Readings for Creating a Welcoming and Inclusive Learning Environment
Read articles, tip sheets, tutorials, IU expand courses, and more.
This survey provides a summary of students' experiences during Spring 2020, including challenges specific to online learning.
- Tanner, K. D. (2013). Structure matters: Twenty-one teaching strategies to promote student engagement and cultivate classroom equity. CBE Life Sciences Education, 12(3), 322-331.
This article introduces 21 practical strategies that you can use to give your students opportunities to think and talk about your content, encourage and manage participation, build an inclusive classroom community, monitor behavior to cultivate disciplinary thinking, and teach to all the students in your courses.
If you're teaching a course that is hybrid or fully online, then you can use this rubric to self-assess your courses and make your students' online learning experiences more equitable.
This article explores seven ways professors can help students thrive in class in times of trauma.
- Chapter 5: A Framework for UDL Implementation in the book Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice. by Meyer, Rose, and Gordon (2014). (You will need to create a free account with CAST to view the book for free.)
This book chapter introduces a framework for instructors to implement the principles of Universal Design for Learning
- Barnett, P. E. (2013). Unpacking Teachers' Invisible Knapsacks: Social Identity and Privilege in Higher Education. Liberal Education, 99(3), n3.
This articles builds on Peggy McIntosh's article on white privilege to consider how other identities may impact the experiences of students and instructors in higher education.
- Center for Urban Education Syllabus Review Guide (You will need to create a free account with CAST to view the book for free.)
This is an online inquiry tool for promoting racial and ethnic equity and equity-minded practice and ensuring that your syllabus reflects this appropriately.
This article provides recommendations for how to respond to racism, including specific language that instructors can use when facilitating a conversation with students.
Learn how to edit captions in Kaltura so that any student who is hearing-impaired, or those who may not be familiar with the jargon from your course, have access to accurate captions for your videos.
- Improving the Accessibility of your Canvas course through IU Expand
This course will help you improve the accessibility of your Canvas sites by showing you how to determine what areas you should consider for accessibility, what steps you need to take to make your course accessible, and how to test your Canvas site for accessibility.
- Creating an Accessible Syllabus using Microsoft Word course through IU Expand
This course demonstrates what steps you need to take to create an accessible syllabus using Microsoft Word. By completing this course, you will also learn about various features in Microsoft Word so that you can create other accessible documents.
The Universal Design Online Content Inspection Tool (UDOIT) is an accessibility auditing tool for Canvas. This website lists specific instructions for running a UDOIT scan in your Canvas sites.