Universal Design for Assessments w/Technology (UDAT)

And, like that, in my blog post title, a new acronym is born.

I had a fantastic meeting this afternoon with one of Fresno State's SSD (Services for Students with Disabilities) staff. Without divulging too much detail, I have a student who approached me in confidence about a disability (reported to me as dyslexia, although I'm not sure that was a formal medical diagnosis) that the student hoped I would be able to accommodate.

At the time, I felt torn. I pride myself in being as equitable as possible, so I immediately started thinking about how I might accommodate disabilities in a fair manner.

I feel absolutely fortunate that we have such caring SSD staff (as well as faculty) who are invested and committed to helping students succeed. Today I learned (and am sharing) a couple of points about Universal Design for Learning (UDL) that might also be useful to you!

Briefly, my student mentioned that it helps to be able to read exam questions out loud, which is clearly something that isn't feasible in a traditional lecture classroom-style written exam. So, feel like I have a few options if I want to accommodate this approach. One I'll rule out, and I'll explain the others further. My hope is that, every time you design a student assessment, you'll consider (as is a premise of UDL) pro-actively adopting the couple of viable options I'm about to describe.

1) Write multiple versions of an exam
No, I don't promote this. It is a lot of work, but more critically (I feel), there is no way to write multiple exams that fairly (and critically) assess students. Sure, you could write multiple-choice items in which you switch the order of answers, but because I avoid multiple-choice tests like the plague, I'm not comfortable with this approach. A similar, but more practical approach, might be:

2) Write "choose-your-own-adventure" exams
This approach is also not equitable, but I'm a bigger proponent of this than writing and distributing (randomly) multiple exam verisons. I like the idea of writing one section of an exam in which a student is presented with a few different questions (all worth the same number of points and assessing the same concept), where the student selects and answers one question. This can give students with learning disabilities the option to pick the question format that they're most comfortable answering. No, this isn't perfect (and there is, of course, no panacea for treating all types of learners equally), but it seems like a reasonable approach.

3) Write UDL exams!
I realized today that, in a course like I teach, which is specifically designed to incorporate mobile technology, there are some readily available approaches I can use to make life easier for the huge variety of students I have in my classes. In this specific case, I know that many students with dyslexia can benefit from hearing a question read aloud and/or having the student's response read aloud. This might not be practical in the traditional testing situation, in which many students are seated in the same room, and every effort is made to reduce distractions, including noises other students might make (including reading aloud to themselves!) Fortunately, I'm in a situation where I can reasonable inform students that they can bring headphones to exams and use their mobile devices to use text-to-speech software to read the questions in the PDF exam to them. I've never thought to mention to students that, with digital materials, these sorts of approaches are available. And, as is the principle of UDL, making such approaches available doesn't just benefit students with documented learning disabilities. Everybody can potentially benefit from having such options open to them!

In conclusion, I urge you to reflect on the exams you prepare. Ask yourself not only "Are they accessible?", but "How much do I explicitly demonstrate to students how they can use technology to enrich assessments (and not just learning, as many of us focus on in class!)?" 

As my SSD staff member noted today, some accommodations are legally required for students, but we would do best to help them learn how to advocate and find solutions for their disabilities that can be used beyond the boundaries of academia. Once they graduate, they'll be fending for themselves in the workplace, and we will do them a valuable service if we can help students with learning disabilities establish and practice their own methods of accommodating their disabilities!