Enhancing Inclusive Instruction with Tracie Addy, Derek Dube, and Khadijah Mitchell

Tracie Addy, Derek Dube, and Khadijah Mitchell are authors of a new book called Enhancing Inclusive Instruction: Student Perspectives and Practical Approaches for Advancing Equity in Higher Education. It’s a sequel to their 2021 book, What Inclusive Instructors Do: Principles and Practices for Excellence in College Teaching, both from Routledge. 

In this episode, the three co-authors talk about the origins of the book series, the importance of hearing student voices when practicing inclusive teaching, and how someone like me, who has been practicing active learning instruction for a couple of decades, might want to reconsider a few of his teaching practices.

Episode Resources

·       Enhancing Inclusive Instruction: Student Perspectives and Practical Approaches for Advancing Equity in Higher Education (Routledge, 2024), https://www.routledge.com/Enhancing-Inclusive-Instruction-Student-Perspectives-and-Practical-App/Addy-Dube-Mitchell/p/book/9781642675719 

·       Book launch on February 27th, https://lafayette.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAtcuCtqDorE9KK1RnODlhWBBf4IsV7g9iR#/registration 

·       “A Tool to Advance Inclusive Teaching Efforts: The ‘Who’s in Class?’ Form,” Addy, Mitchell, & Dube, Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education (2021), https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jmbe.00183-21 

·       “The Development of the Protocol for Advancing Inclusive Teaching Efforts (PAITE),” Addy, Younas, Cetin, Rizk, Cham, Nwankpa, & Borzone, Journal of Educational Research and Practice (2022), https://ldr.lafayette.edu/concern/publications/q237ht28c 

·       Inclusive Teaching Visualization Project, https://inclusiveteachingvisualization.com/ 

·       Tomorrow’s Professor Today at UVA, https://cte.virginia.edu/programs/tomorrows-professor-today 

·       “What Really Matters for Instructors Implementing Equitable and Inclusive Teaching Approaches,” Addy, Reeves, Dube, & Mitchell, To Improve the Academy (2021), https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/tia/article/id/182/ 

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Transcript

Derek Bruff 0:05
Welcome to the Intentional Teaching, a podcast aimed at educators to help them develop foundational teaching skills and explore new ideas in teaching. I’m your host, Derek Bruff. I hope this podcast helps you be more intentional in how you teach and in how you develop as a teacher over time.

Tracie Addy has become aleading voice in higher education for the use of inclusive teaching practices. I’ve been following her work for a few years now, and when I saw that she and her co-authors have a new book out on inclusive teaching, I reached out to see if they could come on the podcast to talk about the project. The new book is called Enhancing Inclusive Instruction: Student Perspectives and Practical Approaches for Advancing Equity in Higher Education, and it’s a sequel to their 2021 book, What Inclusive Instructors Do: Principles and Practices for Excellence in College Teaching, both from Routledge. Tracie and her colleagues are throwing a virtual launch event for the new book on February 27, 2024. Stay tuned at the end of our conversation for details on that launch event, or just follow the link in the show notes.

But first, that conversation! Tracie Addy is associate dean of teaching and learning and director of the Center for the Integration of Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship at Lafayette College. Her co-authors on the new book are Derek Dube, associate professor of biology and director of the First Year Seminar Program at the University of St. Joseph, and Khadijah Mitchell, assistant professor in the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at Fox Chase Cancer Center at Temple University. We talk about the origins of the book series, the importance of hearing student voices when practicing inclusive teaching, and how someone like me, who has been practicing active learning instruction for a couple of decades, might want to reconsider a few of his teaching practices.

Thank you all for being here today to talk with me about your new book. I'm very excited about this conversation. Thanks. Thanks, all three of you for being here today. 

Derek Dube 2:01
Thank you. 

Tracie Addy 2:02
Absolutely.

Khadijah Mitchell
Thank you. 

Derek Bruff 2:03
Well, you all have a new book coming out this year called Enhancing Inclusive Instruction. And I gather it's a bit of a sequel to a previous book, What Inclusive Instructors Do. How did these two books come about? How did they come to be? 

Tracie Addy 2:18
That's a great question, Derek. So I'll take this one. And I just first want to start off by saying that I'm thankful for Derek and Khadijah for joining me in this journey for these two books. It probably wasn't something they were thinking about before I proposed them, but essentially several years ago, before we published What Inclusive Instructors Do, I had a lot of interest in thinking about how do we support instructors on inclusive teaching. And of course, as an educational developer who directs the center, I'm very keen on those questions where I'm like, how could we develop supports and resources and things like that?

At that time there wasn't as significant a push, I guess, around inclusive teaching in higher education as expanded to in the years after. And so we actually started with not a book but a research study. And that research study involved all of my colleagues here and a few others. And that particular study was really aimed at trying to address like thinking about barriers and challenges of instructors who are trying to do this good work, right on equity and inclusion. So that particular study, which is published in To Improve the Academy was kind of the beginnings of what evolved into our book stories, you know.

So when we looked at that particular data, all we collected so much different data in different ways. We basically found that there was a lot of rich information around what inclusive instructors do. And so it felt very natural to put it all together and just to create like that book that we never had. So I always explain it, like when I started teaching, if I had this book, how wonderful it would be. And actually a colleague just shared with me that they shared what inclusive instructors do to somebody who was new to teaching, and they were very inspired by it. And they had a great first teaching experience and whatnot. And we hear lots of wonderful stories like that.

So that book really is kind of a culmination of putting all that and synthesizing that together with my wonderful colleagues in a way that is very, I think, palatable for instructors. We embrace the data that we have from our study, the research, and we also add in some of our perspects. But it's holistic in that way. So it's what inclusive instructors do and all of the dimensions that we've added into that book.

So the next book, Enhancing Inclusive Instruction is really the student story. What Inclusive Instructors Do was, you know, kind of like the instructor story. So we thought, well, wouldn't it be really great to actually get more perspectives? I mean, who to better ask about inclusive environments than students, right? I mean, they really need to inform us about how we're doing this work. So then I propose that next the study right after, you know, What Inclusive Instructors do, what kind of kind of publishing and finished off.

And then we endeavored to try to do a similar thing where we got voices from student of students through survey, through interview, etc. It did take a little bit more effort to get the student voices, I'll say, than the instructor voices. But it was wonderful to do and it was wonderful to kind of see their thoughts. So that basically moved us into creating this book, which I think a lot of instructors will appreciate because it's really coming from students. And it's also and I know that Khadijah might talk about this a little bit more, some of my colleagues will talk about this more later in our conversation, but it also gets at questions that we couldn't ask with What Inclusive Instructors Do, because this is purely from students. 

And in addition, it gets more into observation and assessment of your practice in some emerging topics that just, you know, we could have addressed in What Inclusive Instructors Do, but it would probably get quite long. But we just, you know, it made sense to have another book. So those two books basically came about from that.

And I asked my colleagues to be part of this because of several reasons. Mallory is not part of this book, Mallory SoRelle, but she was part of the first book, but she was a colleague that I worked with, and she did a lot around inclusion at my college with me and like with especially with our new faculty. And I knew a lot of great things she was doing in her class. And then Khadijah, you know, worked with me at my current institution before she moved to Temple. And she I knew that she had been doing a lot of wonderful things, especially when thinking about creating, welcoming, etc., classrooms. I thought, you know what, awesome contributions, all of these folks would have. Derek's been a long time collaborator for years, and we worked together for a while, always doing really neat things in his class, thinking about active learning and all these kinds of things. So it seemed like a perfect opportunity to ask all the colleagues to actually come together and to write this really important work. And of course it informs our practice, it informs my work and informs others outside of our institutions as well, which is great. 

Derek Bruff 7:37
So I want to follow up on this notion of the student voice, a big a central part of the new book. You touched on this a little bit, Tracie, But but why is that student voice so important? And and what are some of the things that you learned from the students that maybe you didn't learn from their previous study talking to faculty? 

Khadijah Mitchell 7:58
You know, I think the thing that was important and things that emerged from the student surveys and we didn't see previously is maximizing engagement from the first assignment. So when you're thinking about inclusive course design, we all think about the type of syllabus and how we want to engage with students. But in fact, the students resoundingly said from the first assignment throughout the course and interestingly with the first assignment, and that they highlighted having a high degree of engagement but actually requiring little new mastery of content. And this is always a tradeoff right about the time that we spend in the classroom. So really relying on existing student knowledge. So the scaffolding, so that was very prevalent. And thinking about positive feedback, how they mentioned that from the first assignment that can trigger both short term and long term positive impacts on the student.

And a thing that is interesting that did not come out when we talk with our faculty colleagues is group work. And so we know that we use this throughout higher education as active learning strategy. And it's it's deeper learning and teamwork. And so everybody knows about the benefits of work from an instructor perspective. But the students, they thought that they appreciated group work that it was carried out throughout the life of a course and it could help with engagement. But several students talked about the pitfalls and in our previous book, we didn't have from the student perspective, pitfalls for these strategies. We all think we're doing great until we're not, right?

And so some of the things that the students thought, and this was very enlightening for us is, especially for neurodivergent students and students that have disability, is thinking about... it can be a challenge with group work, and particularly students that have autism spectrum disorder and thinking about how some other students that may have different challenges, such as those that would have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, they like group work, but they said that the composition was critical. So as an instructor, thinking about how you put together the groups, they mentioned that there actually was a classroom context where one of the students said they did not feel like the ADHD was a barrier because of the intentionality of the instructor with constructing their groups. And there are several tools that you can use for that. And there were students who didn't specify their disability, but they talked about the importance of the professor actively engaging with the groups. And so that was also very clear. So they said they felt supported and that that kept them on track and accountable. And I think that was really enlightening.

And a couple other things I'll highlight that came out in this book from the student voice is student choice. So this concept of the personalized learning. So they loved flexible deadlines, having individual preferences in assignments or exams so that that choice and also considering mental health needs. And I think the thing that was resounding is when we say disabilities, it's not just one type of disability and that needs to be accounted for when you're thinking about like designing the course from the student perspective, so they talked about thinking about learning disabilities, but also visual, physical and sensory disabilities. There's a lot of quotes and suggestions for what instructors can do. There is also from neurodivergent students. And so an example is there's a student in a wheelchair, I remember, and they said that every seat in the class sat in a different seat in that course and that really made that student feel welcome. And so I think that was really great.

And a couple other things from a student voice. I think we all have heard that knowing their names is important and that we saw in the first book. But what we saw come out in this book from their, from the students voice was using chosen names, was really, really important. 

Derek Bruff 12:08
Not necessarily the name on the roster you get from the registrar, but the student's chosen name. 

Khadijah Mitchell 12:13
Yes. They thought that was really important, they mentioned there were some instructors who did that, some instructors who did not. And so the power of chosen name.

And and finally telling jokes. So we know that is a double edged sword. So that many instructors use humor, right, in college and university classrooms. And so there's a lot of advocates for humor. But we saw that a pitfall to using jokes is that everyone in the room may not receive the joke in the same way. And some people could also be offended. So it was interesting in that way. There's something like, I love this instructor. They have the best jokes. I really feel welcome and has a great rapport for relationship building and there were some students that said I was very offended by some of the jokes. And so so those are things that we didn't expect but definitely helped with hearing from the students. 

Derek Bruff 13:08
Tracie and Derek, anything you want to add to that? 

Derek Dube 13:11
I mean, I'll talk a little bit more to some of these things probably a little bit later today when we talk about it, maybe talk a little bit about active learning and things like that. But I think, you know, the idea of student voice being an important is I kind of looked at, you know, this book and the study that led up to it almost as a report card for the book. So we were hearing from instructors on what they thought they were doing and how they were doing so well. But now we get to hear from the students and they're kind of being able to, you know, turn the tables a little bit from a common course and aid our work towards inclusive instruction. So it was kind of interesting to see. And as Khadijah mentioned, you know, see some of those pitfalls where instructors, you know, really were like, I'm killing it, I'm doing great. I'm I am you know, this I'm an inclusive instructor and this is why. And we saw that some students said, yeah, that's true. And we saw some other students say, well, that wasn't necessarily inclusive for me. And that was really interesting. 

Derek Bruff 14:11
So let's suppose let's, let's take someone like me, right? So I've been teaching now for a couple of decades and I have colleagues kind of in the same boat who maybe got interested in active learning instruction 10, 15, 20 years ago. And they've built it into their their course, right? It's a kind of regular part of my teaching, but I feel like I might have some blind spots because I think our understanding of students and their experiences as learners has changed in that time. And while kind of the instructional practices I adopted a decade ago might have been very thoughtful and effective at the time, we may know more now. So what kind of advice would you give to someone like me or someone in that boat about kind of maybe how to update their practices a little bit in light of what you're learning about the students' experience? 

Derek Dube 14:57
Yeah. So, I mean, the first thing I would do is I would, you know, applaud you or other instructors that are thinking about this and being thoughtful about it. You know, being willing to dive into active learning and aspects like that, there is research that shows active learning can have very positive outcomes, especially as opposed to exclusively a didactic lecture type course or things like that. It's more student centered and in the outcomes, the data shows the outcomes do improve. 

Further, again, that idea that, you know, as instructors, we're also lifelong learners. We have to be aware that we can learn more. There's more research being done, there's more being known, and the demographics, the experiences and our student population is constantly changing, right? It is not the student population today, as it was 15 years ago. So the strategies, while there's things we can learn from them, they have to evolve with our student population as well.

So I think, you know, with specifically thinking about active learning, I would say that while active learning, again, there's data out there that shows its benefits, not all active learning is created equal, right? So there can be good active learning and there can be bad active learning. And the idea is that, you know, hopefully you're being thoughtful about it as an instructor. You're thinking about what are my learning objectives, what do I want to get out of this? But then you're incorporating the who are my students, right? That's a really important point. It's not just what are my learning objectives, here's an activity that students can do to get there, but it's who are my students that I have in this cohort?

And so engaging with the students that you have, learning about the students that you have up front... In our first book, What Inclusive Instructors Do, one of the things that we shared there was was a form, a questionnaire called Who's in Class. That's something that could be used right at the beginning of class to get some basic aggregated information about your student population. And it comes anonymously. It's volunteer by the students, but it can let you know if students have the ability to purchase a textbook for your course. If students have the ability to bring a device to the course, whether it's a smartphone or a laptop or things like that, if a student is a first generation student, if a student has a different primary language... a bunch of these different tools, that all actually when you have a better feel for what looks like and what your student population looks like, you can better approach how to create those active learning environments that are going to actually support their learning.

Now, one of the other things that that came out and this kind of ties back to some of what Khadijah was speaking about earlier is that oftentimes with active learning, we're incorporating group work or not and thinking about what are those group dynamics? Am I letting students maybe have a choice of whether they're working on this independently, with a group, do they choose their group or do I form that group? You know, being aware of tokenizing individuals If if the diversity in your classroom is such that that could be an issue with a group where there's one person, Oh, I want to spread out all the people of this particular background, well, that's not always the best way to go because there's there are certain feelings and emotions that may come with a student feeling tokenized within a group.

So like Khadijah said, you know, places where student choice can be allowed within the active learning format is wonderful. You know, there were several students that said that they were allowed to choose whether they worked independently on this project or with peers and that allowed those that preferred to work with peers and that would benefit from that strategy to choose that strategy. Whereas those that might have reasons why an independent assignment is better, were able to work in that way.

Further, other things that students said that were really interesting along the lines of active learning, if we think about... and I know you have some background, Derek, in thinking about how do I like use interactive polling and student response systems and things like that. One really interesting quote from a student who identified as having a sensory disability was that there was this student pulling mechanism that was happening in class. And and they mentioned that and I'm going to quote them here. We were going to do a active learning participation activity with some polls like answering prompts, and the instructor shared them with her ahead of time so that she could put up her post-it sticker or whatever she was doing virtually so that she could have time to do it. And where in the class there was a moment to do it, she where she would not have felt comfortable. She was able to share her opinion that way. She didn't have the time crunch. She goes on to mention, was at her own pace.

So thinking about some of those things, how our students may not have the same pacing within active learning that we anticipate within a classroom are really important as well. So, you know, the take away message would be active learning can still be a great tool in the classroom. You know, we encourage instructors to to center their their learning in the classroom around students and active learning is a great way to do that. But like you said, to be thoughtful about what they're doing, to not just stick necessarily with something that worked three classes ago, three semesters ago, this semester too, but to incorporate who are my students? What are they going to benefit most from to create the best active learning environment that that you can? 

Derek Bruff 20:32
Well, And I think that student choice is such a huge piece of what you just said there, because I've been in situations where I'm teaching, you know, a roomful of students in a statistics course and I'm asking them to turn to their neighbor and talk about a polling question. And for some of them, it seemed to me in the past, they had never been asked to do something like that during a college class before. And so they aren't engaging in the peer discussion because they don't know how,  they feel uncomfortable. They think it's weird that Bruff is asking us to do this to begin with. Why doesn't he just, like, do some more problems at the board and I'll take notes, Like they're not used to active learning, but what I'm hearing from you is there may be a multitude of reasons why students aren't engaging in that kind of interaction. And yeah, maybe I need to encourage them to give it a try. If they've if they've not done it. But at some point to let them make the call like, is this something that I'm going to engage with regularly or am I, am I actually better, better served if I can just process by myself when one of these, you know, polling questions comes up? 

Derek Dube 21:35
Yeah, I think that's a great way to think about it. And, you know, as instructors, like, we want our students to grow, right? And one of the ways that they grow is when they are pushed a bit out of their comfort zone. So it's not to, you know, student choice doesn't mean necessarily always let them pick the easiest path for them, right? It means give them some options. If there's a challenging path, let's be ready to scaffold them to success in that, in that more challenging path for them. And again, one of the... what some of the students said a kind of across the board was they actually appreciated when there was diversity and variable means of instruction included. So, you know, yeah, today we're going to have you talk with your peers a little bit tomorrow. You know, we're going to do something that maybe has a little more of an independent bent. And if you choose, you know, maybe this can turn into a group project later on and a project where you have the choice of working in a group or working in a pair or working as an individual, but thinking about that scaffolding, thinking about that variety can be really important. 

Derek Bruff 22:36
Now, Derek, you mentioned getting to know the particular group of students that you have in front of you, and you mentioned a tool, the kind of who what do you got? Who are you? Who's out there? 

Derek Dube 22:46
Who's in class, who's in class. 

Derek Bruff 22:49
I was close. 

But I gather the new book also has some other kind of ways to think about how you might better understand your students, how you might hear your own students voices. Tracie, could you speak to that a little bit about kind of tools or processes for for for getting a better sense of who is in the class beyond that, beyond that survey? 

Tracie Addy 23:11
Yeah, sure. We do have a tool that's in the appendix of this book that really gets into kind of How's It Going? Like, how is the class going along with regards to your inclusive teaching approaches. So that's definitely included there.

Another tool that this book emphasizes because we're also moving into here, practice, like what are we doing in the class and getting feedback on that that can serve us to be better in terms of our instruction. Is the Protocol for Advancing Inclusive Teaching Efforts. So the PAITE and that's a protocol that's published, my group published it, and we've been using it actively in classrooms. We've done hundreds of observations with this particular tool. And this tool is really centered on different approaches that you can use in a classroom that are reliably observed and accounted for. And those approaches are with the whole goal of building an inclusive, equitable classroom environment.

And so one of the nice things that I hope readers will see in the book is that there is a lot of alignment between what the students say, and that's in the first parts of the book, and the types of behaviors that we're looking at in that protocol, the PAITE and then also things from what inclusive instructors. There's a lot of alignment, a lot of overlap. So that particular tool I think is a really great strategy or a really great instrument for instructors to get some feedback about how it's going along the way.

When we use this tool, I have some really interesting observations to see faculty in terms of how they see the data. They've never seen their classes that way, like the data represented their teaching in that way typically, an that's really interesting to them. When they also see that there are certain approaches that they might use more of. And I'm going to give you a couple of examples. This is stuff like growth mindset language right on there. There's things such as equitable participation, using diverse visuals and media, giving diverse examples as well as a lot of different science of learning things like assessing prior knowledge and all of that kind of thing. 

And so they get to kind of get a sense of the frequency of those particular instructional approaches in their classes. And that's really an interesting type of visualization to really think about teaching. And so in my work in educational development, we train students as partners on this tool. So I have student fellows who now learn how to use the tool. I use it in classrooms as well, and they can actually give this really rich and interesting information to instructors. And instructors can also use it as a tool to set goals, to make change, to get, you know, get feedback and  be observed and then, you know, see the changes so they can actually see that change in real time and also get a sense of how their students are responding to it by other means, like if they do these midterm assessments and things like that that give that more formative feedback.

So putting that all together in a package is a really great way for an instructor to kind of advance their efforts in many ways. And I'll say that instructors come into the tool with it for a variety of reasons. So first I mentioned there's the goal directed nature of it, right? Maybe I'm going to do more of this approach and I want to see change and I'll change and I'll move to the next class and I'll try to do that more. There's also just I just want to know, what am I doing? Like what kinds of inclusive teaching approaches am I doing? I just want to know.

And then sometimes instructors will actually want to take a deeper dive into different approaches. And we talk about this in the book of it where if I see that I'm trying to encourage equitable participation, maybe it's not as high as I would like, you know, but what does that mean? Like who's responding, How are they responding? So sometimes we'll also do subsequent kind of analyses and they'll use a different tool so that we'll actually get a deeper questions that they have as well. So this kind of gives them what I call it as a launching point. It kind of gives them that overview and they can take that information, they can make changes, but they can also go deeper right into specific areas that they really want to target.

I recommend everyone go to inclusive teaching visualization dot com. So that's inclusive teaching visualization dot com and that site has the PAITE and all the information about the PAITE. Anybody can try to do like the training and whatnot and try to learn it. There's a lot of different training materials and I recently just established a community for PAITE like a group. So you're always welcome. Anyone is always welcome to contact me. There is instant. This has been something used at other institutions as well. And so they've been using in a lot of their and various ways to support instructors on their inclusive teaching approach.

But that's the PAITE. And so that really gets us into figuring out monitoring, assessing and then using that as a reflective to on our practice once we're trying to do these particular approaches or just knowing what we just do kind of in general, what we do in our classes is.

Khadijah Mitchell 28:28
So I'd like to chime in on the with Tracie mentioned. So I actually have use PAITE in my classroom and I just want to share a little bit about that experience because it was actually very enlightening for me... and helpful. So I'm a very strategic thinker when it comes to the teaching.

So I spend a lot of time relationship building and using verbal affirmations, which are some of the dimensions of the PAITE. And I was starting a new laboratory and this teaching laboratory was a CURE, so a course based undergraduate research experience, and it was based off of my laboratory research, which is cancer genetics. So it's a little complicated in there, like genomics and all these fancy things that I thought, you know, but I knew they could do it. And I was really interested in thinking about equitable participation, right? Because sometimes that can be it can be a little daunting if you've never done research. And I was really interested in comprehension check because along the way... 

And so Tracy and her team came, they observed me and what I loved is that it was quantitative enough for me to see how much of my time was spent in these different areas so that I could go back and I was able to actually modify my teaching so I could be intentional about spending more time making sure that I had engaged every student. So they're in lab groups, but how do I make sure that all of them so I would go around and that was all in and different types of comprehension checks. So I would always do a recap at the beginning, but I started stopping more throughout along the way of the lab section and hearing back. So it was really helpful in that way and it helps me modify the course. So it didn't take a lot of time, right, once I knew where to focus the efforts on so so I thought that I would speak to that the benefits of PAITE. 

Derek Bruff 30:26
Yeah. And now I gather you need to have someone who is willing to come and observe your class and use the protocol. And so that speaks to something I've been thinking a lot about lately, which is the kind of culture of teaching at our institutions and at some places having... at many places, having a colleague come and watch you teach means that you're up for a promotion, tenure or reappointment, and they're there to make sure that you're not screwing things up. And that's not the most productive way to have a colleague visit your classroom. And so I guess, do you have advice for either individuals or maybe academic leaders who who might want to move to a place where, like using PAITE is actually more normalized to to help these efforts? 

Tracie Addy 31:17
Yeah, I think that's a really key question for us to think about. And I can actually share this from the context of my work because I work with departments and they work and I partner with them in an academy that's focused on inclusive teaching. So the PAITE is actually embedded within the framework of what they do. Most of the departments, some of them, it's other things too. It depends on their goals.

So the kinds of things that departments I think what I've seen it done really nicely is that oftentimes they're going to gather some data about their students to start. They're going to have some kind of awareness of some challenges that they might be facing in their courses. So maybe they do a climate study, maybe they do student focus groups. They get some various types of information. Maybe they're just motivated because they're like, this doesn't seem to be working based upon our individual classes and perceptions of what's going on ultimately overall. And so they want to make change in their they're really valuing that. So I think the first step that's really critical is that they value it and they take time to really see and understand where challenges could be facing their students and their teaching and then be intentional about the next steps.

So one of the things that I've been working on with our particular instructors in our departments now, because I have an academy focused for anybody because I want to make sure they have choice. They can come in even if their department doesn't, as well as one that's focused on departments and they have teams. And so in that team kind of model, we're thinking about creating this culture like this coming together and having discussions is huge. So this academy actually encourages that. But departments could also do that on their own, being very intentional about discussing these topics and issues and how do we want to actually go about addressing them as well.

That said, one of the things that I've also seen be very effective thinking about our next book is on student voice and students' perspectives. I also embed student pedagogical partners with the departments and they think about what are the students backgrounds that are most useful to get that feedback. And actually sometimes some of the student partners that we have and we hire in our center, they actually go back to their departments. They also tell them, you should try out this program or something like that. So that's also another kind of avenue in. And so those students along the way will give feedback. And so I would encourage departments to actually ask their students and also if they can have some students that can actually support them in thinking about their pedagogy even actively along the way and giving feedback. We always make sure the students are not in their current classes or anything. So there's no like weird power differential there.

So that's always something we make sure of, but that has been really helpful for departments to really think about the teaching that goes on and it empowers students and they already have voice, but it allows it to be heard right and in a way that can be meaningful and it can support departmental change.

So those steps in goal setting and coming together, having discussions, making changes and then, you know, incorporating things like PAITE or other types of tools to kind of get a sense of where you're at. And so some of the departments in the end will also collect information on all their different courses, and then they'll come back to the department and they'll present it and have a conversation there. So I think that is a... department is a really important unit where a lot of change can be made. They know their courses best, the types of things they're addressing and they can find out more with their students. So I would encourage that type of thing to happen.

And institutionally, absolutely, we need to value this, right? If we're going to have diverse students come into our classrooms as an institution, it should be clearly and part of our strategic plans that it's really embedded, that we have a culture of this and we're actually intentionally making sure that the students who come here thrive. So I would also just say that we need to definitely have larger conversations. This actually came out in some of our study. Sometimes the barriers where we don't talk about it, right? We don't have professional development around it. And that's the types of things that centers like mine can run to or they can get it from other places, right? Like this. There's a lot of knowledge out there right around how to do this work and even disciplinary kind of knowledge as well.

But those types of things I think are really critical and a commitment to doing it. And of course, it's really good if it's part of the reward system too, right? So if we can incorporate that in the reward system, we're demonstrating we value it right? We truly value inclusive teaching as... inclusive teaching is effective teaching. We should see that if instructors are getting evaluated for teaching as well. It's part of that package of effective teaching as well. So thinking about ways that this some this is more kind of embedded in our culture and how we do things I think is really critical.

But we need to talk about it. We need to be intentional about it. And there's so many obligations that instructors often have, right? Faculty members' teaching, research service, etc. There's a lot of balls to juggle, but we do also need to make some time for this, these things, because this is critical, right, for our students and to the missions of our institutions. 

Derek Bruff 36:49
I know there's a lot more we could unpack about this, but our time is nigh. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing a little bit of your book and behind the scenes. I really appreciate you taking the time today. 

Tracie Addy 37:02
Thank you so much. 

Derek Bruff 37:06
And would one of you want to say something very brief about the event later in February? 

Tracie Addy 37:10
So yeah, so we would love for anybody to come out to our book launch. It is going to be Tuesday, February 27th, from 2 to 3 p.m. Eastern Time, and it will be kind of a webinar style. The wonderful thing about our book too, is that you'll see that students were invited to write the foreword. They will be joining us for that particular book launch as well. This is about students perspectives, right? So we really do want to have their voices kind of amplified. So we would love for you to join us and hear more about the book. And we're excited of what it can do and what it will help, how it will help instructors think about their teaching. 

Derek Bruff 37:53
That's great. That's great. Again, thank you all. This has been really, really lovely. 

That was Tracie Addy from Lafayette College, Derek Dube from the University of St. Joseph, and Khadijah Mitchell from Temple University. Together they are the authors of the new book Enhancing Inclusive Instruction: Student Perspectives and Practical Approaches for Advancing Equity in Higher Education, out in March 2024 from Routledge. I always put a few links to relevant resources in my show notes, but you’ll find a bumper crop of episode resources in the show notes this time. That’s because Tracie and her colleagues are so good about publishing about their work! You’ll find links to the “Who’s in Class?” survey, the Inclusive Teaching Visualization Project, and more, including the February 27, 2024, book launch event. If you’re listening to this episode within a week or two of its release, it’s not too late to register for the book launch event!

Also, I have to give a shoutout to the Tomorrow’s Professor Today program at the University of Virginia. When I asked Derek Dube about his journey to become an educator, he said that that UVA program was instrumental in helping him become not just a researcher but a professor. My friends at the UVA Center for Teaching Excellence have been running that program for grad students and postdocs since 2005. That’s almost twenty years! There’s been some buzz online lately about the lack of teaching preparation for PhD students heading into faculty positions, but UVA’s been getting the job done for a long time now.

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association. In the show notes, you’ll find a link to the UPCEA website, where you can find out about their research, networking opportunities, and professional development offerings.

This episode of Intentional Teaching was produced and edited by me, Derek Bruff. See the show notes for links to my website, the Intentional Teaching newsletter, and my Patreon, where you can help support the show for just a few bucks a month. If you’ve found this or any episode of Intentional Teaching useful, would you consider sharing it with a colleague? That would mean a lot.

As always, thanks for listening.