Supporting Choices in Action and Expression
Educators can become overwhelmed when considering choice in their course and assessment design, particularly regarding format options. Some wonder how they can become experts in a variety of different modalities.
The UDL framework does not require educators to be experts in every modality, but it does ask us to be resourceful within the environments we work and learn in. “UDL is a framework to think about how different tools and resources can be leveraged to reduce barriers and support every learner to engage in challenging ways of thinking” (CAST, 2024). Collaborating with other educators can offer opportunities to share both resources and modality experience; UDL is a community as opposed to individual responsibility (DeLarge, 2022). As we’ll explore in the Curriculum Considerations section of this module, how and when you offer choice will depend on the learning goals of your course, program and/or service, as well as environmental constraints.
This comic strip from artist Rebecca Burgess explains neurodiversity and possible impacts on action and expression.
Research suggests that postsecondary learners need a gradual and supportive process when learning to express themselves optimally. This can be done through scaffolding elements in the course such as formative activities and connection opportunities. Offering choice to learners from the beginning of the course helps them to adjust and acclimatize to multiple means of action and expression before engaging in higher-stakes assessments. For example, offering the choice of written word, spoken word, or visual modes for self-introductions is a low-stakes way for students to explore different formats early in the course or learning experience.
Recommendations for utilizing choice for learners in the classroom include (Patall, Cooper, & Robinson, 2008):
- reducing the labour involved in the choice. Although it is important that individuals feel that they are autonomous and have authentic choice, choices that are highly effortful, perhaps due to the importance or consequences they carry, may diminish the positive effect of choice on motivation.
- providing opportunities for students to make choices across the unit of study
- presenting choices as equally valued and valuable
- avoiding overwhelming students with too many choices. Following a meta-analysis, Patall et al. (ibid.) suggest a maximum of five choices when first acclimatizing students to the idea of choice.
- avoiding incentivizing any particular choice. The positive effect of choice on motivation may be diminished, indeed reduced to zero, when rewards external to the choice are also provided. For example, offering bonus points for choosing a particular format.
Myth: If I offer my students choice in how they express what they value, know, and can do, I decrease the academic rigour of my course.
"To educate" has Latin roots meaning ‘to draw out.’ When we support students through multiple means of action and expression that align with our learning outcomes or objectives, we’re not giving them some advantage; we’re trying to draw out what is already inside them that has been inhibited by exposure to socio-psychological underminers.