ACCESS, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION
Our Commitment to Access, Equity, and Inclusion
One of the most important goals for the Course Production Team is to create courses with faculty that promote equal access and experiences for ALL students. The members of the Course Production Team are passionate advocates for these topics and work to create frameworks and supports to help with this goal. To formalize this approach, we have created a rubric, learning institute, and a common book club for internal improvement.
Access, Equity, and Inclusion Rubric
In fall 2021, we adopted Peralta's Online Equity Rubric. This rubric is rooted in research to guide teachers and instructors in creating equitable and inclusive learning environments. Each topic coverd includes an explanation of what incomplete, aligned, and additional exemplary elements look like in a course.
Upon adoption, we realized the need to cater this rubric to the culture of UNC Charlotte. First, we decided to organize the rubric's requirements by the principles of inclusive teaching and learning. This created a better organization system and helped showcase the research behind the rubric to users.
Additionally, we created specific visual examples for users to view and adopt in a DEI course exemplar. These examples were then listed with links included for easy adoption.
Finally, we renamed the rubric to Access, Equity, and Inclusion in Online Courses: Rubric for Making Inclusive Online Courses to better align with our future offerings.
Access, Equity, and Inclusion Institute
Beginning in spring 2023, we launched our first Access, Equity, and Inclusion event. This first year of the event, the institute will recruit only from past course development process participants with established online courses. In future semesters, it is the intent of the Center for Teaching and Learning to open the opportunity to all faculty and to stipend the experience.
The Access, Equity, and Inclusion institute was created to meet UNC Charlotte's mission to create and nurture an environment, climate, and culture of inclusion, fairness, civility, and mutual respect.
The goal of the inclusion institute is for faculty to reflect and broaden their mind to the application of DEI practices in the online course development and deployment process.
Objectives for the institute include:
Recognize the four principles of inclusive teaching and learning.
Integrate one component of the Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity in Online Courses Rubric intentionally and mindfully in online course development and deployment and in your daily work.
Reflect upon how your own human bias and experiences impact your ability to integrate DEI practices into online course development and deployment.
In the institute, participants have the opportunity to choose their own learning path. After completing modules one and two, they will choose one module to focus on and learn. Once they have completed their chosen module, they will then apply a piece of their new knowledge into their course. This application will be presented in a final project that will be shared in a virtual conference.
Continuous Improvement
One concrete goal for continuous improvement is the application of the DEI rubric to courses in course development. This goal requires a lot of cultural groundwork and communication work to ensure that faculty see it as a positive rather than a punitive measurement of their course.
We have begun the work of incorporating elements of the rubric into our own templates, with a specific focus on student experience in regards to ease of navigation, clarity of information, and separating need to know information from just in time feedback opportunities.