{"id":1420,"date":"2020-10-19T11:00:13","date_gmt":"2020-10-19T16:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ele.local\/?p=1420"},"modified":"2023-06-08T14:38:59","modified_gmt":"2023-06-08T19:38:59","slug":"equitable-online-course-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.everylearnereverywhere.org\/es\/blog\/equitable-online-course-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflect and Check: 3 Steps to Equitable Online Course Design In Higher Ed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Equitable online course design for college and university classes often requires flipping the usual perspective, says Dr. Ruanda Garth-McCullough, Associate Director of Teaching and Learning for Achieving the Dream.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of us were taught to treat everyone the same and ignore differences,\u201d she says. \u201cEquity requires educators to shift their thinking and be comfortable with acknowledging the differences \u2014 identifying differences \u2014 and addressing students differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

A principle of \u201ctreating everyone the same\u201d may not result in the equity that a college classroom strives for. If they are going to close equity gaps and improve learning outcomes for Black, Latino, Indigenous, and poverty-affected students, instructors will need to understand how every student walks in \u2014 or logs in \u2014 with unique needs, perspectives, and barriers.<\/p>\n

Equitable online courses don\u2019t ignore differences<\/h2>\n

Equity can\u2019t be achieved with so-called \u201ccolorblind\u201d or \u201cimpartial\u201d approaches. Equitable online course design considers representation of student identities, including culture, race, gender, and sexual orientation, country of origin, first language, economic class, and religion. Equitably designed courses also consider access \u2014 not just during admissions but after students get the acceptance letter and progress toward a degree.<\/p>\n

Achieving the Dream<\/a> (ATD), one of the partner organizations of Every Learner Everywhere\u00ae<\/a>, helps community colleges identify and confront systemic inequities, and equitable course design has been one of the organization\u2019s priorities since its inception.<\/p>\n

According to the ATD team, in order to design courses from an equity perspective, institutions and faculty must first understand who their students are. That understanding should inform what content is included, what policies are required, how class meetings are conducted, and what expectations the course rests on. Then open lines of communication should ensure student needs are being met.<\/p>\n

Start by working from actual data about students, such as demographics, technology access, and outside obligations to family and work. These and other other factors all influence how individual students interact with the course. Something on your syllabus as innocuous as \u201ccheck for the problem sets online on Tuesday and respond by Thursday\u201d may be a significant challenge for some students.<\/p>\n

At an individual course level, Susan Adams, Instructional Designer at ATD, recommends faculty do an informal assessment of students that asks questions like:<\/p>\n