Content uploaded by Stephanie Moore
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Stephanie Moore on Apr 14, 2015
Content may be subject to copyright.
BOOK REVIEW
David H. Rose, Anne Meyer, Teaching Every Student
in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1703 N.
Beauregard St., Alexandria, VA 22311-1714, Product no. 101042,
$22.95 ASCD members, $26.95 nonmembers, ISBN-0-87120-599-8
Stephanie L. Moore
Published online: 17 August 2007
ÓAssociation for Educational Communications and Technology 2007
A brief history/some background
In the 1950s, the idea of ‘‘universal design’’ first emerged. At the time it was articulated as
barrier-free design, an idea growing in concept in Europe, Japan and the US. It is best
described in the early stages as a growing global awareness of the necessity for and benefits
of building environments that were obstacle-free. The early emphasis was on removing
obstacles for people with physical disabilities—when a building was designed for
‘‘universal’’ access, it would by design accommodate users with disabilities. By the 1970s,
the idea had matured and gained political strength. During the ‘70s, US architect Michael
Bednar described universal design as an awareness that everyone’s functional capacity is
enhanced when environmental barriers are removed. The best example to date remains the
curb cut—a city planning feature designed to benefit individuals in wheelchairs, but that
turned out to benefit many others such as joggers, parents pushing strollers, etc. That
awareness would soon become a cornerstone for design practices in fields such as archi-
tecture, civil engineering, and human factors engineering. The political strength especially
came from the disability rights movement, focusing on the rights of individuals with
disabilities.
By the 1980s, this concept had gained strength in numbers (or critical mass; Rogers
1995). In 1987, the World Design Congress passed a resolution stating that designers
should factor disability and aging into designs, adding professional strength to the
approach (Adaptive Environments 2006). A number of professions adopted universal
design as a core tenet of professional practice: when a supermarket or a building or a city
infrastructure or an airplane is designed and built, it should be able to accommodate a wide
range of users. This ‘‘wide range’’ was not simply a range of physical abilities, but a range
of ages and life stages—what is called ‘‘lifespan design.’’ Any person, regardless of age or
S. L. Moore (&)
Center for the Enhancement of Teaching & Learning, University of Northern Colorado,
Greeley, CO, USA
e-mail: Stephanie.Moore@unco.edu
123
Education Tech Research Dev (2007) 55:521–525
DOI 10.1007/s11423-007-9056-3
physical limitations or stage of life would be able to access physical environments (Mace
et al. 1991). In 1987, Ron Mace coined the term ‘‘universal design’’ to try to differentiate
from accessible design. He said, ‘‘it’s not a new science, a style, or unique in any way. It
requires only an awareness of need and market and a commonsense approach to making
everything we design and produce usable by everyone to the greatest extent possible.’’
By the 1990s, ADA was signed into law, adding legal strength. The legal impetus drove
widespread change (or at least widespread compliance). Today, companies, producers,
service providers, etc., are required to be Section 508 compliant (added in 1998 to the
Rehabilitation Act). Education has been somewhat behind the curve in this area—hence
the book under review here.
The fundamental premise of UDL
In their text, Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age, Rose and Meyer put forth the most
comprehensive articulation of universal design for learning (UDL) that has been offered to
date. Indeed, there are many valuable aspects to the book. They state, ‘‘...barriers to
learning are not, in fact, inherent in the capacities of learners, but instead arise in learners’
interactions with inflexible educational materials and methods’’ (p. vi). This is akin to
Rummler’s statement that when you pit a good performer against a bad system, the system
will win every time (2004). At the heart of UDL is the view that ‘‘failure to learn’’ is not a
measure of the inherent capacity of the learner but a reflection of learning systems (some
part of the systems, such as materials, strategies, policies or infrastructure) that fail to
address the needs of all learners.
Rose and Meyer argue that brain research reveals just how different learners are and
how the same instructional approaches will not work for every learner, regardless of
whether a learner has a disability or not. They describe recognition networks, strategic
networks, and affective networks, including what the implications of these networks are for
how learning should be designed. For example, they describe how both bottom-up and top-
down processing play a role in learning content often associated with recognition networks
(e.g. learning to read) and how instruction that incorporates both directions of processing
benefits a wider range of learners and is more responsive to diversity in the learner
population. For instance, reading research reflected in the work of Adams (1990) dem-
onstrates that learning to read becomes constrained at some point if a student only has
mastered large patterns (e.g. word recognition or large vocabulary) or only has basic skills
(e.g. letter recognition or letter-sound correspondence). A student with vocabulary but lack
of decoding skills when she encounters new words will not develop into a strong reader.
Conversely, the student who has learned to decode phonemes and words will not become a
reader until he has developed a larger vocabulary and gained exposure to more contexts for
understanding. Other students may have neither large vocabulary exposure in their back-
ground (a strong correlate for students who do not go on to read; Hart and Risley 1995) nor
the basic skills for decoding even simple words. Given the reality of this diversity,
instructional strategies that include both bottom-up and top-down processing capture a
much broader range of students and the backgrounds they bring to learning environments.
Additionally, Rose and Meyer argue that UDL is now possible because new technol-
ogies make it possible to build learning materials and environments that are more flexible.
They provide a positive picture for the role technology can play in creating learning
systems that bend with the individuals in the systems. In his testimony before Congress,
522 S. L. Moore
123
Rose adds that technology can not only help us overcome existing learning barriers but also
design learning environments with fewer barriers right from the start (Rose 2001).
The authors provide an excellent treatment of setting clear learning goals and objec-
tives, outlining just how separating outcomes from process is necessary for building
flexible learning environments. For example, a universally designed learning goal will
focus on end results, or outcomes, and not pre-specify means for reaching those outcomes.
If the goal is for a student to learn to read beginning phonemes with criteria set (e.g. 95%
accuracy), then the means for accomplishing that goal are left open. Some students will
require only a few minutes of instruction and some reinforcement activities. Other students
may require numerous repetitions. Still other students may respond better to a computer
game or practice session that allows them high repetition in a multi-modal format.
Additionally, assessments can be designed along these same lines to allow more stu-
dents the opportunity to demonstrate mastery, comprehension or application. For example,
in a college level class, students can demonstrate their learning and application of course
content in a final project that can take the shape of a paper, a revised unit or lesson, a
multimedia demonstration, or a final product in which they apply the course content and
describe their decisions based on course content.
At the core of this framework for design is an emphasis on multi-modal representations
of content and flexible learning materials and systems that clearly separate ends from
means. However, there are some significant gaps and assumptions in the text. These gaps
may not be due to any lack of awareness of the part of the authors, however, so much as the
instructional design community’s lack of awareness on this topic and subsequent absence
in the dialogue. Universal Design is not a new set of ideas that is yet another fad to pass,
but instead has become the design standard for other professions and an adopted set of
principles for Fortune 500 companies and international government agencies (see for
example Japan, Pacific Bell, and UN post-conflict redevelopment policies, referenced
below). As it becomes more widespread, there are some areas where the instructional
design community can provide good insight that will yield strong solutions.
For example, in Chapter 3, Rose and Meyer argue that new digital media (versus
traditional media of textbooks and lecture) facilitates a more universally designed envi-
ronment because the new media is inherently flexible. They outline four characteristics of
digital media that are particularly beneficial for classroom application: digital media are
versatile, are transformable, can be marked, and can be networked. Indeed, these are
potentially valuable characteristics of learning environments or materials mediated by
technology. However, these are not intrinsic characteristics of the technology, in many
cases. Therefore, an assumption that use of HTML (that can be marked up and linked)
makes that learning resource (such as a website) flexible and accessible is an erroneous
assumption. Conscious design considerations and features have to be built into the website.
A website can be just as inaccessible as a building with no ramps or elevators. The
technology alone is not flexible or accessible—we build those sorts of environments only
through deliberate design that includes universal design and accessibility as part of the
framework.
Enter the discipline of instructional design. Design models demonstrate (in different
ways) that design of learning environments, materials, and systems is a conscious set of
decisions centered around a variety of factors (e.g. learning goals and objectives, learners
characteristics, media characteristics, message design, etc.; e.g. Morrison et al. 2004;
Smith and Ragan 2005). These models can inform the universal design framework to
provide a more robust framework for how flexible, universal learning systems are
designed. The models highlight design considerations and provide systematic processes
Teaching every student in the digital age 523
123
that, to date, are not present in the UDL literature. Additionally, the field provides a more
rounded conception of technology in which inherent characteristics are separated from
design decisions. What Rose and Meyer relate as the characteristics of digital media are
characteristics seated in a context of decisions and individual designers who are either
aware or unaware how to leverage those characteristics to achieve flexibility. The
instructional design community is uniquely equipped to explore the design considerations
that would yield flexible learning infrastructures and materials.
Additionally, the human performance technology literature has much to offer universal
design. Nearly all of the literature on UDL, this book included, focuses solely on learning
materials, strategies, and sometimes environments (classrooms or buildings). None focuses
on systemic-level barriers to performance that would have to change for learning envi-
ronments to become truly universally designed. From policies to rewards and incentives, to
feedback systems and resources such as technical infrastructures, all these systems-level
features play a significant role in whether a school or business or government entity will
achieve a universally-designed environment. Without attention to these aspects of systems,
Universal Design simply will not accomplish what it otherwise can. Universal Design
principles applied at these levels could relieve much of the stress at the classroom and
individual levels in schools and organizations. Indeed, if we pit a good idea against a bad
system, the system will still win every time.
And universal design is not without its benefit to instructional design and performance
improvement. Universal design gets at the core of learner characteristics in the instruc-
tional design and HPT models. Every model available to us today includes some sort of
analysis of the learner population. Starting with a diverse definition of the learner set
(or audience) in the assessment and analysis phases of the instructional design process
should lead one to designs that incorporate features of greater flexibility, multiple
modalities, and an understanding of how different learners access learning so that we build
truly optimal instructional and performance support systems. In some ways, it is part of our
professional responsibilities to ensure that the learning systems, materials, and environ-
ments we build do not limit by design. A book such as this can raise our awareness of our
practices and elevate professional standards, even as we give back to this topic to
strengthen how it is practiced.
References
Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Adaptive Environments. (2006). History of universal design. http://www.adaptiveenvironments.org/index.
php?option=Content&Itemid=26. Accessed July 17, 2007.
Fletcher, V. (2002). Universal design, human-centered design for the 21st century. Adaptive Environments
Center, Inc.
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American
children. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company.
Japan (2006).—Ministry of Land, Infrastructure & Transport—General principles of universal design policy.
http://www.mlit.go.jp/english/2006/a_policy_bureau/01_udpolicy/03_10.html. Accessed July 17, 2007.
Morrison, G., Ross, S., & Kemp, J. (2004). Designing effective instruction, 5th edition. Prentice-Hall: Upper
Saddle River, New Jersey.
Mace, R., Hardie, G., & Plaice, K. (1991). Accessible environments: Towards universal design. In W. E.
Preiser, J. C. Visher, & E. T. White (Eds.), Design interventions towards a more humane architecture
(pp. 155–176). New York: Van Nostrant Reinhold.
Pacific Bell. (2007). Universal design policy. http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/pacbell_ud/agpd.htm Accessed July
17, 2007.
Rogers, E. (1995). Diffusion of innovations, 4th edition. New York: The Free Press.
524 S. L. Moore
123
Rose, D. (2001). Testimony to committee on appropriations subcommittee on labor, health, and human
services, and education: hearing on educational technology, July 25, 2001, http://www.tsbvi.edu/text
books/afb/kit/tkit55.htm accessed July 17, 2007.
Rummler, G. A. (2004). Serious performance consulting: According to Rummler. Silver Spring, MD,
International society for performance improvement and the American society for training and
development.
Smith, P., & Ragan, T. (2005). Instructional design, 3rd edition. New York: Wiley Publishing, Inc.
United Nations. (1999). Copenhagen declaration on social development. United Nations division for social
policy and development. Available online at: http://www.visionoffice.com/socdev/wssdco-0.htm
accessed July 17, 2007.
Welch, P. (1995). Strategies for teaching universal design. Adaptive environments center and MIG
communications.
Teaching every student in the digital age 525
123
