START WITH THE LEARNING
Start with
the learning.
An attractive resource becomes useful when it helps learners produce evidence of the capability you intend to teach.
Connect the outcome, task, and evidence
Before choosing a format, describe a student performance you would recognize. In the campus example, students compare two proposals and justify a recommendation using two relevant pieces of evidence, a tradeoff, and a limitation. This gives us a basis for judging a discussion, handout, rubric, or interactive page.
Different routes. The same essential work.
Use UDL to examine barriers in this task. These are design options to discuss and test with learners.
Shared outcome: justify a campus transport recommendation using two pieces of evidence, a tradeoff, and a limitation.
Some learners need thinking time before speaking in a group.
Offer a quiet initial recommendation, then a paired comparison before the whole-class discussion.
What stays essential: Learners still explain their recommendation using the shared evidence.
A dense chart can make the evidence difficult to inspect.
Pair a clear visual summary with the underlying data table and a short explanation of how to read it.
What stays essential: Students still compare the same proposals and confront the same limits.
One response format can create demands unrelated to the intended reasoning.
Offer a short written recommendation or an annotated, narrated diagram, if writing itself is not the outcome.
What stays essential: Both responses must compare the proposals, use evidence, explain a tradeoff, and acknowledge a limitation.
Use Bloom's to examine the whole task
The revised taxonomy combines cognitive processes—Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create—with factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive knowledge. A verb helps begin the conversation, but the full task determines what students must do. Asking learners to “evaluate” can still amount to repeating an answer already given. Compare naming a transport option with weighing evidence and defending a recommendation under uncertainty. Ask the agent to identify the cognitive work, expected student product, and criteria for success. Then make the pedagogical decision yourself. The aim is a good fit with the course purpose; every task does not need to culminate in Create.
Use UDL to address barriers
CAST's UDL framework considers engagement, representation, and action and expression. Begin with a barrier in the task or environment. A student may need a clearer reason for the activity, a readable explanation beside a chart, or time to prepare before public discussion. AI can help propose options and explain which barrier each addresses. Check that the options remain meaningful and preserve the learning goal. Avoid assigning learners fixed visual, auditory, or other learning-style labels. The same learner's needs can vary with the situation, and adding more formats only helps when those formats support access to the intended work.
Keep essential requirements visible
A written argument and a narrated diagram might both reveal a supported transport recommendation. Apply shared reasoning criteria: comparison, relevant evidence, a tradeoff, and an acknowledged limitation. If academic writing itself is the outcome, however, the response format becomes part of the assessment. The outcome-and-UDL example helps you examine that boundary. Ask what each option makes observable, which demands are essential, and whether students have comparable opportunities to meet them. After drafting, try the instructions from a learner's perspective. Revise the moment where the resource assumes knowledge, access, or confidence the brief never established.
PUT THE IDEA TO WORK
Try this in your course.
Define the win
Describe the learners, the learning outcome, and the evidence you want to see.
Generate more than one idea
Generate ten ways to teach one difficult concept. Vary the medium, participation, and classroom setting.
Use Bloom's with evidence
Turn a vague outcome into observable student work. Try an explanation, an analysis, and a justified design.
UDL: vary the response
Design two ways students can demonstrate the same outcome. Use shared criteria and identify essential requirements.