EDUC 5313 Week 5 Post

    This week, I started out by reading Inclusive Instructional Design, by Rao. The article starts out by summarizing UDL (Universal Design for Learning), reminding us that it is curriculum design focused around representation, action and expression, and engagement. From there, it talked specifically about how to meet the UDL principles when designing online learning. I chose this article specifically because, since COVID, absenteeism has been a significant problem. Classroom instruction has become so interactive and activity-based, I have struggled with how to recreate this for students who are chronically absent, so truly every classroom lesson plan needs to include an online component to make it accessible for students who were not there. In my lesson plan, the students are performing scenes to show their mastery of characterization, and they need to record these scenes and submit them on Canvas. If a student was absent that day, I need to make sure I have monologues ready for 1 person to do (as opposed to scenes where 2 or 3 students are working together), and since my students have Chromebooks, they can complete this alone at home. 

    Some considerations when planning for online curriculum are to consider the level of access and support students have at home (do they have internet? Are they home alone all night so no adult to help them?), chunk lessons into manageable pieces were students have tasks between reading (this to me was the online version of "don't just stand up there and lecture"), provide clear feedback about the mastery of the subject while also acknowledging effort and practice, and making sure that clear instructions have been given about the technology we are expecting them to utilize to complete the lesson (Roa, 2021).

    Our next task was to visit the CAST UDL Guidelines to look for strategies to implement into our lesson plan. The first strategy I chose was in the Design Options for Building Knowledge section, where it is highlighted that we should incorporate multiple representations of material, and I chose (3.4) Maximizing Information Transfer (CAST, 2024). I will have multiple representations of characterization, including videos, scripts, and live examples. Students will have previous graphic organizers with examples of emotions and how they are represented in performance, and they will be asked to work together to find the correct emotion and also dig deeper into that emotion by trying to seek out the character's motivation. I think the most important of all of the UDL strategies in any class, but especially in a theatre class, is consideration 7.3, Nurture Joy and Play. As a former child development major, the role of play comes up over and over again in child development models, and much farther in to development than I think some people realize (CAST, 2024). Theatre class is supposed to be FUN. This is a consideration that must actually be strung together through multiple lesson plans (really, all of them), and it is one of the things I am really excited about moving from math (which is jam-packed full of standards and is hard to incorporate many activities due to the time it takes to deliver the actual curriculum) to theatre. In this particular lesson, the opening activity will be a fun warm-up that helps students model characterization, but also just lets them have fun and open up a bit so they can feel less vulnerable in their actual assignment/assessment, which will be performance-based.

    Lastly, we return to the idea of the digital use divide. The digital use divide tells us that there is not as much inequity in *access* to technology as is often touted, but the way that (especially children) use technology differs greatly in different socio-economic bands. We have students who have primarily only used technology in a passive manner, while other students have been actively using it to help create a knowledge foundation base (Office of Educational Technology - OET, 2024). How do we design lessons to help bridge this gap? One of the great things that technology offers is multiple ways to express, represent, and engage with information. When introducing technology *with purpose*, we can teach students how to move from being passive users. I think a great example of this is that when my oldest child was in 4th and 5th grade, and they had a weekly book club, where they were to create a book report with a group. One of the options was to basically create a short play that summarized the themes and plot of the book. It was a wonderful way for them to choose a mode of expression that moved past the standard "write 3 paragraphs about the book", which is not fun for a lot of students.

References

CAST. (2024). The UDL guidelines. CAST UDL GUIDELINES. https://udlguidelines.cast.org/

Office of Educational Technology. (2024). A Call to Action to Close the Technology Access, Design, and Use Divides: National Educational Technology Plan. Department of Education.

Rao, K. (2021) Inclusive instructional design: Applying UDL to online learning. The Journal of Applied Instructional Design. doi: 10.59668/223.3753.