When you tackle UD from the perspective of the Disability Resource Center, then you address issues that Melanie described. But you could easily tackle UD from an English-as-a-Second-Language perspective. What kind of design choices could you make to help remove language barriers for students who want to participate fully in the curriculum but are stymied because the curriculum is delivered in English? I’m not proposing we make all professors multi-lingual. That’s accommodation, just in the reverse. Instead, there are actual formatting choices a course designer could make that would make it easier for a student to both increase their second language vocabulary as well as translate the course into their own language. Again, it is easiest to use technology as part of this solution, and explore the different ways you can store information that makes it easier to internationalize.

UD is about wanting to provide an individual experience, but wanting to do that for all students, instead of making design choices that limit success to students with certain abilities. I would rather have success limited to the amount of effort and skill a student and teacher bring to the experience. I would rather see us create experiences with multiple interaction points so that each student can fully participate in the process, no matter what capability or disability they bring to the interaction vortex. Your goal, Nick, is exactly what we’re talking about here. The idea behind UD for education is that instead of designing a curriculum [process] that only a few students can get anything out of, you broaden your scope to design a process that engages all students in an individual manner.

A building and a web site are designed by someone, but are intended to be used by others. Their structures are defined, not by the users, but by the designer. There can be some interactivity, such as this blog, on which I am attempting to add content. However, I can only add content that fits into the blog structure created by Daniel. He has additional control over that structure because he chooses which blog comments to post publicly and which blog comments to discard. Some buildings allow users some interactivity also, e.g., moveable partitions allow users to reconfigure a room to different sizes and shapes.

However, teaching and learning are processes, not objects. A curriculum is a set of experiences that students and teachers go through together. At the university, these experiences are broken down into majors, minors, general education, which are further divided into individual courses. If we limit the discussion to a single course, then the curriculum for that course is the sum of all of the experiences that students and teachers in that course have with each other and with the ideas of the course.

The teaching and learning processes are very individual. I think that most students don’t really learn very much from most of the courses they take in K-12 or at the university. If that is true, then teachers need to find better ways to get students to engage with each other, with the teacher, and with the ideas of the course. If UD can help with that, I’m all for it.

But what I really think is that we need to figure our what works for each indivudual student. Therefore, I’m not sure it is possible to make a course truly universal. A teacher needs to deal with each individual student’s background knowledge, their opinions, their misconceptions, etc.

I think it would be great if I could design a course that would work for every student that takes it. I just think that is a quixotic quest. Again, I am not against the goal. My goal is the same: to help every student learn. I just think that we need to make education more individual, not less.

Finally, back to the original question. If the word curriculum refers simply to objects like textbooks, a syllabus, a WebCT course supplement, etc., then UD principles certainly apply, just as with buildings. A syllabus does no good if a student can’t read it or even access it. In my view, however, those objects are not the curriculum. If so, then we do not need schools and teachers—just sell or give those objects to people and let them do the courses on their own.

In fact, this is why MIT has put most of their course objects on the web for free. The objects that can be placed on the web do not a curriculum make. If it were so, no one would bother actually going to MIT anymore. That is hardly the case, however.

But what if we were to look at disability through a different lens?

Nick already pointed out a situation in which the environment, for him, was disabling. He did not have the tools that matched his prior experience and knowledge. He had to jump through additional hoops to accomplish the same tasks.

Imagine a student who is blind taking a course in which all of the materials are provided electronically through an accessible course management system in a format that works with her screen reader. She takes a laptop to class to take notes and has the handouts on the laptop as well so that she can refer to them as they are being discussed. Exams are provided online in an accessible format and in such a manner that she does not need to request extra time.

The same student takes another course that is designed differently. The professor provides printed handouts during almost every class meeting. He emails them to the blind student right after class but the student does not have access to the handouts during class. Exams are provided in class on paper and are not formatted in a way the works for a screen reader user. So the professor emails the exam to the DRC to be reformatted. The DRC provides a laptop on exam day so that professor can be assured that she does not have access to materials that might be available on her own laptop.

The student’s condition did not change in any way, of course. But in the first environment the fact that the student is blind is a non-issue in terms of participation, whereas the second environment is “disabling.” Sure the student had access to the same materials as other students but it was certainly not seamless integration.

Such a comparison makes it clear that the problem of access lies with the designer rather than with the student. This is reflective of a social or interactive definition of disability. In this view disability lies at the intersection of the individual and the design. Disability results from the present (but not the potential) inability of designers to create inclusive environments. [Italic formatting is the editor's.]

This leads us back to universal design. Designing a course using the principles of universal design is not something that will occur overnight. universal design does not offer all of the solutions to every problem of access. It does challenge us to ask the right questions. It challenges us to recognize that when an accommodation is necessary, perhaps that is an opportunity to think differently about design. Certainly it is easier to conceive of the solutions in a static environment–like a building or a website–than in a dynamic one, but until we begin to challenge ourselves to shift our thinking then we will remain satisfied with the status quo. [Bold formatting is the editor's.]

Second, I never suggested that using UD principles was somehow in opposition to teaching, service, and research. What I suggested is that it is only one aspect of those efforts, and it competes with many other very worthwhile projects for time, energy, and resources.

Third, I never suggested that disabled people were not real. It simply is not clear to me that there is less effort involved in using UD than there is in making specific accomodations for specific students, each of whom might have a very different need. In my opinion, it would take a herculean effort to make a course truly universal (for every hypothetical student that might walk into my classroom). However, it does not necessarily take a herculean effort to solve a specific problem for a specific real student that wants to take my course.

Fourth, the PC vs. MAC discussion is interesting. When I arrived at UALR in 1996 from my graduate studies at RPI and Yale, I was like a fish out of water. I had never even seen either a PC or a MAC at those engineering schools. My research involved doing scientific computing to solve mechanical engineering problems on massively parallel supercomputers, and it was a 100% UNIX environment. But even undergraduate computer labs for the computer science and engineering students were 100% UNIX. When I came to UALR, no one could even install my computer properly because there was no UNIX support on this campus. Many of the things I was able to do easily in the 1970’s and 1980’s in a UNIX environment are still difficult or impossible in a PC/MAC environment, or they have only recently become possible (e.g., logging in to my office computer from home). I was seriously impeded from continuing with my research by the lack of scientific computing infrastructure at UALR. I had to spend my time on hardware and software infrastructure issues instead of my research. So, I found it frustrating to work at a university that did not support UNIX users.

Fifth, let me close by again stating that I support the principles of UD as I understand them. However, there is a caveat. Designing a course to be truly universal is not a simple task. The design would have to address every possible disability, every possible learning style, every possible student ability, every possible level of student preparation, every possible motive for taking the course, every possible language, every possible cultural background, etc. I’m not sure that it is even possible to make a course truly universal. However, do not confuse that skepticism with opposition—just because something is hard does not mean that we should not try to do it.

I’m not sure I understand UD applied to curriculum. A curriculum is not an object, like a building or a web site.

As regards their objectness*, a curriculum and a web site are very similar and have only distant similarities to a building. In what sense, Nick, do you find this not so?

*objectitude? objectiality? objecthood?

Best Regards,
Karen Irons
Teacher Education