1. Equitable Teaching
1.1. How many people constantly use reflexive scans? Will overloaded teachers make time for themselves to reflect? (Odmaa)
1.1.1. Is there any mandatory self-assessment or tools that support educators' behavioral, mental, or hidden logic to be addressed and remind them to keep in some levels? (Odmaa)
1.2. How can we support the ability to unlearn? (Odmaa)
1.2.1. What could trigger one to realize that they must unlearn and relearn something new? (Odmaa)
1.3. However, I struggle to fully understand her bullet point regarding the pace of self-development. In the article, she says, "Self-development is a marathon, not a sprint," and yet she also says, "To do this self-learning, we must cultivate a radical growth mindset." I'm not sure if she wants to pursue this radical path or not. If she believes that building critical awareness and becoming an equitable teacher would take time and effort, why does she advocate for a radical mindset? (Won)
1.3.1. I'm also intrigued by the racial literacy training session she mentions, and some incidents run through my mind. The question is, how can we protect instructors against discrimination? When I was an undergrad, I took a math class with an Asian lecturer, and I saw that some white students were sarcastic about his English pronunciation and did chinky eyes in the back of the classroom. He did not know what to do at the time. In this regard, teachers must also be trained in order to avoid future tension. As such, Dr. Stevenson's CLCBE model is an extremely valuable tool to protect ourselves and our students in challenging situations. (Won)
1.4. I agree that “this entire conversation hinges on our awareness of our socialized beliefs and ways of thinking (or “invisible logics”), and the implicit biases they form within us.” When discussing something inherently political, social, historical, or psychological, I can see where socialized beliefs come into play directly. However, how does this play out in science and math? I’m curious to hear from classmates about ways, specifically in those domains, that implicit bias has affected a learning engagement. (Salvo)
1.5. Ravitch talks about doing reflexive scans as a way for teachers to understand and challenge their own invisible logic. “I do these scans frequently—in classes, meetings, and events—because I find them valuable for my own self-awareness and generative to identity-based self-learning. Plus, by doing this work ourselves, and then sharing our learnings and outcomes with our students, we are modeling the importance of this self-reflection and creating space for them to do the same. I encourage students to do these scans intensively at the start of new group experiences or projects.” (Ravitch, 2021) (Fikayo)
1.5.1. I am curious, how can teachers challenge themselves and students to be able to do these scans effectively? What informs the scans? How do they know when they encounter a problematic “logic” and how do they go about unweaving it? (Fikayo)
1.5.1.1. In general, I am curious about how we can create space and enough time in courses that are not about exploring inequities to fully engage with and tackle the biases existing within students and professors alike in a way that is impactful and changes the way we interact in the world. In a feedback session I participated in, students cited that although they were happy that the professor regularly brings up topics that are not usually discussed such as sexism, rape, racism, etc they felt the professor didn’t address them adequately and they were typically left feeling more hurt. How can we avoid instances like this? (Fikayo)
2. Critical Digital Pedagogy
2.1. How can we drive a change so that universities care more about hiring teachers and not just great researchers, or at least reward / require that their professors are engaged in their teaching? (Daniel)
2.1.1. As long as tenure is in place, do we think it's realistic that professors will adopt these new effective strategies? (Daniel)
2.1.1.1. And whose job is it to drive such large systematic changes? (Daniel)
2.2. My questions here are regarding teacher preparedness. Are there techniques and/or skills that educators must familiarize themselves with to practice critical pedagogy? Are there training programs that the institutions must make standardized among all educators? And should critical pedagogy be encouraged on an institutional level? (Aakansha)
2.3. How to replicate the inmate in-person learning in an online environment? How to provide equitable learning in a hybrid mode? How to conduct the first meeting to set a good tone in an online class? (Paul)
2.4. I must admit that critical theory, in the second sense to which the author alludes (”as in literary criticism and critique, providing definitions and interpretation”) has always been difficult for me to fully wrap my head around. I have pretty pragmatic sensibilities, so even when I agree about principles (which I do in this case about pedagogy), I scratch my head a bit when it comes to what, specifically, this kind of pedagogy looks like in practice. For my learning style here, whatever it’s worth, I feel like I’d benefit quite a bit from case studies. I’d love to see examples of “here’s a situation that was causing friction,” “here’s how we adapted the classroom dynamic,” and “here’s the change in behavior/learning that we observed.” Something like that. (Salvo)
2.5. what does the author mean when they say “It is not that education is without content altogether, but that its content is co-constructed as part of and not in advance of the learning.” (Fikayo)
3. Trauma-informed Pedagogy
3.1. Students expect institutions to provide advanced services, specialized care, and individual support. However, in many instances, student support services need to be improved. (Stacy)
3.1.1. Too many students struggle to meet academic standards, become frustrated, and suspend their studies. (Stacy)
3.2. I still feel urge to cover all important materials I have prepared for every class session, and every time I realize I am "over prepared" because I always run out of time. (Paul)
3.3. Should strategies to promote resilience and mental health be mandatory for every instructor to incorporate into their syllabus? (Nikisha)
3.4. Should "spotting warning signs" be a part of instructional training? (Ruihan)
3.5. What if offering institutional support is a stressor for students suffering from trauma? In that case, how to achieve the same caring effect more discretely? (Ruihan)
3.6. how can we ensure that the activity we conduct or help that we provide would not violate their privacy or overstep the boundaries? (Ambika)
3.7. How can instructors around the world notice that prioritizing mental health in a classroom is of grave need? (Nikisha)
3.8. What can we as learning experience designers do to inform them about the repercussions of not prioritizing mental health on student learning? (Nikisha)
4. Student Engagement
4.1. If, and how, teachers should be clear when divergent thinking is “okay” in certain actives and discussions vs times when more “accurate” information is required? (Daniel)
4.1.1. Maybe making this distinction could help students become more comfortable sharing divergent and perhaps inaccurate thoughts without being worried about it affecting grades? (Daniel)
4.2. Do structured interactions work in all classrooms despite the classroom size? (Ruihan)
4.2.1. To ensure structured interactions, is the lecture-seminar structure the ultimate solution? (Ruihan)
4.3. One of the categories discussed is that instructors should encourage, demand, and actively manage the participation of all students. My main question is: what does the author mean when he asks educators to "demand"? Suppose we have students who are unwilling to participate and are not interested in the subject in our classroom environment. Do we have the right as educators to demand from them active participation, and what if these students are referred to as sensitive student groups? (Aysu)
4.3.1. What should we do in the case that our students are playing video games in our class? How do we intervene? If we, as lecturers, face this type of situation, how do we act? Is there a set of rules or teaching strategies that help us understand and intervene? (Aysu)
4.3.2. This is the main dilemma in my mind. Although we should intervene, students are disassociating and not active in class because they do not want to be there, and intervening is against their rights of not wanting to engage or participate. However, if we do not intervene, we slack on our job as lecturers. What is the right way to proceed? (Aysu)
4.4. Overall, I believe her objective for student engagement is to give students an equal voice. However, should we force every single student to say their opinion during class? If some students do not fully understand the class contents and need self-study time to wrap up the idea, I would not push them to voice their opinion. When learners lack understanding about the course and are called at random (Strategy 7), they may freak out in the crowd audiences. (Won)
4.5. The reading passage also mentioned the spotlight report on pedagogy developed by CNDLS using the Climate Data Survey data saying that, “many students are feeling excluded from the full educational experience, and that in particular we’re seeing dramatic differences along dimensions of race and first generation status.” Is there any practical suggestion that can be implemented among the students? Because, I feel like the professor is not the stakeholders that are responsible to ensure the success of the inclusive learning experiences in the classroom. (Ambika)
4.6. Out of all the 21 principles mentioned in this article, I can’t think of a single one being applied at my school. Despite this, there were students who did well and those who didn’t do well. I wonder why that is the case? (Pulkit)
4.7. A lot of these principles can be completely ignored and the class can be engaged while learning happens. I have watched hours and hours of lectures on YouTube where I’ve learned a lot, and I’ve also attended classes which were engaging but felt like a waste of time. (Pulkit)
4.8. This issue of encouraging asking questions got me thinking about the “planning fallacy” in social psychology, about which I recently learned. Essentially, there’s evidence that when other people know your self-estimation of ability, you tend to overestimate your ability. In other words, when people are observing, you are more likely to present a version of yourself that seems more capable than you are. Whereas when you estimate anonymously, you are more likely to provide a lower, more accurate estimate of your ability. (Salvo)
4.8.1. All this gets at a thought — how can we not only encourage everyone to participate but also remove possible negative effects of social pressure of learning? Specifically, how do we encourage people to ask those earnest questions that often begin with, “This may sound like a dumb question but...”? (Salvo)
4.9. “With hand raising, the instructor can also be explicit about asking for “hands from those of us who haven't had a chance yet to share” and strive to cultivate a classroom conversation that goes beyond a few students in the front row.” (Tanner, 2013) I am conflicted about this technique as there are many reasons why students do not put their hands up and I feel there is potential for this phrasing to put pressure on students who are typically quiet. How can hand-raising be used in a way that doesn’t make quiet or shy students feel like they are being singled out? (Fikayo)
4.9.1. “Multiple voices to respond to any question posed during class time (Allen and Tanner, 2002 blue right-pointing triangle). Instructors can set the stage for this by asserting, “I’m going to pose a question, and I’d like to see at least three hands of colleagues here who would share their ideas. I won't hear from anyone until I’ve got those three volunteers.” (Tanner, 2013) How can we engage students who are nonverbal? (Fikayo)
4.10. All students are entitled to speak out in the classroom, but it's not easy to do that. A passive student may feel uncomfortable sharing a point of view that others have not thought of. in order to create a safe environment where everyone can participate, teachers must have the strengths of students with various backgrounds and abilities and a wide range of participation tools. (Dayea)
5. Classroom Equity
5.1. With the educational technology that we have today, why don’t more instructors adopt other ways to encourage and demand participation instead of just relying on the old-school “speak up” approach? (Daniel)
5.2. What might learning design look like if we created self-assessments for our own values/standards as designers? (Hannah)
5.3. How to make students feel more identified with learning and immersive learning is the direction we can study in the future. (Tingjie)
5.3.1. In particular, how to use technology to enable students to experience different learning environments in one location is one of the core propositions of high-tech education. (Tingjie)
5.4. While many of Tanner's solutions involved active learning strategies, how do we encompass all students in a hybrid learning situation, where internet lagging and professors missing questions in the chat can isolate those students who are online? (Kathleen)
6. Inclusive Teaching
6.1. How can we make professors care enough about teaching to want to adopt these strategies? Or, if we don’t want to focus on professors’ motivations, is there a way in which we can force professors to adopt these strategies? (Daniel)
6.2. Structure-wise, should academic belonging happen before the official start of course materials (in other words, should a class begin after belongingness is already formed,) or should the forming of academic belonging and learning happen simultaneously? (Ruihan)
6.2.1. Can academic belonging be achieved solely in classroom time? Or must instructional designers plan non-classroom time (i.e., individual meetings, office hours, extra-curricular activities) to achieve the effect? (Ruihan)