I want to welcome everyone to the online community of practices spring event:
Cultivating inclusive online classrooms. Today we are going to explore the
relationship between inclusive teaching and student learning. We will introduce
key ideas and concrete teaching strategies to create inclusive online
classrooms. And we hope through this discussion where we can all share ideas
that have helped inspire our own inclusive online teaching. Just to sort
out housekeeping notes. If you are on the phone we'd appreciate it if you could
mute yourself during the presentation so we don't get feedback. If you are on GTM
you will see that you can press the microphone button. There'll be a
microphone button that will either be grayed out or green. You want it to be
grayed out to mute yourself during the presentation. You can always let us know
in the chat box if you have a question. We'll have discussion as well where you
can unmute yourself but if we're all unmuted at the same time it kind of
starts to sound like we're in the metro. Also we are going to be recording
today's session so that we can make it available to AU faculty who would
like to be able to attend today but are not able to. So the audio from the
session will be recorded today. Our speaker today is Amanda Taylor. She's a
faculty member in SIS where she also directs the master's program in
international intercultural communication. Her teaching and research
focused on the intersection of culture, power, and education in intercultural and
international contexts. Amanda's going to speak today for 15-20 minutes or so and
then we will open this up to discussion with people on campus and those that are
joining online so that we can learn from each other's experiences. Thanks very
much for joining us Amanda. Sure Bev. Thanks so much for the
invitation. I'm really happy to be here today and I wanted to just start us off
with an opportunity to introduce ourselves to each other. I'm happy to see
a couple of folks online who I know. Hi Ally. I know and saw Ally last night.
And we've got some great colleagues here on campus in the room too. So maybe if we
could start with our on-campus colleagues. If you all wouldn't mind
we can start with you and just circle around the room. If you could introduce
yourself kind of loudly if that's all right. Your name and
your school and maybe what you teach. My name is Jody Higgins Smith. I'm
with the School of Education and I will be teaching my first online class ever
this summer. I'm here gathering information today. Hi everyone. Katerina Kulagina. I am the Assistant Dean for Graduate Academic Services at the School of Communication. I oversee admissions
admissions advising and curricular services for the grad side and I'm here to just learn from you
all and how we can partner with faculty to create the best possible classroom
environment for experience for the students and for faculty. Great thanks. Hi I'm Teresa
Calais. I'm an instructional designer with the School of Communication. I'm working
rather largely in the MA in strategic comm online program. And so
inclusive practices for online learning is something I'm looking at here today
and I'm so happy to hear you're recording this because I certainly want
to share this with my online faculty. Thanks look how inclusive we are.
Okay thanks. Hi. I'm Kara Reynolds. I'm an economist and I've done some teaching online both through blackboard but also I've
I've developed courses for the Wiley platform. Ok great. Thanks.
Well welcome all of our face to face folks and maybe we can take this chance I know
Bev you've already introduced yourself, thank you. But Ally I'm just gonna move
down the list of attendees. Ally would you mind just unmuting
self and introducing yourself to us talk a bit about what you do and and your own
work. Sure, can you hear me? Yes we can. Perfect. I'm Ally Krupar.
I'm doing online learning and I'm really interested in how to incorporate some of
the inclusive classroom principles we're going to talk about today online.
I'm also hard of hearing myself and so there's a lot of things that I think of
when I think about inclusion that includes disability so I'm really
looking forward to learning from you all. Thank you. Great. Thanks a lot Ally. I really
appreciate that and appreciate your help last night too - thanks so much she came to
my presentation for my grad students and gave some great feedback. So it looks
like next we have Bob Stokes. Bob would you mind
unmuting yourself and introducing yourself to all of us? Sure it's Bob
Stokes. I'm the Graduate Program Director for Human Resources Analytics in the
School of Professional and Extended Studies. I've taught online for a couple decades but
I've only been at AU for the last year. But I'm looking forward to hearing your
ideas and suggestions. Perfect. Thanks so much for joining us. And it looks like
our last colleague online is Kim. Kim could you introduce yourself to all of
us? Sure hi everyone. My name is Kim Westemeier. I work in CTRL as the pedagogy and instructional
technologist. And I do online learning syllabi consults and I also teach the online
learning course that we have here so I'm really interested in looking at ways to
incorporate inclusivity there okay. Ok thanks. We have two colleagues
who've just joined us face-to-face. I want to offer them a chance also to
introduce themselves. And we're talking really loudly due to my lack of
technological prowess here so if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself and telling us what you do what you do.
Hi everyone. My name is Paula Weissman and I'm in SOC and I'm the Program Director for the
online MA in strategic communication and I teach in the program as well.
Hello everyone. I'm Mindelyn Anderson. I'm the program director of our Masters in
Measurement and Evaluation which is over in SPExS. It's online. And I'm an affiliate faculty member in Sociology.
Thanks welcome. Thanks for being here. So I would just start by
adding to my own introduction. I have taught online as well. I
typically teach face-to-face and though I studied these issues in my own work
I'll be honest I have found myself challenged to figure out really how to
incorporate some that I've really learned how to practice in my
face-to-face context in an online class. I taught in the SIS online master's
program that we have which has both a sync and an async component. And I found it
really fascinating. It's actually intellectually quite interesting to look
at how different courses. Have like Brady Bunch style face-to-face. I know all the platforms
are different. It's a 2-U platform. And so we can
see all these students at least in 2D and then there's the chat box going
on as well. I want to open with an anecdote from my own practice that was
really challenging to kind of navigate and and I'm not sure frankly how to how
to respond to it but it I think that is helps frame maybe some of these
conversations. So in my class which I teach an intercultural relations course. So
it already animates at center for some of these questions around inclusivity
more broadly in kind of the international relations context
generally. But we were having a conversation about kind of identity
movements in the US. Right. And how they've shifted over time and so we were
talking about sort of contemporary quote unquote identity movements as framed by
the designer of the course, who is not me. That's another dilemma. Right? In a
lot of this work that we don't often face as much I think and face to face.
And I had in my class I had an African-American woman activist
as well as a Latina female police officer in DC and we were talking
about Black Lives Matter. And it became this really interesting dynamic whereby
in the face to face piece no one was saying anything. But on the
chat there was this very heated conversation going on with these two
women in particular but also other classmates kind of piping in. And I was
really challenged to figure out. Okay I know from my teaching. One of the
things you do is when there is a quote-unquote hot moment in class. Right.
We stop. We center it and we have a conversation about it.
So I stopped and I said there's this really interesting conversation going on
in chat that I think is worth us centering and talking about all together.
And so I kind of moved it then to the virtual face-to-face space.
It was dead silent. Right. And then. Dead silent. And then. So I tried to kind of
talk about it from my perspective and again continue to invite perspectives.
And feedback, and thought and kind of reframe and do all these strategies that
I've taught about for many years blah blah blah and then nothing. Dead silence.
And then as soon as I kind of say okay well this is something certainly we can
come back to and another time and circle back on right we don't just solve all
these things right now and I started moving on. BAM. The chat exploded again right.
And so I think that one of the really interesting dynamics is beyond what we know and we
have a lot of research on in this sort of face-to-face space. A lot of your
instructional designers, educators, evaluation people, right we know a lot
about how to kind of do this more effectively in the face-to-face. The
online component brings a whole other set of dimensions that I think are
really critical to engage and I am by no means an expert which is why I'm so glad
that Bev is here too. I know she's done a lot of thinking on this in an online space -
too but it just really adds another layer to our work and then that layer of
really thinking about how does the dynamics vary when we don't we
everyone is not always visible to each other. Right. So there are opportunities
in that and there are challenges in that as well.
Right. So in terms of what we can sense and and what we can kind of maybe
guess maybe some possible dynamics that could be operational in our classes
oftentimes we don't know as much insight into those as instructors. Similarly that
can be a great opportunity right for being more inclusive right. So I
think there are real challenges in both of these domains but I'm really happy to
get as many ideas from all of you as I think I'll be sharing today. So what I
hope to do. We don't have a lot of time and we really want to leave a lot of time open for
conversation. Like I said I think this is much more a discussion
frankly that I mean without me offering wisdom that you can take it plug in your in
your teaching. But I really want to sort of start by framing overall the goal is
like how do we do this work? How do we create more inclusive classroom contexts?
And so we'll start by just thinking about what are we talking about? What do
we mean by inclusive classrooms? Where are we all on that idea? And then how do we plan
for these? What are some of the things we can do in our own planning as we
approach our first online classes or as we're doing --Bob's that he's been
doing 10 years now--right as we do our 10 millionth. What are some ways that we
we plan more strategically to cultivate these kind of environments? And then what
are some concrete strategies that we think we may be able to use? And then
Bev will take over from there. I'll leave you with just a few resources that
I've gathered that are on the CTRL website that you can go to in your
practice. Some of them are links to other CTRL sites from other universities that I
found that are really well done and have lots there in terms of opportunities [feedback, inaudible]
Then we will talk a little about [feedback, inaudible]. open up more broadly. That said please feel free to jump in and
disagree or add your own thoughts all the way along. So I want to start off
just by mining our own thinking you know I want to take one minute for us if
you're a writer maybe you can type this out if you think through writing. If you
think more just by taking a minute to think in your head but all of us
face-to-face and online just take a minute
and think about in your mind what is an inclusive classroom. What does that mean to
you? As you signed up for this session or as you wondered whether it was relevant
what were you thinking about? So for those of you who you can take a moment
to free write which I often call fondly verbal vomit just start writing and
don't worry about making any kind of sense but you're trying to get at what
might be a little latent in your mind. And if you're a thinker feel free to
just sit and think. So I'm gonna time us and give us just one minute here to take
a minute to center ourselves and kind of focus on our own thinking. So ready? I will start now.
[background feedback from caller: Be quiet for one minute while everyone thinks. What? {Laughter} More feedback].
It sounds like there may be someone online who is not muted so if you're not
speaking if you don't mind just muting your phone I think it will help us all
be able to hear just a little better. Amanda I think it's somebody on a
telephone because everybody online looks to be muted. Okay ah there we go.
Okay great. So why don't we do a couple of things for a face-to-face folks I'm
gonna ask us maybe to share out verbally anyone who has some ideas and for people
who are online there's my timer for those of you who
are online feel free to put this in the chat box we'll also offer an opportunity
for all of you to speak out for those of you who are on the phone that would give
you a chance to share as well. So I notice here we have Bob Stokes has
described his thinking around what an inclusive classroom is which those of
you who can see it can read it here and those of you who may be on the phone Bob
is describing his sense of an openness to diversity of ideas and personalities
and the value of students helping students understand the value of
inclusivity which i think is a really interesting addition. Thank you, Bob. Anyone
any face-to-face colleagues wanna share kind of where are you on this and it's
okay if the answer is I have no idea both but you know what do you bring to
this what is your thinking? Yes. I mean I wrote down a couple of things. One thing is I
think everyone needs to have an equal opportunity to learn and I think that brings in a lot of accessibility issues and things like that. And then I have a similar comment about
this feeling of equal opportunity to share
your opinions and your thoughts and feeling like it's a comfortable place to
do so. And students won't be attacked. And the dialogue is respectful. Thank you. I appreciate that. Anybody else? Agree? You want to add on?
Yeah. Space where students can share their thoughts freely where course material is accessible to
all learning styles, disability, etc. So as an instructional designer I'll add from the
from the get-go from the foundation from the design inclusivity has to be there. From the design of the class
right it's key in every aspect not just in sort of our pedagogy how we manage
the class but really and how we sort of design it initially. Anyone want to add
any other thoughts on face to face here? Mine were along the same lines. I just had you know a space where diversity and equity is respected. And the rules of engagement are set to have critical conversations from a range of perspectives.
That piece on critical conversations echoes I think what Bob was sharing here too. But I
think it is sort of creating the space for everyone to participate in whatever
form they feel best sort of response to their practice as well as kind of
introducing critical conversations. We often call them difficult conversations
which i think is problematic. I like critical a lot better actually and and
really cultivating this this interest in these kinds of conversations. Any other
pieces face-to-face folks want to add? I was just thinking from a planning
perspective to plan the accommodations to be almost invisible so that you don't notice there is someone that needs an accommodation.
I like that idea it's sort of how do we not spotlight? Right. Folks for any what
we call quote unquote needs even that is problematic frame
right so how do we have instructors think about it as our responsibility as
opposed to some kind of deficit in a student and not sort of illuminate those
but rather think about them as different different sort of possibilities for
engagement you know and how do we ensure we create those kinds of contexts. So let
me turn to our colleagues online here anybody
online some of our other colleagues who might want to either share out your
thoughts verbally or feel free to also add them in the chat. We seem to have a
few people. This is Bev. There's quite a few people that have written different
ideas in in the chat. If you scroll down you can see them.
Ally echoes what you were saying that an inclusive
classroom is one where all students are able to contribute and participate
according to their learning goals and abilities. That's helpful. It looks like
Kim is also sharing. Kim you're bringing in this notion of class
materials to which i think is something really new that we all didn't really
name as explicitly and i think that's really a helpful addition. And this
notion of empowerment as well as kind of an outcome I think. Why do we do
this work, right? What is the goal? Ultimately I mean a colleague of
face to face wants to share. Please. I just really wanted to add
something along the lines of the affective domain. So much of what we do is so centered on cognitive.
When we are developing inclusive classrooms it's really important to remember that there
is that affectiveness aspect that students, that we can't see, especially in
online learning, that is really significant to the success of our learners.
That's helpful. So affective with an A. Yeah yes okay right so that sense of
sort of feeling right and how does how we feel actually shape how we
learn cognitively and how does our cognition then kind of impact how we
feel so there's this really flow between these two dimensions. I often think about
the aesthetic as well as a piece of learning. You know what we see is
beautiful right and how that can stimulate and prompt different kinds of
learning and what we've seen senses as ugly right and and how those kinds of
things can also shape our our learning practice.
All right and Bev has added in here too this sort of ongoing piece I think that's a
really helpful thing it's not something we have to do it when we set up the
class right but if it's something we have to
continually do in an ongoing way throughout the learning process and
it moves through our through our practice. And Marie is adding this notion
of how we engage as faculty. I think that's key. How we set the tone, the
language we use, the framing that we use, and the way that we're really modeling.
You know the kind of environment what we we can talk about inclusivity right. And
a lot of these practices are gonna say you know make sure you set up class
norms for your classroom, talk about what it means to be respectful. And I think
there's something to that, right? To really define what respect means. At the
same time, it's much more powerful when we model it, and enact it through our own
teaching. We know this right? Students remember about 5% of what we say versus
something like 45% of what we do. It's kind of like parenting for those of you
out there. So thanks so much for all of these these great ideas and and you know
I think you're right on point with where we're headed. I just wanted to
pull in a quote that I like that I think gets at really many of the key ideas
that you all have already framed. But it's from Kaplan and Miller and they
talked about an inclusive classroom climate. Right. So how do we cultivate
an environment or the space which is in fact inclusive. This notion of an
environment where all students feel supported intellectually and
academically. And I think this sort of interpersonal piece that you're bringing
up is really key too. And are extended a sense of belonging. This is often where
the affective and the interpersonal comes in. And they are extended a sense
regardless of their identity, learning preferences, or education etc, etc, etc.
Right, abilities. Such environments are sustained when instructors and
students work together for thoughtfulness, respect, and academic
excellence. The environments are key to encouraging academic success of all
students. And I think this notion of we work together with our students is really key.
It is a co-created space. And in fact I actually think it's not just co-created
by ourselves and our students. We talk a lot about the instructional triangle
which is sort of student, faculty, and content. So there's really these sort of
three domains. I just went to the American Educational Research
Association Conference this weekend when they critiqued the instructional
triangle. So there are other ways of thinking about it too. But really you
know recognizing all the outside influences in the environment, right. And
the socio-political environments, right. And the very immediate American
University environment. The way that that all those messages and dynamics
aren't separate from our classroom spaces, right. We are in our classroom
spaces, are not in a vacuum but in fact what we do as teachers and learners,
whether we do it online whether we do it face-to-face, they're deeply informed by
the broader environments in which we live and work and breathe and learn. And
again another dynamic of online is folks could be doing this from all around the
globe, right. So it's not even just what's happening here on a youth campus, but
it's what's happening everywhere. And how are we really as instructors attentive
to where our students are coming from, the sort of psychosocial in terms of
their identities and then even geographically. I think it's something
that we've got to really pay attention to. In the online space what might be
going on in the Philippines [background: I had some issue with students in the path of hurricane]. The weather patterns you
know all kinds of natural disasters, other kinds of disasters.
Students in Canada this week what they might be thinking about I mean really
being aware of the way that those drivers underpin the learning experience
for students in kind of unpredictable ways, right. But really being aware of
those three things. So you know here at AU what we know on our physical campus
is that this is often quite racialized actually. The difference is in this sense
of belonging vary widely across multiple dimensions and this is really only one
of them, but the one that that I think has been very salient on AU's campus at
least our physical campus. And I think salient even in our virtual
campus because of social media and how widely publicized many of these incidents
on campus have been that have been targeting African-Americans and
African-American women in particular. Also Muslims, immigrants. We've had
anti-Semitic actively anti-Semitic statements on campus. Again we know that
these are probably also being folks outside quote-unquote of our community
that are coming here. At the same time they are deeply animating the
experiences of our of our students. And they're also reflecting I think some of
this experiences of our students that pre-existed some of these more
high-profile moments where I think race, gender, you know nationality, immigration
status, etc have been kind of hyper mobilized as dimensions of identity
across which many of our students do feel less included. And we see big gaps
here across across our student backgrounds, international students as
well. Something that I think many of us in online contexts are really working
directly with international students. We see Asian students. That's a broad
category and there's a lot of variation in all of these categories, and we've got
to be really aware of that. Hispanic students and white students vary widely
in our sense. And this is from the 2017 Campus Climate Survey. Now I don't know
if the Campus Climate Survey includes online students. Does anyone know that? [background: I think it's almost all undergrads these results.]
I think these are almost all undergrad as well to be honest. I feel like they open
it to grads but I don't think grad students really participate. And I wonder about
online. Does anyone know? [background: no, but you know it's something I noticed sometimes too
that I feel like when these hate crimes happened on campus we were encouraged to
outreach to our students in the classroom and let them know the
counseling center's there and I feel like all those messages don't go to the
online students. So I actually sent a note to my online classrooms. I just
said look I know this is really disturbing and can be very difficult and
I gave them the information for the Counseling Center because they can still
call and connect that way. You know I told them I wanted
them to get in touch if you know they were having any concerns. But I just feel
like they're just completely left out. And you're right it's still their
university and these things are still happening to them whether they're in
Texas or Washington DC]. Yeah that's right and you know so we don't know
empirically I think whether these these trends hold necessarily with our
students in the online case. I would venture to guess that our our students
probably do vary, if I had to guess. That said we don't know but I think it's
something worth really keeping in our minds. We also tend to have at least from
me and SIS I don't know if this is true for all of you. Different compositions of
students online. For example in SIS a lot of veterans in our online class. And I
know that vets often here on campus experience a sense of marginalization
sometimes about political ideology but not always. Sometimes it's about age you
know sometimes they're older than than their colleagues. Or sometimes it's just
feeling like they've had a totally different set of life experiences than
many of their colleagues on campus. So that's just one sort of drive that I've
seen in my own practice and and I have heard on campus and some online students
describe sort of having a different sensibility or feeling like they have a
different way of engaging with with the work, with each other, and even with
faculty based on those statuses. I've also noticed I and I again I don't know
empirically if any of this is true, I have noticed I've had more students with
disabilities in my online class but they've revealed to me, I didn't see them,
they weren't always visible, but there's that they revealed to me over time. And I
wonder if there's something about the online context that allows maybe maybe
more accessibility or or more a sense of access. Whether that's true or not I
don't know. But I've noticed that as well. Again these are just my anecdotal
observations. I don't know if they lineup. Have any of you noticed any trends in
your classes or are among the the student populations that you serve that
either echo what we're sort of seeing on campus or that maybe are distinct? [Background: I can
say certainly political diversity. I've seen more I think online than I see in
my campus classes here. And I've had to intervene a couple times when students
have gotten in touch with me and said like look like everyone on the
discussion board is trashing Donald Trump and assuming that all of us are
you know kind of anti Trump whatever. And I think that we're getting this
large geographical diversity and just this great mix of people and so I've had
to kind of go in sometimes and say like look it's great to like link the content
to current events or whatever but we have to not make assumptions, right. Yeah
do it in a way like we have a variety of people in the class of different
political opinions. And I have noticed recently in our admissions applications
and I think it's because we have an advocacy and social impact concentration
now too that we are getting students who are disclosing in the admissions
essay that they are you know have some type of a disability and they want to
learn how to advocate for their communities.] Interesting thank
you. Let me invite our our online colleagues
here too. Anyone I'm sure that the chat is a great place to share if you've noticed
any of these dynamics or also feel free to to speak out if you'd like to or any
colleagues on the call. Anyone want to add anything who is with us online or on
the phone. [background: This is this is Bev. One of the challenges that we had and we first
started our programs and SPExS is that we hadn't anticipated the level of
difficulty that students, adult learners, that hadn't been in school or
university for 10 or 20 years, now going back into a classroom. The challenges
that they would face balancing work and and life with their studies. And so
that was a challenge to us at at first to try to devise ways both to balance
the workload and expectations, and then you encourage students and
give them the tools that they needed to refresh their their study habits].
Hmm that's really helpful. Thank you Bev. Yeah that's a key thing for us to keep in our
minds here. And thanks those youth on chat please feel free to keep talking.
I'm gonna make sure I move along just a little so we have time for a broader
conversation here. But just you know a note and I think you all know this as
learning theorists, as instructional designers. But you know inclusivity goes
beyond the nice thing to do. Right. Or the political right thing to do from a moral
perspective. You know, ultimately inclusivity is what we have to do is our
responsibility as instructors to create and cultivate this sense of belonging
because we know it's directly linked to academic performance and learning. There
are straight lines between a student's sense belonging and their their
ability to perform in all kinds of contexts beyond the academic even. We
see this in lots of contexts. I don't know if anyone knows Claude Steele's
work around stereotype threat. But but he's a psychologist and has studied this
in lots of different contexts. But this notion of belonging is really really key
we know in the academic context for student learning. And that is our job.
Right. That is all of our job. It is our responsibility. And ultimately this work
is key to being excellent. This is this work is key to being excellent as
individuals. This work is key to being excellent as an institution. And I think
that's from me at least what I've really so appreciated about President Burwell's
strategic plan. Did you, I don't know if you've all seen the strategic teaching plan.
But really it marries inclusivity and excellence. It suggests that one cannot
exist without the other. Not only on the teaching and learning domain but
actually on intellectual and research domain. Which is to say if we
are not inclusive and we don't invite multiple perspectives and not just be
one dominant perspective even if that's a progressive liberal one that we think
is somehow inclusive. If we are not inclusive of all voices and don't create
spaces where all voices can be heard we will have intellectual blind spots. We
will make bad decisions as an institution because of that. So it really
is all tied up with our key outcomes as an institution. Again both
as teachers and learners and as a research institution and a large
organization trying to do lots of things too. So just a couple of thoughts that I
want to put forward here before I turn it to Bev. I think someone already
mentioned the setting the tone is so key. And then how they set the tone often the
syllabus is the first thing that our students see. Right. Especially in the
online context the syllabus is posted. Right. And the syllabus conveys a lot
about inclusivity. Specifically and one of the more hidden dimensions I think of
how we communicate these messages. Right. We can say things verbally and directly
but there's a lot of subtle messaging that we send to our students about
inclusivity they have a lot to do with things like our classroom policies. Right. What are we I encourage all of us to think really strategically what are our
policies around late work. What do we mean when we say late. When do we make
exceptions for these things? Why? How transparent are we about our
thinking process and our rationale. This is not to say you should you should
always accept late work. That's not what I'm arguing. What am arguing is really
we've got to be incredibly thoughtful about some of these very
taken-for-granted assumptions that we make sort of like cut and paste the
syllabus. Boom. Right. Work must be turned in on time if not I deduct you know half
a point blah blah blah blah. Right. But inclusivity I think suggests rethinking
fundamentally some of the assumptions that we've all made because we've all
been taught we have all learned. Right. In this environment about what's normal
here. And really thinking about how some of these more subtle messages can convey
a sense of exclusion for many of our students. Please and again sorry just
speak up really loud if you don't mind so you can make sure that we. [background: I would like to add from an admin perspective
that is is always great to see when faculty collaborate with administrators on this issue not
only about late assignments but for example if someone's trying to get an
extension or incomplete you know for some kind of
an issue that they have approved through the Dean of Students. And sometimes
students don't know their rights and responsibilities yeah they relate
to AU's policy. And I always applaud faculty who work with us with my office
to help students navigate. Because what I hate to see is a faculty member saying
yes you can do it only then to the students to find out that no whoops
sorry it's against the policy. So it takes collaboration right while the
faculty may have great intentions, it's always great to check with admin maybe
there is also an additional opportunity, an additional resource for the student that that's the faculty member may not be aware of].
Great thank you for that. I think that's really important. It's sort of one thing
as we think about non-traditional learners and any kind of sense being
very clear and explicit about what our policies are. I think the other piece of
that is what is our rationale for those policies and being very transparent
about our rationale. So that we're clear why. That helps students understand you
know our thinking. And can help them also really make sense of the fact that this
is a part of it's a part of our learning goal. Right. And they can align. It's not
just some arbitrary. Right. Punishment or reward or sanction but in fact that it's
immediately tied to what we understand to be our learning goal. And if students learn in different
ways well then we maybe need to shift the policy. It gives us a thoughtful sort
of framework from which to I think make also exceptions. But under a very
rational and transparent and then ultimately hopefully fair framework. So
again this goes with absences. How many absences do you accept? What do you do
for example students are experiencing hyper anxiety. It happens a lot. If we have
any students with I'm thinking about my vets many of whom had PTSD. Right what do
you do with anxiety and absence policy? Right. How do we think about really being
inclusive while still holding a high standard of rigor. This is not about
lowering expectations and I think that's super clear. That's really really
important. All right. It's about holding high expectations
and offering high levels of support to help our students meet them
with the continued knowledge that all of our students can meet them. Right. But
they may need different paths to getting there. Right. So that's what this is.
Thinking about how we communicate with students. Where and how we hold office
hours. And how do we make those opportunities for students to maybe bump
into us either physically in the face-to-face sense or how could students
bump into you online. Are you ever there available for a chat? Right. Is that a way
to hold online where they could maybe jump in and they wouldn't have to do
something. Often cultural cultural differences shape whether and how we
feel like we have the right to actively reach out to faculty. I have many
students from from non-western cultural backgrounds who always say I never
thought I could actually send you an email. Sort of, you know, and that would be
too intrusive right. And I and I think about well I of course I wait for them
to let me know what they need. And so really thinking through all the ways
that we can make ourselves available for our students. Then we start to turn a
little more intentionally around pedagogy. Right. So once we've laid out
our syllabus in terms of policies ,we start to think about alright how do we
approach the framing of our content. Right. What we teach really thinking
about our decision-making around what content to include. Now I know some of us
very especially online whether it's our class or whether we're teaching someone
else's class. And that can actually be another complication which I've
experienced myself. How do you maybe compliment someone's slightly less
inclusive framing of the field? It's something that I've done really reactively.
You know is thinking about what perspectives are not here. Whose
perspectives are not reflected as a field. I think we've got to really think
about this epistemologically from our various fields. How are their problematic
assumptions and silences and gaps built into our fields, right, from the very
start? And how do we ensure that we really offer a sort of multiplicity of
voices and a multiplicity of again like epistemological approaches
to the work? Through the readings that we that we help students encounter? Through
the way we describe our different sections? Right. Who are the master works
in the field? Right. Who do we frame as the canon? Who is seen as the ancillary,
the extra, the other? Right. How do we think really more thoughtfully about
integration of multiple voices and how that can be more rigorous than just
having a week on okay well here the here's the core right here a couple of
women who wrote about this then we got a couple of books of color and then we got.
Right. How do when that sort of like subtly in our pedagogy can offer other
voices that are in fact central to our understanding of the various phenomena
and ideas that were attempting to sort of put forward for our students. And then
finally we get into our actual practices. Right. This is how do we manage our
discussions. How do you give feedback? Is it verbal? Is it written? How might that
offered varied opportunities for students depending on their abilities?
You know their their comfort level their expectations. How do you set up the
classroom physical or virtual space? Who do you put where, even dragging people's
faces? Who do you center? I have this issue often in my class. I'm thinking
about what do I demand of students. Do I need to be able to see them? Can they be
live? What happens when a student's child runs through? I mean I'm thinking back to
the CNN interview my favorite interview. Right. [laughter]. Really thinking about how that
changes those moments and what we view for our online students. Either they're
intentional. How they set a conscious. I had a student who was in Afghanistan and
he was in actually like a tent. Right. And we could see that all the time. What did
that do for how me and other students interpreted that student? We're seeing
them in this very two-dimensional way online where is in face to face there's
a little more fluidity to how we encounter people. Right. So thinking about
all of those very subtle things. Often we can't change them. But really
being aware for ourselves. How that might be framing our interpretations of our
students in ways that could in fact be quite powerful to either helping them
learn or shutting down their learning. So I want to leave some time for Bev so
I'll just put a couple of strategies up here. We talked a lot about tone I think
what's key is it's not just sort of making sure our students can learn but
it's inviting in conversations. Right. That are critical. That are often hot.
Right. That we don't agree on. And and I really found it useful to think about
distinguishing between safe and comfortable. I say to my students you
will be uncomfortable here. And that is good. We do not learn if we're not
slightly uncomfortable. Right. Because discomfort suggests we're sort of out of
our previously existing neural pathways right for the learning theorists in the
room. But safety means that you as a whole human can bring all of who you are
to this class. And to know that you will be fully respected as a full complex
human being. Right and that that's me as safety. And safety is necessary for
belonging whereas comfort is not. Comfort can hinder learning. Comfort and hinder
inclusivity. So I think kind of parsing those out and being really clear for
students that has helped me a little bit navigate this. Often using an explicit
diversity statement on your syllabus can be a very key way to signal very
intentionally the type of classroom that we encounter. I have an example from my one of my colleagues
in SOC actually. Leena Jayaswal. Who's who's got her inclusivity statement here.
But I think that's a really nice way to sort of actively signal that. [background: can I just make a point? On the diversity statement. Make sure you run it by admin first.
Because I have had an issue where in our film division for example they wanted to use a diversity statement that they
all agreed on. But I found a sentence within that statement kind of raised a red flag for me. So I ran it by UCM marking and
Legal and they both suggested that we take it out.
So we just just couldn't again the collaboration between admin and faculty
I think it's key so we don't get anyone in trouble]. That's a good
point. Right we don't want to we don't want to
shut anyone down, ourselves included by by messing up here. But I think I mean
I'll say that to to the point in messing up. I think we gotta be ready to mess up.
This is not perfect right. This is really um and and maybe we get ourselves caught
sometimes. And hopefully we can prepare not to be sort of bound in a legal
problematic. All right. But but this work is is not um it's not magic. Right. It is
in fact a practice just like teaching. We call it teaching practice because it's
an ongoing learning exercise. Right. And we've got to be ready to trip a little
bit and that's okay. So especially when we get into this notion of hot topics
right so when these things happen right sometimes we know based on our content
that we're gonna have we're likely to have maybe a hot moment given the nature
of what we're going to talk about. And sometimes it happens. Right. It just
there's a moment that happens. All of the best practice in this work suggests
addressing it. Right. As opposed to what myself included many of us want to do
which is kind of manage it right, or close our eyes, stick our head in the
sand, pretend we'll go away if we don't say anything. All of the best practice
suggests that we in fact need to push ourselves past our comfort zone. This is
my comfort zone for sure and and actually stop and center it. And so you
know I think something just happened here in this class. And even if you're
not sure how to do it. It's okay to be honest about that. And to say look
something happened here. I think we need to address this. Right. And I'm not quite
sure even what to do but let's take. This is a five minute pause. Let's take a five
minute pause. You know we've got a lot of quote-unquote content to cover. But
there's something that we need to talk about, so let's take five minutes and
let's really address what just happened. Right. It could be something sometimes
I'll caught myself in something I've said. And I was like oh I can't believe I
said it. You know it comes out of your mouth. You're like oh I wish I can take
that back [laughter] and you realize you can see on a student's face
maybe that you basically tripped, right. So sometimes as I recognize something
that I did or I might have done. Sometimes it's something that happens
between students. Sometimes it might be something you sense is going on but
you're not sure, right. And so taking five minutes to address it can be a way to
keep going on the content, right. Because you're always gonna have that that
moment of okay but but we saw the test next week. But at the same time we
want to balance this real need for creating this climate. The other way to
do this often when you don't know what to do is to focus on the argument or the
issue as opposed to the person and people involved. So I hear us talking
about X as opposed to the two of you were right disagreeing on Y. So really
extrapolating beyond the individuals and talk about the idea maybe that's being
debated and put that on the center of the table. Right. Start with that and and
that doesn't mean that you can't get to you know and sometimes when we talk
about these ideas this can often prompt individual people to experience them in
this way, right. So you're not spotlighting anyone in the class or
assuming that they thought something about a moment that maybe they didn't,
right. I mean we don't know what's going on in our students minds all the time.
We can certainly invite them to share but students will often not want to
share if they've got you know if they feel really silenced in a moment. I'm
probably not gonna be like I feel silenced right. That's what feeling silenced is.
[laughter]. So I think you know there are ways there are ways that we can
voice some possible interpretations that might be going on in the room and frame
them as possibilities. We can also use writing. I use free writing a lot to help
students. Like let's just pause here. Let's take two minutes and just write.
And sometimes I'll have students you can do things like have them underline one
phrase or word and then just do like a popcorn and have them say their phrase
or word or go around or go along across the the attendee list and have them
voice that. So there are ways to kind of get perspectives out there that may give
students a moment to process. And you can also always have students
feel free to pass if you don't want to share, right. We don't wan to demand inclusivity
and belonging the performance of that either. So that that's something I've
used. We've talked a bit about the syllabus so I'll skip that but I think
really thinking about knowing our students. The key to this is the the more
we know about who they are the better we can the more inclusive we can be. So how
can you think about assignments, opportunities in class or outside of
class to get to know them as people? And to have them get to know each other as
people. Ultimately that information is what allows us to to really be inclusive.
And I always say one last thing I've been so sorry to cut you off is this this
notion of don't forget that you're still teaching after class. So if something
happened and here like I really didn't manage that right or I could have done
something different and that hits you. It's not done. You can come back to it in
another class. You can post on the group chat, on the group, what do you call that? The
site. You know where people can post. You can do it in an online space. You can
encourage students to email. There's ways to continue conversation outside of
class or for you to basically try again. You know in another moment. We also can
circle back to these things over time. Right. We can come back to them. We can we
can continue to learn. So I just want to stop there and Bev I've eaten
into a ton of your time. But I want to make sure that you've got space too you
to share. Thanks very much Amanda you've definitely given us some great insight
into these issues of inclusivity. And I think we all realize now that there's a
lot that we need to do as online instructors to promote inclusive
classrooms. From our syllabi and the instructional design to creating
accessibility of our lecture materials for example. Setting the tone and
creating open spaces, modeling the inclusivity, and connecting with our
students. I thought that was a really important point that you made towards
the end of the presentation. I want to make one one point and then
we can open it up more for discussion. I I sincerely think that we all need to be
self reflective as as instructors. Methodology I come from from an
anthropology background. So when we do research we're always very
self-reflective. We're constantly, we're journaling. And something that I started
a few months ago was journaling as I teach a class. Just so that I can be more
self reflective of what's going on in that classroom. Qualitative researcher
Sarah Tracy talks about carrying out a self identity audit when you collect
qualitative data, when you engage in in qualitative data collection. And I think
that this is also useful for me as as a teacher. I'm reflective of my own
identity and how it impacts the perceptions that I have and the the
perceptions that others have of me. How I ask myself questions around gender and
sex and age ethnicity and religion, social class, education level, all those
different attributes and how they might impact my perceptions, the involvement
that I have with students, my reception in a specific context, and all of this as
it relates to that 10 or 20 different personalities that I have in my online
classroom. That all have varying perspectives and and at different
places in their lives. It's challenging but I think that getting together and
talking with others about how we can create more inclusive classrooms is the
first step in being successful at doing so. Does anyone else, that we've got a couple
of more minutes that we can spend on the chat. Wondering if anyone else has some
ideas or I don't like the term best practices but what has worked in your
classroom to create that online environment knowing that sometimes we
need to encourage students to think inclusively because we might find that
not all of our learners are in that inclusive space yet. Great question.
Great points. Anyone face to face have a thought? Something you've tried that
has sort of helped cultivate this in any of your classes? [background: I don't have a suggestion but I do have a comment. I think one of the things
that's unique about some of our graduate programs is that they're very much
cohort based. And so the students are coming in with this whole history
because they've been through class after class together. And so it kind of suggests
whether we need to set at a programatic level like a beginning some kind of good
practices for discussion for the students as a whole. I don't know if
anyone has thoughts about that or suggestions on like an orientation
type activity given that they're moving through the whole program together. We do
have I know in our syllabi in our program we have these netiquette types
of rules for this. Some ground rules. But it's a really interesting idea. I
don't think it's in our Student Orientation that the students go through.
And that could be a nice way to flesh that out a little bit right so that's a great
idea. I think often students do not have a clue as to what make what is a quality
discussion post. And then so one of the approaches that I use when I train
faculty is the practical inquiry approach. Okay so there's there various levels,
integration, and that is something I find very very helpful if faculty understand
what does it mean to go through the various levels and what does it look
like and what's it based on though so it's called a practical inquiry approach.
I think it's very valuable for evaluation of online discussions.
That's a great idea and like how could we even incorporate
some of these inclusivity ideas into that so maybe they're not separate
but they become part and parcel to what a good discussion is. Right, yeah. So
anyone else on last I know that we're coming close to time here. It's just
about one o'clock but so maybe we'll just we'll just thank you so much for
your time and encourage you to sort of go to this ed space site here, which is
AU's CTRL site that has a lot of resources. Also if you have any to add
please email I'm sure you could send to Bev, to me, to anyone at CTRL and and
let's let's continue to populate this because this is really a living site and
a living document. So thanks so much for all of your time and and great ideas and
focus on this really important work that we're doing for online students. Thank you. [applause].
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