Universal Design (UDL) in Online Spaces with @BethRitterGuth

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) helps us design learning to reach every student. Today’s guest, college professor Beth Ritter-Guth teaches us about using UDL in online learning spaces. Whether you’re flipping your classroom, blending learning, or teaching online, every teacher can learn from Beth’s techniques to reach every learner.

Beth Ritter-Guth became interested in Universal Design for its potential to increase student success.  She believes if everyone uses UDL in online education then all students will succeed, regardless of ability labels.  Dr. Ritter-Guth is an award-winning professor  at Union College in New Jersey. Listen to this episode of Every Classroom Matters to find out how this award winning professor uses UDL to increase student learning.

Listen to Beth Ritter-Guth discuss increasing student e-learning success with UDL 

Listen on iTunes 5/20/2014 episode

Add @BethRitterGuth to your PLN

Dr. Ritter-Guth’s work with UDL is recognized by the Chronicle of Higher Education, America Online, Wired Magazine, and USA Today. She has received the 2013 Claes Nobel prize, the 2013 Campus Technology Innovation Award, and the 2008 National Association of Independent Schools, Faculty of the Future Award.  She has presented at the NJEdge Conference, the Florida Educational Technology Conference, ISTE, and the Campus Technology Conference in Boston, MA, among many other presentations. 

Beth Ritter-Guth – Show Notes #76 – Universal Design in Online Spaces

Dr. Ritter-Guth says video with transcription is an example of UDL at work in online learning.  (She tells us how she does it.) Designing lessons to be accessed by all students, despite disability labels, increases student success rates.  She uses UDL in assessments, saying not all assessments need be tests or final papers.  She uses virtual worlds so students can design spaces based on the literature.  Because they are designing in 3D, students read literature deeply.

She suggests teachers find tools tied to the standards and your objectives for the course.  Tools should never take over lessons. The literature content should be the focus.  Dr. Ritter-Guth uses gaming to teach literature and find commercial games offer as much storyline as text-based stories.  She finds students are more engaged when using games to learn and hopes to collect data about using UDL to format online courses and student success rates.

In one of her classes, Beth teaches her students using a post-apocalyptic virtual world with her college students called Fall Out 3.

UDL resources: The National Center for Universal Design.

Thank you Dr. Ritter-Guth for teaching us all so much about UDL!

Every Classroom Matters is a bi-weekly Radio Show by Vicki Davis on BAM Radio network with best practices for busy teachers.  Subscribe.

Show notes prepared by  Lisa Durff, Production Coordinator for Every Classroom Matters.

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