UDL 3.0: What higher ed instructors might want to know

And some of my own reactions

For this first post in the new year I wanted to offer some information and commentary on the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) 3.0 guidelines, which were released in July of 2024. If you are not familiar with UDL at all and you are interested in inclusive teaching and accessibility, it might be something you want to check out. In short, it is a framework for inclusive instructional design and teaching in which variability among learners is anticipated, rather than addressed after the fact. Partly because it began as an approach to provide students with disabilities greater access to the curriculum with fewer retrofits and individual accommodations, UDL is often associated with disability inclusion efforts in teaching. The UDL framework is shepherded by the organization CAST. If you want to build your foundational knowledge of UDL, I’d recommend the books Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice (there is a free version published by CAST) and Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone. I’ve also written about UDL extensively in my posts and articles, if you want to check those out. If you aren’t particularly interested in UDL, you still might be interested in this post because I will be reviewing some conceptual and linguistic changes in a teaching framework, and how they land for me as a practitioner of that framework. If you write content for instructors or do faculty development, it might just be interesting to think about how shifts in language help or hinder understanding of teaching ideas. With that, on to a discussion of the UDL guidelines.

If you already work with UDL in some way, you are likely familiar with the UDL guidelines - the nine-square array of strategies that can be used to implement the core ideas of UDL: Multiple means of engagement, representation, and action & expression. The guidelines that came out last year are an update to version 2.2 (which is the version you will have seen if you started learning about UDL in the last 5 years or so). There were several versions of the guidelines even before this (you can check out the past versions on the CAST website). The changes that have been made to the guidelines through the iterations often represent the incorporation of new research, new interpretations of research findings, or changes in the intended audience of the guidelines. For an example of a change in the evidence base, the 2.1 guidelines emphasized multiple means of engagement as the first step in UDL as a nod to research that suggests it is not possible to learn without engagement. An example of a shift in audience is that the newest guidelines, which we are about to unpack in more detail, shift language from “providing options” to “designing options” in an attempt to de-emphasize the instructor as the sole decision maker about options in the learning experience.

The UDL guidelines, as developed, packaged, and distributed by CAST are (in my opinion) a useful resource that also require critical analysis. I think it is safe to say that from its birth to the present day, the CAST UDL framework has transitioned from an approach to removing barriers to the curriculum such that students with disabilities access learning with fewer retrofits and individual accommodations to a framework that aims to remove barriers for all learners, informed by principles of universal design and cognitive science. The newest iteration of the guidelines reinforces this transition in emphasizing practices that are intended to address different forms of bias in the learning environment and affirm multicultural learning (taking the idea of learner variability further beyond just ability and disability). I’m personally not affiliated with CAST, or positioning myself as an expert here - merely reacting as a longtime advocate and practitioner of UDL. I hope it at least provides a model of generous critique. With that introduction, I’ll now highlight some of the changes and offer some commentary on them.

Reconsidering “alternatives” in favor of “options”

In the new version of the guidelines, language used to indicate that there should be multiple options for various learning activities has shifted from “alternatives” to “options.” The rationale for this change is that the language of alternatives in many ways implies a standard and non-standard way of doing things. Think of how “alternative” is almost always an alternative to something else. I’ve been working with this idea in my neurodiversity teaching, suggesting that an important neurodiversity-informed application of Universal Design is to use the language of options and choice rather than standard vs. alternative^¹. It is not that these are “bad words” to use necessarily, but if we want to communicate to ourselves and to our students that multiple options are not just valid but equally valued, it may not be very helpful to label (for example) a written essay as the “standard” and a video essay as the “alternative.”

“Provide” vs. “Design”

Another aspect of this language shift is the transition from “provide” to “design”. According to CAST, the reasoning for the shift is that “provide” indicates that the instructor makes decisions about the available options and “design” suggests that both instructors and students participate in this process. An example of what this might mean is that all members of the learning community participate in “clarifying the meaning and purpose of goals (8.1)” rather than just the instructor. While I am definitely supportive of co-design of learning experiences (between students and instructors), I don’t personally feel that simply replacing “provide” with “design” makes this point clear to the reader. Part of the problem may be that design has a particular meaning in education contexts, which is not necessarily equivalent to taking an active role in the learning process or exercising agency in learning. In an attempt to find language that incorporates both student and instructor roles, the new guidelines may have inadvertently combined (and conflated) design behaviors with teaching/learning behaviors².

While it is very important to critically examine who has power in a learning situation and how it can be more evenly distributed, the fact that the 3.0 guidelines aim to be applicable to both students and instructors might make them more confusing to actually use. For example, the old (2.2) guidelines suggest that instructors “activate or supply background knowledge” and the new guidelines suggest we “connect prior knowledge to new learning.” For me, the older guidelines make it clear that I as the instructor take responsibility for initiating prior knowledge activation, though the students of course take an active role in making the important connections between background knowledge and new learning. The newer guidelines seem to lose some of the most important information from the previous version (namely that the knowledge must be activated or supplied before connections are made). More generally, I think we may say that it is important to share power and responsibilities in the classroom without erasing the unavoidable logistical roles and responsibilities that the instructor will take on.

“Expert learners” vs. “learner agency”

The overarching goal of the new guidelines is to cultivate “learner agency”, which replaces the previous goal of “expert learners.” The rationale for the change is that “expert” may imply a specific and limited end-goal of learning which does not account for learner variability. It seems to me that prioritizing agency over expertise has some benefits for both learners and teachers. The most obvious one in my mind is that students and teachers may feel there is a lower barrier to entry to use and learn from UDL, which is a good thing. After all, we are not necessarily experts in every field of knowledge or practice that we learn from.

I want to use this idea of agency to point out that the UDL guidelines are just one idea of how the basic ideas of Universal Design could be applied in teaching and learning, and I don’t think anyone should feel compelled to like these guidelines or find them inherently useful. Following Jay Dolmage and also inspired by Ann Gagné, when I have written about UDL in the past I have adopted the perspective that Universal Design, and UDL in particular, is best viewed as a “place to start” rather than a checklist of behaviors or design features. Some of the writers whose work I most appreciate and learn from do not use the UDL guidelines as much as they offer perspectives on how accessibility can be integrated into teaching but how it can be a pedagogy in itself. Recently, I have found myself thinking less about the UDL guidelines and more about how some other ideas from architectural Universal Design can apply to teaching. For example, in a recent LinkedIn post I talked about how I apply “tolerance for error” in teaching. I mention these points to emphasize that the coalition of teachers and designers who are working towards accessibility can, I think, include both those who find the UDL guidelines to be a useful tool, and those who want to conceptualize and implement Universal Design in other ways. I do have some other ideas in the works about bringing a critical perspective to the 3.0 guidelines, so if you are interested in discussing this further, feel free to comment or be in touch!

Photo by Milivoj Kuhar on Unsplash

1. I initially learned this idea from sarah currie, to whom I give credit for it.

2. I credit Tom Tobin for initially giving voice to this point.