Innovative inclusive educational technology in language classrooms and learner perspectives: A study of nine learner narratives

Emerging from studies of innovative educational-technology designs for disabled students, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has established principles to bridge special needs education and regular classroom teaching. Although UDL has been around for some 40 years, apparently, only one empirical UDL study of language classrooms exists before Kasch, and no studies before him in lower-secondary language classrooms. Only Kasch has worked on integrating Computer-Assisted Language Learning and UDL in a pedagogically informed cross-pollinated Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) and UDL design. The present paper examines a sui-generis innovative language learning design and learners’ interaction with it, affording the digital scaffolds: 1) multimodal bilingual comprehensive, 2) contiguous (words-in-context) and non-base-form glossing, 3) text-to-speech with highlighting functionalities as well as 4) bilingual retelling functionalities for individual Ebook pages and 5) learner response functions. The hypothesis explored is that multimodal UDL digital scaffolds can be pedagogically integrated in language instruction materials and will help to bolster language acquisition in a variability of learners. The paper presents the findings from semi-structured interviews in a stratified sample (n = 9), appearing to offer support to the viability of the sui-generis CALL and UDL language learning design.