How will your interactive learning resource specifically ensure that the needs of all learners can be met?

The way in which I believe our interactive learning resources will meet the needs of all our learners is to prioritize UDL guidelines. By implementing said guidelines, it will help in assisting and covering all student needs while also providing the best ways of teaching material. Three main components are of this design, the first being representation. This will help in providing learners with the best possible ways of learning content for them with everyone being accounted for. An example is providing online-held classes that account for individuals who might have difficulty with time management. Online lectures that are later posted give students the ability to come back to content and gain total understanding while also referring to a transcript and subtitles. The second design includes expression, which allows students to express their learning and really showcase their understanding of material with different assessment methods. For example, doing research on a topic they are interested in showcasing this learning with presentations, projects, and reflections. The third and final design, apart from UDL guidelines, is engagement. This one, aside from representation, where it is providing students with the content in different ways, engagement focuses on using more than one teaching method in order to capture and maintain learners interest in the content being taught. This can be done with actual experiences and hands-on learning, amongst many more.

How can you adjust your planned learning activities to meet the needs of your learners if an unexpected event occurs? (What training will they need, and how will you deliver it, knowing they must remain at home?)

If an unexpected event were to occur, like the pandemic, for example, and the classes were strictly shifted online, providing virtual spaces to meet, communicate, and teach would be the main goal. Zoom is a prominent site that is used and still is today when teaching or meeting online. Additionally, as mentioned before, the feature of recording lectures to help students later that might have time conflicts and help them intake content at their own pace. Online learning can be made better for learners and instructors when communicating with each other and completing content with sites available to everyone like Google Docs, Google Workspace, or Microsoft Office. All these sites are easy to use and accessible.

However, it should also be mentioned that online learning has come a long way; it has more options to help all learners be able to get the same education. Providing captions, videos, and documents that follow accessible formats.

Training that would be of use would be tutorials and steps on how to navigate through online sites needed for learning. While online learning is nice because one can do it at your own pace, it can be used to teach how to manage your time effectively so that learners are up to date with the newest content and not falling behind. While we can give training to students, it would also be useful on our end to continuously grow from the feedback that is provided, making the courses more accessible to all individuals.

Choose one (or more) of your planned learning activities from your Blueprint and identify any barriers to student success. How can you alter or adjust your current plan to reduce those barriers?

Since our topic is about mental health and such, some barriers to student’s success might come in the form of concepts that might be harder to grasp or understand simply from the standpoint of information. For example, learning about depression just as a term and mental disorder might prove to be maybe less motivating or harder to completely gain an understanding of why learning about it is important, but also having workshops where other individuals who might have experienced it telling their stories about how they might have developed it and the tools they use to help themselves through it would be useful.

Consider the learning environment for your current design. What potential barriers can be reduced or eliminated to provide more pathways for learner success?

In our learning activities, our blueprint wants to make use of online tools, and a barrier to this can be an individual not having access to a device connected to Wi-Fi, and a solution would be to provide students with devices. Providing captions and videos also would help those who might struggle with their location, so the videos can be used as information and also completed in your own time.

Besides curb cuts, there are many examples of universal design in engineering. Choose an example of universal design in engineering and explain how it can be used as inspiration for a learning design.

The design I want to talk about and use as inspiration comes in the form of ergonomic tools and kitchen supplies like knives. These tools are used by everyone, and companies such as OXO make sure that most, if not all, products can be used by all individuals. Similarly, the design is to help all learners and give them the ability to use tools and take classes that do not interfere with or cause barriers to their educational journey regarding mental health.