The Office for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning at the University of Rhode Island hosted 200 faculty from around the world to learn more about inclusivity at their first Innovative Education Conference on March 27.
This all-day event focused on how to engage college students, with 30 presentations and 15 posters on the topic of inclusive teaching. Some topics included artificial intelligence, disability, anxiety, virtual and asynchronous learning, first generation students and faculty community and wellness.
About 40 faculty from URI and other universities and colleges made presentations at the event. This event was in person as well as online, and offered a mix for an asynchronous option.
Christopher Lavan, the associate vice provost for the Office of Advancement of Teaching and Learning, and Todd Dresser, the associate director for the Office of Advancement of Teaching and Learning, were co-chairs of this year’s event, and chose this theme in light of public universities around the country shutting down diversity, equity and inclusion programs, Laven said.
“We wanted to be a safe haven,” Lavan said.
He wanted this to be a place where faculty can talk about and learn how to make education inclusive, Lavan said, In Rhode Island, there have been no laws or regulations surrounding equity and diversity in education, and so this can be a welcoming space for this topic
The keynote, “Creating Inclusive and Welcoming Classroom Environments,” featured professors Kelly Hogan from Duke University and Viji Sathy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They talked about how structured active learning classrooms can help further equality within the classroom.
They recently published a book titled “Inclusive Teaching: Strategies for Promoting Equity in the College Classroom,” which new faculty received a copy of.
Active learning classrooms apply activities that allow students to work through the lessons and their own knowledge on different subjects, through experimentation on their own as well as in groups, according to the University of California at Santa Barbara.
This also includes a welcoming and friendly environment to encourage equality in learning. Active learning classrooms encourage student participation and allow students to think about the lessons more so than typical classroom settings.
This event had five established conference tracks focusing on different elements of an inclusive and modern classroom: Learning Approaches to Blended and Online Learning, Effective Strategies for Assessment and Measuring Student Learning, Teaching and Technology in Artificial Intelligence, Supporting Faculty Wellness and Wellbeing, and Fostering Inclusivity in the Physical and Online Classroom Environment.
In each section of the workshop, one or more of these topics were present. Many of them had a focus in helping students in STEM fields specifically.
Laven and Dresser felt this event was an initial success, and were excited about the opportunity to host URI faculty and use technology to host faculty from around the world for their flagship conference. He added that Elizabeth-Ann Viscione, a graduate student, helped with a lot of the marketing for this event.
“We thought about the motto [of the University], ‘Think Big,’” Lavan said.
If you want to learn more about how the University is planning to encourage diversity within education and support students, you can visit the website for the Office for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning at https://web.uri.edu/atl/ .