Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

In the wake of the 2020 summer of racial reckoning, faculty and educators have increasingly felt the pressure to examine the role of institutions of higher education and their teaching in challenging white supremacy and oppression. Many educational institutions and academic associations published statements condemning police brutality and racism; signaling that academia was embarking on a journey of self-reflection and renascence. Despite the efforts of many faculty across the United States to display their commitment to racial justice, curricular and campus reforms have been slow to come.

Not new, but you may be interested in the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning's (CIRTL) Inclusive pedagogy framework. CIRTL is focused on teaching science and technology subjects in higher education, but I think it is applicable in other disciplinary areas. Go to https://cirtlincludes.net/inclusive-pedagogy-framework/ 

As course creators, our highest priorities are to help learners master instructional objectives and transfer new knowledge and skills to real-life situations. At the beginning of a project, course development teams typically create a profile of their target learners. This information might include the number of people taking the class, their job roles, locations, and experience with the subject matter.

Looking at elements of the student experience where institutional practices and policies can make the learner experience much more inclusive.

The Floe Inclusive Learning Design Handbook is a free Open Educational Resource (OER) designed to assist teachers, content creators, Web developers, and others in creating adaptable and personalizable educational resources that can accommodate a diversity of learning styles and individual needs.

Making learning accessible through an inclusive learning community is crucial for all students to feel seen, valued, and to maximize their potential by implementing a safe space (CAST, 2018). Ensuring that all students feel included is especially vital in remote learning, where they are likely to feel less connected to others to begin with. Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which maximizes student performance and success, argues that inclusion is a prerequisite for academic success (CAST, 2018). This manuscript offers recommendations to combat prejudice and implement an inclusive learning environment by bringing equity to the forefront to better support minority students and improve their academic experiences and outcomes. Though this paper mainly focuses on supporting students of color, many of these teaching strategies can also benefit students of different marginalized identities, such as LGBTQA+ students or international students navigating North American culture.

The important role professors play in helping our students appreciate cultural diversity cannot be overvalued. There has been much written about what a Culturally Responsive educator can do to help his or her students engage with the course content, their peers, and their professors in a more meaningful way. In my quest to simplify the process of integrating multicultural content into my classes, I developed a graphic organizer that combines several approaches onto one page. Thus, making it easier for me to select an instructional strategy and set the level of rigor for the learning activity at an appropriate level.

Over the summer, we updated our online general education syllabus template using learning theory, universal design for learning (UDL), plain writing, and accessibility principles. Recently, Dave, Tara, and I presented this process at the Symposium on Universal Design for Instruction and Learning.

As we heard from Tara in An Overview of Universal Design for Learning, UDL principles provide a framework that removes barriers to learning by helping us:

How UDL can be used to provide all students an equal opportunity to learn, at any grade level or subject area.

Who am I to speak about diversity and inclusion? I am a middle-aged white woman from an upper-middle-class family. I have been afforded numerous opportunities many of my students never have been, and possibly never will be, afforded. I am the picture of privilege.” This is what I told myself at times when the topics of diversity and inclusion came up. However, when you look at the racial/cultural makeup of most college campuses, if faculty “like me” do not broach the sensitive topics of diversity and inclusion, who will?