Universal Design for Learning, or UDL, is a framework used by educators to augment teaching and learning styles, content, and assessments for all populations of learners. CAST, a nonprofit education research and development organization, created this framework and provides UDL guidelines for educators. These guidelines offer suggestions for how to apply UDL in all course modalities. The principles of UDL—engagement, representation, and action—provide an easy-to-understand structure to apply UDL principles to your course. Within each of these principles, there are additional guidelines that suggest “ways to increase access to the learning goal by recruiting interest and by offering options for perception and physical action” (CAST, 2018). These fall into four categories: access, build, internalize, and goal.
These guidelines are not meant to be prescriptive; instead, the guidelines should be read as a set of suggestions that “can be mixed and matched according to specific learning goals and can be applied to particular content areas and contexts” (CAST, 2018). To learn more about CAST, UDL, and the UDL Guidelines, visit their website.