Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) and Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) in Action: Defining a Pathway for Broadening Access to and Engagement in a Blended Engineering Course.

Some of the most amazing and awe-inspiring research happens in the STEM disciplines, yet this same area has greatly struggled with moving learning to the online arena (McKenzie, 2021). STEM students perhaps struggled the most with online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, which left some administrators and faculty wondering if it could be done effectively (Hammerness et al., 2022). Furthermore, the failures of emergency remote instruction (not just in STEM) have been misconstrued by some and generalized to represent the ineffectiveness of online education. This misinformation has resulted in instructional support roles defending (even more than before) the importance of online education, its demonstrated effectiveness, and how critical it is for online courses to use research-backed, evidence-based practices. Presenting a use case like the one we propose in this submission is one attempt to provide more evidence of how online courses can effectively meeting students' needs, specifically in a STEM discipline.

 

At our R1 STEM institution, the emergency pivot to online instruction during the pandemic presented many of the same obstacles lived by others over the past two years. However, we are seeing forward movement in how faculty are approaching the redesign of their STEM courses. We believe it is of utmost importance to present these success stories since they serve as motivators and can inspire others to help progress the discussion of what constitutes effective online learning in the instructional design community. Collectively, we are still looking to establish teaching and learning best practices in STEM, and it is through opportunities like these we can further that discussion.

 

This session will present initial findings from a redesigned upper-undergraduate, graduate-level Engineering course for blended delivery, one of our institution's first of its kind. In addition to combining synchronous and asynchronous sessions as a teaching format, we included the use of three educational technologies which allowed for the application of best practices in UDL and DEI. 

 

This presentation will briefly discuss how our course development framework leverages UDL principles and DEI strategies to create a course that presents content in multiple ways and allows students to select how they would like to interact with the content, peers, and instructor. These choices provide students some ownership over their learning, a guiding principle in many prevailing adult learning theories.

 

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework initially developed by researchers at the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST), collaborating with Harvard University. It states that there is no average learner and instead puts forth three tenets (multiple means of representation, multiple means of action, and multiple means of expression) to support as many students as possible, considering learner variability and neurodiversity. Designing courses with the UDL framework bakes in flexibility, support, and scaffolding into activities, assignments, assessments, and content.

 

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) has also been a frontline topic in the last few years, powered by the political and racial unrest witnessed in the United States and abroad. Researchers observed that the pivot to emergency remote instruction adversely affected some underrepresented groups (McKenzie, 2021). Unfortunately, many of these deficits were already prominent in poorly designed courses before the pandemic. Therefore, there has been a significant movement to consider how our course design practices can support or may detract from good DEI practices. A well-designed course should not only aid diverse learners to succeed (UDL) but also increase the visibility of underrepresented groups in course content and resources, minimize biases that may exist, and allow for the inclusion of students that may otherwise "fly under the radar" (DEI). Therefore, the inclusion of DEI strategies in a course development framework serves as an extension of UDL principles and supports an even broader diversity of students.

 

Another powerful lesson learned through the pandemic is the importance of Social-Emotional Learning (SEL). During the last few years, the role that environmental and personal factors play in a person's ability to work and study effectively has become blatantly obvious. We must now consider how our course design practices and teaching strategies impact students' emotional ability to learn in our classes. In an OLC survey of barriers to STEM online (Seaman and Allen, 2021), respondents reported that the most severe barrier to moving STEM online was that students were not motivated enough to succeed. While there is no doubt that many variables influence student motivation, one of the aspects we can control in the design phase is the inclusion of teaching strategies that focus on humanizing the course.

 

The second most significant barrier identified in that same OLC survey was the difficulty of maintaining academic integrity.  The topic of academic integrity can lead to interesting conversations about the impact of intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivators for cheating, once again touching on aspects of SEL. The faculty member will discuss the impact of humanizing their course by increasing their visual presence in recorded educational content, being vulnerable in their teaching, and increasing instructor transparency in justifying selected teaching strategies. One of these strategies was including active learning activities for every synchronous session in the semester, a practice this instructor had never utilized before.

 

This course leverages educational technology to accomplish more than simply assessing knowledge. It also considers the students' emotional readiness to learn at the onset of each synchronous class. We will demonstrate how these tools were used and discuss other ways to leverage this type of strategy with the audience. 

 

The faculty member will present the observed results of designing their course in this way, providing evidence gathered during the inaugural online offering in the Spring 2022 term. At the time of writing, they have reported a considerable improvement in student interaction, an increase in the quality of student work, and an increased level of student commitment and engagement with the course and its materials, among other things. Our work with this course has led to promising student learning and success outcomes which we are excited to share with the community. 

 

As part of our audience engagement strategy, we will demonstrate some of the technologies used in the course and provide an opportunity to interact with one of them during the presentation. We will invite the attendees to discuss how we can collectively continue to reimagine online STEM education.

 

By the end of this session, participants should be able to:

• Identify several obstacles to redesigning STEM disciplines for delivery in an online/blended format

• Describe how the selected technologies, in this case, were used to increase student engagement, agency, equity, and inclusion

• Describe three teaching strategies that can be used in an online STEM course to support student agency

• Discuss what other changes in design and teaching strategy could help improve learning outcomes in online STEM education

 

Works Cited

 

Hammerness, Karen, et al. "STEM Students Struggled with Online Learning (Opinion) | inside Higher Ed." Inside Higher Ed, 14 Mar. 2022, www.insidehighered.com/views/2022/03/14/stem-students-struggled-online-l.... Accessed 21 Apr. 2022.
 

McKenzie, Lindsay. "Cautious Optimism about Teaching STEM Online." Inside Higher Ed, 11 Mar. 2021, www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/03/11/faculty-still-harbor-concerns-abo.... Accessed 22 Apr. 2022.

Seaman, Jeff, and I. Elaine Allen. Teaching Online: STEM Education in the Time of COVID. Bay View Analytics, 2021. Independent research commissioned by The National Survey on the State of Online STEM Education 2021.