the podcast.

Ruby Stardrum