Today, I had the pleasure of leading the #SWCAREsChat focusing on Ensuring Equity In Online Teaching And Learning. This was an exciting opportunity to be invited to share the knowledge that I have around establishing and maintaining equity in online classrooms. For each of the five questions asked, below you can find my full transcribed response. Click here for the full transcript of the chat.
Question 1: What does equity look like in online classrooms, i.e. from different vantage points (students, faculty, administration)?
As a student, equity means being able to bring your authentic self into the classroom. The space should be open, welcoming, and inclusive of the many identities that students have. As a faculty member, it means cultivating and fostering an environment that acknowledges mistakes will happen, but they will be acknowledged head-on. For many students with identities that are oppressed, classrooms aren’t safe because faculty aren’t grappling with the hard/challenging conversations. We cannot continue to allow faculty to “opt-out” of professional development for learning how not to cause harm in the classroom.
For higher education administrators, look no further than Patricia Reid-Merritt’s Righteous Self-Determination, “The African worldview recognizes the importance of self in relationship to the community” (p. 194). The same should be applied to online classrooms/programs. Understanding and applying John Mbiti’s famous quote, I am because we are, we are therefore I am. As leaders, we must demand that equity is not only afforded to students in our learning environments, but demanded.
Question 2: What are effective strategies for inclusion for online classrooms?
Just like you would in a F2F classroom, you need to get to know your students. I’ve found it helpful to do the following: 1) create a “Class Lounge” discussion board where students can introduce themselves, (I provide 2-3 question prompts) and ask that students introduce themselves with a photo or video. But before releasing this task to students, I upload one of myself to model sharing the name that I go by, my pronouns, my teaching philosophy, and my wishes/hopes for the course. 2) I also provide a Google form for students to communicate directly with me.
This allows them to share additional information they may not want their peers to know, i.e. if a student uses the wrong pronoun for them, are they comfortable with me acknowledging the issue and correcting/encouraging their colleagues to ensure accuracy when using pronouns. Both of these tasks have helped my students to see that, yes, I’m a faculty member, and I’m also human, easy to connect with, and eager to teach, learn with, and learn from them.
Question 3: What does an anti-racist online platform look like?
Ibram X. Kendi defines an antiracist person as “one who is supporting an antiracist policy through their actions or expressing an antiracist idea.” To apply this to our online platforms/classroom/interactions, we must first be willing to acknowledge that some of us have been straddling the fence of “racist” and “not racist.” I admit, this was a concept I initially struggled with; but I am dedicated to getting off the fence and being antiracist. This means I challenge racist ideologies in the classroom and use that term directly.
Using each covert, overt, explicit, and implicit incident as a teaching moment and opportunity for student and self-growth. It also means in our online programs, courses, learning management systems, we are elevating ideas/research of non-White scholars. Having an anti-racist platform means boldly challenging issues of power, privilege, and inequities without fear that by elevating voices of people who are/were/continue to be oppressed, that we are erasing the fabric of America. Having an antiracist platform means no longer questioning intent vs. impact – it’s learning to say “ouch” and “I’m ready to listen, learn, and do better.”
Question 4: What are appropriate and necessary strategies for managing challenging discussions in online formats?
Model and participate, participate, participate! But this DOESN’T mean that you need to assign a discussion board topic each week. Most faculty who take the jump from F2F to online (or remote as happened this semester due to COVID-19) think that students have to submit something each week to be engaged – not true! If students are spending most of their time trying to find scholarly resources to respond to your discussion board posts, how much time do you really think they have to critically reflect on the weekly course content? When discussion boards are assigned, there should be a mix between written, audio, and visual. We should also model accessibility to our students but ensuring the videos we upload have either a written transcript or captions.
Students should also understand the cadence of your discussion board expectations. Are they expected to make an original post, respond to peers (what are you really looking for here), and close the loop on their discussion? What are your expectations for all three of these steps to occur? — It’s key for this to be outlined for students. Back to the written/audio/visual mix… why is this important? Every discussion board doesn’t need to be scholarly, some need to be reflective/introspective and some students do that better via audio/video. We lose out on authentically hearing our students when we put too many parameters on how to craft a scholarly post.
And as a faculty member, you should be participating in the discussion questions? How else will students know they’ve appropriately understood the material if they don’t hear from you until a grade is posted? We must be willing to respond/answer to the discussion board prompts that we are asking of our students. So to sum up strategies – model, participate, have mix options for student participation, give feedback, ensure the discussions that are assigned are absolutely necessary.
Question 5: How does faculty social presence impact discussions and interactions that are racist?
Lack of an awareness of one’s racial identity is a social justice issue, particularly when discussing course content centered on racial diversity and difference or dealing with racist interactions. In order to combat this form of oppression and create a more inclusive classroom, instructors need to be aware how their racial identity affects how they see the world. We also have to be aware of how white supremacist culture infiltrates classroom spaces: paternalism, worship of the written word, fear of open conflict, power hoarding, objectivity, individualism, and right to comfort. So when faculty aren’t confronting these issues head-on, classroom environments can be toxic.
So effective faculty social presence will allow appropriate responses to: When is it appropriate to take online conversations offline? and Is there ever a time where it is appropriate to continue the conversation simultaneously online and offline? So, in addition to modeling and participating in discussions, faculty need to address racist issues in their lectures, office hours, 1:1 convos, and in their written graded feedback.
Top 3 Thoughts
- What struck me during this chat were the tweets from students who were participating. I would love to hear from more students regarding how they view equity (or lack thereof) in online classrooms.
- Mistakes. Mistakes. Mistakes. We have to be willing to make them, learning from them, and grow from then. Sharing that their peers were scared of making mistakes when having conversations about race/racism means faculty aren’t pushing themselves to have the hard conversations. This translates to us failing our students. If we aren’t willing to “go there” with the conversation and stretch our students comfort levels, then we are doing a disservice to our profession and future colleagues.
- How do we build deeper relationships with students and dismantle the power structure in classrooms so we can all learn from and with each other? Online learning is a choice for most students due to the flexibility of the learning environment. So how do we elevate online pedagogy and adult learning theory to demonstrate the humanity and effectiveness of online education.
Analytics
303 Tweets. 31 Participants. 321K impressions. Let’s keep the conversation going.
How to cite this blog post:
Clark, S. H. (2020, May 6). Transcript of & reflecting on leading the #SWCAREsChat [Blog Post]. Retrieved from Becoming Dr. Clark website: https://becomingdrclark.com/transcript-of-&-reflecting-on-leading-the-swcareschat