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Creating Equity through Connection
Pedagogy in Practice | By Catherine Ford, Program Director for Educational Development
Greetings! It is wonderful to see you again. The Network for Educational Development theme this year is Creating Equity through Connection.
“The theme of connection allows us to intentionally explore ways to create belonging for students, colleagues, and ourselves. As we work to create change for equity in our classrooms, we will inevitably experience the ‘implementation dip’ – the feelings of self-consciousness and chaos that occur when we implement new practices,” (Fullan 2007).
In order to support each other through this, we need to create intentional spaces and times for connection with our colleagues and our practice. The theme of connection allows us to intentionally explore ways to create belonging for students, colleagues, and ourselves.
After spending almost 2 years at least partially in a virtual environment and in uncertain conditions, many of us need to reconnect with our colleagues, our students, and our purpose for engaging in equity work. This year, we aim to help faculty and staff reconnect to themselves, each other, and students to provide them with opportunities to revitalize their values and connect them to their practices in teaching, learning, and serving students. Exploring the theme of connecting allows us to intentionally explore ways to create belonging for students, colleagues, and ourselves. We need to connect with each other in order to re-energize ourselves, our students, and our community. In order to meaningfully engage in equity work, we need each other. We need to support each other, energize each other, and hold each other accountable. We do this best in a connected, supportive network of colleagues. Building that network requires intentional time and spaces for connection in order to build trust and cultivate resilience for the work ahead of us.
Reflect with colleagues
In reflecting on connecting with colleagues and building a supportive network, consider how you might do this as you engage in educational development opportunities offered through the Network for Educational Development (NED). This past spring and summer, faculty and staff have shared about the added value when they engaged in offerings together with colleagues (locally or across Minnesota State) and the joy and deeper connection they felt to the content when engaged with a community.
This fall, register for one of the NED events (a webinar, a short course, a learning community, etc.) with someone from your department or from another program at your institution. This person could be a close colleague, a mentor/mentee, or a fellow committee member. Plan to attend the same online webinar and then gather that same day or later to discuss and share implications.
After a NED webinar, meet to consider these questions:
- What resonated with you?
- What was new or reframed information?
- How might I apply this in my courses?
- What is one thing I might try that is slightly (or a lot) different than what I am doing now?
- Am I skeptical about a practice or recommendation? Why? Am I willing to give it a try?
- How might my students benefit if I use this approach?
- How does this support equity in my instruction, content, and/or policies?
The quality of reflection and engagement improves when we are in dialogue with one another.
Would you consider inviting your entire department to participate in an event together? For example, register for the Cultural Competence for Professional Fluency one-hour webinar on September 12 or for the three-week asynchronous Hacking Your Course Assessments short course beginning in October and plan to spend one department meeting or another time to apply a discipline-specific lens to the content and applications. Options are abundant!
Regardless of the who and when, I encourage you to reach out to at least once this fall to another colleague or small group and connect. Identify intentional time to come together to build your network and create community to support each other, energize each other, and hold each other accountable.
Fullan, M. (2007). Leading in a culture of change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Summer Zoom and Kaltura Changes
Academic Technology Tips | By Brock Behling, Program Director for Instructional Technology
If you didn’t stay on top of the full release notes for Kaltura or Zoom over the summer, you might have missed some new features that were released as part of the core product.
Kaltura Improvements:
- Accessibility – (Assistive technology tags, mobile interactions, and search capabilities)
- Editing – (Co-editors now have full access to dual-screen media)
- Sharing – (Embed enhancements with downloads)
Zoom Improvements:
- Accessibility – (Direct automated captions for 12 new languages, profile cards, persistent views and filters, faster gesture recognitions, and simultaneous sharing while in webinars)
- Breakout Rooms – (Search for participants, broadcast microphone to all rooms)
- Recordings – (Improved access to cloud recordings from client, ability to control capture of participant names in local recordings)
Sharing your voice to multiple virtual groups at once
The new broadcast feature can be helpful when you need to provide additional guidance to multiple groups quickly. Hosts can now provide live, verbal instructions to all breakout room participants. Previously, only program audio could be shared to breakout rooms.
Now, when meeting participants are in breakout rooms, the host has two options:
- They can use the hotkey “B”– This hotkey allows voice to be instantly sent into the breakout rooms. When the hotkey is released, the audio share immediately stops.
- Or they can use the control panel “Broadcast Voice” option– Selecting this button allows a broadcast until the button is selected a second time.
From the same place in the breakout room control panel where you could Broadcast a Message to all groups, you now have the option to Broadcast your Voice.
After selecting Broadcast Voice, the Broadcast Voice Control panel opens and the play can be activated to begin broadcasting. If you are currently muted, you will not be able to activate the broadcast functionality.
After toggling the control, the message will change to “Currently broadcasting to all rooms” and the Icon for the control will change to a stop button. Toggling the control or muting your audio will stop the broadcast.
If you have a quick message to share to the breakout rooms, and you are actively in the Zoom application, you can press and hold the letter “B” on your keyboard and you will notice the indicator that you are broadcasting to all rooms.
If you are sharing your screen, you can also find the Broadcast controls in the More Menu.
Make sure you are on the latest version of the clients (Zoom & Kaltura) to find and leverage these new features!
Using the Equity Scorecard on your Campus
Did You Know? | By Scott Wojtanowski, System Director for Educational Technology and Development
Is your college or university using the Minnesota State Equity Scorecard in order to address, narrow, and eliminate equity gaps in student outcomes?
Last month, Dr. Priyank Shah, Associate Vice Chancellor of Equity and Inclusion and Tarrence Robertson, Project Director for Diversity Equity and Inclusion, authored an article titled, Equity Scorecard: A Tool to Improve Equity. The links provided in the article provide directions on how you can access equity data specific your campus. As referenced in the article, the Equity Scorecard “is not intended to be a detailed report or in-depth exhaustive analysis tool,” instead it is “snapshot of disparities in the outcomes and experiences of students and employees.”
We encourage you, dear reader, to join with colleagues at your campus to answer the calls to action included in this article.
- Share equity gap information with all stakeholders throughout campus in order to promote transparency, increase familiarity with, and awareness of, disparity patterns between groups.
- Prompt consideration of, and inquiry into, the factors, dynamics, processes, practices and policies that impede equitable outcomes in order to inform our system- and campus-level strategies and opportunities for realizing greater equity.
- Engage in development of goals and targets for equity, diversity, and inclusion, in a manner that is mindful of the local campus context is a critical component tied to this work.
View past editions of the Educational Development Digest.
Visit the NED Events Calendar to view upcoming educational development opportunities. Visit the NED Resource Site for recordings of previous webinars and additional resources.