Options for Strategy Development
This guideline details ways in which educators can provide guidance for goal setting, planning and organization, managing information, and monitoring progress. Goal setting is, again, contextual and discipline specific. Having students reflect on their goals and how they can align to the course can be an opportunity for them to further connect the course and course materials to their lived experience. This guideline also encourages us to work with learners to uncover exclusionary teaching and learning practices both within our classrooms and larger systems. Once these are surfaced, we can work together to heal using community-based strategies such as restorative justice.
The following video provides an overview of the Strategy Development guideline. There are five considerations that educators can utilize to support learners in developing their learner agency.
Considerations for Strategy Development
[music]
The UDL 3.0 Framework highlights the role of executive function in all three principles. According to CAST, the executive function row “includes the guidelines that suggest ways to support learners’ executive functioning by designing options for: emotional capacity, building knowledge, and strategy development.” Designing options for strategy development is the third guideline in the Action and Expression principle. Let’s explore this guideline in more detail. Learning thrives when we can act with intention and purpose. This requires strategy development skills that help us set goals, plan learning strategies and adapt as we go. The strategic networks of the brain function to respond to short term demands in our environment while setting long-term plans and goals to reach these. Setting Meaningful Goals is the first consideration in the framework under Strategy Development. Educators set learning goals through their course outcomes, lesson objectives, workshops and/or service provision; students also bring unique goals to the learning experience. We can support learners in articulating goals that are clear, measurable and motivating. Once goals are created, we plan for the inevitable challenges along the learning path. Anticipating and planning for challenges ensures that obstacles don’t derail us. Challenges support our learning and growth, whereas barriers block our learning with no way around them. By encouraging students to reflect on potential hurdles, creating strategies to overcome them and using tools like mentorship or project planning templates, we help them to prepare for the challenges on the path towards reaching their learning goals. In the age of information overload, organizing resources is an especially helpful consideration. Staying organized helps us to manage information efficiently and maximize working memory capacity. Tools like graphic organizers, note-taking guides and templates can simplify organizing. We can also chunk learning materials and prompt learners to discover themes and patterns in course-level and program-level learning. Monitoring progress is the fourth consideration in fostering strategy development. By regularly checking progress and adjusting learning strategies, students can stay on track toward their goals. Feedback is essential for monitoring progress and needs to be explicit, timely, informative and aligned with learning goals. This consideration is new to the 3.0 version of the UDL framework: Challenging Exclusionary Practices. To ensure learning is inclusive, we must address and dismantle exclusionary practices in action and expression. Listening to diverse perspectives and creating space for healing fosters a sense of belonging for all. When the learning community is given an opportunity to name these exclusionary practices, we can work together to challenge these and begin to transform our learning spaces. By enhancing strategy development intentionally, and fostering inclusivity, we empower all learners to achieve their full potential.
[music]
Considerations for Strategy Development - Runtime 3:12 min
https://youtu.be/_J4fGKCocB0?si=rGhXBsIDvWnEg3GK
The following video provides an example of checking our own biases around strategy development.
Hear Juana Gonzalez-Santos, a biology professor in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, reflect on how educators often assume others like to learn the way they did and do. She prompts us to consider the many ways lifelong learning, including executive functioning, can present in our students.
A Professor Reflects On How Our Own Biases Influence How We Perceive Life-long Learning
[ music ]
>> I found this cartoon in the internet, of course. And I find it’s quite ironic so-- and I, I, I mention [indiscernible] sometimes I feel that I’m the professor-- sometimes we want to mold the students the way-- according to the way we are. And by doing that, we go against the UDL principle, no? Sometimes we appreciate the students that are the way we used to be as a students at the expense of those that have different styles, no? And, of course, this is not the goal and we are aware of that, yeah? So if we want the students to really be life-long learners, independent thinkers, we have to appreciate their unique styles of learning.
[ music ]
A professor reflects on how our own biases influence how we perceive lifelong learning - Runtime 1:25 min
https://youtu.be/dLkVeCMym_o