Multiple Means of Student Engagement

On this page, you will learn more about UDL's  first principle- multiple means of student engagement.

 

What is Engagement?

The research basis of UDL explores how affective networks- the areas of the brain that regulate interest, attention, motivation, and persistence- are critically important for student learning. In the UDL framework, teaching practices that attend to student 'engagement' are those practices that leverage and promote student interest, attention, motivation and/or persistence. When we design with affective networks and engagement in mind, we help our students answer these questions:

  • Why should I care about this?
  • Why should I learn it?
  • Why is this important to me?

 

Factors that Influence Engagement

UDL presumes that learners have different interests, backgrounds, and experiences that impact their engagement in learning. Learners may also navigate many potential barriers to engagement (e.g. things that negatively impact attention, motivation and/or persistence):

  • Learners don't understand the purpose of the lesson. 
  • The assignment is too easy or too difficult.
  • The assignment has no perceivable value in the learner's life. 
  • Learners have varied executive functions or coping strategies. 
  • Learners may think the content is boring or irrelevant. 
  • Learners may have varied or insufficient background knowledge. 

 

Providing Multiple Means of Engagement

UDL guides instructors to provide students with multiple means of engagement, so that students can use their varied background knowledge and experiences to make meaningful connections to new concepts and see the relevance of what they are learning. You can provide your students with multiple means of engagement using the following strategies:

  1. Recruit and capture interest
  2. Foster self-regulation
  3. Sustain effort and persistence

You can visit CAST's UDL Guidelines on Engagement for extensive guidance Links to an external site. on how to recruit interest, foster self-regulation, and sustain effort and persistence. We have outlined just a few teaching practices below:

 

Practices for Recruiting and Capturing Interest

  • Help learners make connections to prior knowledge and experiences.
  • Share the goal or purpose of the assignment or reading.
  • Design material so it's relevant to learner needs and interests. 
  • Connect learning to the real world.
  • Provide detailed directions, examples, rubrics, and options for assignments. 

 

Practices that Foster Self-Regulation

  • Self-evaluation and reflection are both effective strategies to foster student self-regulation.
    •  Have learners self-assess their own progress using a rubric (with your learning objectives) as a guide.
    • Ask them to identify areas of strength and areas they need to improve upon.
  • Provide students with opportunities to reflect on their learning, and their learning processes, to see what's working and what isn't. 

 

Practices that Sustain Effort and Persistence

  • Provide opportunities for learners to develop their work.
    • Require learners to submit drafts of their work.
    • Provide developmental feedback and require them to incorporate the feedback into final submissions.
    • Build in touchpoints at various points so that learners can receive feedback on their work.
    • Require learners to conduct peer reviews and use a rubric to provide feedback to one another.
  • Normalize mistakes as a part of learning. Provide low-stakes opportunities for students to make mistakes and learn from them.

 

Required Video Assignment

Watch this video for a discussion of the relationships between affective networks and the importance of providing students with multiple means of engagement.

Transcript: Download Affective Networks

 

CREDITS: Information on this page is adapted by CRLT from CCBY-SA Links to an external site. AccessMOOC Links to an external site..