How can I create an inclusive learning environment catering to student diversity in background and preparedness?

At Western, we have high number of ‘non-traditional’ students, including students who are the first in their family to attend university, from non-English speaking or low-SES backgrounds. The following strategies can assist students from these groups by making the often tacit expectations of university study more explicit, however all students are likely to benefit.

Strategies and Tips

Help your students gauge their own preparedness for undertaking the unit by setting up a pre-knowledge test on expected knowledge and skills. This might include information on literacy skills, mathematical knowledge or academic conventions around referencing and citation. Designing this as an online quiz also has the added benefit of allowing students to get familiar with vUWS in a way that is not connected to official assessment. Make sure that you include information on where they can receive support to develop these skills, either through online resources, or workshops through the Library or MESH. You might like to consult this page to explore how mathematics is used in various disciplines.

Explicitly teach students the about how to learn, especially the particular ways of thinking and learning in your discipline. One great way of doing this is to “think aloud” in class, modelling how you would think through a particular argument, problem or evaluate a resource. For more techniques on helping students understand how to think and learn check out this resource on the metacognition of learning.

Ensure that your learning guide and other unit documentation is written in plain English and that any university or discipline specific jargon is clarified. You may need to define terms such as “research report” or “analysis”.

Provide a glossary of commonly used terms specific to your discipline, so that students are able to quickly refer to essential terms that come up frequently. For university-specific jargon, direct students to this glossary.

Consider cultural days/events that occur during the teaching session and ensure assessments are not due to close to these. You can find a calendar of major religious and cultural events here.

Ensure class examples support an array of cultural and religious backgrounds and experiences

Practical Tip

The University of Newcastle Seahorse project: A YouTube channel for new students, covering literacy and study skills and academic concepts such as “description” and “analysis”.

List of common task words

Resource on metacognitive teaching strategies

Information on Universal Design for Learning strategies

Maths Checklist

Looking into deeper design

Spend time thinking about the academic and learning skills that students need to be successful in your unit, and consider how you can embed these alongside content. You may want to connect with the Library to develop tailored workshops or learning materials on the specific academic literacy or researching skills that are necessary for your unit, or MESH for workshops on maths. For example, if undertaking research is one of your unit learning outcomes, you could work with the library on creating a practical workshop where students learn to research using the online databases that are most relevant to your discipline.

Consider offering graded module activities that support varying levels of ability so that every student can be challenged