A Collaborative Self-Study and Implementation Exercise for Improved Equity-Centered Practices

This paper describes the outcomes of a Digital Learning Equity Analysis project undertaken by two award-winning educators, Sarah Straub and Rachel Jumper, who sought to implement suggestions from the microcredential training hosted by Every Learner Everywhere. This training focused on promoting equity in digital learning and provided a structured protocol for conducting reviews of online courses.

In Fall 2022, Straub received an email about a training to help with online teaching best practices. She signed up because she wanted to learn more about effective teaching in online spaces. Straub’s university offered an Online Instructor Certification as well as the Interactive Video Certification through their Center for Teaching and Learning, but she was eager to see what could be learned for online instruction through an equity framework. As the program continued, she was heartened to discover that this was more than a dissemination of information; it was a multi-week undertaking with mentor meetings, discussions, and reflections. She dove deep into the Digital Learning Equity Framework and was inspired by the suggestions from the Caring for Students Playbook resources provided in the training.

And yet, at the end of the training, she felt as if she needed more time to engage with the resources so as to apply them to her own courses. She communicated her desire to continue to engage with the course material in a structured way to one of the organizers who replied, “Sure… go for it. Let me know what you come up with.” The following paper details the results of the evaluation of online courses following that conversation.