How a Professional Learning Program Turned Best Practices into Better Outcomes

Improving learning in undergraduate STEM courses is a critical need to reduce high failure rates and broaden access to STEM careers. In particular, the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) reports that “Mathematics courses are the most significant barrier to degree completion in both STEM and non-STEM fields.”⁸ The MAA and other leading professional organizations urge instructors to reexamine status quo methods and utilize research-backed instructional delivery strategies to optimize students’ learning.⁸

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework of guidelines rooted in cognitive science research that supports instructors in designing learning environments to reduce barriers for all students’ learning. The UDL Guidelines are a graphic organizer of “…concrete suggestions that can be applied to any discipline or domain to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.”³ In our work supporting mathematics faculty in using UDL strategies to improve their teaching of introductory courses (NSF IUSE Award #2142315), faculty grappled with the internal struggle of learning to teach math differently from how they were taught as students. Here we share project findings and stories of faculty members who participated in a two-year professional learning (PL) program that introduced best practices from mathematics education mapped onto the UDL Guidelines.

The NSF-funded PL program involved nine faculty members teaching College Algebra, Precalculus, or Calculus I who participated in summer workshops, monthly meetings, and classroom observations. Some faculty were early adopters of new strategies and tools, while others tentatively explored more familiar strategies to align with UDL. While some strategies initially seemed outside of faculty’s comfort zones, the boldness and enthusiasm of early adopters gradually spread to others. Faculty members found the stories of others’ successes inspirational, and although some claimed to be “risk-averse,” their colleagues’ experiences and perceived success were enough to nudge others towards change. In the following section, we unpack faculty’s “boldness” in experimentation.

UDL-Aligned Pedagogical Strategies

At the end of the PL program, a faculty survey assessed the frequency with which they used specific UDL-aligned instructional strategies. The following table summarizes strategies that were utilized by at least 50% of participating faculty weekly.

Table 1 (click here to enlarge)

We expand on two of the faculty’s favorite instructional strategies for scaffolding student reasoning and improving engagement.

Think-Turn-Talk: Fifty percent of participants reported utilizing turn-and-talk or think-pair-share at least once per week, with 3 out of 8 surveyed reporting daily use of the technique. Integrating discourse and social interaction into learning is widely established by cognitive science and educational research to offer benefits to student learning.^{2-4, 6-7} When designing peer discourse opportunities with UDL in mind, we suggest think-turn-talk as an effective routine sequence.

1. Think: Allow students to engage in independent processing time.
2. Turn and Talk: Direct students to process and refine their thinking through peer interaction.
3. Share (optional): Provide an opportunity for selected peers to share their thinking with the class.

Instructors can target key areas where students may have misconceptions and then pose a question using the think-turn-talk routine to scaffold student learning. This provides students with timely feedback and opportunities for adjusting their thinking. These think-turn-talk opportunities can be brief and recurring to fit this essential research-based practice into any college course. These discourse opportunities not only support deeper understanding but also create a more interactive, feedback-driven, and responsive learning environment when used thoughtfully and intentionally.

Figure 1: An example problem string on function notation. (click here to enlarge)

Problem Strings/Thin Slicing: Instructors can design their lessons and note-taking guides using a series of carefully sequenced problems, called a problem string,¹¹ in which the instructor elicits student thinking to apply knowledge from the previous problem to solve a subsequent problem with a slight variation. Similarly, instructors can use the method of thin slicing⁵ to design problem strings which intentionally minimize variation between problems so that only one problem feature changes while the rest stay constant. This intentional sequencing allows problems to gradually increase in complexity so that students are better able to notice patterns, generalizations, or relationships (see Figure 1).¹

Successful Mathematics Faculty’s UDL Implementation

At our last meeting of the two-year program, each faculty participant shared key takeaways from their UDL learning journeys. Several faculty described UDL as expanding their “toolbox” of strategies and helping them identify the right “wrench” to address a particular learning barrier. Another important benefit was faculty participants’ increased awareness of the necessity to interrogate their biases and move beyond status quo teaching practices to boldly experiment with UDL-aligned strategies that were previously outside of their comfort zone. One faculty member reflected,

“I’m very used to learning in a...boring environment, because this is my happy place…I don’t need all the bells and whistles. But it’s really interesting to think about the perspective of somebody who’s in this course because they have to be, and you really do need to find ways to [bring them in].” (December 2024)

Faculty described the value of having a community to scaffold their own productive struggle in implementing UDL strategies. One faculty acknowledged their reticence to try new strategies until after their colleagues did:

“I’m very risk-averse, and so…even if I knew a tool existed, do I really wanna try it? What if it fails?…But when I hear people I know, people I respect…say ‘No – it worked for me,’ then it gave me courage to try it….It was nice to learn about the tools and to kind of collect those tools in an organized fashion, but going one step further, it gave me the courage to use them.” (December 2024)

Critically self-evaluating one’s own practice to better suit students’ diverse learning needs requires boldness, and a professional learning community – no matter its size – helps supply courage and accountability. Our project surfaced evidence that UDL implementation was enhanced as instructors increased their boldness to shift teaching practices. This boldness was supported by, as offered by one faculty member, “…camaraderie and working together, knowing that it’s not an easy battle” (December 2024), as well as their growing awareness of teaching biases and the ways their students’ needs may be different from their own. It required a willingness to experiment in practice, which was supported by the collaborative context of a PL community.

A Story of One Faculty Member’s UDL Journey

One faculty member entered our UDL-focused PL collaboration accustomed to teaching according to a traditional style involving heavy note-taking from the whiteboard and posing frequently interspersed conceptual questions that elicited only minimal responses. The faculty member realized, “since the questions are posed to the whole group, this rarely reflects the individual understanding of every student” (August 2023). As they learned more about UDL, one barrier they identified was that not all students were building perseverance for productive struggle during lessons. Though the instructor assigned weekly problems designed to provide regular, sustained opportunities to practice new skills, a barrier was the lack of in-class, instructor-scaffolded opportunities for students to build perseverance for productive struggle.

Thus, the faculty member decided to select a UDL-inspired modification that aimed to reduce the current barrier:

“I would like to increase the number of opportunities I give to students to work out examples independently in class (be that in small groups/pairs or on their own). In an effort to save time, most of the examples we go through during class are done as a class, with all students having the opportunity to contribute. However, students who don’t wish to participate in front of the entire class may not be getting as many check-in moments during the lesson. While there are a few days where I am able to incorporate group-work assignments, I would like to try to add in more short moments of independent work (perhaps “turn and talk” style) to more lessons.” (August 2023)

With time always seeming scarce, this faculty member identified an efficient approach to building in scaffolded opportunities for productive struggle by asking students to briefly think, turn, and talk about a high-value conceptual question with a peer. During this time, the instructor was freed up to circulate around the room, observe students’ work and listen to their conversations, and identify places where the instructor could further support individual students’ learning.

The instructor found that students appreciated this opportunity for processing and optional discussion with peers. Intentionally pre-planning the optimal turn-and-talk moments to use in a lesson improved the quality of execution. These processing opportunities helped some students feel more comfortable asking questions and helped other students form productive collaboration with peers.

While this is only one of the instructor’s strategies utilized over the two years of PL, this was perhaps one of their most catalytic strategies utilized. Increasing opportunities for student discourse in turn increased the instructor’s capacity to monitor students’ understanding during the lesson, allowing the instructor to offer timely feedback and scaffold students’ productive struggle. It gradually increased their awareness of students’ learning needs and how to support them. In their final self-reflection, the instructor described their own learning from seeing the impacts on students:

“My first goal this semester was to provide more student discourse opportunities (specifically, at least one new opportunity per week). While I do believe the students benefited from these new discourse opportunities, I believe the larger impact was actually on me as an instructor. I have often felt that class-wide discussions were the best use of class time, as I could control the narrative there and be sure that everyone was getting the message I was trying to convey. I thought that the solo or group thought to happen with homework assignments was sufficient. However, by forcing myself to give up some of this control on a regular basis, I have learned to appreciate the value of using class time to have students think independently or with a group or partner while I am still there to offer any necessary support.” (December 2024)

Proceed with Boldness: Choose Your “Plus-One”

The UDL Guidelines facilitate a process of instructor reflection that aids in identifying barriers to learning; moreover, they offer strategies to mitigate these barriers.⁸ However, examining all the considerations across nine guidelines simultaneously can feel overwhelming. One sustainable way to engage in continual refinement is to adopt a “plus-one” approach.⁹ After an instructor evaluates past practices to identify barriers to learning, they then choose a “plus-one,” or first UDL-inspired modification, which aims to reduce the current barrier. After several iterations of this process, an instructor can make meaningful progress towards improving student access to learning.

We have found that it is critical for UDL practitioners to first set clear, actionable goals to implement throughout a term. These goals often require boldness to actualize, especially when faculty choose to adjust their instruction to teach in ways that are different from their own learning experiences. Setting goals in the context of collaboration and accountability involves making a faithful, regular commitment to employing new strategies (such as integrating peer discourse) that can be sustained even after encountering initial setbacks or student resistance. Our experiences suggest that a PL community promotes sustainable, transformative change, but even informal conversations in which faculty share ideas, successes, and challenges with colleagues can actualize continual improvement that aligns with UDL.