Re-examine your syllabus.

• Be mindful of your language in the syllabus. Ask a friend to read it. Does it have a welcoming tone or does it seem unapproachable? Include statements related to accessibility, sexual harassment, and other resources on campus.⁴
• Establish clear expectations and goals for the course and include them in the syllabus.⁷
• Prepare the syllabus early to allow students the option of beginning to read materials and work on assignments before the class begins and to allow adequate time to arrange for alternate formats, such as books on tape.³
• If you use a course textbook, put several copies on reserve in the library and include this information on the syllabus. Be mindful that course costs, including textbooks and lab costs, may be a financial strain for some students.⁹
• Incorporate flexibility in your assignment policies. For example, set a standard late policy that allows you three make-up days for the quarter (to use at once or over multiple assignments). Or drop the lowest assignment. If students have an outside conflict for health or personal reasons, this allows them some breathing room.
• Include a statement about your personal commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Diversify your learning strategies and improve your teaching practices.

• Expand your range of educational approaches. People learn in different ways, so use a variety of approaches and activities to engage your students. For example, use different active learning strategies such as think-pair-shares or case studies.⁷
• Facilitate group work and projects which allow for more points of entries than an instructor-focused lecture.⁵ But don’t assume that people know how to work well together. This is a skill that needs to be practiced, so make sure norms are in place for enabling all students to succeed and so that all students are able to contribute.⁶
• Encourage students to take advantage of on-campus tutoring and other academic assistance resources.¹
• Ask a colleague to
  • observe your teaching and provide feedback.¹
  • Participate in workshops or conferences to learn new teaching strategies. ¹

Set a learning objective around habits of mind or team-based skills.

• Consider non-technical learning objectives, such as, “Students will develop a growth mindset and seek out ways to incorporate feedback in improving their skills”; or, “Students will be able to work effectively with groups in which all members are active contributors.” Provide specific guidance and assessment on these skills throughout the course.

Consider your content.

• Incorporate diverse examples. These can be diverse in terms of application and diverse in terms of people. For example, if you are reading papers in your class, choose authors from different backgrounds and do an “Engineer Spotlight.”
• Include diverse characters in your examples. Use a culturally diverse selection of arbitrary names, and use stock photos and illustrations that reflect different races and genders in non-stereotyped roles.⁶
• In your examples, analogies, and contrasting cases, assess what assumptions you are making about the past experiences of your students. Are all students likely to be familiar with the example? Can you include multiple examples?

Students are learning from the moment they first interact with you and your course materials. Pay attention to your language to see what messages you are sending. Reflect on your assumptions about students. What unconscious bias or stereotypical notions do you hold about some student groups?¹ Research suggests that even non-content talk in a classroom can play a role in student engagement, success, and learning.² How can you leverage this to set the tone for an inclusive classroom and increased student learning?

Let students get to know you.

• Introduce yourself: who you are, what your journey has been like, and your own educational experiences. This can lead to an increased sense of “instructor immediacy” which has been found to correlate with perceived and effective learning.³
• Express your understanding that outside factors affect class performance and explicitly state your intent to foster an inclusive classroom. Share your pronouns and display slides showing your commitment to supporting students (for example: logos for a Safe Zone (LGBT+) and Supporting Survivors of Sexual Assault certifications).⁴

Get to know your students.

• Learn all your students’ names and use them. Only knowing some names can make other students feel excluded.⁵ To help you, set-up name tents so both you and their peers can learn each other’s
• Give students a way to share with you. For example, at the beginning of the course, you can ask students to email you to introduce themselves and share one of their core values,⁶ or you can send out a pre-course survey. In the survey, be sure to ask for any accommodations the students may need and for their preferred gender pronouns. At the end, leave space for students to tell you a bit about them, ie: “Anything else that you would like for me to know?”

Establish a course culture.

• Set the tone for the course by explicitly establishing classroom community and norms. You can have students do this as an opening activity, or you can explicitly state ground rules for peer interactions and class discussions (ie: students should work together and support one another’s learning; they should be open to differing points of view and avoid critiquing others’ experiences and name calling)^5,7.
• Consider in advance how you can handle sensitive issues or heated discussions that may arise so that you can use difficult moments as learning opportunities.³ Having a policy in place and some phrases to fall back on can help in the heat of the moment.
• Be open to feedback, and explicitly state this.
• Be clear about why you use the teaching strategies that you do and what your expectations are, such as that you want and expect everyone to learn⁵.
• Avoid using masculine pronouns for students¹, eg: instead of ‘Hey guys’ say ‘Hey folks’.

Examine your environment.

• Regularly go back to your class norms. Ask if these need to be changed or updated.
• Evaluate your course culture, and re-orient if necessary.
• Examine your physical space. Are there things that propagate a stereotype about your field and could be removed (ie: Star Trek posters)? Are there things you could add to make the space more welcoming to a diverse student body?⁶ Even if you don’t have a lot of say over your classroom, look around your office and other spaces where you will meet with students.
• Monitor your non-content talk. Address any microaggressions that are brought to your attention as soon as possible, including things you say and things other students or members of the teaching team have said⁸ (see also “Peer to Peer Inclusive Practices,” another document in this series).
• Accommodate students. Be compassionate and understanding of illnesses, religious holidays, and other stresses.¹

Check-in with your students.

• Give students a chance to express how outside events may be affecting them. You can give an anonymous quiz to see how students are feeling (think: pick an emoji on a PollEverywhere survey), or discuss significant outside events before digging into the material.⁴ As a student, it can help to know that you’re not the only one affected by these things.
• Reach out to students who have filed a disability accommodation form with you to see if their needs are being met.⁶
• Encourage your students. Tell them that you enjoy working with them and appreciate the hard work they are putting in.³
• Remind students about office hours and what they can be used for. Not all students will know what office hours are or what they can discuss with you, so give them clear direction about what you are there for.³

Give regular and timely feedback.

• Specific, timely, actionable feedback is a best practice in any class, and can help set expectations when you have a wide array of backgrounds. On a large project or assignment, for instance, allow students to turn in parts early and get feedback before the final project is due.⁷ That way, you can make sure students are focusing on the parts you really care about.
• If multiple students are struggling with part of a homework assignment or project, address the class as a whole so that other students are aware that ‘"they aren't the only one"
• When giving back exams, be explicit that this is an assessment of their work (not them!) at one point in time. Walk through the math of how students can still do well in the class and offer suggestions for changing study habits or getting additional feedback.⁶
• Ensure that resources and assistance provided in and out of class is available and accessible to everyone. ¹

Plan for regular cycles of assessment and feedback.

• Collect regular assessments from students using multiple methods. Not all of your assessment needs to come from high-stakes exams. For example, have students fill out exit tickets or take class-wide polls to see where students are in their grasp of a concept. Grade these for participation only.⁵
• Allow students to contribute through multiple outlets. Think about incorporating portfolios, group work, projects, and take home exams in addition to a standard exam format.⁷
• Provide multiple opportunities for students to practice a certain objective by giving regular assessments and the chance to incorporate feedback from the previous cycle.
• Communicate clear and consistent expectations for assignments. Consider posting grading rubrics with each assignment and refer to them as the due date approaches. This creates an evidence-based approach to grading and reduces potential for grades to be affected by unconscious bias.⁷

Encourage participation and contributions from all voices.

• Set the expectation that everyone will contribute and structure your activities and discussions so this can take place. Some great strategies can be found here https://www.lifescied.org/doi/full/10.1187/cbe.13-06-0115 and here https://diversity.arizona.edu/creating-inclusive-classrooms with a few examples mentioned below.
• Monitor your classroom to see which students are or are not participating. In some cases, it may even help to keep a tally. Facilitate discussions to encourage and hear from students you haven’t heard from yet.⁵
• Participation can be about more than just speaking up. Offer alternative ways to contribute to a discussion, such as submitting questions via note cards or through an online polling system.⁷
• Don’t immediately shut down ideas or responses. Even if something is wrong, ask follow-up questions or thank the student for sharing their idea. Immediately judging a response as incorrect or irrelevant can shut down the classroom discussion. Any misconceptions need to be addressed, but can be done at a later time.⁵
• Set ground rules for respectful interaction, for example, no interrupting, wait until three people talk to contribute again, etc. Be aware when a few students dominate class discussion.¹