Mapping out your course for students moves far beyond writing the syllabus and laying out readings and assessments. The idea of mapping relates directly to UDL principles of multiple means of representation –the way we structure and comprehend content. It includes the ways we support vocabulary knowledge, advance concepts, teach relatedness between ideas, and the granularity of information. It has to do with the transparency around difficulty level (as in the Accounting class example earlier), the density of content, and criteria for success. If you are having mapping problems in your class, you might see students feeling surprised by the material on tests, complaining that they feel lost, wondering how to get their performance back on track. Sometimes students struggle because the content is beyond their current level of understanding, but sometimes it is the way the course is mapped out.

Here are some ideas if you are thinking about mapping.

How are you building ideas?

You can build concepts in your courses in a number of different ways. Some instructors will start with the big ideas: Economic expansionism is the story of railways or Evolutionary biology is a dominant underpinning of the study of psychology. Some instructors start small, with kernels of ideas that grow throughout the course: Let us start with the example of the spiny stickleback fish or The phrase the wrong side of the tracks is a good starting place to understand the history of labour relations. If you are hearing that students feel lost, a strong UDL intervention is to ask questions about how you are structuring the course to reveal patterns, stories, and narratives around the content; your starting point for mapping may be providing alternative pathways, big or little, to building understanding.

Have you considered the transfer problem?

Transfer is concerned with the ways we learn information in one setting and see relationships for application in other settings (CAST, 2018b). When we get concerned that learners are just learning by rote or memorizing, we are often actually concerned that they only learn content for the classroom and test performance and do not see its application in other classes, in terms of program goals, or career goals. Working with learners to generate a community of inquiry as some of our students said they valued, often means that we work with transfer to help students begin to see the entire network of content of a field. We can put them in touch with questions that everybody in the field is talking about; the tough questions that help us locate our research.

Could students benefit from illustration?

A strong UDL measure you can take when it comes to mapping is to have learners illustrate relationships between concepts. Instead of checking for understanding by testing or writing essays, consider clarifying the importance of certain vocabulary terms, concepts, and processes by using multimedia illustrations to show how others in the learning community are comprehending and connecting the content. It can be as simple as sticky notes or more advanced, like advance organizers or online concept mapping tools.