How inclusive classrooms drive belonging and improved outcomes for students

Image credit: Adobe Stock/Seventyfour.

Last month, Adobe hosted the second installment of a four-part webinar series in partnership with The Chronicle of Higher Education that breaks down how unique approaches to teaching can provide greater access to digital tools and can lead to improved student outcomes.

Ian Wilhelm, assistant managing editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education, moderated the event, which featured academic leaders and faculty members who explored how colleges can foster inclusivity across campus, especially in classroom.

Here are three key takeaways and reflections from the discussion:

Leveling the academic playing field with inclusive teaching

Beckie Supiano, senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education, kicked off the webinar moderating a panel discussion with academic leaders from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill about teaching practices that create more inclusive learning environments.

Kelly Hogan, associate dean of instructional innovation, and Viji Sathy, associate dean of evaluation and assessment, underscored the importance of academic leaders employing inclusive teaching. This practice encourages faculty to create learning environments and courses with intentional structure that support all students, especially those from diverse backgrounds. Sathy explained that providing more structure when designing courses and interacting with students can ensure they feel safe to share their ideas, which ultimately leads to stronger learning outcomes.

Time constraints and a lack of training may cause trepidation among faculty to embrace inclusive teaching. And the data agrees. A flash poll conducted during the webinar showed that more than a third of respondents believe they don’t have enough time to move in this direction. However, both panelists acknowledged that some universities, such as Wake Forest, are already creating new channels for faculty to break down these barriers.

Wake Forest designated a mental health day for students, during which the administration invited faculty to attend a day-long training session that taught them how to promote inclusivity in their own classrooms, including assigning student groups, establishing fixed seating in the classroom, strengthening modes of communication and adopting both active and project-based learning methods.

“By using these approaches we're hopefully making a big classroom feel smaller and making students feel like they belong,” Sathy said. “It definitely can be done, so it's something that I think we should all strive for and learn from each other.”

Redesigning classes to bridge the digital divide

The pandemic illuminated major disparities in education, which ultimately prompted faculty members to rethink the way they teach. In a Q&A session, Wanda White, director of the Center for Innovative and Transformative Instruction at Winston-Salem State University (WSSU), delineated the realities of the digital divide, which often bar students from succeeding in the classroom as well as in digitally transformed workforces.

WSSU is an HBCU with many enrolled students who are either the first in their family to attend college, come from households with incomes of $50,000 or less and/or are Pell Grant recipients. White explained that a large portion of these students lacked adequate resources at home to learn to their full potential. As a result, her team took a two-pronged approach to bridging the digital divide at WSSU.

She first ensured that all students had access to digital tools that could help them stay engaged in remote environments and also enabled them to build creative skills that are critical for academic and career success.

Recognizing that access was half the battle to addressing the digital divide, White still needed to offer WSSU faculty members ongoing touchpoints that helped them understand how to incorporate these tools into their curricula.

“It [the pandemic] forced people to be creative, to integrate technology — whether they wanted to or not — and forced people to think outside the box on how they were going to reach students,” she said.

In addition to the training resources her team published online, White launched the annual “Faculty Festival” event, which convenes faculty to share their personal teaching practices and how they’ve redesigned their courses to provide more equitable experiences for students. The most recent event featured a long-time attendee of the Faculty Festival, who honed their skills overtime and taught their colleagues how they created an online course using digital tools.

Although universities will likely resume fully in-person next semester, faculty members can continue providing more equitable academic experiences for students by leveraging digital tools that they may not have access to outside of school.

Linking inclusive teaching to students’ feeling of belonging

The recent declines in university enrollment are forcing academic leaders to better demonstrate the value of higher education to students. Establishing strong communities in the classroom and on campus can have a profound impact on student retention, according to the American Educational Research Association. The final session of the webinar zeroed in on this topic, exploring how universities can employ inclusive teaching methods to reach this goal.

“The level of disengagement we’re seeing [among students] has reached a crisis level…it was exacerbated by the pandemic, but I think that was a long time coming,” said Jamiella Brooks, associate director, Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Pennsylvania. “Inclusive teaching isn't really that political it's just good pedagogy.”

This form of pedagogy is especially impactful in academic disciplines that may historically lack diverse representation. Sara Brownell, professor, School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University (ASU), emphasized the important role faculty play in helping create inclusive classroom cultures, nodding to a recent research paper she wrote that examined how increasing awareness of LGBTQ+ identities in biology classes sparked conversations about transforming learning spaces within the discipline.

In the study, LGBTQ+ faculty came out to students enrolled in their biology courses, which had a positive impact on all students’ sense of belonging, and especially those who also identify as LGBTQ+. In addition, students overwhelmingly felt that sharing this information laid a foundation for a more inclusive classroom environment.

Although the study specifically focused on biology classrooms at ASU, Brownell recently obtained a grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct this study at scale.

“There are often assumptions about who ‘should’ be a scientist. People are trying to change that narrative,” Brownell said. “Lots of different people can be scientists, and we have way more representation of different people beyond that stereotypical image.”

As we look ahead to the future of higher education, taking an iterative approach to inclusive teaching, faculty can help level the academic playing field, engage students and ultimately drive greater retention.

• Watch the full on-demand webinar and keep an eye out for details from Adobe on the next webinar with the Chronicle of Higher Education.
• For more information on how to integrate digital skills across disciplines and throughout curricula, please visit the Adobe Digital Literacy resources page.