Project: CLAS Inclusive Pedagogy
Team Members and Partners: Amanda Beyer-Purvis, Tim Stalker, Richard Allen, Sean Morris
About: The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS), Office of Inclusive Excellence in STEM, had a variety of affiliations and projects with a unified theme of inclusive pedagogy in STEM. Projects in development included Canvas courses and workshops for staff and faculty.
Goal: The aim of this project was to assess the CLAS current projects and extend their projects in the digital educational space.
Role: Instructional Designer
Technology used: Canva (wireframe), Drupal, HTML
Analysis: An initial meeting was set up with Dr. Amanda Beyer-Purvis and Dr. Sean Morris to discuss the Department’s current projects and goals, how the projects are implemented (target audience, requirements, marketing, etc.), instructional content of workshops, future goals, and barriers for faculty and staff. After discussing several solutions, we found that limited time for staff to participate in workshops arose as a barrier and decided to develop a web-based micro-course with resources (including a course shell). I gathered material from Amanda that she wanted to be included in the micro-course, and then searched for additional resources (such as videos) that could be supplementary. We identified that the target audience for this would be faculty and staff, who ultimately would participate in the intensive inclusive pedagogy workshop. However, she did not want to limit the audience.
Design: Before developing, I researched methods to host the micro-course, including Canvas and platforms with discussion board and/or RSS capabilities. Although Canvas had discussion board capabilities, it was a closed-forum, individuals would have to be affiliated with the University and sign up for the course, and due to the asynchronous nature, participation in the discussion board may not have been fruitful. I researched websites with discussion boards, as well as creating a Community of Practice via messenger apps (Slack, Discord, etc.), but there were security and administrative management challenges to this. We discussed setting up a meeting with the University’s Webmaster (Tim Stalker) to ask if I could develop a page. A wireframe was developed to show the solution that I proposed to Amanda. After approval, a meeting was scheduled with Tim to discuss if I could create a webpage from the University system.
Development: Once accessed was granted, Tim and I set up a meeting to review the site (Drupal). I tested the functionality and began to develop with periodic check-ins with Amanda. Content and resources that were gathered added, along with additional resources that were found.
Implementation: A final review of the mini-course was conducted. Amanda presented the mini-course in a meeting with key stakeholders and received approval. Webpage was launched and is now managed by Amanda. Final screenshots below.
Additional resources were developed, including a Canvas shell that instructors can edit (contains information about how to create an inclusive course) and a how-to guide for the Canvas shell. .
Result:
- Micro-course webpage
- Canvas shell – Must enroll to view (includes information and examples about developing an inclusive course)
- How-to use Canvas shell guide
