{"id":34480,"date":"2020-04-07t09:42:07","date_gmt":"2020-04-07t14:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/?p=34480"},"modified":"2020-04-10t16:58:21","modified_gmt":"2020-04-10t21:58:21","slug":"inclusive-and-equitable-teaching-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/2020\/04\/inclusive-and-equitable-teaching-online\/","title":{"rendered":"inclusive and equitable teaching online"},"content":{"rendered":"

by joe bandy, cft assistant director<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>teaching face-to-face presents many challenges, not least of which is the task of ensuring that all students feel belonging and have equal chances to thrive regardless of their abilities, identities, or perspectives. the online teaching environment suffers from all of the same obstacles to this and more, especially when not planned or executed with care.<\/p>\n

online teaching can restrict the interpersonal interactions necessary for building trusting and accountable learning communities in which students can feel more belonging and care. it can limit the kind of hands-on, interactive, and problem-based learning that many student groups prefer, particularly those who are underrepresented in the academy. it also can require higher levels of self-directed learning skills, as well as technological resources and self-efficacy, that students do not share equally. this, in turn, can lead to significant engagement and performance gaps for a variety of groups of students, especially in courses that require extensive applied, experiential content or intensive instructor-student interaction (xu and jaggars 2014). as brooke ackerly, professor of political science, states, \u201cit is hard not to take into my heart each of my student\u2019s individual challenges, some of which are heart wrenching.\u201d<\/p>\n

in the effort to share stories from faculty experimenting with online teaching in the wake of higher education\u2019s social distancing measures, the 2022年世界杯中国小组赛积分 asked several faculty about their approaches to teaching inclusively in their newly online courses. their responses reveal much about the challenges, and potential solutions to them.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>lily claiborne<\/strong>, director of undergraduate studies and senior lecturer in earth and environmental sciences, discusses her efforts to learn about her students\u2019 difficulties learning online, to flexibly offer them the personalized support they require, and to provide accessible and varied content for students with different abilities or technological resources:<\/p>\n

\u201cwhat i\u2019ve quickly realized as i\u2019ve worked with my students remotely over the past few weeks is that each student is being impacted by this transition and these events differently and that this changes over time.\u00a0 thus, their ability to engage with their coursework is constantly changing, as both practical and emotional conditions change.\u00a0 for these reasons, the key mode underlying my approach to our work is communication and support.\u00a0 i polled students at the start of the remote transition, and i\u2019ve polled them weekly since then.\u00a0 i find that their responses regarding what kind of class structure they can best access has changed over the weeks, as has their confidence in their ability to engage with the course in a meaningful way.\u00a0 this allows me to approach each week with an eye for what is manageable and appropriate for the students that week.<\/p>\n

\u201cwhile most of my students can or will strive to do whatever i ask (engage in live zoom sessions for our full classtime, for example), there is always at least one student who cannot.\u00a0 it is important to me that all my students have an equal opportunity to engage with our course in these times, and so this is not okay.\u00a0 while full live zoom classes are perhaps the easiest and most fulfilling approach for me personally, i am choosing not to leave that one student out.\u00a0 instead, i record shorter lectures for students to watch in advance, and we have shorter (optional but encouraged) live zoom sessions during class time for brief check ins, lecture q&a, discussions, and homework help.\u00a0 thus far, this has engaged the most students and according to the students, has been the most accessible.\u00a0 i\u2019ll keep asking, and keep adjusting as we all grow into these times.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>shaul kelner<\/strong>, associate professor of sociology and jewish studies, although not teaching in this, his sabbatical year, has been active in encouraging his fellow faculty to consider the emotional needs of students shifting to online courses. this is something he sees from a unique perspective as the parent of two college-age children with many experiences to share, particularly about unfairness in online assessments. he is particularly concerned with student anxiety and potential violations of academic integrity, something discussed at greater length\u00a0here<\/a> by thomas tobin, and here<\/a> by william sanderson:<\/p>\n

\u201cthere is no technical fix.\u00a0as a parent of two college students, seeing this play out in my own home, i’d say this:\u00a0empathy is crucial, and professors are structurally positioned to be ignorant about how students are actually experiencing this.\u00a0talk to your friends and family who currently have kids in college, and ask what it’s like to have them home and taking classes online. better yet, talk to your friends and family who are themselves college students at other universities \u2013 kids who call you by first name and who don’t think of you by your title and who you are not in authority relationship with. ask them how things are going. they will tell you truths that your own students would never tell you, and you will hear them with ears that will be more inclined to the empathy that professors need at this moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cas an example, i learned from a\u00a0friend\/family member student from different university, comparable to vanderbilt, that students there were expecting cheating to be rampant on an exam in a large pre-med general science lecture. the professor had assigned an\u00a0online, closed book test, with no proctor. students had been talking openly among themselves about their plans to treat the test as if it were open note. these were pre-med students already jittery about their grades and convinced that this class was crucial for their future prospects. it was a rational cost-benefit analysis. they believed there was no chance of getting caught. self-interest trumped ethics.<\/p>\n

\u201cwhen the student sought my advice, they were\u00a0upset about the potential for wide-spread cheating to bust the curve. they\u00a0felt like they were in a catch-22.\u00a0\u2018i’m not going to cheat, but i don’t want to get a lower grade because i am the one being honest while most of the rest are using their textbooks and notes.\u2019 i suggested approaching the professor with the concerns. the student felt uncomfortable doing that. in the end, the student did not cheat. many others did. the student remains upset at the unfairness of the situation.<\/p>\n

\u201ctakeaways? the responsibility to ensure a fair testing environment still rests with the faculty. don’t shift that burden onto the students. that adds to the unfairness. be aware that the incentive to cheat is heightened by two related factors right now: 1) the ease, 2) students’ anger at the disruption to their learning. they may feel justified in cheating to \u2018retake\u2019 the grades that they think are rightfully theirs. don’t put the honest students in the situation of having to decide whether to report, or to be stuck in the catch-22 of\u00a0\u2018cheat or be cheated.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>sarah suiter<\/strong>, assistant professor of the practice of human and organizational development, is highly attentive to fairness given the radically different and unequal learning environments her students now occupy at home, and models how we can be more communicative in our course assignments and interactions to accommodate their unique needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cone of the most difficult tensions to navigate as a faculty member in general (even before teaching on-line) is that fairness is related to, but not the same as \u2018sameness.\u2019 certainly, when some students are allowed accommodations (especially when they are informal) the differences in treatment can easily be interpreted as \u2018unfair.\u2019 so in the classroom, and now on-line, i\u2019ve tried to be attentive to \u2018fairness\u2019 and how it\u2019s different from (but related to, at least in interpretation) \u2018sameness\u2019 and also, along what dimensions it operates\u2026for example, if students have different living situations (which are now also their school work situations), different access to technology, different temperaments with which they respond to difficulty, different skills and resources for transitioning in the midst of extreme change, and different caregiving responsibilities (just to name a few), what does it look like to set fair classroom expectations, fair assignment expectations, and fair grading practices? similarly, what is a fair expectation of student contribution and engagement…for each individual student?<\/p>\n

\u201ci know i don\u2019t have the answer to these questions, but here is how i\u2019ve tried to navigate them:<\/p>\n