My group’s interactive learning resource is focused on storytelling. Considering this week’s topics and readings around assessment, feedback and designing for inclusion we are now making some adjustments to best meet the needs of students that might use our resource. We want to integrate a feedback informed and universally designed approach that can help ensure all learners have the opportunity to engage and succeed through its materials or lessons. Thinking about the ideas from Hattie & Timperley’s (2007) article “The Power of Feedback”, I now want to embed the three essential questions, “Where am I going? How am I going? And where to next?” to guide the instruction and student self-assessment within our unit plan. Especially because it shows that feedback that addresses these questions helps bridge the gap between current performance and learning goals, fostering “deep processing and mastery of tasks” (Hattie & Timperley, 2007, p. 90). 

In terms of aligning with UDL principles or approaches as well my group is aiming at meeting diverse needs in a variety of ways. One of our main focuses within the storytelling unit is to make sure we are providing students multiple ways to engage and participate whether that be through writing topics, representing understanding, or expressing ideas with choices like written text, verbal, and visuals. This aligns with UDL’s call to “eliminate barriers in instruction” by designing flexible goals, methods, materials, and assessments from the start (CAST, 2018). 

We could still adjust our planned lessons to better meet learners’ needs especially in terms of considering any sudden changes like having to complete lessons completely online. We could make the resource more flexible in this way by adding in more interactive learning resources like checklists, sentence starter outlines, and more structured supports without restricting creativity. If we could scaffold these things in to guide students through literacy skills and storytelling this could hopefully lead into enabling self-regulation even within a more online environment which is the third level of feedback described by Hattie & Timperley, where learners “self-assess, set goals, and regulate their actions accordingly” (2007, p. 91).

The lesson is easily adaptable to be self led and online based through an extension platform like google docs and classroom to complete and hand in write ups. However to strengthen this we could add in guiding videos on how to accomplish each step of the lessons and provide some sample projects or stories with rubrics. We could also add more foundation for peer feedback with sentence starters like “I noticed…” or “I wonder…” By making these more inclusive considerations and shifts we can also make the overall assessment more growth oriented rather than performance focused. Designing for inclusion means giving every learner not just permission but the power to share their stories through different modes removing barriers and strengthening this with feedback that guides them forward. 

“Switching our lens from focusing on addressing accommodations for individual learners to understanding how those supports might best benefit the entire group of learners may lead designers to creating greater accessibility in their designs.”

From: https://edtechuvic.ca/edci335/universal-design/