Digital Media Creation
This week we learned about Universal Design Principles. I have summarized UDL further below my assignment submission.
Our assignment was to update our digital media checklists and create a piece of digital media that uses images or content that we found from Open Educational Resources. I found several OER images licensed as "CC By" that I was able to combine into a short video and an infographic on the topic of Preparing to Write. The micro video and accompanying infographic introduce strategies for brainstorming that students 3-5th grade may employ prior to any writing assignment.
In selecting images, I wanted to find a uniformity of style and coloring but with images that would fit my steps for preparing to write. I used PowerPoint slides and built out each area, tying each area to a recognizable icon. I followed the same pattern in the infographic I made at canva.com.
Digital Media Creation
Infographic
Micro Video
Updated Digital Media Checklist
Universal Design Learning Principals
The primary goal of UDL principals is to reduce barriers to learning for all learners and increase access for all students' success. As an instructor, prior to course design, consider the possible barriers your target audience or students might have and design to overcome those barriers without reducing curriculum content or expected standards of academic excellence.
The UDL principals are to provide multiple means of Engagement, Representation, and Action and Expression throughout the course.
Engagement involves how learners interact with fellow learners, the teacher, and the content. Carefully designed engagement can motivate students to learn and build their interest and ownership in learning. One way to engage is to use real-world application of content to help learners see content relevance. Use immersive projects, hypothetical scenarios, or testimonials from past students to develop content relevance. Another way to engage would be to allow learners to exercise their own voice in activity design via online discussions or assignment feedback and critique. You can also vary the difficulty level and the order in which content is introduced. Finally, consider the value of prompt and frequent feedback from you, the instructor. Use rubrics to clarify expectations. Consider peer-to-peer assessing of some activities. The instructor's engagement can be contagious. Frequent feedback motivates the learner to continue to improve.
Representation involves how you guide learners to the content they will be learning throughout the course. To help reduce barriers for learners, consider using a variety of materials and formats. Don't overlook the value of listing key vocabulary relevant to the topic in a glossary format. Consider using resources that the learner can control such as video recordings of your lectures so the student can revisit the lecture and listen at their own pace. Be sure there is transcript for each video. You could also point out additional, useful video resources that students could look at to build understanding. Point out important relationships between ideas in a course using concept maps or annotated texts. When you design the course try to chunk information into manageable units that highlight concepts to be learned.
Action and expression involves how the learner demonstrates their understanding or mastery of course content and skills. When requiring students to deliver a presentation of their learning, consider allowing them to record their presentation so they can work to perfect it. Throughout the course consider providing student access to your PowerPoint, if that is how you organized your lecture, or your base outline for each lecture. Providing outlines before the lecture, lets students preview what is to come and prepares them to learn. Provide examples for learners of multiple ways to solve problems; plan for discussions of their prior knowledge, introduce real world problems and authentic situations, and discuss multiple ways to solve those problems. Allow the students to use varied formats to express their ideas with you and fellow students.
Takeaways for Graphic Design
Summary
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Strive for simplicity
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Reduce features and data displayed
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Regularize visual properties that aren’t important
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Make elements perform double-duty
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Enhance contrast
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Choose visual variables carefully
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Use the squint test
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Repeat design elements to create unity
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Align items to create visual connections
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Group related items together and avoid grouping unrelated items
Sources:
Universal Design for Learning (Part 1-6) by Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at OU
Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)
Collaboratively authored with contributions from: Elena Glassman, Philip Guo, Daniel Jackson, David Karger, Juho Kim, Lea Verou, Rob Miller, Stefanie Mueller, Clayton Sims, and Haoqi Zhang. This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.