Strategies for Creating an Inclusive, Accessible Environment
Content
- Choose readings that deliberately reflect the diversity of contributors to the field, and emphasize the range of identities and backgrounds of experts who have contributed.
- Avoid references that are likely to be unfamiliar to some students based on their backgrounds (e.g., citing American pop culture from ‘when you were in high school’ in a class with many international students).
- Teach the conflicts of the field to incorporate diverse perspectives.
- Deliberately choose course materials with a range of students’ physical abilities in mind.
- Deliberately choose course materials with students’ range of financial resources in mind.
- Analyze the content of your examples, analogies, and humor; too narrow a perspective may alienate students with different views or background knowledge.
Instructional Practices
- Help students connect their prior knowledge to new learning.
- Use a variety of teaching methods and modalities rather than relying on one mode.
- Avoid giving verbal instructions without a written corollary. Multiple modes can be helpful to students with processing disabilities as well as non-native English speakers.
- Ask students for concrete observations about content before moving to analytical questions.
- Allow ample time for any in-class activities that require substantial reading, and provide guidance that reflects the fact that processing times will vary (e.g., how to approach the task given you may not finish reading)
- Clearly communicate the expectations and grading scheme for each assignment.
- Emphasize the larger purpose or value of the material you are studying.
- Carefully frame objectives when raising potentially sensitive or uncomfortable topics.
Instructor-Student Interactions
- Learn and use students’ preferred names; encourage them to learn one another’s names
- Encourage students to visit office hours
- Communicate high expectations and your belief that all students can succeed.
- Allow for productive risk and failure. Make it known that struggle/ challenge is important and not a sign of deficiency
- Avoid making generalizations about student experiences.
- Refrain from asking individual students to speak for a social identity group.
- Model productive disagreement, showing how to critique a statement or idea.
- Elicit formative feedback from students about their learning experiences in the course.
Adapted from: U-M Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT). Some content adapted from Linse & Weinstein, Shreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence, Penn State, 2015.
Syllabi
The syllabus can also communicate a commitment to diversity and inclusion, and it can be worthwhile to review and reflect on whether your syllabus conveys these values. For example, does your syllabus include information on accessible education policies? Does it state that inclusiveness and diversity is valued in the classroom? Does it lay out expectations for classroom conduct? Do authors and sources represent a diversity of viewpoints?
The University of Kansas DEI Syllabus Tool provides more details and resources related to how you might approach this process. The CTL can also sit down with you to review your syllabus for these elements.