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Date
12 June 2025
Link
inclusive.tki.org.nz/guides/universal-design-for-learning/design-options-for-sustaining-effort-and-persistence

Design options for sustaining effort and persistence

Engagement guideline

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Why this matters

Why this matters

Learners vary in how they stay motivated through challenges.

Without access to a range of flexible supports and scaffolds, some learners may get left behind (CAST, 2024).

Design options for sustaining effort and persistence prompts us to consider learner variability at the outset and offer options to:

 

This guideline also reminds us to consider

  • How will these options support learners in reaching their goals?
  • Could any of these options create barriers or unnecessary challenges?
  • Will all learners have fair and equal access to high-quality choices?
  • How do these options reflect and respond to learner variability?

Source: Design options for sustaining effort and persistence: UDL Guidelines 3.0 | CAST (2024) (opens in a new tab/window)

Optimise challenge and support

Optimise challenge and support

Learners will vary in how they respond to challenges in learning.

Learners engage with challenges in different ways: Too little challenge is demotivating and too much challenge is overwhelming.

Consider the following:

  • Presume competence and nurture a belief in the capabilities of every learner.
  • Offer options with varying modes of complexity or difficulty.
  • Offer options for tools and scaffolds that align with the learning goal and promote agency.
  • Emphasise process, effort, and progress.

Source: Optimise challenge and support: UDL Guidelines 3.0 | CAST (2024) (opens in a new tab/window)

Foster collaboration, inter-dependence, and collective learning

Foster collaboration, inter-dependence, and collective learning

Learning with and from one another is central to the learning process.

Consider ways to foster collaboration, interdependence, and collective learning:

  • Co-create community agreements that foster collaboration, interdependence, and collective learning.
  • Support group work with clear shared goals, roles, expectations, and responsibilities.
  • Discuss different ways to ask for help, including visual or body cues.
  • Support different ways to develop ideas or generate knowledge, such as discussion, wānanga, talanoa, and digital collaboration tools.
  • Encourage and support opportunities for peer interactions and supports (for example, Think-Pair-Share; peer tutors; tuakana teina).
  • Support communities of learners engaged in common interests or activities or who identify in similar ways.
  • Offer opportunities to learn about differing interests or activities or peers who identify in different ways.
  • Encourage questioning to more fully understand concepts, ideas, and perspectives.

Source: Foster collaboration, interdependence, and collective learning: UDL Guidelines 3.0 | CAST (2024) (opens in a new tab/window)

Offer action-oriented feedback

Offer action-oriented feedback

Action-oriented feedback is focussed on ways to make progress and take action toward the learning goal.

Offer feedback in a way that upholds the mana of learners and:

  • encourages perseverance, focuses on development of efficacy and self-awareness, and encourages the use of specific supports and strategies in the face of challenge
  • emphasises effort, improvement, and achieving a goal rather than on relative performance
  • is frequent, timely, and specific
  • is substantive and informative rather than comparative or competitive
  • models how to incorporate reflection, including identifying patterns of challenges or strengths, into positive strategies for future success
  • encourages risk taking and offers another (or differing) perspective(s).

Source: Offer action-oriented feedback: UDL Guidelines | CAST (2024) (opens in a new tab/window)

Next steps

More suggestions for implementing the strategy “Design multiple means of Engagement”:

Return to the guide “Universal Design for Learning”

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