EPIC Newsletter:
February 2019
Thank you for stopping by and reading this month’s EPIC Newsletter. We are still continuing on the theme on inclusivity and accessibility this month and we hope you find our features helpful as you consider ways to create more inclusive learning environments for our students.
Quick reminder: the application for the Seminars in Teaching Excellence (STE) for the 2019-2020 academic year co-leads is open and the deadline has been extended to Friday, March 15. If you are a faculty member based in a Humanities department, History or Musicology, please consider applying to co-lead one of the four STEs we will offering next year: Urban Humanities (Fall 2019), Inclusive Classrooms II (Fall 2019), Technologies of Teaching in the Humanities (Winter 2020), and Community Learning (Spring 2020). This year, Academic Administrators with extensive teaching experience in the Humanities and expertise in one of the last three STEs on the list will also be considered. For more information, please visit the application page.
As always, please feel free to reach out if you are interested in writing a feature for an upcoming newsletter or have ideas for future articles, especially on innovative and inclusive teaching.
Dr. Lisa Felipe
Program Director
EPIC Program
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From left to right: Emma Naliboff Pettit, Maite Zubiaurre, Stephen "Kip" Tobin, Carla Suhr, Jimena Rodriguez and David Schaberg at Inclusive Gatherings.
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Introducing Inclusive Gatherings: An EPIC Teaching Innovations Grant Project
After the conclusion of EPIC’s Fall 2017 Seminar “Inclusive Classrooms,” three of its faculty participants decided to follow up on the topic by creating a space for instructors to engage in practical conversations about inclusivity in their own classrooms. Stephen “Kip” Tobin, Carla Suhr, and Jimena Rodriguez, all faculty in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese, founded the Inclusive Gatherings project. Under the mentorship of Maite Zubiaurre (co-lead alongside Steven Nelson for the Inclusive Classrooms Seminar in Teaching Excellence), the team successfully applied for an EPIC Teaching Innovations Grant. These grants are available to faculty that have participated in a Seminar on Teaching Excellence for projects that will build on concepts from the seminar and which will use materials and/or processes that can be adapted for undergraduate curriculum.
Carla Suhr, Stephen “Kip” Tobin and Jimena Rodriguez’s Inclusive Gatherings are a series of workshops taking place this Winter and Spring that invite educators to come together for informal and practical conversations about incorporating inclusivity into their pedagogical practices. The Inclusive Gatherings aim to provide a space for instructors to discuss real case studies and pragmatic solutions. The gatherings are open to instructors from all over campus as well as from local community colleges. Each gathering will feature a speaker who will talk about their area of expertise and lead conversation in a semi-structured manner. The Inclusive Gatherings website also aims to be a virtual space where educators can consult a growing list of resources for practical suggestions and dialogue with each other in an online forum.
The afternoon of January 30, a group of instructors came together for the first Inclusive Gathering, “‘Hot Moments’ in the Classroom with Emma Naliboff Pettit.” Pettit is the director of the UCLA Intergroup Relations Program, housed at the Bruin Resource Center. The first half of Pettit’s workshop was comprised of a brief talk on intergroup dialogue methodology and how it may be helpful for instructors tackling difficult moments in the classroom. Dialogue, Pettit said, is a form of active listening that can be conceived of as a dialect that instructors can learn to code switch into when needed. It can help instructors find their way to asking the right questions rather than shutting down conversations with students when sensitive topics or conflicts arise in class. After the talk, participants workshopped and shared specific case studies based on examples from our own experiences.
After the workshop, I sat down with Stephen “Kip” Tobin and Carla Suhr to ask them some questions about their project and their vision for the future of Inclusive Gatherings. Unfortunately, Jimena Rodriguez, the third founding member, was unable to stay for the interview. Here are some of the highlights from our conversation:
How would you define inclusivity?
Stephen: There are many ways to define it, but I think probably the simplest is that no one feels left out. It's kind of linked with diversity in terms of there's a plurality of voices that are heard in the class that I hope helps to promote empathy among students, as well as a plurality of texts and cultural production that are shown.
Carla: Inclusivity for me, too, is that sense of embracing all types of identities and all the different aspects that make you unique. Not only referring to your background, but also who you are as a student. That is also part of who you are when you come to the class. For educators, it means to embrace the diversity in the classroom and see it as a learning strength through which every student will thrive and succeed.
Stephen: One more thing to add, I think that inclusivity as a professor is strongly linked to care, to caring about your students. There's a saying I really like that says, from the standpoint of students, that “I'll never care how much you know, unless I know how much you care.” And I've always wondered why, from ten years ago when I started as a grad student, I've always had high evaluations and I think it's because I have that care and connection, even when I didn't really know how to teach very well. And so I think that's really the first step towards it being inclusive and embracing of different identities.
What is the Inclusive Gatherings project?
Stephen: The three of us were all in Inclusive Classrooms, the Seminar in Teaching Excellence, with Maite [Zubiaurre], who was also here, and Steven Nelson, and we really enjoyed it. It was broad in scope and lofty in ambition and maybe tending towards the theoretical at times. And so we really wanted to continue talking about inclusivity but more in a practical sense with other educators, from TA’s all the way up to full professors, if they decide to come. And hence we looked for funding and came up with the idea. We wanted it to be open but not totally open that it didn't have any structure, which is why there are five events that have a speaker. What Emma [Naliboff Petit] did was excellent in terms of it was a talk, but it was very open and responsive to everyone. And so that to me was excellent and exactly what I hoped it to be.
Carla: We want to create that open space for us educators to feel that we can talk about these issues that are so important, but so many times we don't talk about it because we're in our own little worlds working on research and doing our own projects. We don't really have that much time, or we don't really create the space to talk about pedagogy or inclusive pedagogical practices. So our goal was to create that space.
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How do you think that Inclusive Gatherings will benefit Humanities instructors?
Carla: I think not only for the classroom setting itself, but also in general. What we learned today is very useful for any of our academic activities, like when we work with other colleagues, when we think about how we are going to design a course... So not just for that moment when we are in the classroom, but also in our academic life in every sense, we can put into practice all the resources that we are going to be learning about.
Stephen: Well, I think because Humanities tends to critique and tends to look at the human and all its different manifestations, both positive and negative, I think it allows—it's a pretty good intersection, especially when teaching in the humanities—it allows professors… For me, I didn't realize how many blind spots that I was unaware of, in terms of things that I either would say or let happen in class. And so I think it's just brought that awareness to me. Like what she [Emma Naliboff Pettit] said, that was excellent, I think it's always important to speak from the “I,” and not from a group identity’s perspective, which is not something I was super aware of before I took the Inclusive Classrooms. And then even this [workshop] really drilled it down for me. So in that sense, I think if a class is truly inclusive then it reaches all the students. And in that sense it should engage the students more deeply in what they're learning about.
Carla: We are working here mostly within the Humanities but inclusive pedagogy should be implemented in every single area.
How will Inclusive Gatherings benefit the undergraduates at UCLA?
Stephen: So there was a study done, I think in 2014—this is one of the first things we talked about Inclusive Classrooms—and they found that underrepresented minorities tended to have higher dropout rates or longer times to graduate. And it seemed to be there's at least a correlation, that they feel left behind oftentimes in classes. And so it's a way to counterbalance that trend. Especially for us teaching a lot of Latino students. I mean, I have students who are either undocumented or have parents that are, or siblings. A lot of them come from community colleges that I don't think have the same sort of norms and expectations that they have necessarily at UCLA. So I think it's one way of trying to reach those types of students that might otherwise fall through the cracks if you're not taking inclusivity into account.
How can instructors incorporate inclusivity into their classes without making changes they're uncomfortable with?
Carla: Well we might need to change some things, and we might be uncomfortable at the beginning when we are implementing new techniques. We all create habits in the way we teach and think and while transformation might not always be an easy and comfortable process, we believe the result is worthy.
Stephen: Yeah, I would say it also doesn't have to be a radical transformation of how someone teaches. There are small, easily implementable techniques that can make the class more inclusive without it turning around to being as if Emma [Naliboff Pettit] were teaching it, which I imagine would be the ultimate in terms of inclusivity. For example, the whole strategy, the whole technique that has been called “sage on the stage” comes from a two-thousand year tradition of the Greeks in an auditorium and everyone's looking at a teacher. I heard of a really good technique: so you can still give lectures but take a brain break, especially for students, every fifteen minutes. They can stop and you have them do something that can be two or three minutes. But it's a great way of chunking it up that allows them to assimilate it better. That seems to me to be one one way to do it.
What she [Emma Naliboff Pettit] had was the “Community Agreement” which I do, which I typically call something like “Ground Rules” right from the beginning and I think it's really important to set the tone. And I tend to do it with the students. So I have them say, and I put on the board, what makes a good class? What makes a good professor? What makes it good student? And also I have a part about technology. They come up with the answers and I might add or modify it a little bit, but it's not me imposing from above. I think that because they come up with the answers they sense a bit more responsibility and accountability towards it. So those are just a couple of small techniques that I don't think need to be radically reworking the ways one approaches teaching.
What Inclusive Gatherings are planned for the future?
Stephen: You can see the brief descriptions on the website. Edna Chavarry from Santa Monica College, who has worked with EPIC in the past and she works with this topic, [...] it's going to be about the classroom syllabus and institutionalizing inclusivity in the everyday. Then Jerry Kang is the next one, which is in this first week of April.
Carla: “Politics and Inclusive Pedagogy.”
Stephen: It's about, if we really want to be inclusive, since universities tend to be very progressive and liberal institutions within their politics, what do you do with conservative students? How do you not exclude them? That seems to me like such a thorny issue that I can't even wrap my head around it. Most professors tend to be very liberal from the outset and they're just going to shut that down, often. So I think it's very important to try and consider, especially if you listen to the discourse on the Right right now, these are just “factories of political correctness” that are “hypersensitive” and they're not. So I think it would be a good response to that criticism that I often hear.
Carla: For me, what I want to get from that gathering are resources we can implement with students to actively listen to any perspective, so that when they leave the university they know how to communicate and know how to have a conversation with someone that doesn't have their own opinions. Right now, if they are only used to having conversations with people who share similar ideologies, then they are not going to be able to or probably won't have the resources to manage tough conversations.
Stephen: The way you put that it sounds like a great antidote to the self-contained opinion bubbles, which tends to be a large part of the polarization that we're experiencing right now. There's just no dialogue. There's no hearing other opinions. As soon as you hear another one, it’s labelled as either the left or the right and then it’s shut down. So I hope that it accomplishes that to some extent. Because I think we all have a lot to learn in that.
The fourth [gathering] is going to be “Classroom Design and Inclusivity” and we’re going to have a panel that include an undergraduate first-generation student, a graduate student from Inclusive Classrooms, [and other panelists TBA.] [...] The last one is going to be about teaching at the graduate level.
Carla: Hopefully we can continue with these gatherings in the future, not only for this academic year, and establish a strong community of professors supporting inclusive pedagogy.
Stephen: I would be thrilled, personally, if this ended up catching some degree of momentum, or even just maintained this momentum, in terms of having this many people here that were interested and interactive in contributing.
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The next Inclusive Gathering, “Making Space for Equity in your Syllabus and in your Everyday,” featuring guest speaker Edna Chavarry, will take place Tuesday March 5, from 4-6pm in the Lydeen Library. On April 9, Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Jerry Kang will speak on “Politics and Inclusive Pedagogy.” Please take a look at the Inclusive Gatherings website for more information about these and other upcoming gatherings. |
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This Month in Innovation: Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT)
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In three months of interviewing our humanities undergraduate students about what helps them to succeed in the classroom, we consistently heard that students want more “DMC”s (deep and meaningful conversations) with their instructors. Our students feel better equipped to succeed when their instructors are transparent about three things: how they define students’ success in the class, how they imagine the application of learning in their course to other classes, and how they imagine the learning will be relevant in their students' personal and professional lives.
Similarly, pedagogical experts have discovered nationwide that:
- Students are often unfamiliar with strategies for success once they leave a classroom
- Underrepresented and first-generation students benefit from transparent practices that create a welcoming, inclusive environment that engages participants in ways that highlight their individual strengths
TILT (Transparency in Learning and Teaching) is a pedagogical method that removes many of the common barriers to learning, including resistance, lack of control, lack of expertise, insufficient time, and concerns about privacy.
TILTing a course asks instructors to make very small modifications to TWO assignments (one low stakes, one high stakes). TILTed materials will simply include three main headings that are emphasized on any printed handouts and in the instructor's explanation of the assignment:
I. Purpose (the WHAT of learning)
- List the skills that will be practiced
- Describe the content knowledge will be gained
- Explain how these skills and knowledge connect to the course goals, and how they will be relevant in students’ other coursework and personal lives
II. Tasks (the HOW of learning)
- Provide a thorough set of instructions for each activity associated with the assignment
- Tell them how to accomplish the activities (what to do, when to do it, how to do it, what to avoid, where to get help)
III. Criteria (the WHY / how to define success of learning)
- Provide a checklist (or rubric) can students use to self-evaluate as they develop the assignment so that they understand how they will be evaluated
- What does excellence look like? (Provide annotated examples with feedback where students and faculty applied the checklist or rubric)
- Where possible, provide tools (i.e., Writing Center link, workshop link, websites or book titles) that students can use to self-evaluate
Students reported more satisfaction and motivation to lifelong learning skills, and instructors reported a significant improvement in performance, when the TILT method was applied to just two assignments.
To learn more about the TILT method at UCLA, attend our Deep Dive Workshop on Wednesday May 15th, or look for an invitation to participate in our asynchronous TILT Refresh course this spring. To learn about the TILT protocol and sign up for the nationwide study, visit this page.
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Upcoming Events:
Small Changes, Big Impact Workshop Series - TILT & UDL Deep Dive
TILT Deep Dive
Wednesday, May 15, 2019
12:00-2:00pm
Location TBA
Focusing on relatively small modifications to course design, this workshop will help instructors reconfigure an entire course using the TILT method. Workshop participants will learn to revise a syllabus and develop a set of informal tools to check for student progress while empowering students to assess their own mastery of course materials.
UDL Deep Dive
Tuesday, May 21, 2019
12:00-2:00pm
Location TBA
Continue building your universal design classroom by shifting learning goals and assessment techniques. In this workshop, we will discuss how to redesign a high and low stakes assignment so that they align with best practices for students, especially transfer and historically underrepresented undergrads, in public research universities.
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On Teaching and Learning: Resources Round Up
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There are a TON of resources, scholarship, and advice for instructors out there! Here’s just some of what we have been reading and exploring this month on faculty and graduate student teaching:
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“As Paula Krebs [Executive director of the MLA] recently put it, ‘More graduate programs should step up and educate their students about careers at teaching-intensive institutions.’ So why aren’t they? One explanation lies not only in teaching’s largely devalued status within research institutions, but also in a culture that casually denigrates teaching more broadly, an attitude reflected in everything from the pay scale of educators to their depiction in popular media. Also at the heart of the problem may be the unexamined assumption that teaching (not coincidentally, a historically feminized field) is more vocation than profession—an expression of discipline-based enthusiasm, or altruism, or love.”
From “Who’s Teaching the Teachers?” by Elizabeth Alsop
“The teaching demo is a critical part of the interview […] At research institutions, the teaching demo is usually separate from the interview and conducted in front of students (an actual class or a group invited just for that purpose). Some community colleges do it that way, too. At most two-year colleges, however, the teaching demo is part of the 60- to 90-minute interview […] and the audience is usually composed solely of members of the search committee.”
From “What to Expect at a Community-College Interview” by Rob Jenkins
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“At its core, faculty mentorship involves caring about, connecting with and catalyzing students. Mentorship by a faculty member focuses on building a relationship that reaches beyond academic planning. It includes helping students reflect upon and integrate their various learning experiences, as well as caring for and impacting students’ personal and professional growth. It is about helping students start a long process of becoming the architects of their lives.”
From “Creating an Ecosystem for Faculty Mentorship” by Adam Weinberg
For a little fun as we wrap up the Winter 2019 Quarter, check out Beloit College’s The Mindset List, a list of experiences traditional-age college students may have had that seem vastly different from the experiences of their professors. For example, below are some of the “experiences” of students who entered college in 2019 who were born in 1997.
- Hybrid automobiles have always been mass produced.
- Google has always been there, in its founding words, “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible.”
- Email has become the new “formal” communication, while texts and tweets remain enclaves for the casual.
- Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic have always been members of NATO.
Oooofff! I am suddenly feeling very, very old. For the full Mindset Lists, visit this link.
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This newsletter is edited by Nina Devolder.
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