Leveraging Your Learning Management System to Enhance Equity in Your Course

Amy Ort - University of Nebraska Lincoln

Center for Transformative Teaching

Outline

• CTT: Who we are & what DEI initiatives we’re working on
• Why target the Learning Management System (LMS)?
• Best practices for equity:
• Build connections
• Be consistent
• Grade equitably: Rubrics + anonymous grading
• Take-home Resources: Reviewing courses for equity

Center for Transformative Teaching

• Team of 14 Instructional Designers
• Individual consultations, programming, campus initiatives
• Our DEI work on multiple levels
• External resources: Workshops & web resources
• Internal processes: Reviewing team policies & hiring practices

Center for Transformative Teaching

​

• Our approach to working with faculty on DEI
• Good teaching = inclusive teaching
• Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility frame everything we do
• Find practices that enhance equity while making life easier for instructors

Why target the LMS?

​

​

LMS = software used to facilitate courses: like Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, D2L / Brightspace, etc.

• (Almost) everyone uses it
• In person, online, and hybrid
• Students report organization & work management as huge challenges
• Substantial help for neurodiverse & underrepresented students
• Using it well saves time & energy
• Specific, practical solutions
• Target faculty otherwise disinterested in inclusive teaching

Low cost, high impact strategy!

1. Building connections with students

Who do you want your students to think you are?

• One of the most important factors in whether students continue their education
• Particularly important for students from underrepresented backgrounds & 1st generation
• Think about your tone and presence in everything you do
• Use a survey to learn about them

2. Consistency is key

​

​

(Or: Your course is not as intuitive as you think it is)

• Make an Overview video the first thing on the home page
• Repeating structure across all sections of your course
• Each unit: Learn, Connect, Demonstrate
• Put due dates on everything
• Students, especially neurodivergent ones, rely heavily on the LMS to-do list
• Use the LMS gradebook for everything: think of it as being as much for students as you!
• Weight it appropriately

All of this saves emails (read: time) and improves student success & equity

3. Grade Equitably

• When teachers expect students to succeed, they act differently & students perform better (Center for American Progress, 2014)
• Most LMS’s have settings to help
• Rubrics help explain standards to students & make grading more consistent
• Anonymous grading can decrease the impact of implicit bias
• Use instructor feedback to support students
• ‘Wise’ feedback: “I am giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them” (Yeager et al., 2014)

​

​

Reviewing your course through an equity lens

Why are we reluctant to have other instructors look at our courses?

• Doing course ‘Peer Review’ helps notice potential challenges
• Other instructor acts as ‘new student’
• Without any instruction, can they find important things?
• Normalizes treating teaching like other scholarly activity
• Learn that others have the same challenges as you
• And: Sometimes they’ll have solutions!

Activity #1

Scavenger Hunt

​

Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13AdxNMkzaeHEqYkUexX-zmOfvUhbSltjJ4e4Yu9KwGw/copy?usp=sharing

​

1. Swap courses with another instructor (bonus points if they’re in a different discipline!)
1. Or find someone that’s unfamiliar with your LMS!
2. Don’t share any information ahead of time - remember, they’re like a new student!
3. Have them try to find / think about the things in the Scavenger Hunt
4. Debrief

​

Activity #2

Course Reflection

​

Less ‘formal’ and intimidating than most rubrics

​

Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L8EafNzN31nd3-J9unL7H_og2wF1btxxpCMgfvLFkoU/copy?usp=sharing

​

• Reflect on your course
• Individually work through the reflection doc
• Deep dive into the choices you made when developing your course
1. Or maybe, that someone else made and gave you!

Feel free to share them with anyone!

(But if you make them better, send them back!)

Contact Info

• Amy Ort - Instructional Designer at the University of Nebraska Lincoln
• aort@unl.edu; 402-472-2596
• Center for Transformative Teaching: https://teaching.unl.edu/

​

Thanks for coming! Any questions?

​

The University of Nebraska does not discriminate based upon any protected status. Please see go.unl.edu/nondiscrimination