CAST Releases Universal Design for Learning Guidelines 3.0

On July 30, 2024, CAST released version 3.0 of its well-known Universal Design for Learning Guidelines.

This latest release includes an updated set of guidelines designed to help educators create learning experiences that are accessible to everyone. In their intro to the UDL Guidelines, CAST states, “The guidelines offer a set of concrete suggestions that can be applied to any discipline or domain to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.”

Rather than focusing on learner deficits, the UDL framework concentrates on effective learning environments and how those environments can be designed in ways that leverage the strengths of all learners. In the Frequently Asked Questions section of their site, CAST points out, “When environments are intentionally designed to reduce barriers, every learner can engage in challenging, meaningful learning.”

The UDL framework is based on extensive research and brain science, and it offers design strategies based on three key brain networks:

• Affective Network: impacting motivation and learner engagement
• Recognition Network: affecting perception and understanding of new learning
• Strategic Network: addressing learners’ abilities to plan, organize, and take action

 

With relevant, updated research in mind, CAST has outlined nine guidelines that are broken down into 35 smaller parts labeled as “considerations.”

CAST explains, “The Guidelines are not meant to be a ‘prescription’ or a ‘checklist,’ but a tool that offers a set of suggestions that can be applied to reduce barriers, sustain and honor learners’ multiple identities, and maximize learning opportunities for every learner. The Guidelines can be mixed and matched according to specific learning goals and can be applied to particular content areas and contexts.”

To create version 3.0 of the UDL Guidelines, CAST conducted both extensive research and outreach. In the process, it created an advisory board, conducted over 40 focus groups, researched over 1,100 unique titles, and completed literature reviews. Through this process, CAST updated its UDL Guidelines to include a more asset-based approach, a focus on identity as part of learner variability, an emphasis on interdependence and collective learner, and a shift from educator-centered to learner-centered language.

The new UDL Guidelines are available on the CAST website at udlguidelines.cast.org. At the site, you can access an interactive version of the UDL Guidelines or download a version as a graphic organizer.

In the interactive online organizer, you’ll find a color-coded table broken down into the three main areas: Engagement, Representation, and Action and Expression. Under each of those headings are lists of suggestions for aiding learners with accessing new information, helping to support them through the process,  and helping them manage executive functions.

The following is an outline of the framework with links to related pages on CAST’s site:

Design Multiple Means of Engagement

• Access: Design options for welcoming interests and identities
  • Optimize choice and autonomy
  • Optimize relevance, value, and authenticity
  • Nurture joy and play
  • Address biases, threats, and distractions
• Support: Design options for sustaining effort and persistence
  • Clarify the meaning and purpose of goals
  • Optimize challenge and support
  • Foster collaboration, interdependence, and collective learning
  • Foster belonging and community
  • Offer action-oriented feedback
• Executive Function: Design options for emotional capacity
  • Recognize expectations, beliefs, and motivations
  • Develop awareness of self and others
  • Promote individual and collective reflection
  • Cultivate empathy and restorative practices

Design Multiple Means of Representation

• Access: Design options for perception
  • Support opportunities to customize the display of information
  • Support multiple ways to perceive information
  • Represent a diversity of perspectives and identities in authentic ways
• Support: Design options for language and symbols
  • Clarify vocabulary, symbols, and language structures
  • Support decoding of text, mathematical notation, and symbols
  • Cultivate understanding and respect across languages and dialects
  • Address biases in the use of language and symbols
  • Illustrate through multiple media
• Executive Function: Design options for building knowledge
  • Connect prior knowledge to new learning
  • Highlight and explore patterns, critical features, big ideas, and relationships
  • Cultivate multiple ways of knowing and making meaning
  • Maximize transfer and generalization

Design Multiple Means of Action and Expression

• Access: Design options for interaction
  • Vary and honor the methods for response, navigation, and movement
  • Optimize access to accessible materials and assistive and accessible technologies and tools
• Support: Design options for expression and communication
  • Use multiple media for communication
  • Use multiple tools for construction, composition, and creativity
  • Build fluencies with graduated support for practice and performance
  • Address biases related to modes of expression and communication
• Executive Function: Design options for strategy development
  • Set meaningful goals
  • Anticipate and plan for challenges
  • Organize information and resources
  • Enhance capacity for monitoring progress
  • Challenge exclusionary practices

Overall, the UDL framework is largely about offering choices, multiple pathways to new learning, and procedural supports that empower learners with multiple ways to access, interact with, and express new learning.

In many ways, the UDL framework is a guide for differentiating and scaffolding learning experiences, so each unique learner can have access to the tools, strategies, and opportunities that they need to be successful.

AVID Connections

This resource connects with the following components of the AVID College and Career Readiness Framework:

• Instruction
• Student Agency
• Break Down Barriers

Extend Your Learning

• UDL Guidelines 3.0 (CAST)
• CAST (official website)