60-Second SoTL

Exploring the Impacts of Course Redesign for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Episode Summary

What’s the impact of professional development cohort programs focused on redesigning courses for equity, diversity, and inclusion? This episode features collective autoethnography research assessing the outcomes of a course redesign initiative.

Episode Notes

View our full episode notes at: https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/exploring-the-impacts-of-course-redesign-for-equity-diversity-and-inclusion/

What’s the impact of professional development cohort programs focused on redesigning courses for equity, diversity, and inclusion? This episode features collective autoethnography research assessing the outcomes of a course redesign initiative:

Nakamura, Mayuko, Jennifer C. Friberg-Fort, and Mary Hollywood. 20206. “Exploring the Impacts of Course Reinvention: A Collective Autoethnography.” Journal of Diversity and Equity in Educational Development 2 (1). https://doi.org/10.5070/N5.53218

This episode was hosted, edited, and produced by Jessie L. Moore, Director of the Center for Engaged Learning and Professor of Professional Writing & Rhetoric.

60-Second SoTL is produced by the Center for Engaged Learning at Elon University.

Music: “Cryptic” by AudioCoffee.

Image in show art by magnific.

Episode Transcription

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0:10

Jessie L. Moore:

What’s the impact of professional development cohort programs focused on redesigning courses for equity, diversity, and inclusion? That’s the focus of this week’s 60-second SoTL from Elon University’s Center for Engaged Learning. I’m Jessie Moore. 

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0:30

In “Exploring the Impacts of Course Reinvention: A Collective Autoethnography,” Mayuko Nakamura, Jennifer Friberg-Fort, and Mary Hollywood report on a collective autoethnography study of outcomes of faculty participation in a course redesign initiative. Their article appears in Journal of Diversity and Equity in Educational Development, an open access journal.

0:55

Nakamura, Friberg-Fort, and Hollywood used collaborative autoethnography to collect longitudinal data on outcomes of faculty participation in a three-week course redesign program. The Redesign Your Course for EDIA initiative began at Illinois State University in 2014 and is offered every summer to support faculty redesigning for diversity, inclusion, and equity. Like many course redesign initiatives, the program includes content on backward course design, learning objectives, learning activities, and assessment and feedback. However, it also integrates content on identity, intersectionality, and positionality; inclusive teaching; grading for equity; Universal Design for Learning; and other equity-minded teaching practices.

1:41

The authors focus on collective autoethnography evidence from four participants from their 2021 cohort, analyzing written reflections and focus group transcripts. Participants contributed to identifying themes, and the first author—Nakamura—facilitated consolidation of themes and subsequent coding of documents.

2:00

The authors focus on four themes:

• First, participants made changes to course content, integrating EDIA topics across units in their course and being more attentive to diversity in examples. One participant already had extensive EDIA content but revised how she presented the content.
• Second, participants experimented with flexibility to course policies and structures, offering flexible deadlines and choice in topics and assessment. Most scaled back their flexibility in subsequent classes, however, and the challenges and responses identified in the article mirror those raised in alternative grading scholarship.
• Third, the course redesign process helped instructors prioritize what content and activities were most important for students to know and do.
• Finally, although instructors focused on redesigning one specific course, the collective autoethnography suggests that redesign ideas spilled over into other instructors’ other courses.

2:59

Ultimately, this study begins to capture short- and longer-term impacts of course redesign initiatives and highlights that the return on investment extends beyond individual courses, amplifying the value of this type of professional development. The article also offers a model for assessing the longitudinal effects of educational development.

To learn more about this study, visit our show notes for a link to the open access article.

3:24

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3:30

Jessie L. Moore:

Join us for our next episode of 60-second SoTL from Elon University’s Center for Engaged Learning for another snapshot of recent scholarship of teaching and learning. Learn more about the Center at www.CenterForEngagedLearning.org.

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