Universal Design for Learning: Making My Classroom Work for Everyone

Earlier this week, I wrote about how impactful a professional development workshop on backward design that I participated in early in my full time teaching career gave me a concrete, actionable way to be more effective. A few years later—with a pandemic in between—I attended another workshop that changed my teaching again: this one focused on Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

It was 2023, and the University Teaching and Learning Commons at UNC Greensboro (my university), the department that supports teaching on our campus, offered a 2-day workshop on UDL. At around the same time, UTLC also offered training and resources on trauma-informed teaching and strategies for better supporting neurodivergent students. All of those ideas clicked together for me, and I’ve been making both big and small changes ever since. I’ve seen the difference in my classroom—and my students have too.

If you’re new to UDL, I encourage you to check out the resources from CAST, the organization that developed the UDL framework. At its core, UDL recognizes that people learn in different ways—how they take in information, how they stay engaged, how they demonstrate what they’ve learned.

I don’t claim to have a deep knowledge of UDL, trauma informed teaching or how to teach neurodivergent students; I’ve only done that workshop and continue to read about it here and there, so don’t take this as definitive, but instead just my own interpretation and application.

Here’s how I apply what I learned that summer in three main ways:

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1. Presenting Information in Multiple Ways

• If I’m showing an image, I include text. If there’s text, I add an image.
• I avoid overloading slides with text. I follow the guideline that we can only really read five words at a glance—and that we can’t listen and read effectively at the same time, so I keep it simple so that people who have a harder time processing information orally can read, but can still listen. And the people who do better listening, get the material reinforced by reading, but it’s not distracting.
• During class discussions, I write keywords on the whiteboard and organize them visually, like a live infographic. That way the speaking is reinforced by the writing, and if a student misses something, they can read it on the board.
• My online teaching videos follow the same principles, and I always include captions.

These may seem like small adjustments, but they go a long way toward making the material more accessible—and more memorable.

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2. Offering Choice in Assignments

When I can, I let students choose how to complete their assignments. For example, in my Arts Marketing course, I assign an analysis of social media posts: students evaluate whether a post is customer- or product-oriented and justify their response.

The goal is twofold: analyze the post and communicate the analysis clearly and succinctly. I don’t care whether they do that in writing or via a short video—either way, they’re meeting the learning objective. So I let them choose the format that works best for them. But, I keep it simple for them and me. I don’t offer a menu of a dozen options and am always sure to include clear instructions and a grading rubric.

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3. Varying In-Class Activities

In my last post, I wrote about how I structure lectures and discussions to support learning. After that part of class, we typically move into small-group activities. Thanks to my theater background, I gravitate toward mini case studies and role-play scenarios that ask students to apply what we’ve just learned.

But I also make sure to mix things up. Not every student thrives in the same format, and variety helps each of them engage in different ways. Over the years I’ve used:

• Scavenger hunts
• Classroom “stations”
• Quick research challenges
• Low-stakes debates
• Peer consultations

These activities are never graded, but they’re always tied directly to the day’s learning and to how students might use the material in their future careers.

Especially in the first couple of years after COVID, these formats helped students re-learn how to interact with each other. In a field as collaborative as the arts, getting comfortable connecting with classmates is a huge bonus because their classmates are their future collaborators, creative and business partners.

Another surprise (that I shouldn’t have been surprised by) is how moving around the room, even just a little bit, gets the energy and engagement up. I try to have an activity that gets them out of their chairs every 3-4 class sessions.

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A Few More Inclusive Practices That Go a Long Way

• Repeat important info like deadlines or key concepts multiple times. Everyone benefits from repetition, and sometimes it just takes multiple exposures before something sticks.
• Start class by grounding in the timeline of the course. I open with something simple like: “Here’s where we are in time. Last class we discussed X. Today we’ll cover Y. Next time we’ll do Z. Any questions about where we are?”
  That tiny moment of orientation helps students get present and mentally prepared to learn and just keep track of where we are. It’s remarkably effective.

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No Diagnosis Required

One thing I appreciated from the UDL workshop was the advice not to try and implement every principle all at once. That was a relief—and great advice. I focus on three core ideas: share material in multiple ways, offer choice, and use a variety of formats. That’s already made a big difference.

I also don’t try to guess which students are neurodivergent or coping with trauma. If they want to tell me, I’m here for that. I don’t need to know to justify these approaches. But no one needs a diagnosis to benefit from a learning environment designed to meet a range of needs.

That’s the beauty of Universal Design for Learning: it’s universal. These practices help everyone.

Tomorrow I’ll write about my current approach to teaching with generative AI, the topic on everyone’s mind.

If you’d like to read more about teaching arts management in higher education, read the Teaching Notes section of the American Journal of Arts Management, which I edit. It’s free to read, check it out! On today’s topic, read “Applying Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to Arts Management Curriculum by Maclain Hardin Kurza.