UDL Case Study: A Multimodal Approach to Medical Terminology
by connecting between the medical root
word, part of the body, and the ASL sign.
Ashley Orr is an educator at Corinth Holders High School in Johnston County, North Carolina. She spent over a decade teaching high school before moving on to writing Health Science curriculum and training Health Science educators for the NC Department of Public Instruction. Last year, she found herself back in the classroom, teaching Health Science to students with and without disabilities, covering for a vacancy. Alongside teaching, Orr also serves as the Special Populations Coordinator, overseeing students with learning challenges and ensuring accommodations are provided in Career and Technical Education (CTE) classes.
While teaching complex medical terminology, Orr noticed a common struggle among her students. Despite grasping the concepts in class, they faced difficulty retaining and recalling the information later on. She hypothesized that using multiple means of representation - pairing physical gestures with medical terminology - would aid comprehension and retention and facilitate active class participation.
“Originally, I had students design and share their own body motions to match medical terms with the hope cross brain coordination would improve retention; however, some students just weren't mature enough to handle making up their own gestures.” Then she had an “aha moment”: she could teach her students the ASL signs for anatomical body parts to match the medical term root word definitions. This way, her students had print, auditory, and tactile representations for terminology. This strategy also worked to better engage students in the classroom. This multi-sensory approach not only facilitated retention, but the students enjoyed putting signs together to communicate a term they could later use as a healthcare professional.
In class, Orr introduced the root word cardio, for heart, and also taught the sign for heart. This engaged students by seeing, speaking, and doing. Then, students completed review exercises to reinforce the connection between the root word and medical terminology.
Around this time, Orr and her colleagues participated in an accessibility workshop, in September of 2023, hosted by Johnston Community College and supported by the National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education grant DUE #2201663. Part 1 of the workshop featured Luis Perez from CAST, who presented on Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a framework aimed at removing learning barriers to learning and understanding the variability in how students learn best. High school CTE teachers and special populations coordinators in attendance earned continuing education credits for completing a project associated with UDL. Ashley presented this project in February 2024 during Part 2 of the workshop. Orr said: “The UDL model is interesting to me because it's not just something extra to do! These strategies can help everyone in class, not just your students with accommodations. I have always told my students how you learn best should be how you study best. The UDL model actively incorporates these strategies into our lessons and it carries over to improve student engagement and ultimately performance in mastering a concept.”
to the body part using a diagram of the
human body.
Orr’s approach to teaching medical root words with ASL was inspired by her UDL learning. She had two questions at the outset: 1) What is the most effective way to learn and retain information? and 2) Will movement that activates both sides of the brain and body improve retention? Orr noticed that during weekly quizzes, students would make the sign language gestures to help them recall the meaning of root words.
Orr's journey wasn't just about teaching; it was also a reflection of her own learning experiences. “We tend to teach how we learn best, and I had to learn the hard way in college that when flash cards and color diagrams did not work, I often turned to audio books to review material from class.” Her experiences as a learner influenced her as an educator to explore UDL-based strategies to best meet the needs of her students.
The semester's end brought tangible results: Orr's Health Science students scored 10 points above the county average for the medical terminology objectives. In addition to improving test scores, Orr is motivated to continue developing her students' ASL skills, especially for those entering healthcare professions, to enhance communication with deaf patients and their families.