Video Eleven: Universal Design for Special Needs

After watching the assigned video the objective of this blog was to answer the following questions:

1. Identify the advantages of universal design in education.  Describe how a universal design textbook could work for students with cognitive, emotional, or physical disabilities.   

2. What are your thoughts about integrating universal design to meet the needs of the “individual” student?   

3. How can education benefit from universal design?  

4. How could you benefit from universal design?

Universal design in education would provide access to all students including those students with disabilities. For example as pointed out in the assigned video, students who are in the same class might be at different reading levels so it presents a challenge to those students who cannot read at the level of the class. By creating “sliders” or the ability for a teacher to adjust the level of text, amount of images, or cater to an individual’s learning strengths a teacher would be able to challenge every student equally.  Universal design would create assistive technology devices that enhance the learning experience for students. For example, students with cognitive, emotional or physical disabilities could easily overcome such learning barriers with the help of universally designed textbooks. Students who need larger text could adjust the text within the textbook or have the ability to implement sound for those who are visually impaired. Additionally students with cognitive disabilities could adjust the level of text for reading purposes, or even add pictures to the text to enhance the learning outcome for that particular student.

Integration of universal design is something that I am in support of. I believe that while students should be provided the same opportunities as other students within the course every student is unique and has different strengths and weaknesses. I do not think it is fair or beneficial to keep those students who excel back because a few students might not understand the content or vise versa have students who are absolutely lost because you are moving at a pace they are unable to handle. By creating universal design components I believe you allow the student the ability to understand their strengths and options so that they may utilize technology to help maximize their learning.

I think education can benefit immensely from universal design especially in helping challenge the individual to learn as opposed to ensuring every individual knows the same content. The video makes a valid point in regards to standards. While standards are put in place to ensure that everyone learns the same content, universal design is put in place to help students learn at their own speed, pace and preference. This allows students the ability to learn more than what is required or the material needed in the format that they best understand it. This feature would be extremely helpful in a classroom of 10 gifted students, 12 average students, and 5 students with disabilities allowing each student to participate within the class while learning what they mentally have the capacity to learn.

As an individual universal design would allow me the ability to capture the content being studied in the most beneficial form to me. I am a self-learner and enjoy visual and auditory methods of learning. By incorporating universal design I could implement more visuals and audio components as needed while my colleague my employ a hands-on approach in similar learning exercises. As long as we are each being challenged and advancing our knowledge in the content the design of the course is achieving the same task it has set forth to achieve however now the content has been molded into the format most beneficial for us as individuals.