Inclusive design and delivery
An inclusive curriculum is ‘one where all students’ entitlement to access and participation in a course is anticipated and taken into account’.
Morgan and Houghton (2022)
‘The process of developing, designing, and delivering programmes of study to minimise the barriers that students, regardless of educational, dispositional, circumstantial, or cultural background, may face in accessing and engaging with the curriculum.’
Thomas and May (2020)
Inclusive design and delivery of teaching is an anticipatory adjustment insofar as it obviates or minimises the need for individual reasonable adjustments. By anticipating the diverse needs of students, inclusive teaching removes barriers to participation and avoids the stigmatisation of students, who no longer need to request such adjustments.
Only got five minutes? Check out these examples of inclusive delivery
- Provide clear, advanced information about the class format
- Use a mixture of teaching strategies and activities
- Provide class materials in a visually clear and customisable format
- Distinguish between essential and desirable items on reading lists
- Use microphones where available
- Repeat students’ questions clearly for other students to hear
- Use lecture capture technology
- Minimise the use of unnecessary cultural references
- Avoid making generalisations about students (e.g., remember mature students)
- Enable students to meet with staff in an accessible locations
Using technology in an inclusive manner
The University’s Digital Accessibility Adviser has designed an Introductory Course for Digital Accessibility that covers topics such as formats, fonts, colours, graphics and closed captions.
Learn more about digital accessibility here (Digital Accessibility Adviser):
Student Services has designed a Disability Awareness and Inclusive Practice training course for staff (on Moodle) that includes information about disability types and requirements. The University’s study support toolkit, compiled by the Disability Advisers, provides a list study support tools and applications, ranging from ‘no tech’ to ‘low tech’ and ‘high tech’, that students may wish to consider using.
Learn more about ‘How Microsoft Teams can support inclusive teaching’ here (IT Services):
Want to know more about how to use technology inclusively?
- Read the Disabled Students’ Commission report entitled Exploring the use of automated captioning and its impact on disabled students in higher education.
- Professor John Traxler reflect on whether education technology has been developed from a White, Western, Male perspective?
Facilitating effective group work
Research suggests that allowing students to work in randomly allocated groups, or groups that provide an opportunity to work amongst a diverse range of students, has a positive impact. The University of Plymouth’s 7 Steps to: Using group work in teaching provides ideas for facilitating positive group work, including setting clear expectations and thinking carefully about group size and composition.
Wellbeing and belonging
A report has shown that a sense of ‘belonging’ at university has an important impact on student wellbeing. The survey of over 5,000 students, carried out in November 2021, explored students’ experiences and perceptions of how they settled into university, whether they felt their course and university was inclusive, whether they engaged in extra-curricular activities, their academic confidence, and their connections with peers and tutors in the academic sphere.
Key findings include:
- two-thirds of respondents agree that they feel a sense of belonging at their university.
- just under one in ten (9%) say they do not feel they belong.
- students who do not feel they belong at university are more likely to say they do not feel settled, that their course or university is not inclusive, and that they do not feel a sense of connectedness on their course, and they are more likely to report low academic confidence, or “imposter syndrome”, and loneliness.
For more information, see ‘Belonging inclusion and mental health are all connected‘ on the WonkHE website.
Resources
Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Safety (IDEAS) in the curriculum guide – offers some suggestions for teaching staff in designing modules, crafting lectures, running field courses, and engaging with difficult conversations about race, power, and privilege. (Developed by the School of Geography and Sustainable Development).
