2. Inclusive Learning

Striving to create a more equitable university (and ultimately society) is at the heart of my role as a teacher. I mainly teach students in their first year of university, a cohort that is especially diverse across dimensions including gender, age, ethnicity, culture, socioeconomic status, educational preparedness, and understanding of the university system. In my Teaching Philosophy statement, I outline some of the ways in which I use the overarching design and organisation of my subjects to level the playing field for students I teach. Here, I focus on specific learning activities designed to cater to a diverse cohort of students.

Interactive and interconnected lectures

Active learning is widely acknowledged to significantly benefit student learning (e.g., Freeman et al., 2014). Active learning also plays a role in facilitating improved equity. Research shows that employing active learning techniques in introductory science classes disproportionately benefits underrepresented minority students, removing performance gaps between these students and their classmates (Ballen et al., 2018). Underrepresented students in active learning classrooms also report greater self-confidence in their scientific abilities (Ballen et al., 2018) – a key factor in determining whether they continue in science degrees and careers (Brainard and Carlin, 1998; Lent et al., 1986).

I employ active learning techniques throughout my classes. My lectures (which take place in the interactive classrooms in the Science Teaching Facility) are designed as a set of 10-20 minute mini-lectures punctuated by activities that encourage retention, retrieval, and transfer of information (while also maintaining/regaining student attention). These activities vary lecture-to-lecture; some examples include:

• Think-pair-share and/or table group discussions to answer a thought question posed in the lecture
• Worksheets that help students practice a new concept or skill taught in the lecture
• Online virtual experiments (i.e., the PhET interactive simulations) that allow students to not just observe outcomes but also manipulate conditions, promoting deep engagement and conceptual learning (Hodges, 2015)
• Conceptual questions students answer individually with clickers before engaging in “peer instruction” (students discuss with peers and answer again before being told the correct response), promoting retrieval practice as well as meta-cognition (Hodges, 2015; Crouch and Mazur, 2002).

My first-year subject is relatively large (~120 students), and students in larger classes tend to feel more isolated, less engaged, and less interested (Cash et al., 2017) than those in smaller classes. To combat these negative potential outcomes, I consciously promote student interactions with one another and with myself. For example, I learn students’ names and walk around the room during lectures, strategies that have been identified by students as making larger classes “feel small” (Cash et al., 2017).

Feedback from both students and peers shows the effectiveness of these strategies (Figure 1).

Mixed learning approaches to enhance self-regulation and self-efficacy

First-year students begin university with diverse educational backgrounds. At this level, many students have not yet worked out how best to manage their own learning (self-regulation). The students most at risk in this regard include those who are first-in-family to attend university and those who come from low socioeconomic backgrounds (Cunninghame et al., 2016). These students are also likely to have less confidence in their academic abilities (self-efficacy; Cunninghame et al., 2016), which can lead to poorer performance and decreased learning gains (Ballen et al., 2017).

I use mixed learning approaches in my first-year practical classes to encourage students to develop improved self-regulation and self-efficacy. Students first encounter new material in class, where after a short explanation they are given interleaved examples and problems to solve during class, when they can ask questions and get help from both peers and teaching staff. During this class period they are encouraged to discuss problems and solutions with their peers, as students who feel like they are part of a connected learning community have been shown to develop enhanced feelings of self-efficacy (Hodges, 2015).

After class, students complete review quizzes as homework. These are low stakes quizzes (each worth only 1% of the final class mark) – but they must be passed before attending the next practical. Students can take each quiz as many times as needed to pass, spend as long as they like on each quiz attempt and consult any materials they like. The quizzes not only give students increased opportunities to practice new material but also help them see the benefits of spending time outside of class reviewing and practicing material. This type of out-of-class work is associated with increases in both self-regulation and self-efficacy in undergraduate science students (Hodges, 2015 and references therein). Surveys of my students conducted at the end of the semester show that these review quizzes succeed in encouraging better study behaviour than students would otherwise implement on their own (Figure 2).

References

Ballen, C. J., Wieman, C., Salehi, S., Searle, J. B., & Zamudio, K. R. (2017). Enhancing diversity in undergraduate science: Self-efficacy drives performance gains with active learning. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 16(4), ar56-fe7.

Brainard, S. G., & Carlin, L. (1998). A six‐year longitudinal study of undergraduate women in engineering and science. Journal of Engineering Education, 87(4), 369-375.

Cash, C. B., Letargo, J., Graether, S. P., & Jacobs, S. R. (2017). An analysis of the perceptions and resources of large university classes. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 16(2), ar19-rm2.

Crouch, C. H., & Mazur, E. (2001). Peer instruction: Ten years of experience and results. American Journal of Physics, 69(9), 970-977.

Cunninghame, I., Costello, D., & Trinidad, S. (2016). Issues and Trends for Low Socioeconomic Status Background and First-in-Family Students. In Facilitating Student Equity in Australian Higher Education, Curtin University, 4-13.

Freeman, S., Eddy, S. L., McDonough, M., Smith, M. K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., & Wenderoth, M. P. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(23), 8410-8415.

Hodges, L. C. (2015). Teaching undergraduate science: A guide to overcoming obstacles to student learning. Stylus Publishing, LLC.

Lent, R. W., Brown, S. D., & Larkin, K. C. (1986). Self-efficacy in the prediction of academic performance and perceived career options. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 33(3), 265.