My co-facilitator and I will be presenting for our learning community at MSU’s Spring Teaching and Learning conference on incorporating equitable pedagogy into the classroom. We will cover practices from the readings we have done over the spring semester.

Abstract: Increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in higher education aim to cultivate learning spaces where all students have the ability to thrive and succeed. Our learning community, Equitable Pedagogy: Removing Barriers to Learning, has spent the year reviewing methods for making the classroom more inclusive. In this workshop, we want to share those practices with our participants. Many components of our course design can affect our students’ perceptions of belonging. This workshop will explore how we as instructors can choose to be more equitable in our classrooms towards the creation of more inclusive learning environments. Our focus will be on the course syllabus as a framework to discuss the many ways in which we as instructors can better address issues of equity. Topics will include language and tone of the syllabus, flexible course structure options, fair attendance and late work policies, providing opportunities for collaboration and social connectedness, instructor presence, and equitable grading policies.

Participants should bring their course syllabus to the workshop to annotate as we openly discuss practical ways to increase equity and inclusion within our courses. The workshop is relevant to in-person, online, and hybrid courses.

Over the spring semester, our equitable pedagogy learning community will be diving into educational research to examine the outcomes of different practices. The plan is to cover syllabus language, course structure, class activities, and assessments and grading.

I’m staying on Twitter even as it becomes a dumpster fire.

I’ve tried out Mastodon, but I just don’t love the disjointed feel. I also have a Post account, but I haven’t had time to learn that app yet. I have a few Discord communities that are great, but again, completely disjointed. I love that my Twitter feed used to be filled with many diverse groups: MSU, science news, local news, accessibility and disability communities, higher ed pedagogy, comedians, cycling, etc, etc, etc…

Where are other people going at this time?

So excited to be co-facilitating a learning community called Equitable pedagogy: Removing barriers to learning. We will meet once a month throughout the academic year, and hopefully bring in a diverse group of faculty and staff to discuss inclusive classroom practices. For fall semester, we will be reading Kevin Gannon’s “Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto”

I am excited to share that I have taken on the role of Digital Accessibility Coordinator in the College of Natural Science. My responsibilities will include managing academic accessibility needs for NatSci courses, providing guidance on digital methods for teaching, providing professional development to faculty and staff, and networking with IT and other accessibility folks on campus. I look forward to promoting equitable and inclusive pedagogy practices in our STEM classes. 

Since I created and have been using an open education resource (OER) in my class, I was asked to participate in a faculty panel hosted by the MSU student government, ASMSU, yesterday in celebration of Open Education Week 2021. It was a great panel with multiple faculty sharing their experiences of using OER. I was surprised, though, by finding out that ASMSU was also honoring us with OER Leadership Awards as recognition for using OER in our courses. It always feels so great to be recognized for my work by students.