The Equity Challenge: Putting Equity into Practice in Higher Education

Dramatic demographic, economic, and technological changes present our nation’s schools, colleges, and universities with significant challenges for preparing students – particularly those from diverse backgrounds – for success. Over the past four decades, Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, has studied student achievement, focusing special attention on how to increase the participation and performance of students of all backgrounds. Drawing on his TED Talk and his recent book, The Empowered University, he will discuss institutional culture change and its role in supporting innovations in undergraduate education – including course redesign, active learning, community-building, and the use of technology – that promote student success, inclusive excellence, and achievement for all students.

This interactive session is an opportunity for participants to review strategies and practices for supporting equity as an instructor or as an administrator. The key question is, Why Equity? We will discuss equity, review equity-minded instructional practice, and strategies for supporting equity through professional development. The purpose of this session is to explore connections between individual practices, institutional outcomes, and practical ways to support student success through a lens of equity.

This session will explore the art of digital storytelling and how it can be used to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in digital learning spaces. We will discuss the principles of Universal Design for Learning as a framework for developing equitable learning experiences and how digital storytelling can lead to an authentic assessment practice for students. Examples of the power of digital storytelling will be shared from a multicultural education course and research conducted in study abroad programs. Resources and tools will be offered for educators to take back to their own digital learning spaces.

In acknowledging that we benefit from community input and shared meaning-making practices, this session invites participants in for collaboration around how we define equity and quality, particularly the relationship between equity and quality. Together we will share own unique experiences in measuring equitable and quality learning in online, blended, and digital environments, story our challenges in designing for equity and quality, and identify key areas of focus and direction that we should prioritize as a community in the future. Finally, as part of the OLC and McGraw Hill’s partnership, contributions made during this session (and across the event more generally) will be synthesized into a series of free artifacts/resources for the community following the event. With this specifically in mind, this session not only invites you to story your own expertise, but invites you in as a collaborator and credited contributor for those resources (e.g. white paper). 

Increasing digital mediation of our educational landscape has meant significant, rapid changes in information, meaning-making, and participation over the past 20 years. What this means for learners is that we can further our knowledge anywhere, anytime, and through a variety of interactive digital platforms. And while some of these new dimensions of learning have been addressed during the digitalization of schooling forced by the COVID-19 pandemic, much needs to be done to do so equitably and with quality pedagogy. As sites of knowledge production, what does it mean for higher education institutions to engage expansive forms of knowledge and knowledge construction? How might we move away from “common-sense” approaches to teaching and learning that may not actually serve the interests of students from non-dominant backgrounds? We will discuss the centrality of authorship, digital composition, and widened apertures of learning to help us challenge the status quo and design toward more equitable and inclusive learning environments. And because putting equity into action involves thinking about our own practices and tools, we will spend time reflecting on and applying the presented content to our respective domains of educational influence.