Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Online Courses

There are a lot of ways that online/hybrid teaching can enhance or hinder classroom equity. Equitable teaching means that the outcomes of our teaching are “fair and just” regardless of the differences that the students bring to the classroom. Even though we may have the good intention to treat students equally, good intentions alone are often not sufficient. Learn concrete strategies to make your online/hybrid teaching more equitable.

Equity review tools

Equity-Minded Worksheet for Instructors of Online Courses
This document is a guided reflection tool to think about inclusivity and equity in your online/hybrid courses. You can use examples of equitable and inclusive online/hybrid teaching practices as your strategies to make your course more inclusive and equitable.

Equity-minded Syllabus Review
A syllabus serves to encapsulate our teaching beliefs, values, and approaches, and this article challenges us to reflect on those attributes and engage in an equity-minded review. The exercises in this article will help you better understand who your syllabus serves and who it does not, and how you can change it to promote equity-minded practice.

Peralta Online Equity Rubrics This rubric is composed of 8 criteria which you can use to evaluate your course in terms of inclusion and equity. The companion document describes “How You Can Start Addressing This Equity Issue” for each of the 8 criteria.

Equity and Inclusion guides from other universities

Maintaining Equity and Inclusion in Virtual Learning Environments
This comprehensive webpage gives you six types of strategies for equity and inclusion in your online/hybrid teaching. Each type includes concrete strategies you can implement right away in your course with additional links to explore and reflect on these strategies.

Guidebook: Inclusive Pedagogy for Virtual Teaching
This guidebook covers how to intentionally design your courses to be accessible and engaging, providing actionable strategies to address pedagogy, course content, assessment, climate, and power in a virtual classroom.

Inclusive Teaching and Learning Online
This guide discusses inclusive teaching strategies for 5 evidence-based principles in online teaching and learning. Their strategies would help increase students’ sense of belonging and support student success in online courses.

Strategies to make online courses more inclusive and equitable

Managing Microaggressions for More Inclusive Online Learning
The insidious nature of microaggressions is that they are most difficult to identify in ones’ own communication and thought. This article encourages you to address this issue by establishing an “anti-microaggression netiquette,” re-interpret poor participation in groupwork, stay in touch with peers and students about prejudice and microaggressions, and to add meaning by being intentionally inclusive.

Incentivize! Don’t Penalize: Revisiting Late Policies for Online Students
“Is it equitable to apply the same late policy to every student in every situation?” Consider this question as you read through this article and re-evaluate how penalization/incentivization encourages student learning.

Four Tips to Make an Online Course More Welcoming
Is your online class welcoming for all students with diverse social identities? This video points out several ways that students from different social identity groups perceive online courses.

Webinars

Employing Equity-Minded & Culturally-Affirming Teaching Practices in Virtual Learning Communities
As the transition to online courses has the potential to exacerbate issues of equity in teaching and learning, Drs. Frank Harris III and J. Luke Wood educate on the issues that diverse college learners face, and provide equity-minded teaching strategies to counter those issues and better support a diverse learning community.