Diversity, Inclusion and Equity
Over the past 20 years assisting faculty in the area of teaching and learning, I have integrated a cultural asset-based approach. I look at the resources and strengths that students and faculty bring and build upon those. I believe in cultural diversity, defined as including many different subcultures identified by ethnicity, language, social class, gender, sexual orientation, age, family, neighborhood, exceptionalities and religion (Pang, 2018).
As Director of several Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTLs), I have partnered with Center’s for Diversity and Inclusion, Multicultural Affairs and Accommodations Offices to offer faculty members resources that support all students from different backgrounds and ways of learning. One of my aspirations is to build lasting relationships and I encourage faculty to do so with their students. It is through these relationships that we truly get to know our student’s cultural backgrounds and integrate those into the curriculum – explicit, implicit, social, hidden, null, rhetorical or electronic.
I have taught in highly diverse universities in northern and southern California; the UAE; Pacific Islands; central America; China (where half of our students are Chinese and the other are international) and currently in Qatar (where we enjoy a highly diverse group of students from the MENA region). I was fortunate to lead a Women's College in the UAE, where all students were of Muslim faith and the faculty were from countries around the world. This highly diverse group of professionals created one of the most powerful and productive learning environments I have ever experienced. I found that gathering teams from diverse backgrounds resulted in more innovative programs and solutions that were culturally relevant.
I hope to live up to this faculty quote teaching a Diversity course with large enrollment:
"When I think about trying something new in class, I ask myself, 'What would Jace think?' I truly believe that Jace is essential to the mission of a university invested in innovative teaching and the advancement of social equity, as engaged teaching leads to better outcomes from processing information, especially for those who are not 'standard' learners."
I believe that my research agenda investigating relevant and meaningful instructional technology creates an opportunity for a diverse set of learners to use technology to enhance their way of thinking. I have integrated Assistive Technology to help students make conceptual connections in person and online, which address the needs of students from a variety of exceptionalities. I favor an Open Education Resource model, which makes my research available to highly diverse international audiences. I support faculty in creating accessible syllabi and documents so that all students have access to the learning materials to be successful in their courses. I offer students multiple ways to share their application of a concept by frequent formative assessments using the Student Response System (SRS). Types of SRS that I offer include Plickers, Poll Everywhere, Answer Garden, Mentimeter, Kahoot, Padlet, Jamboard, Pecha Kucha and Tricider.
I have created services that increase the participation of historically under-represented groups, which include working with faculty to create more inclusive, accessible learning environments. Evidence to support my approach comes from faculty members quote:
"You offer a wealth of pedagogical wisdom from the theoretical to the practical, and you do so in a way that is unobtrusive, i.e., you make people (you certainly make me) feel welcome, but not pressured, to partake of the wonderful insights, resources, and opportunities you make available. You are cognizant of the pressures (the incentives and constraints, the hierarchies) that faculty face and their implications for faculty's willingness to carve out time to improve their teaching. You plan and provide an array of worthwhile events and creative resources, from weekly emails of relevant articles, to workshops and studios, to individual observations and feedback. Above all, you are whip smart, kind, sensitive, aware, approachable, and a model of excellent teaching. I feel grateful for all that you share."
I consistently integrate research into my teaching, integrating inclusive instructional practices from the University of Michigan Center for Research on Learning and Teaching. These include helping students connect their prior knowledge to new learning; using a variety of teaching methods and modalities; providing multiple modes to assist non-native English speakers; asking students for concrete observations about content before moving to analytical questions via student response systems; providing guidance that reflects processing times will vary; clearly communicating expectations of grading; and carefully framing learning outcomes.
Being sensitive to students’ backgrounds is critical to creating an inclusive and culturally responsive learning environment. While teaching abroad, where many students’ first language is not English, I offer a dossier approach of inclusive teaching strategies. I share concepts and ask students to work in small groups; at the board; research independently; or the most successful approach is for them to post their response through the use of a shared Google Document (GDoc) projected on the screen. I found that through these approaches, I am able to gain a broad student voice. A supplement to this approach for students who may not express themselves in writing, is that I ask them to take digital photos of items which represent the concept and post them in the shared document with an annotated bibliography.
Future Plans to Advance Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
I would like to expand my work on an on-going major issue in teaching, which is to more accurately measure effective teaching. There has been research providing evidence of how student evaluation of teaching (SETs) are biased against women and faculty of color, particularly in the STEM fields. I have created and implemented an Assess Effective Teaching Protocol, to supplement SETs and empower faculty to gather additional assessment data aligned with research-based effective teaching. I have used this protocol with over 500 faculty at six different universities, including over 100 faculty at UCSD, representing over 10,000 students. I would like to create a systematic and sustainable method for all faculty to use these protocols to gather useful information on their teaching for continuous reflection and improvement, and as a supplement to highlight their teaching in tenure and promotion documentation.
I would like to offer targeted inclusive teaching programs for departments, partnering with the many exemplary UCSD Campus Community Centers, such as the Women’s Center, Black Resource Center, Cross-Cultural Center, LGBT Resource Center, Raza Resource Center, and Intertribal Resource Center. The focus of these programs would be to provide resources to faculty on ways of assessing and supporting culturally diverse students. Some of these programs could include:
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Using formative assessment, such as media-rich qualitative data and learning analytics to better inform teachers to remediate in real time;
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Fostering self-regulation through nonlinear adaptive learning programs to empower students;
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Building a "Play with Purpose" facility, which focuses on the maker economy, democratizing the benefits of a Fab Lab, gamification and open educational resources;
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Developing an Electronic Content Creation Ecosystem, which would allow faculty to upload media-rich, instructional strategies into an open-source platform, that are crowd-sourced assessed, returned to the system, and continually updated.
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Creating Student Think Tanks that focus on perceptions of instruction, and provide assessment data in a creative, actionable way;
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Assisting programs to map their curriculum; enhance Program Outcomes and integrate cultural diversity in a meaningful, sustainable way; and
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Assess a longitudinal study on the effect of teaching, with first year experiences, implementing a teaching interaction and tracking through students’ experiences.
I would like to mentor under-represented faculty and students on the academe, teaching and faculty path or scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) research.
References
Pang, V. O. (2018). Diversity and Equity in the Classroom. Nelson Education.