Be explicit in all aspects of your teaching. Telling students how they can address you, clarifying the learning aims and outcomes and articulating class structure is all part of inclusive practice.
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- Clearly articulate the purpose, aims and expected outcomes of the class or e-learning resources. For embedded classes or resources, these should reflect the unit objectives. The Research Skills Development (RSD) framework (Willison and O'Regan, 2006, 2016) can be useful when articulating and scaffolding these objectives.
- At the beginning of each class, it is a good idea to give a brief outline of the structure and expectations for the session so that you make your expectations about student-participation in your class explicit. Students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, in particular, can have different expectations of how classes will run, so it's important to articulate your expectations.
- Students have varied understandings of what to expect and how to behave in the classroom and clarifying expectations reduces anxiety and encourages participation.
- In zoom, it is particularly important to be clear to students about the value of their contributions as well your expectations about how they can contribute. Consider whether it’s best to use breakout rooms, the chat function, the ‘raise hand’ function, and then be explicit about the format.
- Be consistent with terminology and make links between topics/parts of the lesson clear through ‘signposting’.*
*Signposting is language which helps learners navigate though the lesson more easily. It can indicate the kind of information being discussed (is this an important point, a divergence, or an example), transitions between topics, and how ideas are related. Examples could be ‘This is a key point’, ‘This is an example of...’, or ‘This relates to…’
Whilst useful for all learners, this is particularly useful for neurodiverse students and students with mental health concerns who may have trouble with concentration, memory, or processing information.
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Scrutinise what assumed knowledge is reasonable, for first-year cohorts in particular, and take time to explain the basics.
There are a lot of subtle ways where we can unintentionally 'other' people – making people feel like 'others' – by any kind of assumption that the students that are in our class have the same knowledge that we have, or came into being a student the same pathway we did. – Library staff member
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- Take the time to explain jargon as many students have never encountered such terms before. Examples of terms and concepts not widely understood outside academic environments may include: peer review, academic literature, scholarly literature, primary and secondary sources, academic journals, scholarly databases, critical thinking, argumentation, contention, and so on.
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Design classes so that they involve active learning.
Active Learning means that students are actively engaging with and thinking about the learning material through tasks or discussion, as opposed to passively listening or reading. This increases critical thinking skills and improves retention and student motivation (Prince, 2004).
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- Examples of active learning activities include brainstorming, case studies, debating/discussion, peer feedback, quizzes or polls, and jigsaw activities. For zoom examples see Active Learning for Your Online Classroom: Five Strategies Using Zoom and scroll down to 'Active learning strategies'.
- Students with less confidence or who are more introverted, for example, may be uncomfortable contributing to a whole-class discussion - working in pairs might provide them with a way to get involved and share their ideas that is less intimidating. You could use a 'Think, Pair, Share' structure, for example. In a class about using the library search, you could give students two minutes to write a list of keywords they would search for ('Think'), then give them five minutes to talk about that list with the person next to them ('Pair'). Then you can ask for volunteers to 'Share' with the whole room. This structure also gives students who have learned English later in life enough time to think about and articulate their answers in English.
- Explore ways of making the most of the teaching space. If there are large whiteboards around the room, for example, they might provide a way to get students active during group work.
- Find ways to make database and software demonstrations interactive, to keep students involved and engaged. When demonstrating the use of Search, for example, consider having students volunteer topics or keywords - then get them involved in finding and combining search terms (as in the 'Think, Pair, Share' example above). Alternatively, ask the students to perform their own search on topics relevant to them, then ask them to discuss the problems they encountered in pairs.
Find out more about Active Learning
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Scaffold students’ learning, so that it gradually introduces and progresses their knowledge and skills.
A 'scaffolded learning' approach begins by providing students with a support structure or framework that is gradually removed as they become more independent (Devlin et al., 2012). This technique helps to alleviate the frustration and discouragement students can feel when encountering new and difficult concepts.
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- Break up complex concepts or skills into smaller tasks, giving students time to practice and give feedback at each stage of the lesson.
- The Research Skills Development (RSD) framework was designed for this purpose - to scaffold the different aspects of skills development - and can be a very useful tool when teaching research and learning skills and progressing students/researchers to greater levels of autonomy (Willison & O'Regan, 2006, 2016).
- Articulate complex concepts in multiple ways. This may involve rephrasing key concepts or using visual aids or images to represent them differently.
- Create vocabulary or concept guides for specific topics and give students a chance to look this over before and after class. This is particularly useful for students who have English as an additional language.
- Begin with a simple task, followed by learning tasks of increasing complexity. Using Bloom's taxonomy can help with this.
- Model the task for students. This involves working through the task yourself, whilst verbalising what you are doing and why you are doing it, including any mistakes you may make along the way.
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