Advancing inclusivity while mitigating burnout

Concurrent Session 10
Leadership

Session Materials

Brief Abstract

Panelists will discuss lessons learned about inclusive teaching during the pandemic and how to sustain momentum toward building more inclusive environments in higher education. Focus will be placed on adapting strategies and policies for a more sustainable and scalable way forward that does not perpetuate faculty or student burnout. 

Presenters

Lead Presenter: John Kane, SUNY - State College at Oswego

John Kane is a Professor of Economics, the Director of the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at SUNY-Oswego, and a co-host of the Tea for Teaching podcast..

Co-presenter: Rebecca Mushtare, State University of New York at Oswego

Rebecca Mushtare is the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and a Professor of Interaction Design at the State University of New York at Oswego. Rebecca co-hosts the Tea for Teaching podcast with John Kane.

Co-presenter: Michelle Miller, Northern Arizona University

Michelle D. Miller is Director of the First Year Learning Initiative, Professor of Psychological Sciences, and President's Distinguished Teaching Fellow at Northern Arizona University. Dr. Miller's academic background is in cognitive psychology; her research interests include memory, attention, and student success in the early college career. She co-created the First Year Learning Initiative at Northern Arizona University and is active in course redesign, serving as a Redesign Scholar for the National Center for Academic Transformation. She is the author of Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology (Harvard University Press, 2014), and has written about evidence-based pedagogy in scholarly as well as general-interest publications including College Teaching, Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, and The Conversation. Dr. Miller's current work focuses on using psychological principles to help instructors create more effective and engaging learning experiences, and to help students become more effective learners.

Co-presenter: Kelvin Thompson, University of Central Florida

A popular speaker and facilitator, Dr. Kelvin Thompson regularly addresses groups throughout the US on topics related to online/blended learning and educational technology while he serves as the Executive Director of the University of Central Florida's (UCF) Center for Distributed Learning (http://cdl.ucf.edu) with a faculty appointment as a graduate faculty scholar in UCF's College of Education & Human Performance. Dr. Thompson has collaborated on the design of hundreds of online and blended courses over the past twenty years and is active in the online education community. Kelvin developed the BlendKit Course open courseware (http://bit.ly/blendkit) as part of UCF's Blended Learning Toolkit, and he also co-hosts TOPcast: The Teaching Online Podcast available on iTunes and at http://topcast.online.ucf.edu. His personal research interests center around how interaction affects learner engagement, and information on his Online Course Criticism qualitative evaluation model for facilitating the scholarship of teaching and learning in online and blended environments is available online (http://onlinecoursecriticism.com). Kelvin Thompson holds an EdD in curriculum and instruction and an MA in instructional systems technology from UCF and a Bachelor of Music Education degree from The Florida State University. Curriculum vitae is available online at http://bit.ly/kelvin_cv.

Co-presenter: Elizabeth (Liz) Norell, Community Portal Self Registration Account

Extended Abstract

The pandemic resulted in rapid initial changes in instructional and institutional policies to allow instruction to continue in an emergency remote format. During this time, the resource challenges facing many of our students and our colleagues became increasingly visible. The need for a more equitable educational system has become increasingly important. While the student bodies of higher ed institutions have become more diverse, even before the pandemic, college completion rates continue to vary dramatically by race, income, and first-gen status. The U.S. system of local property tax funding for elementary and secondary institutions continues to result in substantial differences in the resources available to students based on the income of their communities, leading to a substantial variance in the educational background of students entering post-secondary institutions. The pandemic has greatly amplified these inequalities, resulting in larger pandemic-related learning losses for students in low-income school districts than in wealthier school districts (due to differences in both school district and household resources).

 During the initial stages of the pandemic, faculty created supportive networks and communities and, at least temporarily, broke down many of the silos surrounding individual courses and disciplines. Faculty engaged in extensive exploration and iterative experimentation with alternative instructional methods to allow them to more effectively support students and address equity and access issues in this new and challenging environment. During this time there has been significant innovation at the cost of faculty workload beyond “normal” pre-pandemic expectations. With over two years of increased demands on faculty time and declining public and institutional support, faculty burnout and mental health challenges have become more prevalent. This current model needs to be reimagined with sustainability and scalability in mind so that faculty have the resources and support necessary to develop and maintain flexible and inclusive learning environments for students.

This session will include a panel of three thought leaders in higher education and moderated by co-hosts of a popular podcast on teaching and learning. Panelists come from different disciplines and represent a range of public institutions including a community college, a regional comprehensive and university center. The faculty panelists include experts on cognitive science, inclusive teaching, and self care who have authored several articles and books on teaching and learning and have served as keynote speakers and presenters at numerous conferences. While a panel session generally has a single moderator, this session will be moderated by podcast co-hosts who come from very different backgrounds and have extensive experience facilitating conversations and workshops together. This session will start with a facilitated panel discussion in the style of a typical podcast (but with a live audience) that will include questions from the audience. The session will include an interactive whiteboard that will be pre-populated with resources provided by the panelists. Participants will be invited to contribute to this whiteboard during the session. The intent is for this document to be an initial step towards a roadmap for redesigning our current systems. If organizers of the OLC Accelerate conference agree, we hope to record this session and to release it as a podcast episode for wider distribution.

During this session panelists will address questions such as: 

  • What have we learned from our pandemic experiences about creating an inclusive environment in all course modalities?

  • How can we more effectively build community in remote and asynchronous classes?

  • Should there be an expanded role for synchronous remote and HyFlex teaching as we move forward?

  • How can we support increased flexibility for students without overburdening faculty?

  • How do we address the learning losses that have affected all students, but have disproportionately impacted first-gen, low-income, and racially minoritized students?

  • How can faculty and institutions more effectively respond to the mental health challenges facing our learning communities?

  • As we move back into more onsite instruction, how can we prevent a return to less inclusive practices that do not promote student success?