Teaching and DEI
Teaching with DEI Resource Guide
Across all classrooms, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are cornerstones to serving our students and creating a sense of belonging. All courses, including those online and in-person, require intentionality and commitment in order to embed equitable and anti-racist practices. This document provides resources for reflecting on DEI in course and site design as well as support spaces on campus to further your understanding.
Site Design
Site design ensures a welcoming, informative, and easy to use learning environment. Well designed sites provide intuitive, consistent, and accessible experience to reduce friction in locating, accessing, and engaging information.
Ask yourself
- How might the design of my current site limit some students from participating fully?
- Does the first page of my course site welcome students, provide course information, and orient students to the most important parts of the site?
- Have I limited the navigation menu to only the items students actively use in the course?
- Do I provide appropriate orientation to the site to ensure students understand how to locate important course information?
- Have I taken steps to ensure the site is accessible to all students?
Resources
- CEI Teaching with Access and Inclusion: When embraced fully, accessible and inclusive teaching is a paradigm shift that fundamentally alters thinking about curriculum, course design, the classroom and campus culture. This resource provides foundational information for teaching with access and inclusion.
- CEI Antiracism for Higher Ed: Anti-racism work is an active and on-going process of identifying, describing, and dismantling racist systems, policies, and practices. These activities and resources aim to support academics across disciplines and identities engaged in addressing racism in higher education.
- Accessible U Start with the 7 Core Skills: No matter your role at the University, you can cultivate a more inclusive, accessible, and equitable community for everyone. A great place to start with accessible course organization and structure is the 7 Core Skills of accessibility and running a UDOIT check on your Canvas site.
Communication/Engagement/Participation
Strong course communication demonstrates an instructor’s presence in the course and encourages student success. Courses with a strong grounding in equitable practices model inclusive and equitable communication and participation in effort to make all students feel welcome.
Questions to ask yourself
- What am I explicitly and implicitly communicating to my students?
- Have I verbally stated my values and commitment to DEI as well as modeled behaviors in support of equity and anti-racism?
- What is one area where I can better align my values with my actions?
Resources
- GPS Teaching Globally Diverse Classes: UMN’s system wide Global Programs and Strategy Alliance offers events aimed at internationalizing campus and curriculum practices, supporting nternational and domestic students, and internationalizing teaching and learning. They also offer a certificate for Teaching Globally Diverse Classes.
- CEI Inclusive Teaching at a Predominantly White Institution: Class Climate - Understanding the Differential Experiences of Your Students: Guide for understanding and interrogating the classroom climate to improve learning experiences for students based on their lived experiences.
Assessments
Most courses engage in some evaluative measure of student performance. Equitable assessments and grading strategies aim to honor the diverse lived experiences of your students and anti-racist assessments aim to mitigate bias and encourage adoption of inclusive feedback strategies.
Questions to ask yourself
- How might my assessments allow for implicit bias against or in support of some students above others?
- What is one small change that can increase student autonomy and flexibility in my current assignments?
- What do I want students to learn by the end of the course and how do my assessments throughout the term build to that learning?
Resources
- CEI Trauma-Informed Teaching and Learning: Trauma-informed teaching strategies incorporate calmness through clarity and flexibility, and integrate principles of Universal Design for Learning in course format, content delivery, assessment formats, grading, and instructor characteristics and practices.
- CEI Inclusive Teaching at a Predominantly White Institution: Pedagogy - Diversifying Your Teaching Methods, Learning Activities, and Assignments: Describes assumptions present in the pedagogical tradition of a predominantly white institution and provides suggestions for diversifying and assessing pedagogical and assessment practices.
DEI Trainings And Workshops
- CLA Transformational Conversations Book Club Series: A partnership with the Center for Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender & Sexuality Studies (RIDGS), this series invites the CLA community to read and discussion books on diverse topics related to identity. The programming culminates with the members presenting to the larger community reflecting on their learning and how to incorporate practices taken from the text.
- OED Equity and Diversity Certificate Program: The Equity and Diversity Certificate Program helps learners develop tools necessary for advancing equity and diversity in all aspects of their personal and professional lives.
- School of Public Health SPAR Antiracism Animated Video Series: This animated video series explores topics related to antiracism, justice, and equity to support the ongoing implementation of our Strategic Plan for Antiracism.
DEI Groups and Spaces
Educational Groups
- OED Programs and Initiatives:
- Campus Climate: These initiatives support a welcoming campus climate in which all people are treated with respect.
- College-MADE: The College-MADE (Multicultural Access, Diversity, and Equity) Initiative provides individual colleges with data-driven approaches to increasing representational diversity, improving campus climate, and creating partnerships to effect positive change.
- Diversity Community of Practice (DCoP): The DCoP is a grassroots community of faculty and staff across leverage personal and professional expertise to ensure the successful implementation of equity and diversity goals at the University of Minnesota.
- Institute for Diversity, Equity and Advocacy (IDEA): IDEA is a research initiative that convenes scholars from the University of Minnesota and from around the world to collaborate across disciplines, departments, colleges and campuses.
- Louis Stokes North Star STEM Alliance: The Louis Stokes North Star STEM Alliance is the Minnesota branch of a nationwide program. In addition to funding from NSF, we also receive funding from 3M to support Southeast Asians and the rest of our cohort. LSMAP provides stipends, travel opportunities, research funding, and more to students who join our cohort.
Support and Affinity Spaces
- UMN - TC Affinity Groups
- Asian American Pacific Islander Desi (AAPID) Staff & Faculty Association
- American Indian Faculty & Staff Association
- Black Faculty & Staff Association
- Disabled Employees at the U
- Jewish Faculty & Staff Association (JFSA)
- Latino/a/x Faculty & Staff Association
- Pride at Work
- U of M Indigenous Women & Women of Color
- U of M Veteran and Military Affinity Group
- Duluth Affinity Groups
- Commission for Women (UMN Duluth)
- GLBTQAI Commission (UMN Duluth)
- Employees of Color and American Indians (UMN Duluth)
Centers and Offices
- OED Unit and Initiative Sites:
- Circle of Indigenous Nations (COIN)
- Community Outreach Retention and Engagement (CORE)
- Disability Resource Center (DRC)
- Diversity Community of Practice (DCOP)
- Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action (EOAA)
- Gender and Sexuality Center for Queer and Trans Life (GSC)
- Institute for Diversity, Equity, and Advocacy (IDEA)
- Multicultural Center for Academic Excellence (MCAE)
- Office for Conflict Resolution (OCR)
- Office for Supplier Diversity (OSD)
- President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (PPFP)
- Women's Center
CLA Center for Canon Expansion and Change (CCEC) founded in 2021 by faculty of the Department of Philosophy with the goal of effecting meaningful change in the way that philosophy is done, understood, organized, and—especially—taught