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Inclusive Teaching Forum

About the Forum

What does it really mean to be included in the classroom? How can Columbia’s instructors and students intentionally engage with diversity to enhance learning?

The Inclusive Teaching Forum was an opportunity for the Columbia community to discuss the cultivation of inclusive learning environments for students and instructors. Our thanks to the undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral instructors, faculty, and staff from various offices at Columbia who gathered to discuss aspects of diversity in the classroom and initiate the creation of a Guide to Inclusive Teaching and Learning at Columbia, based on real-life scenarios developed by participants.

Plenary speaker Michele DiPietro, co-author of the nationally acclaimed volume How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching, connected inclusive teaching methods and priorities to research-based principles of effective pedagogy.

Inclusive Teaching Forum

Plenary speaker: Michele DiPietro

Dr. DiPietro is the Executive Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and a Professor of Statistics at Kennesaw State University in Atlanta, GA. His book How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching, co-authored with his former Carnegie Mellon colleagues, distills the research on learning in the last 50+ years into seven interrelated principles and provides pedagogical strategies for educators. His other scholarly interests include learning sciences, academic integrity, diversity and inclusivity in the classroom, statistics education, student evaluations of teaching, the consultation process in faculty development, and teaching in times of tragedies. His work has been translated into Chinese, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean and (forthcoming) Spanish.

Dr. DiPietro is a former President of the POD Network in Higher Education, the premiere faculty development organization in North America. He was the recipient of the POD Innovation award in 2008. His course “The statistics of sexual orientation” has been featured on The Chronicle of Higher Education and in other publications as a highly innovative course. Dr. DiPietro is the 2015 recipient of the Bob Pierleoni Spirit of POD award, the highest honor bestowed in the field of educational development for professional achievement and legacy to the field.

Inclusive Teaching Forum Materials

Inclusive Teaching Forum schedule

Printed Resources

Handout 1: Discussion guidelines
Handout 2: A draft glossary of inclusive teaching terms
Handout 3: Seven principles of research-based teaching
Handout 4: Aspects of inclusivity

Response Sheets

Interactive activities at the Forum gave participants the chance to share inclusive teaching values, scenarios, and strategies with each other and with CTL. Response sheets allowed us to collect these thoughts, which will in turn inform CTL’s forthcoming Guide to Inclusive Teaching and Learning at Columbia.

Response Sheet 1: Framing inclusive teaching
Response Sheet 2: Developing a scenario
Response Sheet 3: Strategies for inclusive teaching

Videos

The CTL prepared two videos for the Forum that captured various perspectives about inclusive teaching at Columbia, and helped us set a framework for the day’s discussions. Staff also recorded the plenary address delivered by Dr. Michele DiPietro (see information below). Dr. DiPietro aligned inclusive teaching practices against research-based evidence into how learning works, and took a number of questions from Forum participants.

Word Cloud

CTL participants were asked to pick a word that they associate with inclusive teaching and learning.