4.2 Engaging Students in Advancing Equitable and Inclusive Teaching

Sania Hameed, Special Projects Officer, Teaching Initiatives, OVPIUE,  Jessica Dere, Associate Professor, Teaching Stream and Associate Chair Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, Psychology, University of TorontoScarborough, Sanja Hinić-Frlog, Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, Biology and Interim Associate Dean, Teaching & Learning, University of Toronto Mississauga, JudithPoë,Professor Emerita, Olivier St-Cyr, Associate Professor, Teaching Stream and the Associate Dean, Teaching and Learning, Faculty of Information, Rebecca Laposa, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, Pharmacology and Toxicology, Temerty Faculty of Medicine

This roundtable session brings together a group of instructors working on LEAF+ funded projects focused on advancing equitable and inclusive teaching in order to share some of the insights, models and resources that emerged from their projects. This session will focus specifically on how instructors engaged undergraduate students to foster student-centered innovation while advancing equitable and inclusive teaching objectives.

This student engagement takes multiple forms across the projects including students collaborating with curriculum and EDI committees within an academic unit, engaging in critical reflection on discipline-specific assumptions and controversies, contributing to the development of a resource repository, and assessing the usability of a tool. This approach to equitable and inclusive teaching that centers student engagement serves to empower students in the learning process, as students actively contribute to developing a classroom culture that values inclusivity and diversity, and that not only enhances their own growth and understanding but also serves to support their peers.

This session will offer participants a range of examples of student engagement modalities in equitable and inclusive teaching-focused projects, an overview of the benefits and challenges of each modality, resources that can be adapted to future participant projects, and space for shared discussion on how to deepen student engagement while advancing equity in teaching and learning. While this session is focused on course instructors, the resources and lessons learned may be of broader interest to librarians, staff that support instructors and courses and academic administrators aiming to advance equitable and inclusive teaching in their units.