"Clear Goals, Multiple Means”
When designing your course, one of the most powerful ways to make learning more inclusive and engaging is by clearly stating your learning goals and offering multiple means for students to achieve them. Practically a mantra in the UDL world, “Clear Goals, Multiple Means” underscores the importance of clearly defining what students need to accomplish while offering flexibility in how they get there. This approach makes learning more inclusive and engaging by empowering your students to make choices that maximize their strengths and support their learning preferences.
Content-based Goals
With content-based goals where the focus is on understanding the content, multiple means can open avenues for your students to explore a topic in a variety of ways. For instance, if the goal is to “analyze how early jazz shaped social and cultural movements,” you might offer students multiple ways to explore the impact of jazz music. Students could examine how jazz challenged social norms in the early 20th century, promoted cultural expression, and sparked movements in art, dance, and fashion. They could look at how jazz spread globally, shaping music traditions worldwide, or analyze its role in advancing civil rights or breaking down racial barriers. To meet this goal, students might choose to write an essay, create a multimedia timeline showing jazz’s influence on different art forms, or produce a video or podcast discussing jazz’s role in social justice movements. The possibilities here are rich and, in the spirit of Thomas Tobin’s +1 model, can be expanded in an iterative, reflective, and evolving manner.
Skills-based Goals
For goals that are more skills-based, it’s important to offer multiple means for students to practice and to demonstrate the relevant skills. For example, in a business course focused on data analysis, a clear, skills-based goal might be to "use spreadsheet software to analyze data sets and present findings through visualizations." To meet this goal, you could offer multiple means for students to practice. Some might prefer watching a video tutorial, while others might prefer following step-by-step written instructions or a live demonstration during office hours. For assessments, you could also allow students to demonstrate their spreadsheet analysis and data visualizations in different ways: a written report with charts, a recorded walkthrough of their data analysis process, or a live presentation. The more flexibility you offer, the more students can engage with the material in ways that align with their learning preferences and strengths.
In a nutshell, by designing with clear goals and multiple means in mind, you’re creating a learning environment that respects, and provides for, students’ diverse ways of engaging with content and demonstrating their knowledge. This approach not only makes learning more inclusive and impactful—it also encourages students to take ownership of their learning, fostering greater independence and confidence on their pathway to becoming what UDL educators commonly refer to as “expert learners.”
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