Since 2013 I have embedded principles of equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility in my teaching practices and research projects. As a person who has experienced marginalization due to my ethnicity, gender and social class, it is of paramount importance to me to provide safe spaces for my students. To ensure that my teaching practices are current, I take workshops, attend seminars and speak to experts in the field of EDI. I am open to learning as I see it as my responsibility, as an educator, to ensure that my practices are informed by current and changing social contexts.
Three examples of my work in this area can be seen below:
Designing for Diversity
Presentation for TESS 2020 Designing for Diversity: Five ways to create a more inclusive online course
As an educator and researcher who has been practising and researching culturally responsive teaching for a number of years, I have found that small changes to make a course more inclusive can have a significant impact on student learning. In this presentation I introduce ideas that will help instructors design online courses that factor in the full range of diversity found in Canadian post-secondary classrooms. This diversity includes ability, gender, gender identity, culture, socioeconomic factors, geographical location, age, ethnicity, first generation students and so on. This session discussed the importance of implementing inclusive design for learning in all course design, while demonstrating how this can be accomplished in quick and simple steps.
Video: Inclusive Teaching Techniques in Broadcast Education
In 2014, I received funding from the Broadcast Educators Association of Canada’s Diversity Research Internship Grant to produce a video showcasing inclusive teaching techniques in broadcasting. Craig Robertson, a professor of Radio Broadcasting explains in this video why inclusive teaching is important to him and shares some of his techniques
Open Educational Project
In 2018, I approached author Waubgeshig Rice with the idea of collaborating on an open educational guide for his novel, Moon of the Crusted Snow, when I discovered that open educational resources (OERs) for books written by Indigenous authors were lacking. That collaboration resulted in an online educational guide launching in 2019 that was well received by educators across Canada. In early 2021, Waubgeshig and I decided to update the guide and, at that time, Dr. Kaitlyn Watson, from the Teaching and Learning Centre at Ontario Tech University, joined the project. As part of this update, themes from the original resource have been expanded and a new theme which explores connections between the novel and the global COVID-19 pandemic has been added.
Link to this open educational resource:
Moon of the Crusted Snow: Reading Guide