E. Assessment
As a means of supporting engagement, the UDL framework is supportive of authentic activities and assessments that connect to students’ lives, academic, and professional goals and values. Authentic activities and assessments can take a number of shapes:
- Discussions of current events
- Discussions of current student concerns including social justice issues
- Portfolios (including e-portfolios) wherein artifacts are collected on the development of thinking
From a UDL standpoint, effective assessments have a number of features and point not only to student performance but to curricular performance as well (Meyer et al., 2014):
- ongoing and focused on learner progress
- flexible
- measure both product and process
- are construct relevant
- actively inform and involve learners
Both Connor and Easton referred to assessments that were meaningful because they were tied to their interests, related to the constructs in class, and had an unusual format which piqued their curiosity.
Connor: I also find it helpful to tie in assignments to special interests I have whenever I can as it allows me to become more invested and interested in my classes and not just trying to reverse engineer exactly what my instructors want with assignments to meet the criteria and fulfilling them to earn good grades.
Easton: In my class recently, we did a project where we had to create a product and create the marketing materials for it, and we presented it as a mini pop-up shop. And there was one classmate who had previously had a stoma and so they decided to create a clothing brand that would accommodate that.
In the same vein, Mike spoke about the value of being multi-disciplinary and had the opportunity to engage in interpretation.
I prefer this kind of multi-disciplinary learning and am happier when we are given some leeway to interpret things the way we each tend to. I like creative writing, because I am basically the definition of an introvert and spend a lot of time self-reflecting, but I also really value variety. In two of our design courses in the spring semester we also had the opportunity to use skills from multiple classes to create one final project. I think this is the best approach for me.
A number of students spoke about the value of being offered choice, a cornerstone of the UDL framework. According to Allison Posey (2019), a prominent UDL researcher, choice is tied to autonomy; supporting autonomy is in turnkey to supporting engagement. By providing options, learners are empowered to deepen their understanding of their goals, strategies, strengths and challenges. This idea was borne out by the students we spoke with.
Shanvi: If I could design assessment, the first thing I would do is I would offer the choice in assessment. … it would be a choice between discussions where you can have group discussions of sorts … this is something we already do but it’s simply not graded. So, where the lecturer would give us a small prompt and then you bounce ideas back and forth, and maybe the lecturer could listen in and see how much blocks are building, how novel the ideas are, how good their reading of the story is, and maybe give an assessment, rather a grade based on that.”
Wesam: I wouldn’t say that assessments can be specific to one type of demonstration. Instead, I think it would be great if assessments included options that students could choose from. While I may enjoy creative writing, others would prefer tests or infographic.
Kristen took the discussion a step further and commented that having choice in assessment not only supported her own learning but allowed her to witness the ways her classmates came to and developed their own knowledge.
During my undergrad I had several opportunities to express myself in various ways—written essays, presentations, video projects, group or individual work, art projects. While I personally prefer to write (as I did here!), it was really informative to see the many different ways my classmates presented their learning.
To understand choice in assessment as not only supporting the development of expert learners for themselves but developing community in which individual differences can be appreciated is a stirring prospect for UDL in the classroom.
Students expressed many different preferences for assessment. In fact, when asked about assessment preferences and practices, a veritable treasure trove of assessment ideas emerged.
Shanvi: I would mostly lean towards take home essays where you have instructions and it’s about whether you understood the material.
Julia: I also definitely prefer projects with multiple different parts to them (for instance a project with a physical component, an essay or report, diagrams, and mathematical analysis).
Josh: I love infographics, actually I love, I think it just summarizes all the data and information you need to know and just displays it so nicely. And you can get really creative with it and make it really pretty.
Charlotte: Creative writing or an infographic.
Norah: While not the most accurate form of assessment, multiple-choice tests are best for me.
Nicole: We were like, asked to make art, like some sort of art piece about like why we wanted to be a social worker and then, and I TA’d an intro to Social Work class, we did an assignment where it was like people to do art or lecture or video or a TikTok.
Ash: If I had to assess my sci-fi class, what I would do is I would do like, um, I would do an art piece, I’d do a poster, like kind of mapped out different portions of the books that we read, and then kind of tie it all together with some of the themes and things from my classmates’ writing that they had done and kind of tie that all together.
Ash: I’ve had the final for my sci-fi class, which was like okay so for your final you’re going to make something from the world that you created and display that instead of making me write a paper, things like that have been super useful because it’s like okay I can actually demonstrate instead of sitting here for hours at a time trying to rack my brain to meet a word count or page count that is really just going to be disingenuous for both of us because I’m eventually just going to start putting in filler words and not actually putting the topic, and you have to read that, and you know, like, you don’t want to read that, I don’t want to write it, let’s find something else to do.
