On-Demand Webinar: Designing Inclusive Classrooms

Megan Raymond:

Okay. Hi, everybody. Welcome to today’s webinar. We’re really excited to have wonderful presenters with us and a great topic, Designing Inclusive Classrooms: Where to Start? This webinar is presented in partnership with our great friends, Wiley University Services. I’m Megan Raymond. I direct programs, events and sponsorship here at WCET. And if I’m not had a chance to meet any of you, please visit our website, learn more about WCET and the work that we do. And one of the best parts about my job is like I get to talk to people doing great work across the United States, including people that we have on this webinar today.

Megan Raymond:

As we go through, if you have any questions, please enter them into the Q and A. If you put them into chat, there’s a chance we will lose those. So keep them in the Q and A. And we encourage you to keep the chat active and lively. So make sure to contribute your thoughts there and then the experiences or resources that you have. The slides will be shared. And we will also make sure that we send out the link to the slides and the recording. So you can access that and share that with those that may have missed it. We tend to have a pretty active Twitter back channel. If you’d like to follow along, the hashtag is #WCETWebcast. Again, any questions, add them to the Q and A. And I’d like to go ahead and pass it off to our moderator today, who’s a friend of WCET and a coworker of WCET, and does a lot of the heavy lifting for our initiative, the Every Learner Everywhere network. So Norma, I’ll let you introduce yourself.

Norma Hollebeke:

Thank you very much, Megan. And welcome to everyone joining us. Looks like people are joining from all across the country and that’s wonderful. So as Megan said, my name is Norma Hollebeke. And I am the manager of network programs and services for Every Learner Everywhere. And we are a sub department of WCET. It is my honor today to moderate this wonderful webcast. And I’d like to go ahead and introduce our panelists for today. We have Cindy Gallatin, chief of digital learning initiatives from University of New Haven. We also have Jason Rhode, executive director and chief online learning officer from Northern Illinois University. And Jeanne Kim, senior learning designer from Wiley University Services. So at this point, I’m going to hand it off to you all, but I will be back to help you all with the Q and A at the end. So I’m turning it over to you all.

Jeanne Kim:

Thank you so much. Hi, everybody. I’m really excited to be here. As Norma said, I’m a senior designer at Wiley University Services. And today with my talented presenters, we’re going to talk about how… where different campuses have started with the process of implementing inclusive programs and inclusive courses and some strategies they’ve learned in the process. And so we’ll hear some practical ways that Jason and Cindy have implemented diversity and inclusion on their campuses. And we’d also love to hear from you in the chat and all the participants because I’ve seen in the roster, there’s lots of instructional designers and faculty and leaders in this area. And so we’d love to keep it active.

Jeanne Kim:

So moving right along on the next slide. And this slide, we’re going to talk about the Wiley design process. And I don’t know if you know, but Wiley has the division called Wiley University Services and we work with over 70 universities over the world and over 800 online degree programs. And this gives us a lot of insight into what’s happening in inclusion. And we layer our course design practices with the best learning design resources, but also the data from our students. So we survey our students and we have a great research team that gives us reports.

Jeanne Kim:

And so these are the three categories of what we found our students want in our online courses. And it’s not going to be anything new to you. But the three categories are students want real world experiences. They want inspired and engaging courses. But lastly, this is very important in inclusion, they want community and connection. So we design using a community of inquiry framework, which is especially important for equity and inclusion. So as you know, community helps students stay motivated and engaged. And we’re going to talk about actual examples that Jason and Cindy are implementing. And that we’d love to hear what you’re doing in your courses.

Jeanne Kim:

So moving right along. This next slide is just a handy mnemonic that reminds people that faculty members are actually at the core of creating the inclusive course. And you can put in a chat like what else you would include besides curiosity, candor, courtesy, and courage. I would add probably collaborative. There’s other critical qualities that make a great faculty member. So we just wanted to cover this really briefly. I’m speeding through this because I want to get into the interactive part of the presentation and the discussion. So I like that Olivia, the agile. Absolutely. So it doesn’t have to be a C quality. I was thinking of the carrots. So we’re going to stop here right now. These are some big questions on this slide, but we’re going to take a minute and hear from Jason and Cindy about the types of initiatives that are going on on their campus. So these questions are large, but we’re going to just take a moment and Norma is going to transition.

Norma Hollebeke:

Okay. So here we go. Put your comments on the chat as Cindy and Jason are providing us this information. Let’s go with that first question there on the slide in terms of your DEI initiatives on your campus at the program level, university level or department level.

Cindy Gallatin:

I’ll be happy to jump in, Norma. So we have a lot of initiatives at our university. Everything from international student life to a center that really focuses on programming to something we call the ideal council, which is inclusion, diversity, equity and access, which is comprised of faculty, staff and students that are engaged in many programs across the university. But the one that I want to highlight right now is one that was very creative. It’s a faculty member, who’s also an assistant provost at the university. His name is Alvin Tran and he created a JEDI program.

Cindy Gallatin:

And what makes this kind of fun is that he uses the acronym JEDI to really describe a student group that is involved in justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. And this student group is really comprised of a number of different students who really go out in the university and become immersed in helping other students. They do surveys. They get feedback from students. So it’s a way to not only have administrators and faculty involved, but it really is a DEI initiative focused on supporting students of color, LGBTQ students and students from other historically marginalized backgrounds without having to come forward. So he’s called it The Return of the JEDI and it’s been very, very successful to date.

Jason Rhode:

Cindy, that’s fabulous. I love the Return of the JEDI moniker and that’s wonderful. Like your campus, at our institution at Northern Illinois, a number of efforts underway. We’re fortunate to have a chief diversity officer at the vice presidential level at the university, who’s really helping to champion many initiatives, many efforts. And it’s exciting times because these conversations and this look at belonging and inclusion is… It’s really, institutionally, it’s one of our core values. It’s something that we truly believe strongly that all of our students should belong. They can be successful. And that shared belonging, that core value has really catalyzed a lot of conversations on our campus. I think for us, back to Jeanne, the point that you made about faculty being at the core and thinking about how important that is, that they are equipped and empowered and to have a safe place where those faculty can have conversations.

Jason Rhode:

We’ve launched something that we’re calling the Faculty Academy for Cultural Competence and Equity or FACCE. It’s not as cool as JEDI, but that is an effort that’s really going to be combining and blending both professional development and with conversations on these really important topics, giving faculty a safe place to come together to share ideas. And for that work to then filter down and to happen in smaller pockets across the institution. I think for us, where we’ve seen success is that this hasn’t been just in one little silo within the institution, but it’s been bringing the campus together broadly to have conversations where we think about things like, what is our inclusive language that we want to put in syllabi? What’s the diversity statement that we want to promote? What are some of these key areas that we can come together around?

Jeanne Kim:

Jason, that’s really impressive about the coordination across departments. Do you have any sort of tips or… I mean, that’s hard on… I mean, I’ve had experience working in a very siloed environment in a university setting. Sort of what… I mean, what tips or what strategies?

Jason Rhode:

I’ll tell you, Jeanne, it’s been a lot of communication and continued communication and continually raising the visibility and from the various highest levels. I mean, this gets discussed at board meetings, at senior leadership and really then taking this down to the colleges. So we have… Each of our colleges has been tasked with creating a kind of an equity team that is looking at, not only the climate, but very specific tangible things like equity gaps and such in curriculum and across courses. Looking at those trends and having these conversations that are localized and specific to the needs of a particular area within the institution. But having those shared goals as well, so that you can come together and you can see how the efforts that you might be doing in biology or chemistry, how those align with the shared institutional goals that we have to continue to move forward, this agenda of inclusion and equity.

Jeanne Kim:

Thank you. All right. We may come back to these questions because they’re pretty heavy, especially around the topic of bias training. But we’ll move on for the time being. Thanks, Cindy and Jason. And so, the next slide is the roadmap to today’s presentation about our eight recommendations. I’m just going to stop here briefly. This is not like set and carved in stone, but as you can see that good design is inclusive design. And everyone implements these types of things in their courses already, but we’re just… We’re going to talk through these recommendations with exemplars. And we’re going to start with examining your own biases.

Jeanne Kim:

And this one is the most important one because it starts with our own selves because each of us carries our own bias in us. And in order to have courses that are inclusive and equitable, you can’t just have a one-day workshop or an online training from HR. And one resource that I love… And I’m interested if anyone in this group, any of the participants have had the training by Dr. Patricia Devine and William Cox from University of Madison in Wisconsin, where they treat bias as a bad habit. So those, that resource, I’ll put in the chat. But it’s like data-driven resource to eliminate unconscious bias. But anyway, doing the work and starting within with that self-reflection is the first step. And so that is the first recommendation. And so I would love to, in the chat, if you share like any trainings that you felt were worthwhile, so.

Jason Rhode:

Jeanne, if I can jump in here.

Jeanne Kim:

Yeah.

Jason Rhode:

Thinking about your own implicit bias and there’s the training piece. Something that I found really helpful and that we encourage our faculty to do is to, in that reflection phase at really the pre-course level, to not only reflect on kind of their own biases that they may be bringing to the course, but to think about some sort of implementing, and this is what I’ve done in my own teaching and we’ve encouraged faculty do the same, is to implement some sort of a pre-course reflection that could be a tool that then those educators could use as they are crafting an inclusive and welcoming space and to start to combat the implicit bias. And so what this is really, it’s a survey that I typically include that very first week, or frankly, even before the course starts when I send out a welcome to my students. I’ll include this and I’ll ask that they quickly complete it.

Jason Rhode:

And it’s asking things like preferred name and pronouns, but getting to things like questions about their comfort or what they feel like, maybe their background knowledge in the topic, what they’re bringing to the course, helping me to get to know a little bit about those students and what they’re bringing to class. But I also ask them other things like… One of the questions is what’s their biggest concern. Are there concerns that I should know about as I’m getting ready to teach the course, so that I’m not looking at students and making some prejudgments. But that I’ve had a chance to start to think about and see what students are bringing to the course. I think this is really helpful. For example, just knowing, is this student working a lot? Do they have small children? There’s other things perhaps that they’re balancing. Maybe have a learning disability and they want me to know that upfront. Those are the kinds of things that if I know that upfront, it can really help me to come into the course ready to not prejudge and to see what I can do to meet my students where they’re at.

Jeanne Kim:

I really love that because it’s very simple and it gives you so much information, and it’s very non-threatening and it’s just very humanizing. Thank you so much for sharing that. One thing that I have developed in one of my courses is an extra credit assignment where you can meet with another student, a coffee talk, sort of a Zoom coffee talk. So in your spare time… Because students are feeling very isolated these days as everyone. And so bringing the experiential into an online course. So Zoom coffee talks or a Zoom movie night, that type of thing. And giving extra credit for those types of experiences. So the thing is to expand the network, like hanging out with people that you otherwise would not hang out with. So moving right along, I’m going to hand it over to Jason.

Jason Rhode:

Thanks Jeanne. So on this next slide here, this second recommendation is really focusing on the instructional design being the foundation for building an inclusive course. And you’ll see on the slide here, there are some recommendations that will help the majority of your students. Your course may already meet most of these recommendations, but these are some areas that you might want to think about, those of you that do teach and design courses, some specific tasks that you could take. So for example, first of all, looking at encouraging learner autonomy, and you can do this a number of ways by including opportunities where students can self-select topics, they can draw upon their own personal interests, or they can share with peers. This is a really great opportunity to involve students in helping shape various aspects of your course. It could be particular elements of your syllabus. For example, something you could do is having your students have input into selecting the criteria, for example, that you would use in a discussion board rubric. Something that helps to engage them in the process and have an investment in what is happening.

Jason Rhode:

Secondly, looking to allow your students to play an active role in facilitating and leading, encouraging them to… whether it is to join into small group work or maybe it’s using breakout rooms in synchronous sessions that you might be having. That’s key. Another great suggestion and something I always try to aspire to myself and my teaching is to share examples of what success looks like and in meeting successful outcomes. This could be examples that could especially help our first generation students. Maybe they don’t clearly understand the expectations. And so being able to provide them with an example can go a long way in helping them to fully understand what’s expected. And then think about how you go about planning frequent low stakes assessments that begin early in the course. Again, thinking about first our first generation students. Having assessments that can provide useful information to you as the instructor about how your students are progressing. But it also offers those students opportunities to practice before they’re taking these higher stakes assessments.

Jason Rhode:

And then just a final example here that I’ll mention is employing active learning techniques and implying universal design principles to our learning activities. And these are some of the… We could put them in the bucket of the best practices that we typically try to follow when we design online courses. But thinking about beyond just the traditional types of assessments that we might use, but providing students with multiple ways and opportunities to demonstrate their learning. Again, this could be project based. It could be very hands on kinds of activities where they can demonstrate their knowledge. So this solid design foundation, I think, is just really key as we look at starting to build that welcoming and inclusive environment.

Jason Rhode:

Then if we move on to the next slide, we’re going to talk next our third recommendation. Here is now to design for not just the average student, which is what we were talking about on the previous slide, but now designing for student differences. And the key theme here in these recommendations, as opposed to what we just looked at, is that this is really grouped around flexibility. And so if you think about reviewing, for example, your participation requirements and keeping in mind that students studying from home, they may live in a difficult or an unsafe circumstance. They might be in environment where they can’t be their authentic self. And so this could impact their participation or their behavior in synchronous activities. For example, you might have students who conceal their sexual orientation at home, and they might feel uncomfortable referencing that when others can overhear. These are the types of things that we need to think about. And so, just again, review your participation requirements and those expectations that you have.

Jason Rhode:

Secondly, verify that your course materials are accessible. And this might seem simple, but it’s really important. And there are some great tools out there that you can use to help you in this endeavor. Blackboard Ally is one tool that our campus has employed and has been a fabulous tool for helping to proactively improve the accessibility of materials, as well as provide alternative formats for students. But remember that accessibility accommodations they’re helpful for all of our students, not just those that specifically need an accommodation.

Jason Rhode:

I use the example of caption videos and how that can help our multilingual students. And thinking about inclusive office hours is another great example to help our students who are employed or they have caregiving responsibilities, really being flexible. I also try to… would suggest that we question our assumptions surrounding what our students need in order to do and what they must understand to be successful. And so thinking about providing spaces for different learning tendencies that we see and communicating explicitly with our students how they can demonstrate their learning.

Jason Rhode:

And just kind of finishing up this recommendation here would be to offer students flexibility wherever possible with deadlines and workload and provide feedback on how they’re progressing against their timelines. I’ve had a number of students that when I did that pre-course survey initially to get to know my students who were juggling multiple jobs and caretaker responsibilities, and truly they were enrolled in my online course because it was the only way they could meet that particular course requirement for their degree program. And so they needed the flexibility.

Jason Rhode:

And so it wasn’t that my deadlines… I wanted to look at how could I make them accommodating. Not lessening the rigor at all in my course, but being accommodating to my students. And so thinking about that flexibility is really important. And ultimately I would say reflecting on what does it mean for our students to be proficient, to show that proficiency and adapting assessments that can allow for multiple methods of students to demonstrate that knowledge I think is really great. So with that, now we’re going to talk a little bit more about materials. And I’m going to turn things over to Cindy for our next recommendation.

Norma Hollebeke:

Before we dive in with Cindy, I’m going to interrupt for a second, because I think this is a great opportunity to take a question that popped up in the Q and A. On one of your previous slides, you talked about a good example of self-selecting topics as a good design concept. Could you go ahead and expand on that and explain what you mean by self-selecting topics and how that may scale in a large class?

Jason Rhode:

So let’s say, for example, that you may have a construct that you’re discussing that could… You could look at it from a number of different ways. What I’ve often done in times is rather than assigning a specific construct to a student that maybe they’re going to become the expert in and come and teach back to the rest of the class is to let students self-select maybe the area that they want to dig into, take a closer look at. And then I do, I ask them to kind of put the onus on them to help dig into that construct and bring it back to whether it’s within a synchronous session, I break them off. Or if this is an asynchronous experience, I’ll have them maybe bring that back to a discussion and be able to share their experience.

Jason Rhode:

I’ve also done this with Wiki style type of activities where I’ll have a list of topics that students can pick and choose from. And if we’re meeting in class, maybe I have a Google doc and they each have… Each of those topics has a separate page and the students can go to. They do some research. They start to craft and become an expert in some of those areas and then can share that back with students. So I think just thinking about ways where you can provide students choice and yet they can feel like they’re in a bit more control of their learning, I think is a great way to provide that inclusive environment for our students.

Norma Hollebeke:

Thank you. We have one more that’s relevant to this section before we dive into the curating course materials. It’s been asked, if you could give some examples of how you share that previous examples with the students, without your current students using them as a template or it limiting their creativity as they move forward with the assignment.

Jason Rhode:

That’s a great question. You hesitate. Do I want to show them too many… the perfect example. What is the example that I’m sharing? And so, one of the things I try to do is I try to share sometimes multiples, maybe two or three examples, and they’re not all the perfect example. I try to pick examples that are diverse in just the format, the structure. And I will tell my students, these may or may not necessarily be the perfect example, but it gives you an idea of what you might look for. I did this in a course where I had… the project was a research proposal. And so that of course can look so different depending on your interest area. And so I do that up front, but I preface it by saying, “Look, we’re expecting you to be creative.” Maybe I give them a template and say, “These are the key headings or key areas that I’m looking for. But then you’ve of course have the… I want you to be creative in thinking about how you bring to life your ideas.” Great question.

Norma Hollebeke:

Thank you, Jason.

Jason Rhode:

[inaudible 00:27:41].

Norma Hollebeke:

Thank you very much.

Jason Rhode:

Keep those questions coming.

Norma Hollebeke:

Those questions are relevant at the time. So we want to keep it fresh in our mind. Cindy, go ahead, and sorry about that, but dive into your…

Jason Rhode:

Thank you.

Norma Hollebeke:

… curating course materials. I might interrupt you too with some really great questions.

Cindy Gallatin:

No problem. So thank you. So in curating course materials, you really want to think about universal design principles in order to create an inclusive and equitable experience for all students. And today’s conversation really focuses on all types of learning, online, hybrid and web-enhanced courses, to really make sure that, as Jason mentioned, that they’re accessible, but really to ensure access to learning environments for every student. So one of the key things, and thinking about transparent material selection, I think it’s great to really be transparent about the material students need for this course and why you selected them.

Cindy Gallatin:

And there’s this wonderful set of videos from a faculty member named Michael Wesch. I found him on YouTube. I do not know him personally. But he does a wonderful job of providing videos for his online classes. And he shares a lot of tips and techniques. And one of the techniques that he shares online is he tells students why he selected a particular book. And he teaches religions of the world and he actually spends time about being transparent. And he said, he’ll even read segments of the book to the students in some of his videos to actually engage them in the learning process. So I love that example of being transparent about why you are selecting key materials and how these materials will help students on their learning journey.

Cindy Gallatin:

Evaluating your course materials to ensure they reflect a diverse society and world. Here’s a simple thing that you can do in your courses. When you put in photos, just simple pictures within your content, make a point to ensure that your pictures include multiple races, multiple genders, different age groups, so that you’re reflective of the different students that may be part of your particular classroom.

Cindy Gallatin:

On Juneteenth, I received an advertisement from Harvard Business Publishing because I teach business courses. And they sent out an email saying that they curated a lot of discipline-based case studies to be reflective of different ethnicities. So it’s really important when you think about your course materials to think about case scenarios and thinking about different, again, backgrounds, races, ethnicities, genders when you select your content. So that again, students really understand that this is a global perspective and that, in many cases, they may see themselves.

Cindy Gallatin:

Thinking about explicitly name and discuss the agenda and historical biases of your field. So don’t shy away from looking at historical perspectives and how things have changed. I teach marketing courses and it’s humorous to look back at ’50s and ’60s and looking at old advertisements in the way they projected individuals. And I think it’s really important for students to look at present day examples and how we’ve evolved and how we’re evolving in terms of the type of content that’s out there. And again, because I teach marketing, I love to look at things in terms of advertising and target markets and how important it is to really be reflective of different audiences.

Cindy Gallatin:

Supplementing your course materials with background information and multiple types of examples to facilitate learning. Your course materials can be both digital and if you’re in an on-campus class, you may still have some print materials. I’m a little biased. And I’ll admit that I tend to shy away from print materials. I’m a big fan of digital. But thinking about the different types of course materials you’re going to use, think about how terrific it is to use digital content, where you can increase font size, use texts to speech to retext out loud, link to more detailed information. These types of examples are really useful for students that may have dyslexia. So thinking about the types of formats that you may be utilizing for your content. And again, there already was a reference to ADA compliance. It’s really important that your videos have transcripts. And videos are a fabulous tool for students because they’re able to play back and again, go back and understand the material for better comprehension.

Cindy Gallatin:

Not only are these digital tools useful and helpful for ADA compliance, but they’re also useful for students that may not need that particular accommodation. So for example, I worked at a university with a med school. Videos were used, and again, recordings in the classroom were made for the students so that they can go back over content again and again and again. So utilizing different tools in order to facilitate the learning process. Our LMS tools, and it was mentioned again, that you can use Blackboard Ally, or you could use the ADA compliance tool in Canvas in order to highlight things that need to be made accessible. So leverage the technology and the tool sets that you have.

Cindy Gallatin:

Reaching out to on-campus resources or professional groups to provide role models and guest speakers. I’m sure all of you have some wonderful resources on campus that speak to diversity, equity and inclusion. Think about having guest speakers. And they could be virtual or live that join your classes and perhaps highlight some key areas. I love having guest speakers from industry that can highlight different topics and really bring to the forefront what careers are available, where students can progress in the future. Those are a few examples of curating course materials. And happy to answer any questions. And if not, we can move on.

Norma Hollebeke:

Thank you, Cindy. I think right now we can move on. For those of you in the audience, if you’ve got questions for Cindy, please go ahead and toss them in the Q and A, and we’ll try to get to them as we wind down.

Jason Rhode:

All right. So we are at our fifth recommendation that really is focusing on social presence. And Jeanne mentioned this, the community of inquiry framework that many of us are familiar with. That’s a common framework that we utilize as we think about the importance of presence in our online courses. And I think there’s two important steps for crafting that positive social presence. I think it involves both a proactive planning that we’re talking about here, but then establishing strategies where you might mitigate a situation if the class climate sours. And I think we’ll talk about this a bit for and give you a chance to chime in the chat in just a moment. So start thinking about how you manage conflicts that arise in your classroom today, and be ready to chime in with some thoughts there. But first of all, I want to throw a few ideas out as we think about this recommendation of creating that social presence in the course.

Jason Rhode:

And so understanding that conflict is healthy and it is part of our discourse and our grappling with ideas. But I think it’s really important that we model constructive discussion, particularly when we are in situations that could lead to conflict. And so there are some key things you can do. Number one is just including a syllabus statement that recognizes diversity and respects and affirms student identities. I’ve got some sample syllabus statements that we share at our institution that I’ll put a link in the chat. But you might at your institution as well have some of those recommended statements that can help set the tone, even from the syllabus as to what’s expected.

Jason Rhode:

And then next, I would say proactively plan your group formation. Keeping in mind how student demographics may impact, whether it’s your online discussion forums or perhaps collaborative assignments, or how students will engage with materials. You might want to think about… I happen to be teaching a course right now that is a cross-listed course. I have students this summer both taking this course for undergraduate and graduate credit. And I have some different expectations for those students. And grouping them in certain discussions and activities based on those expectations, that’s something I need to keep in mind. And so I think just thinking about that group formation is important.

Jason Rhode:

And then fostering belonging for all of our students. And this goes back to that four Cs framework that Jeanne mentioned. But just you setting the tone as the instructor, as the faculty that you’ve got clear guidelines and expectations. This could be crafting specific guidelines for when there are difficult conversations, how will those be handled to ensure that there’s collaborative work that’s happening. So being proactive there. And then we want to create courses that have a strong… foster a strong and inclusive class community. And there are some, a few things that we can do to help make that happen.

Jason Rhode:

I think, first of all, we’ve already touched on this, but reflecting on how you, as the instructors, the faculty, share or do not share power in your classroom. Thinking about perhaps forming some student leadership roles during class sessions. This could be whether as an asynchronous discussion or it could be having students step up and assist in different ways in the asynchronous class meeting that you might be having. Giving our students an opportunity to share their expertise as well and allowing them to help co-design certain elements of the class like we talked about. You might want students to, for example, act as a moderator in a discussion in a given week. You might want them to help come up with the prompt for the discussion to kind of kick things off that particular week. But look for opportunities to provide students with a chance to share their learning with each other, with the goal that they could help build some class solidarity around those ideas. I think that’s really key.

Jason Rhode:

And then I will just throw in that I think it’s really important that we be prepared to monitor the student interaction that we are encouraging and have a plan in place for the first day of class for how you’re going to manage conflict between our students. And so you’ll want to learn to look for and address microaggressions and these statements that while we might not think of them as being hurtful in any way, certainly can be. And so be looking for language in things like discussion boards or chats or other places where students interact. And being sensitive to that, I think is really important.

Jason Rhode:

So that’s the… From a crafting that social presence piece, those are a few recommendations there. And then next, let’s think about the next recommendation here. And I’m just going to just very quickly mention that as we think about teaching behaviors, there’s so much that we can do to affirm and be positive in our teaching. Being compassionate toward our students. Sharing the challenges that we ourselves face and how we’ve overcome those. And also just checking in on our students, making sure that they’re okay, that they have what they need. I think these are all critical. And so you see some recommendations here on the slide. And in the interest of time, I’m not going to go through these in depth, but we offer these here. And I think these are covered in more depth in the white paper that was shared and will be shared. And you can dig into these further.

Jason Rhode:

The chat though. If we can go to that, the next slide, and just throw this question out there again in the chat, maybe as you’ve been thinking about conflicts in your classrooms and how you handle those, how you manage classroom conflicts as they come up. If you have any great suggestions, please throw those in the text chat. And I’m sure we can continue the conversation and maybe circle back on some of those. So with that, from there, I think I’m going to turn things… Not sure Norma if I turn it back to you, or if we’re going to Cindy.

Norma Hollebeke:

We’re going to go to Cindy on this one.

Cindy Gallatin:

Okay, great. So student resources. I think one of the things that you cannot assume is that even though students are very tech savvy, they don’t necessarily understand or utilize educational technology and it may be new to them. So I think one of the key things is really ensuring that students are set and ready to go, but that you’re also providing tools to make it easy for students. So for example, we often provide an overview of the LMS that any faculty member can embed in their course.

Cindy Gallatin:

And we’re currently updating one of our resources for faculty, where they can actually select tutorials that they can put right into their course for just in time resource for students. So that it makes it easier for a faculty member to have the instructions in there and they don’t have to answer 20 questions of how do I upload an assignment in this LMS. So providing some of those resources to faculty, for students to make it easier for navigation.

Cindy Gallatin:

The other thing that we recommend is at the beginning of each course is really make sure that students can navigate the course. So it might be a little Getting Started module. It could be a video of the course. It could be just a quick overview of where things are and how they should navigate to make it easier for students as they can focus on content rather than focus on navigation.

Cindy Gallatin:

Communicating with students about how the online format may influence their study strategies. So provide strategies for students on studying. Give them recommendations on timing. The biggest challenge most students have is juggling time. And so give them some strategies of doing the readings offline and chunking their study time. Also, by chunking your course and your assignment due dates, you can help students manage their time even better.

Cindy Gallatin:

Sharing resources for students support and explicitly encouraging their use. Again, you want to make it as easy as possible. Make sure that the tools that you have students use are university-supported tools. So if something breaks, they can quickly get some help. In addition to that, if a student has a tech problem, so let’s say you recommend an assignment be done via video, and a student has difficulty using that particular tool. Be flexible. Let them use a different tool. Rather than spend time troubleshooting a technology issue, make it as simple and easy as possible. And don’t focus on the tools, focus on the outcomes.

Cindy Gallatin:

So guiding students to services. We have a university website for technology. We have student support help desk. We have a help chat line, 24 by seven for Canvas. So again, give students an overview of where to go for help because most of the time they’re not going to do it in advance. They’re going to want it at 2:00 in the morning or when they’re doing that particular assignment. So make it as easy as possible for students to self-serve because the self-service piece is really important.

Cindy Gallatin:

Next recommendation is really continuous improvement. And I wanted to think about this in terms of how all of you in the audience are either building courses or teaching courses. The first thing you do is you build the course. And if it’s the first time, you might be testing out some ideas. As you do that, you want to measure the effectiveness of those ideas. And some great ways to measure is to use the analytics tools in your LMS. I don’t know if we can do a show of hands if there’s a way to do this, but I would love to know how many people out there use the analytics tools when they’re teaching, or if they recommend them to faculty to really gauge how students are doing in the class, or how students are actually utilizing the material. It’s really interesting to see how many hits you get to assignments versus reading materials.

Cindy Gallatin:

I used to tell my students the more engaged students who engage with all of the content tend to correlate really well with the students that get A’s and B’s. So if you use your analytics, then you’re learning and you can revamp and continuously improve. So thinking about reflecting on your course materials, and then developing that continuous improvement plan with concrete steps. How am I going to fix this course? How am I going to change it to make it better and better?

Cindy Gallatin:

In terms of your course facilitation, it’s really important to recognize and address microaggressions and language. I went to a gender biased training and it was really well done. We had it done across the university. And we then broke into small groups and I had a faculty member in my group who was military. And he said, “I’m having some difficulty transitioning to gender neutral terms because I have been… It’s been ingrained in me to say sir and ma’am.” And he said, “I’m doing that to be polite, not to be a microaggression.” So again, it’s how do you recognize some of that language and how can you, as well as your students, modify things in order to be respectful to others.

Cindy Gallatin:

So then engage in development opportunities to improve your understanding of students. And I’m a big believer, reach out to the students midterm. Doesn’t have to be a long survey. One or two questions. What’s working for you this term and what is not helping you learn? How can I help you learn for the second half of this course? So reach out to your students in order to get information of how you can continuously improve the course while you’re teaching. And then utilize that information for the next term. And with that Norma, I think we can move on to the next recommendation.

Norma Hollebeke:

Thank you, Cindy. We have gone through quite a few recommendations at this point. And I think Jeanne, did you want to recap everything that we’ve discussed and kind of go through this pathway that we’ve got there before we ask one or two questions that we’ve got?

Jeanne Kim:

Norma, I’m just going to… I just would love to just get to the Q and A and to the discussion. This is just a recap of our recommendation. So I’m just going to hand it, swap it back to you. That’s what I was just going to say.

Norma Hollebeke:

Okay.

Jeanne Kim:

I just [inaudible 00:50:31] like to get… Because the chat is so vibrant and there’s some great topics being brought up, and I see this question. So that’s all [inaudible 00:50:40].

Norma Hollebeke:

Yeah. And I have a really challenging question I want to toss out there. I don’t know that we have the time to answer it wholeheartedly and fully, but at least we can start the conversation. And I have seen this question pop up over the past couple of years multiple times and I’d like to just at least… Jason made the comment that sometimes conflict is necessary and it’s good to help broaden our thoughts and things like that. So this is one, is how do you avoid retaliation in discussing current and historical biases in the field in climates that are not supportive of the diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice efforts? I’d love to have Jason’s thoughts. And then if we have time also Cindy’s thoughts on that.

Jason Rhode:

Yeah.

Norma Hollebeke:

It’s a hot topic.

Jason Rhode:

That’s a great question. No, I mean, really that’s… I think there’s actually fear on the part of… a lot of faculty. They’re scared of how am I going to handle this situation when it comes up? What’s going to be… How do I create us an environment where we can have that discussion and not have that retaliation like we’re talking about here? I think initially for me, it’s all about looking at initially having my radar up and being really attuned to those statements that could be perceived as microaggressions. And that often will lead to… That’s often where conversations will start to go off the rails a bit was when you have that. And then that starts to snowball.

Jason Rhode:

And so trying to step in right away and take a step back and then kind of help mediate that conversation and reiterate the expectations that you’ve already set in your course for collegial and supportive discussion. And we can agree to disagree, but we’re not going to attack one another. We’re not going to let our words… Actually we can disagree without being disagreeable. And trying… You set the tone as the instructor as to what’s expected. I think that’s key. And I think just being transparent about it. Look, this is a hot button issue and we have different perspectives in our class in this community and that’s okay. We don’t have to agree on this, but we are going to be supportive and allow each other to have different points of view. I think that’s where I’d start.

Norma Hollebeke:

Cindy, how about you?

Cindy Gallatin:

I would say let’s think of it as a discussion as opposed to a faculty member disseminating information. So kind of going back to something that Jason said is let’s think of the classroom as a safe place for discussion, and that we are here to respectfully listen to each other. We could have different opinions. And that we can also bring up very sensitive topics, as long as we all realize that we’re listening to each other and we are really in civil discourse, as opposed to somebody saying, “This is how it has to be.”

Cindy Gallatin:

We have some faculty running some programs at our university that are very sensitive, that have students revealing information to the entire group. We have a college that is actually doing training for police forces. So trying to help them through these conversations. And I think it really needs to be framed as civil discourse, conversations and respectful learning as opposed to a faculty member is teaching you something. One of the greatest benefits of college is to have students think and really reflect. And we want to continue that ability. And I think that you’ll find if students are given the opportunity, they’ll rise to the occasion and really have some thoughtful conversations.

Norma Hollebeke:

Oh, that’s wonderful. And I’m going to throw in my two cents here. I also think it goes back to being able to point to your university’s diversity statement or any anti-racist language that they might have in their strategic plan or on their website and stuff. And kind of help that support the faculty member, especially if the faculty member has that kind of that fear of if I go to this direction, am I going to get in trouble, and use that, the university’s language to help support them on that. This was a wonderful conversation. It’s been a great one. And I know that we’re going to have a lot more as the year goes by. I’m going to turn it back over to Megan though, to kind of do some final housekeeping and things like that. Megan, it’s all yours.

Megan Raymond:

Great. Thank you, Norma. And thank you to our presenters. I learned a lot. And thank you to those that were active in the chat. I look forward to digging into the resources that were shared a little more deeply. And we’ll compile those and share those back out as well. So if you’re new to WCET, check us out. We have lots of great member activities and resources. What makes WCET so valuable is the community that is WCET. So consider joining and being part of this amazing group of people.

Megan Raymond:

Again, this was recorded and we’ll send out a link to the recording as well as the resources. And we are very excited to be face to face for our annual meeting. It’s been way too long. We’ll be in Denver this year, and we hope that you can join us. Our annual meeting is open to everybody, whether you’re a member or non-member. Check out our program and learn more. And I’d like to acknowledge our WCET sponsors that make much of our events and programs possible here at WCET. And our supporting members that help underwrite our programming. So again, thank you everybody. And we’ll see you on the next WCET webcast. Have a wonderful 4th of July. Be well.