Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Jams: An Innovative Approach to Problem Solving
Danny Torres in conversation with Zach Smith and Jose Blackorby
Zach Smith:
In a lot of circles, you’ll learn UDL first by getting into the theory of the framework and the brain research and these three principles that really drive Universal Design for Learning. And at WestEd, we kind of flip the model on its head. We say, “Hey, let’s start with the thing that’s keeping us all up at night, the problems or problem that we’re trying to solve together, and then let’s center the solutions we create using the UDL framework and applying it real-time right away in these UDL Jam sessions.”
Danny Torres:
Welcome to Leading Voices, a podcast brought to you by WestEd, a national nonpartisan research, development, and service agency. This podcast highlights WestEd’s leading voices, shaping innovations and applying rigorous research in ways that help reduce opportunity gaps and build communities where all can thrive. I’m Danny Torres. I’ll be your host.
Universal Design for Learning, or UDL, has long been recognized in education as an effective framework for creating flexible learning environments by designing learning experiences that give students choices in how they learn, what materials they use, and how they show their understanding. But can this framework be applied beyond the classroom as an approach to solving enduring challenges within systems? Today we’re here with two experts on UDL, Dr. Zach Smith and Dr. Jose Blackorby. They’ve developed WestEd’s UDL Lab and what’s called UDL Jams, collaborative sessions that help people shift their perspectives toward thinking about UDL as a framework for tackling a range of challenges.
Zach is a senior project director in the special education policy and practice area at WestEd. Zach has worked at local, regional, and national levels in the areas of instructional design, universal design for learning, special education, and school leadership. Zach’s current portfolio of projects center on creating learning networks composed of communities of educators working together to cultivate more effective schools and school systems for all students.
Jose is the director of Research and Learner Variability in the Special Education Policy and Practice area at WestEd. He’s an experienced educator and innovator with a rich background in leading design, development, and research efforts. His expertise encompasses STEM, data science, computer science, literacy, mathematics, and the application of the Universal Design for Learning framework to build innovative and effective educational solutions.
Jose and Zach, it’s great to have you on the program.
Zach Smith:
Yeah, great to be here.
Jose Blackorby:
Great to be here.
Danny Torres:
Now, before we get into today’s topic, can you tell us about your roles at WestEd and how you came to this work? Let’s start with Jose.
Jose Blackorby:
Thank you so much, Danny. Well, this is audio, so you can’t see, but I bring the gray hair to these efforts, which means that I’ve been around a while. That, of course, means that I’ve lost my touch on the basketball court. I’m not as fast as I used to be, I don’t think as fast as I used to, but I have a lot of experience and I’ve been lucky to be working in the field for really since the 1980s, and during that time I’ve gotten to do amazing things.
I’ve worked in the classroom as a teacher, as a paraeducator. I directed a dropout prevention program. I ran a national study. I’ve designed technology. I’ve been a researcher. I’ve run a program. All of those things have just been incredible blessings; I’ve learned so much. And I’ve also seen how much still needs to be changed, but also how much change is possible with modern technology, innovation, and universal design for learning.
Zach Smith:
Hey, everybody. I’m Zach. Don’t have as many gray hairs as Jose, but I’m getting there. It’s more kind of receding hairline these days. But yeah, I come to this work because of my experiences around my family’s dinner table. So I’m the oldest of six children. All of my siblings were adopted. Two of my siblings were adopted from Ethiopia, and three of my siblings were adopted locally. I live in the state of California, but locally, and have Down Syndrome. So growing up, seeing the experiences of my siblings and then comparing them to my own experiences, there was just a big difference. And so I came into education to really think through how we can make schools and school systems work for everybody.
And so UDL was something I stumbled into because I was looking for that solution that would help make instructional systems more robust. And I really fell in love with it and found it as a useful tool in creating these spaces that would be supportive of a wider population of students. I work in the Special Education Policy and Practice division with Jose, but much of my work will span across a lot of different areas of focus.
Danny Torres:
All right. So as I understand it, Universal Design for Learning, also known as UDL, is an approach to teaching and learning that gives all students in the classroom an opportunity to succeed, but your work goes beyond the classroom. For listeners who may not know, can you tell us about the UDL framework and how you apply it to your work?
Jose Blackorby:
Sure. Universal Design for Learning actually came out of architecture. There’s an architect named Rob Mace who worked in the ’70s and in the ’80s, and his idea was that if we build buildings that are accessible to everyone, that you can build something that is both more beautiful and better for everyone. And in the classic example of that are curb cuts that we often see on our streets. Those are actually designed for people who use wheelchairs. That’s how they came into being. But of course, as it turns out, wheelchairs are probably the minority of people who use those. Families with strollers, bikers, skaters, people lugging suitcases, those curb cuts benefit all of those users.
An important thing is that when you retrofit something, often it’s expensive and ugly, but if you do it from the start, it doesn’t cost you any more money. So CAST and now the field took those big ideas and applied them to learning of all kinds.
Zach Smith:
So CAST is the Center for Applied Special Technology. They’re the originators of Universal Design for Learning. And UDL is really built around three principles related to how you design or think about communicating effectively. So the first principle is providing multiple means of engagement. So we need to engage folks in a bunch of different ways if we want them to learn or follow along with what we’re doing. The second one is multiple means of representation; giving different ways for folks to experience the core concepts that we’re trying to either teach or communicate, and to experience those in different ways so that they work with the people that we’re focused on. And then the final one is providing multiple means of action and expression. So, giving students or staff or individuals that we’re trying to communicate with out in the community, different ways to take action and make decisions with regard to a message that we’re trying to get out.
And so in the UDL Jams and in the UDL Labs, we really are trying to build on this idea of these different frameworks or principles through four questions. So the first question we ask is, what’s the goal? What are you trying to accomplish within the space or within a community? And that can tie to a standard; like, we want our students to understand how characters develop over the course of time in a text, or it could be we want to communicate to a city that their water’s safe and that it’s okay to drink the things coming out of their faucets. And so, really, it comes down to getting clear on the goal, and then from there, asking the first question, which is, how do I engage people in this goal? How do I get them to care about this goal, this thing we’re trying to either teach or support folks in?
The second question is, how do I get folks to understand this goal, to comprehend the core concepts and really what we’re after at the conceptual level with regard to where we’re going? And then the fourth question is, how do I empower people to take action in this goal? And for students, taking action could be completing an assessment, showing what they know, showing that they understand how a character develops. And then in the field, it might be the folks in our city trust the water and they’re willing to bathe their children in it or drink from it, or use it as a fun recreational activity in the backyard with the sprinklers. So that’s kind of how UDL breaks its way out and how we within the UDL Lab have been exploring the application of UDL.
Danny Torres:
How is WestEd expanding in the UDL space? Can you tell us about what you’ve learned developing the UDL Lab and the opportunities it’s created? And what are UDL Jams?
Zach Smith:
We’ve been really exploring UDL for quite some time, and we were looking for new ways to ignite people to want to try UDL in their work, and we also found application of UDL that was extending beyond the classroom. We were interested in exploring how does UDL just support overall global problem-solving? And that’s really what we were able to run with when we got some strategic investment dollars from WestEd, to explore that very idea; how does UDL help us solve problems, and are there things to learn about applying UDL within problem-solving techniques?
And so, Jose, I think it was your brilliant idea that found the analogy that we all just fell in love with, and that was of jazz, where similar to in a jazz jam session, you have a bunch of different musicians coming together, sitting around, sitting in a circle. Each has their own areas of expertise and instrument that they’re playing, but we all have a common melody. We all have a common beat. We have a common objective of creating beautiful music.
We also wanted to bring that into how we think about problem-solving, where you just need to have a base level understanding of what the Universal Design for Learning framework is. And with that base understanding, we want you to bring your expertise. We want you to bring your ideas to solve problems, whether it be a problem related to a special education and general education teacher wanting to be able to solve or teach quadratics or school district administrators wanting to know how to better support site administrators in leading for instructional core or leading some sort of instructional endeavor. Either way, we wanted to bring this analogy of a jazz jam session to bear because it was such a supportive and collaborative structure to do problem-solving around.
Jose, what would you add to that?
Jose Blackorby:
Well, now that we’ve been engaging with this now, I’m really surprised that we hadn’t thought of it before. Because the way we experience music, and jazz in particular, is it’s not maybe universal, but it’s very, very popular to many, many people. But people enjoy different things, and they enjoy them in different ways. Some go to live music, some like one genre and not another, some listen to it while they run. In some contexts, it makes you sad. In some contexts, it makes you dance. It supports your affect and your mood in many, many different ways.
There are other important things too. So you can actually start in producing meaningful music with just a few notes, a few chords. Within a day, you can do something beautiful. You can also work on it your whole life and become a virtuoso and teach others. It’s also something that is collaborative, most of the time. Usually musicians come together and they create something that they could never create on their own. This whole idea of improvisation is so, so important because it means that each time you hear it it’s something different a little bit. You learn something different every time. So when you see some of the really, really talented people in our field, they are kind of like watching musicians or actors deliver a performance, and it’s beautiful and you never get tired of it.
So I have a couple of just ways of trying to sum it up, which is there’s structure, there’s technical skills, there’s collaboration. Often there’s joy. There’s engagement, there’s improvisation. It can entertain, it can transport, it can educate. It never gets old. And when we see experts in the world do it, we never get tired of it. So our hope through all this is that we will go to school or professional learning or other events in the way we go to music festivals, with excitement where we line up to get in and we remember them forever.
Zach Smith:
So we actually are working with districts and with state leaders to support them finding new ways to learn UDL through our UDL Jam model. And we actually show clips of this video where we’ll show micro portions of a jazz jam session so that people can start to see and hear and feel what we’re talking about. So here’s one of our favorite clips from a jazz night that NPR put on, but what we really cue people into is listen for the different roles and how you have more technical roles. You have more heavier hands, lighter hands. You have solos at times, but there’s this definite sense of community throughout.
Danny Torres:
So here’s Jon Batiste and a number of musicians playing live in 2020.
Jon Batiste:
(lively upbeat jazz music plays)
If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.
If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.
If you’re happy and you know it and you really want to show it, if you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.
If you’re happy and you know it, say oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
(music fades)
Zach Smith:
So Jose, walk us through. How does the analogy play its way out when you listen to that and see that?
Jose Blackorby:
Well, it starts and you see some interplay. There’s improvisation right from the start. You don’t know exactly where it’s going to go. You hear laughter, you hear connection, you hear excitement, and you hear they’re going to riff on one another, and they’re going to create something beautiful.
Danny Torres:
Yeah. Thinking back to the UDL framework or principles you talked about earlier about defining the goal. In this case, Jon Batiste, as the leader and piano player here, sets the melody, and then everyone plays around it.
Zach Smith:
Well, I think to connect, Danny, to what you just said about Jon Batiste, we have a sense of where we’re going. Someone has set that, whether it be us collectively or this singular figure, and then we all are rallying around that. And in the UDL Jam model, the problem of practice, the thing we’re trying to solve is that first step. That first set of the melody where we’re like, okay, we’re focused on teaching mathematics, specifically multiplication facts. We’re focused on knowing the structure of mitosis. And then we go through a lean in, learn, and launch phase when we’re doing a UDL jam where we start to apply UDL to these different problems of practice and then come out the other side meeting or achieving the goal; following the melody, if you will.
Danny Torres:
So how can systems leaders interested in WestEd’s UDL Lab reach out to you to learn more about this work?
Jose Blackorby:
Through the years that we’ve been working on this, we use the word educators loosely. We’ve collaborated with people who are trying to change the training in the military, people who are trying to create a new way of reading, a nutrition program in Boston public schools, the design of museums and other public spaces. So when we use the word UDL, we use it very, very broadly, as Zach said earlier, and it’s really amazing to see that. And we see again and again new areas which we haven’t seen before, and that has really fueled the growth in the field. Those of us who have been around a while, a chance to learn some new tricks and expand how we think about the framework and how we can apply it. And we think UDL Jams is a way to do it.
Zach Smith:
Yeah. I mean, when we’re talking with those folks that are interested in working with WestEd, it’s a very similar process. So we want to know their goals. We want to know about their community and what engages their community. We want to know about the different representations of content or connecting points that help community with understanding different initiatives. And we want to know the ways in which that client or partner wants to take action coming out of our work together. And one thing that we really are excited about with UDL is we start with application the whole time.
So in a lot of circles, you’ll learn UDL first by getting into the theory of the framework and the brain research and these three principles that really drive Universal Design for Learning. And at WestEd, we kind of flip the model on its head. We say, “Hey, let’s start with the thing that’s keeping us all up at night, the problems or problem that we’re trying to solve together, and then let’s center the solutions we create using the UDL framework and applying it real-time right away in these UDL Jam sessions.” Again, following that lean in, learn, and launch model that we described.
So for us, that’s really exciting because folks see the application right away. They don’t have to move from the space of, oh, okay, get the theory first and then go to the application. No, let’s apply. And even if we get it wrong or incomplete at times, let’s focus on application and solutioning early and often so that UDL starts to get cemented into our own brains and into our own hearts about why it’s helpful in creating more innovative ideas.
Danny Torres:
All right. So unfortunately, we’re coming to the end of our time together. Do you have any last thoughts for our listeners?
Zach Smith:
So we are looking for folks that are interested in this exploration with us. And so the final word I’d say is if you’re interested in jamming with WestEd and doing some exploration of Universal Design for Learning, we’re all ears and we’d love to hear from you and connect with you. Outside of that, we just are appreciative of the time and space, Danny. So Jose, I’ll give it your way.
Jose Blackorby:
Yeah, so many people that we’ve worked with over the years mention something along the lines of, “Once you start seeing the world this way, you can’t unsee it.” And it gets implied in all of these different ways; variability of all different stripes. We are engaged and energized by all of that. We love the idea of the jams, the musical metaphor, and we are looking for band mates.
Danny Torres:
Thank you, Jose and Zach, for being on the program, and thank you to all our listeners for joining us today. You can find this and past episodes of the Leading Voices podcast online at wested.org/leadingvoicespodcast, or on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, Pandora, iHeartRadio, and Spotify.
This podcast is brought to you by WestEd, a national nonpartisan research, development, and service agency. At WestEd, we believe that learning changes lives. Every day we partner with schools and communities across the country to improve outcomes for youth and adults of all ages. Today’s episode focused on one really important facet of the work that we do at WestEd, and I encourage you to visit us at WestEd.org to learn more. My special thanks to Sanjay Pardanani, our audio producer. Thank you all very much for joining us. Until next time.