Overview

Universal Design frameworks recommend allowing students choices and options to demonstrate their learning, such as allowing students to complete a final project instead of taking an exam, or allowing students to give a speech instead of writing an essay. The original intent was to provide options so that students could use a modality that did not put them at a disadvantage because of physical impairments. There are two theoretical perspectives that incorporate student choice: multiliteracies and Learner-Centered Pedagogy. This page provides a brief overview of these two perspectives, discusses recommendations for incorporating student choice into curriculum, and provides samples and models from my curriculum.

Multiliteracies

Multiliteracies developed out of work started by the New London Group in 1994. It advocates for a more diverse definition of literacy that recognizes cultural and socio-economic differences (Cazden et al., 1996). As a pedagogical model, multiliteracies is aligned with social justice movements and is keenly aware of how education has traditionally privileged the dominant race and socio-economic class.

Learner-Centered Pedagogy (LCP)

Learner-Centered Pedagogy is an approach based on cognitive theories of deep learning and research on self-directed learning. It emphasizes giving students more power over their learning, active and collaborative learning, and explicit skill instruction. In this model, the goal is to give students the skills to take an active role in their personal learning through more meaningful curriculum (Weimer, 2013). It is important to note that Learner-Centered Pedagogy does not advocate for giving students complete power and control over their learning. Most students are not developmentally ready for such a step until they are deep into graduate school. Just as students need explicit skill instruction to master course material, they also need explicit skill instruction to become self-directed learners. A compressed summary of this pedagogy is available at the Center for Teaching Excellence at Texas A&M.

Student Choice & Multiliteracies

The multiliteracies approach to student choice advocates for allowing students to demonstrate their learning in the media of their choice. This is perhaps one of the easiest methods of providing students with agency. A typical assignment prompt begins with “use the media of your choice to demonstrate . . . “. It is important to note that students will tend to default to familiar media, and they typically produce something that looks like a traditional written assignment, but without completely conforming to the structure and precision typically expected from academic work.

Students are more likely to branch out into different media if they are given explicit options and encouraged to create an audio recording, an image collage, a poem, etc. One of the most interesting findings about encouraging students to demonstrate their learning in non-traditional media is that they tend to learn more about the material (McGahan et al., 2016; Young, 2003). The “Poetry Across the Curriculum” movement has demonstrated some impressive learning gains among community college students (Jacob et al. 2018).

Student Choice & Learner-Centered Pedagogy

Learner-Centered Pedagogy emphasizes the need to shift the balance of power in the classroom. This is more than the oft-cited notion of the “guide on the side,” because it requires faculty to hand over some of their power to students in determining aspects of the curriculum. One method of doing so that has empirical support for student learning gains is “Cafeteria-Style Grading,” a model developed by Goodwin & Gilbert in 2001. There are several variants on this model, but at its core, assignments are treated like a cafeteria menu of offerings: students are free to choose anything on the menu to earn their desired grade.

Research on Cafeteria-Style Grading demonstrates that student mastery of course content is higher when this model is employed (Goodwin & Gilbert, 2001), but implementation requires a great deal of thought and effort up-front when designing the assignment options that are on the menu. Following the cafeteria menu, if students have the freedom to order an unbalanced diet, many will choose to do so (Hanewicz et al, 2017). A well-structured menu provides students with choice, but ensures that they complete assignments necessary for them to properly master the course outcomes.

Sample Assignments

Feel free to adopt or adapt any of the sample assignments below.

Multiliteracies Approach: Midterm Reflection

The full assignment is available here. While the majority of students choose to complete this assignment with alphabetic text, I have had students turn in audio reflections that they recorded on their cell phone while completing other tasks, image collages, and creative fiction.

Learner-Centered Pedagogy Approach: Choose Your Discussion Grade

The full assignment is available here. Students were free to choose a different group each week, and to change groups after initial sign-ups as well. Over the course of the semester, every student in the class participated in the “High Engagement” group at least once. Students tended to choose “High Engagement” or “Ample Engagement,” only occasionally picking the lower levels of engagement. The quality of discussion in the higher levels was consistently high, and student feedback indicated high levels of satisfaction.

Learner-Centered Pedagogy Approach: Cafeteria-Style Grading

The full details of how I implemented this method are available here. The first week of class, I asked students to fill out a spreadsheet to determine the number of assignments for each category and how many points they should be worth (Sheet 1 in the Excel File below). I put in data validation to give students suggested point-value ranges. I then collated the results and took the mean, median, and mode (Sheet 2 in the Excel File below), choosing the one that was most reasonable in my judgment.

When I implemented this model, I tried to strike a balance between ensuring that students would work consistently across the term, engage with the course content in a way that would foster their mastery of course outcomes, while still allowing them to balance their time and effort according to whatever was going on in their lives. The majority of students chose a wide variety of assignments, and some students chose to do more than the minimum number of assignments required to increase the number of points they had earned.

I tried Cafeteria-Style Grading to see if providing students with structured choices would improve my success rates in my online courses, which hovers around 50%. While I have a small “n” in this class, my success rate improved to 77%.