Universal Design for Learning Strategy Database

Effective learning environments develop learners’ intrinsic abilities to regulate their own emotions and choose how to move forward in service of their learning. While many individuals develop regulatory skills and practices on their own, either by trial and error or by observing successful adults, many others can benefit from more explicit supports. While it is imperative for learners to develop coping strategies, the design of the learning environment should not require learners to cope with inequitable conditions.

Are you working to support students in:

• Setting goals that inspire confidence and ownership of learning?
• Developing and managing healthy emotional responses and interactions?
• Increasing awareness around progress toward goals and how to learn from mistakes?
• Learning from others' perspectives and repair harm?

Learners can set personal goals that can be realistically reached, as well as foster positive beliefs that their goals can be met. However, learners also need to be supported to deal with frustration and anxiety when they are in the process of meeting their goals. Multiple options can be embedded into the learning environment to support learners to find inspiration in the learning process and to develop confidence in themselves as learners.

Reminders, models, and checklists can assist learners in choosing and trying an adaptive strategy for managing and directing their emotional responses to external events (e.g., strategies for coping with anxiety-producing social settings or for reducing task-irrelevant distractors) or internal events (e.g., strategies for decreasing rumination on depressive or anxiety-producing ideation). In addition, scaffolds may be provided to develop and support social awareness, or the ability to understand the perspectives of others, including people from different backgrounds and cultures. 

Creating opportunities for individual and collective reflection is a key way to develop emotional capacity. A UDL lens reminds us of the remarkable variability of learners when it comes to metacognition. Some learners will have a heightened awareness of their progress toward goals and how to learn from mistakes along the way, while other learners can benefit from more explicit instruction and modeling. For many learners, merely recognizing they are making progress toward a goal is highly motivating. Alternatively, one of the key factors in losing motivation is when learners aren’t supported to recognize individual or collective progress. It is important that learners have multiple models and scaffolds of different self- and group-assessment techniques so they can identify and choose ones that are optimal.

Empathy is an essential component for co-designing equitable learning environments. Human beings naturally feel a sense of empathy toward others with whom they identify or have a common experience. Additional care and awareness are required to cultivate a sense of empathy with those who may appear different or come from different backgrounds. Activities that invite listening to and considering perspectives other than one’s own, building communication skills, and offering content that authentically represents a diversity of lived experiences can help expand learners’ empathy for one another.

Empathy has the potential to build and sustain a caring learning community. This attention to others’ experiences and perspectives strengthens the communal bonds within a learning environment, creating a space in which learners feel safe taking risks and collaborative learning can take place.

Sometimes, trust is broken when care is not extended toward others. This may not be intentional, as sometimes we are not aware of how our actions impact others. While it can be challenging for some to confront these situations, restorative practices are a powerful vehicle for repair. Rather than punishing learners for mistakes, restorative practices allow for learners to consider the impact of their actions and design an appropriate response to repair trust in the community. Empathy is a key component to restorative practices, as learners practice identifying with the perspective of others, understand the difference between intent and impact, and seek to make the learning community whole.