Accessibility

• Use closed captioning on videos
• Provide course materials in multiple formats — paper, digital, audio
• Use Universal Design for Instruction principles and UMKC's accessibility policies for external tools
• State your support for the Americans with Disabilities Act in the syllabus.
• Consult UMKC Student Access Services for more accommodations

Classroom Climate

• Ask all students for phonetic pronunciation of their names, and use these to call on and identify students
• Ask students for their pronouns and use their pronouns accordingly
• Recognize that all of your students have multiple identities that inform their cultural practices, beliefs, behaviors and expectations
  • Acknowledge that because someone does something differently than you would expect, it does not make it wrong
• Recognize that you have multiple identities that inform your cultural practices, beliefs, behaviors and expectations
  • Reflect on how these may differ from your students' practices, beliefs and behaviors and how they might affect your students' success in the course
• Recognize the power you hold as a faculty member
  • Consider how this dynamic may affect a student's ability to do things such as speak in class, ask for help or provide feedback to faculty and other students
• Take note of who disproportionately participates in your classroom
  • Is there a way you could structure the course differently?
  • How might you encourage more students to participate?
• Consider administering anonymous surveys throughout the semester to gauge whether students are feeling included and supported, and whether your teaching style is facilitating their learning
  • Use this feedback to change your syllabus or facilitation
• Monitor the assumptions you make about your students and work to challenge negative assumptions or biases that do not support students' success in your course
• Implement a variety of teaching styles in the classroom — lecture, group discussion, student teaching, etc.
• Support effective disagreement and the conflict of ideas in ways that allow a variety of perspectives to be shared
  • Encourage openness to multiple perspectives and experiences of others
• Teach, encourage and model that intention is not the same as impact
  • Ask that all students and faculty recognize that the impact of what they say or do can be harmful, even when the intention was not to harm
  • Model and encourage repairs when harm is caused, even when the harm is not fully understood
  • This can involve admitting mistakes openly and modeling your own self ­improvement

Representation

• Accommodate faith-based observances and cultural holidays when preparing your syllabus
• Ensure that women and people of color are represented as authors and subjects in the curriculum and curriculum texts
• Ensure that multiple voices and cultural perspectives are represented in the curriculum and curriculum texts
• Ensure that different cultural, racial and gender identities are represented in examples. visual aids, multiple choice questions and other teaching resources

Assessment

• Emphasize mastery of content and learning over performance or competition
• Consider whether your assessment, including deadline and attendance policies, disproportionately disadvantage certain students who have competing work and caretaking responsibilities.
  • Is there a way to accommodate those students so that your assessment does not exacerbate preexisting inequities?
  • Are these assessment techniques necessary to achieving the course goals?
• Use methods of evaluation that focus on mastery of content and learning rather than performance and competition between students
• Use a variety of assessments so that students have multiple opportunities to demonstrate their mastery of the content
• Be explicit about your expectations for all forms of evaluation and be flexible in your evaluation of students' work
• Offer task- and process-related feedback frequently
• Use discretion when evaluating grammar.
  • Correct grammar for informational purposes, but try not to connect it to grades unless that is an explicit learning outcome of the course

Other Considerations

• How does my discipline help prepare students to live and work in today's culturally diverse democratic society in an interdependent world?
• How does the course empower my students to develop diverse perspectives about the paradigms and concepts of my discipline?
• How does the course help students understand the global goal of education in a culturally diverse society and develop skills and dispositions for reconstructing society for social change?
• Do I provide illustrations and examples, or enlist my students to share illustrations and examples, that reflect cultural perspectives, global perspectives and issues of equity and justice?
• Do my assignments enlist students to share illustrations and examples that reflect cultural perspectives. global perspectives and issues of equity and justice?
• What cultural perspectives are being shared throughout the course?
  • Which cultural perspectives are missing?
• What issues of social justice and civic engagement are infused?