Equity and Inclusion in Higher Education

Strategies for Teaching

Rita Kumar, Brenda Refaei, Rita Kumar, Brenda Refaei

• Publisher: University of Cincinnati Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781947602182
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Americans' perception of college students does not correlate with the reality of the rich diversity seen on university campuses. Over 60% of Americans believe the average age of a college student is 20 years old but, in fact, it's 26.4 years old. Demographics in the classroom are shifting and instructors bear a responsibility to adjust their teaching style and curriculum to be inclusive for all students.

Equity and Inclusion for Higher Education Strategies for Teaching, edited by Rita Kumar and Brenda Refaei, details the necessity for an inclusive curriculum with examples of discipline-specific activities and modules. The intersectionality of race, age, socioeconomic status, and ability all embody the diversity college instructors encounter in their classrooms. Through the chapters in this book, the contributors make apparent the "hidden curriculum, " which is taught implicitly instead of explicitly. The editors focus on learner-centered environments and accessibility of classroom materials for traditionally marginalized students; a critical part of the labor needed to create an inclusive curriculum.

This text provides instructors with resources to create equity-based learning environments. It challenges instructors to see beyond Eurocentric curriculums and expand their pedagogy to include intercultural competence. The contributors challenge the student/instructor dichotomy and embrace collaboration between the two to construct a curriculum that fits all students' needs. The resources and examples in this book demonstrate the importance of inclusion and equity in the classroom. A companion community page provides examples and tools from the editors and contributing authors, which allows for readers to add materials from their own classrooms. This book and collaborative toolkit allow instructors to begin intentional practice of an inclusive curriculum and implement changes to promote respect for diversity.

PART I

Setting Up Inclusive Learning Environments

Part I of this book is focused on setting up inclusive learning environments, which is the first logical step of any pedagogical endeavor. In this section, the chapters illustrate ways educators can intentionally create inclusive learning environments. In each chapter, the authors develop inclusive pedagogical practices and curricula to achieve equity in their classes.

Developing an inclusive classroom begins with the syllabus. The first chapter is devoted to the course syllabus, one of the first and most important steps in establishing the classroom community. The course syllabus, which historically served as a contract or agreement between the faculty and students, should evolve to become an important pedagogical tool that exemplifies the instructors’ approach, their intentions, and the type of classroom they intend to create. Kirsten Helmer argues the syllabus can set the tone of a class. She examines how the way the subtext of a syllabus is interpreted can impact marginalized and underrepresented student groups. She explains how a syllabus can be written through the lens of inclusivity by following six principles of syllabus design that will promote equity.

After content, educators often state class size as a challenge to applying principles of equity and inclusion. Despite the barriers that large classes can present, Claire Lyons and Janna Taft Young make the case that even large classes need to address equity and inclusion if they are to achieve equitable outcomes for all students. They offer ways to be more inclusive under broader themes such as: How instructors can present themselves and the learning environment they create, how class structure and organization can be personalized to meet diverse needs, and finally how class content and activities can be designed to include all students. They describe how large classes can present a context for analyzing case studies, using media, engaging group work, and providing inclusive examples to illustrate core concepts. By intentionally applying culturally relevant pedagogy and curriculum, Lyons and Young show how large lecture courses can create an inclusive learning environment.

Online learning has become an increasingly necessary medium for learning. In response to the reality of online learning, educators must design inclusive learning experiences that support students in online contexts. Ruth Benander and Pam Rankey discuss how to design and facilitate equitable and inclusive online classes to meet student needs that include content and academic and technological skills. They explore how concepts of universal design, cultural humility, and multiple paths for mastery can develop inclusivity in online courses.

This section of the book brings together practical advice for syllabus design and pedagogical options that faculty can use in challenging teaching environments of large courses and online courses. Readers should consider how they might adapt the strategies presented in these chapters to their own teaching contexts to deliver content in a way that is mindful of inclusion and equity. Part I illustrates how faculty from different disciplines and institutions approach the necessary work of promoting equity in higher education.

CHAPTER 1

Six Principles of an Inclusive Syllabus Design

Kirsten Helmer

The course syllabus is typically the first point of interaction and the initial tool of communication between students and their teachers. This first impression matters (Harnish & Bridges, 2011). For instructors, the syllabus provides a critical opportunity to communicate to students not only the content and structure of the course, but also the expectations and intentions of the learning environment. While syllabi traditionally have been viewed as serving mainly administrative purposes (for example, as implicit contracts between students, instructors, and the institution), perceptions of syllabi have changed to acknowledge the role they play as important educational tools (Eberly, Newton, & Wiggins, 2001). Purposes of a syllabus include setting the tone for a course, motivating students, and showcasing instructor’s pedagogical practices and intentions for the kind of learning environment they want to cultivate (Slattery & Carlson, 2005). In addition, syllabi function as socialization tools that mediate the complex social interactions within a classroom (Afros & Schryer, 2009; Sulik & Keys, 2014). In these ways, syllabi can positively shape the class climate and help to build a sense of community, respect, and mutual support (Sulik & Keys, 2014).

However, many syllabi operate as part of the hidden curriculum—those unwritten implicit rules, norms, messages, and hidden biases about students that we communicate through what Brantmeier, Broscheid, and Moore (2017) identified as the subtext of a syllabus. The hidden curriculum that flows through our syllabus can have a negative impact on students’ learning experiences and academic success, particularly for students from historically marginalized and underrepresented populations. It puts students who are not familiar with the hidden curriculum at a disadvantage from the start. Examining the subtext of our syllabus to uncover its hidden curriculum is a critical step when striving to teach more inclusively and equitably. How we design our syllabi matters because they are “unobtrusive but powerful indicators of what takes place in classrooms” (Bers, Davis, & Taylor, 2000, p. 899). Intentional syllabus design allows us to be attentive to the rules, assumptions, and values that are important for students’ success in our course and that inform our teaching of the course but that we often do not state explicitly.

The purpose of this chapter is to offer ideas on how to write a syllabus with an inclusive design perspective so that students do not simply treat it as “an End User License Agreement—something for which one glances at briefly, clicks ‘agree to terms,’ and moves on to the product without reading any of the document” (Perry, 2014, para. 14). Womack (2017) reminded us that syllabi are informational and rhetorical documents; as such, we should design them with our student audience in mind. She wrote, “I had worked to make the course content diverse and accessible but had ignored the document that facilitates that content” (p. 503). As you write your syllabus, think about how you can use it to communicate your commitment to inclusive and equitable teaching and learning and to begin establishing high-quality relationships with your students.

An inclusive syllabus provides signposts for students about what they will learn, do, and need to know to succeed in the course, and it discusses options, resources, and accessibility for a more equitable learning environment. Grounded in a review of relevant literature, I synthesize existing research about syllabus design into six intersecting principles that serves as a scaffolding framework for the (re)design of course syllabi. These six principles are:

1. Focus on Student Learning
2. Course Design around Big Themes and Essential Questions
3. Application of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Principles
4. Tone and Rhetoric—Inclusive and Motivating Language
5. Supportive Course Policies
6. Accessible Design

I will describe each principle and provide examples of how these principles translate into actual course and syllabus design options that support inclusive and equitable learning environments. Two resources, “Six Principles of Inclusive Syllabus Design” and “Syllabus Template,” are available on the open access companion site for this book.

PRINCIPLE 1: FOCUS ON STUDENT LEARNING

The first principle of an inclusive syllabus design asks instructors to shift from a content-focused to a learning-focused syllabus. Traditional syllabi emphasize the course content and structure of the course. Rarely do course syllabi provide students with a nuanced understanding of the processes involved in learning and mastering the content. Palmer, Wheeler, and Aneece (2016) advocate for shifting to learning-focused syllabi, saying the syllabus should “clearly communicate that content is used primarily as a vehicle for learning” (p. 5). Their research showed that students who read a learning-focused syllabus have significantly more positive perceptions of the document itself, which importantly translates into more positive perceptions of the course and the instructor. They emphasize that learning-focused syllabi positively affect students’ motivation before students even enter the classroom, thus supporting students’ meaningful engagement with the course.

To check your syllabus’s orientation, evaluate how it guides your students through the learning environment:

1. Do you state both high-level, long-term goals (articulated in aspirational and inspirational language) and shorter-term, measurable learning objectives?
2. Do your learning objectives address different levels of cognitive, behavioral, and affective learning?
3. Does the syllabus communicate a supportive and motivating learning environment?
4. Do you consider a variety of student interests and the learning needs of different types or groups of students?
5. Do you explain in your syllabus how the learning activities and course assignments and assessments align with the learning objectives?
6. Does your syllabus provide information about all the ways you will assess students’ learning, including the use of low-stakes formative assessments throughout the course?
7. Do you pace and scaffold assessments in ways that support student success? (Adapted from Palmer, Bach, & Streifer, 2014 and Palmer, Wheeler, & Aneece, 2016)

Consider analyzing your syllabus using one of the rubrics on inclusive and accessible syllabus design developed by Palmer, Bach, and Streifer (2014), Brantmeier, Broscheid, and Moore (2017), or the Ensuring Access through Collaboration and Technology (EnACT) project by the California State University, Sonoma.

Another way to check whether or not your syllabus functions as a tool for supporting student learning is to gather feedback from your students. Consider having your students annotate the syllabus (Kalir, 2018), or asking them to send you an email or post to an online discussion forum with questions they have about the syllabus and areas they find confusing.

PRINCIPLE 2: COURSE DESIGN AROUND BIG THEMES AND ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

When students struggle with seeing a course as meaningful and relevant as they are reading the syllabus, they may begin the course by already seeing themselves as unsuccessful learners in that course. The second principle suggests providing a coherent narrative arc of what students will learn throughout the course. Think about framing your syllabus as containing a “promise” through language that invites students to enter the course with a sense of curiosity and high expectations about how the course will be meaningful for them (Bain, 2004; Palmer, Bach, & Streifer, 2014; Palmer, Wheeler, & Aneece, 2016). Slattery and Carlson (2005) encouraged instructors to write the syllabus as an invitation to students to take part in an “organized and meaningful journey” (p. 159). The Association of College and University Educators (n.d.) suggested building a graphic or big-ideas syllabus to support students in visualizing the organization of the course.

Wiggins and McTighe (2005) developed a backwards design process where instructors begin with the end in mind: What are the essential questions, ideas, and themes that you will explore with your students and how do they connect? They define essential questions as those that “push us to the heart of things—the essence” (p. 107) and that “serve as door-ways through which learners explore the key concepts, themes, theories, issues, and problems that reside within the content, perhaps as yet unseen” (p. 106). Cunliff (2014) emphasized how “the use of questions cues students that there will be interaction and that they are expected to engage. It also tells them that questions are OK” (para. 9). Write an engaging course description and introduce the class sessions in your course schedule with thought-provoking, intriguing questions or statements to stimulate student curiosity and signal inquiry-based learning (Eberly, Newton, & Wiggins, 2001). In doing so, you communicate to students that their voices and input matter and that you are committed to cultivating an inclusive and equitable learning community.

PRINCIPLE 3: APPLICATION OF UNIVERSAL DESIGN FOR LEARNING (UDL) PRINCIPLES

Syllabi function as organizational tools in curriculum (re)design (Eberly, Newton, & Wiggins, 2001). The third principle of inclusive syllabus design focuses on applying the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to strengthen a course’s organizational structure in ways that are accessible to all students (CAST, 2018). As Womack (2017) emphasized, “Agency, for all students, comes from access” (p. 500). She advocated for framing accommodations not as “the exception we sometimes make in spite of learning, but rather the adaptations we continually make to promote learning” (p. 494). In other words, when using a UDL framework for your course and syllabus design, “accommodation is the norm, not the special case” (Womack, 2017, p. 499).

When you create your course syllabus, you have an ideal opportunity to illustrate how you design the course with variability in mind by providing students with multiple paths for learning and success. Through a UDL-informed syllabus, you communicate how you will meet the needs of diverse students by providing a variety of options and flexibility for accessing and processing course content, participating in the course, and assessing skills and knowledge (CAST, 2018). Indicate how you will present content in multiple ways beyond printed texts (i.e., through various modalities or formats, including images, graphics, videos, blogs, podcasts, or websites that feature real-world applications of content); allow choices about topics for readings, assignments, or projects; and provide options for students to demonstrate their learning that go beyond quizzes, exams, or written papers (i.e., through oral presentations, projects, performances, or products).

In addition, a UDL-informed syllabus provides explicit information that will help students plan, prioritize, and see the larger picture of how course content, learning objectives, learning activities, and assignments connect. Create a detailed course schedule, preferably in a concise table format, that provides information about what students can expect to learn, what they will need to do to be prepared for the next class session, and when assignments will be due. Let your students know what resources and supports are available to facilitate their success.

In sum, a syllabus that reflects UDL design principles allows students to see how you intend to create a flexible...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Setting Up Inclusive Learning Environments
• Part II: Creating Inclusive Classrooms in the Social Sciences
• Part III: Inclusive Humanities
• Part IV: Inclusive STEM
• Part V: Inclusive Professional Practice
• Part VI: Inclusive Assessment
• Epilogue
• List of Contributors
• Index