Resources, Support, and Inspiration

Teach In #2 Bias/Microaggressions/Racist Abuse: How Can We Do Better/Heal?

Campus speakers will be engaging with the community from both a personal and professional perspective on the dynamics of bias and microaggressions. Attendees can bring questions in order to think about how we can do better and how we can heal. This conversation builds on First-Year Speaker and author Dr. Ibram X. Kendi's visit to Arcadia on Oct. 12 and the first Teach-In on Oct. 22.

Teach In Recording 

Teach In Jamboard

CTLM Online Equity & Inclusion Principles

1. CREATE CLASSROOM CONNECTIONS AND COMMUNITY AS WE ENGAGE WITH NEW CONTENT.  These learning relationships are not fluff, extra, or less-valuable than the content itself.  The ways that we can help make learning meaningful this fall all come back to enhancing student-student, student-instructor and student-content relationships. (See below for a fantastic set of Arcadia-specific student-facing resources about learning—many created by students!)
2. KNOW THAT THERE IS DIFFERENTIAL ACCESS TO TECHNOLOGY AND DIFFERING LIFE, LEARNING, AND EMOTIONAL NEEDS THAT MIGHT MAKE CAMERA USE UNTENABLE.  We encourage students to have cameras on—not because it is a rule that needs to be followed but because the kind of learning communities we want to create are ones  in which students and faculty know each other and seeing each other in real time can be a great tool for that possibility.  If students can’t have cameras on for any reason, encourage active participation in other ways—through the chat, through asynchronous discussion posts, etc.  
3. ENSURE THAT STUDENTS WHO ARE NOT ABLE TO JOIN IN SYNCHRONOUS ACTIVITIES STILL HAVE A WAY TO PARTICIPATE AND ENGAGE FULLY IN THE COURSE.  Flexibility will need to be the name of the game. We and our students will face many technical and logistical challenges this semester including time zone differences, learning challenges unique to the online environment, etc.  We need to ensure that synchronous material is recorded and made available in ways that allow students to fully participate asynchronously.  In this way, we retain an all-modes philosophy in our courses. (See Hogan & Sathy’s [2020, April] article below from the Chronicle for more ideas about how to make online teaching more inclusive.)
4. ACKNOWLEDGE OUR SHARED HUMAN EXPERIENCE IN THIS MOMENT AND THAT WE ALSO DO NOT ENTER THE SEMESTER WITH THE SAME SET OF EXPERIENCES OR ACCESS TO RESOURCES. As Davidson (2020, May) suggests in her blogpost listed below “The Single Most Essential Requirement in Designing a Fall Online course”: “Online learning this Fall will be wasted if we do not begin from the premise that our students are learning from a place of dislocation, anxiety, uncertainty, awareness of social injustice, anger and trauma. So are we.”  If we are feeling burned out and overwhelmed, our students and colleagues probably are too. How can we continue to care for ourselves and each other in the coming year? 
5. DISTILL WHAT’S MOST IMPORTANT FOR OUR COURSES AND LET THE REST GO: LESS IS MORE—REALLY.  As Shannon Diallo (CTLM Fellow from the PA Program) says, “It’s not about what you WANT to teach. It’s about what we NEED to teach.” What are the most important things? What are our new online routines? There is too much to manage. And we will need to monitor “overload” with individual courses and for individual students. We may need to adjust workload midstream for ourselves and our students. 

Arcadia University Faculty Resources 

• Conducting Synchronous Sessions
• Conducting Effective Assessments in Online Learning
• Creating Effective Online Discussion Activities
• Creating Faculty Presence In Your Online Course
• Recording Lectures for Online Viewing
• Online Course Sustainability
• Effective Communication with Students
• Netiquette Statement for All Modes Courses

We invite you to share your thoughts, ideas, questions, and feedback with the CTLM

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