Pathway 4 Conclusion

The activities and resources that you provide are an essential part of creating a welcoming and effective course for all students. Intentionally designing activities that will engage different learners and providing differentiated supports within those activities help make your classroom more inclusive. In this pathway, we learned that there’s no single activity or resource that works best for everyone, but incorporating a variety of activities and resources can help you reach all your students. These activities and resources include: 

  • Utilizing different mediums to present material to students: text, audio, images, videos, hands-on experiments, role play, etc.
  • Giving students choice in how they learn and how they show mastery of the course material
  • Using handouts and graphic organizers to scaffold students’ note taking during class meetings
  • Providing challenge problems or additional resources for students ready to engage more deeply with the material
  • Collecting, summarizing, and redistributing student notes so that all students benefit from collective knowledge generation
  • Incorporating activities that help students connect course material to their lives outside the classroom
  • Using project-based learning to engage students in active problem solving.
  • Scaffolding and supporting project teams so that all students have a successful group experience

Working together, these activities and resources can help you create course content that allows your students to see the relevance of the material to their own lives and to the broader world. By providing students multiple pathways into the curriculum and multiple scaffolds that support their learning, you can create a classroom that values diverse knowledge, experience, and skills and fosters inclusivity for all learners. 

We hope you’ll take some time to peruse the research and resources to help you decide which moves you want to use and how to adapt them for your own classroom context. And we encourage you to explore the rest of the Instructional Moves site, where you’ll find even more pedagogical moves that support student learning.

Related Resources

CAST’s UDL guidelines for making inclusive activities and resources clearly explain how the UDL framework helps to create more equitable classrooms.

CAST’s UDL Exchange provides UDL resources, lessons, and collections that can help create more inclusive activities and resources.

The Iris Center at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College explains the research showing how graphic organizers support student learning and offers examples of graphic organizers that serve different purposes. 

A tip sheet from Ohio State University provides background, guidance, and examples of guided notes.

CAST’s guideline for comprehension provides useful guidance on how to structure a guided handout.

This Harvard resource discusses the value of real-world connections for student learning.

This Faculty Focus article outlines six key steps in designing and implementing problem-based Learning.

This University of Waterloo tip sheet focuses on how to be an effective team member.

Relevant Research

Studies in mathematics, science, and computer science demonstrate how multiple representation can be used to enhance learning (Ainsworth, 1999; Ainsworth et al., 2009; Wood et al., 2007)

In their review of the use of guided notes, Konrad and colleagues conclude that guided notes are an effective way to incorporate opportunities for active engagement and are generally associated with improved academic performance (2009).

Harvard’s Project Zero has spent years studying the positive effects of making thinking visible, which include increased participation by students from marginalized groups and improved student learning (Ritchhart & Perkins, 2008). 

There’s a lot of research highlighting the benefits of student teams. This occasional paper from the University of Michigan provides an overview of that research and a framework to help instructors set student teams up for success (2011).  

According to a research review, assigning students complex, open-ended tasks that require active collaboration and deliberation with others can extend participation and foster an environment where students learn from one another (Webb, 2009)

A broad research study at 23 institutions found that collaborative learning resulted in increased student learning and greater openness to diversity (Cabrera et al., 2002).

Remaining Pathways

Back to to Step 6