The Online Learning Consortium invites you to contribute to the body of content generated during the December 2020 OLC Ideate: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Digital Learning Environments. This December OLC Ideate brought together the work of countless educators in our field who are exploring key questions around diversity, equity, and inclusion within digital learning environments. Through five days of both live and asynchronous activities, this event sought to answer the following driving question:

How might we create infrastructure, resources, and support to ensure that our digital learning environments are equitable and inclusive of ALL learners?

There are two ways you can still get involved right now, at this very moment:

Via our open, asynchronous Canvas community

OLC Ideate took place across five days and the content presented is archived on this Canvas site. Please explore the prerecorded provocations, the slide decks, and discussion boards for inspiration.

Be sure to engage with onboarding and welcoming content, as OLC Ideate intentionally centers dialogue and uses some specific terms (e.g. “salons,” “provocations,” “saloons”) to move us from a sit-and-get event format into conversations and collaboration. From here, we invite you to:

Contribute your thoughts and talents to our collaborative charter

The community created the Collaborative Charter: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Digital Learning Environments to guide our collective actions related to ensuring diversity, equity, and inclusion within digital learning environments.

Ultimately, this charter will achieve two key goals:

1. 1. answer the question of how we, as a community and organization can create infrastructure, resources, and support to ensure that our digital learning environments are equitable and inclusive of ALL learners.
   2. intentionally design a series of actions that will drive the activities of a future action-oriented convening to be held in Spring 2021.

We recommend you start with “Surfacing Where We’re Collectively At: Getting Started in the Charter Document.” You can access this session content through the OLC Ideate Canvas community (which is completely free).

That said, if you are unsure whether or not to register and join us in Canvas, you can hear from Maddie Shellgren (OLC’s Director of Online Engagement) and Angela Gunder (OLC’s Chief Academic Officer and VP of Learning) by viewing the session in YouTube.

As we are shifting into the next phase of this work, heed these calls to action as a way for you to get involved now and better inform the group of educators within our community leading us towards the next steps. Please make your contributions to the charter before March 19th.

Do you have questions about OLC Ideate and how to get involved with the OLC Ideate or OLC DEI communities? Contact Madeline Shellgren, Director of Online Engagement.