Besides curb cuts, there are many examples of universal design in engineering. Choose an example of universal design in engineering and explain how it can be used as inspiration for a learning design.

I recently purchased a bike, and for the first time in almost five years, I am actively sharing the road with other cars, busses, trucks, cyclists, etc. While this was daunting and intimidating at first, I have come to appreciate the bike infrastructure in Victoria and question how it can be improved. In doing so, I discovered the concept of woonerfs. Woonerfs are a type of road design typically used in residential/commercial infrastructures that remove the separation between pedestrian and vehicular spaces. They merge the two spaces to improve the interaction between users (ex. cyclists, pedestrians, drivers, etc.). The term woonerf originates in the Netherlands and roughly translates to “living street.” It is characterized by a lack of continuous curbs, low speed limits, and traffic calming strategies. I found this concept especially interesting because it takes the example of universal design in engineering presented in the reading of “curb cuts” and pushes it to an extreme where there are no curbs. The concept of a woonerf redefines what a street is and shifts the pre-existing definition of a channel for vehicular mobility to a social space for all to interact.

Woonerfs can be used as inspiration for learning design because it pushes learning designers to rethink how they view peer-to-peer interactions. Using the example of Woonerfs, we can make the comparison that different modes of transportation can equate to students with different familiarities/strengths with a topic. In traditional streets, modes of transportation are typically separated between sidewalks, bike lanes, and traditional lanes. Occasionally in classes, students are separated based on their strength with a topic (ex. language-learning groups that separate students based on proficiency from an examination). While there are benefits to this approach, as it allows students to work with other peers at roughly the same level as them, learning designers can also learn from the opposite approach taken by Woonerfs and remove these separate spaces, opting for a more inclusive approach. While students with high proficiency in a topic may need to slow down (like cars in a woonerf setting), it provides the opportunity for them to interact with learners with a developing proficiency (ex. pedestrians). This could translate in the context of a classroom to learners with high proficiency teaching those with a lower proficiency, thereby reinforcing the concepts in the high-proficiency learners and introducing them to lower-proficiency learners. Regardless, this approach presents an alternative that aims to solidify the relationships between learners of varying proficiencies, embodying at its core the intent of woonerfs in residential infrastructure.