In winter 2021, the Department of Geography Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee invited those teaching in the department to use the Racial Equity Assessment tool to appraise (and revise) their course content to enhance racial equity. Everyone who provided feedback on the process expressed how helpful it was in providing an explicit, systematic means to addressing and correcting DEI issues in their teaching. Here are some excerpts from the feedback:
- The framework prompted me to revise my usual syllabus blurb on diversity/equity – the old version was a bit more focused on prompting people to be nice to one another (also important but...), and needed to be more specific in naming structural exclusions like race, gender, ability, and emphasize equity over inclusion.
- Creating community norms is part of my usual practice for setting up seminars - the assessment prompted me to think about the how those might be meaningful revisited throughout the quarter.
- The [assessment tool] prompted me to notice that I don’t point up what they can expect of me - so future version of my syllabus will include text on how I determine final grades, what kind of feedback students can expect from me, what kinds of engagements and outputs tend to result in what kinds of scores on the 4.0 scale in my grad seminars. I think this is best handled in narrative form, and I will build it out for next year – this is most crucial for incoming students who are both new to 4.0 system AND grad seminar grading.
- Overall, the assessment prompted me to realize that as a general rule, my grad syllabi are far less attentive to access and equity questions than my undergrad syllabus, especially in terms of demystifying academic work at graduate level. This definitely needs attention in future iterations. We know that grad education often seems to have a 'hidden curriculum' - things that students are assumed to know or supposed to figure out without us telling them. So I want to think more about how my grad seminar syllabi, and our seminar sessions can help me these hidden things explicit (e.g. when authors visit, ask them to talk about their publication, review and revision process; ask visiting academics to talk about their trajectories).
- I spent a great deal more time this year explicitly ending lectures and discussion with discussions of why we were doing the things we did (readings, points of discussion, etc.). The seminar became much, much more student-centered.
- Taking the section on care and racial equity to heart, I deliberately reached out the students who required extra help or flexibility at multiple times during the quarter. This allowed me to appreciate the different struggles and penury some students are coping with.
- I redesigned my assignments to be more flexible and student-driven. I learned a lot from how and where students took them.
- I had to completely restructure my class this past quarter. I used the Equity-Assessment Tool as a guide to further racial diversity in the readings --in terms of both authors as well as places and their case studies across the globe. While there was some complaints about objectivity, the overall response from the students was positive.