The More You Know About Your Students, the More Inclusive You Can Be in the Classroom
Chronicle of Higher Ed | Viji Sathy Kelly A. Hogan, Bob Henshaw
Two UNC Chapel Hill deans and a consultant promote the sharing of student demographic information, including race, ethnicity, gender and class, with faculty members to “make learning more inclusive” and “transform teaching.” The program is being used at UNC Chapel Hill.
“Imagine if you [faculty] had data…. to answer questions like… Does the percentage of Black students in my courses reflect their overall proportion at my institution? Are students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds earning grades similar to those of their wealthier counterparts? Did redesigning my course narrow the performance gap between first-generation college students and other students?” The writers describe “the potential of basic demographic information to transform teaching” and the program used at UNC.
“At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,” the writers explain, “we have developed a web-based analytics tool to make accessing such data easier and automatic for instructors who teach undergraduates… the data does show the demographic mix and student grades — grouped by race, gender, first-generation status, and the like — and points out potential problems.”
The writers walk through the steps needed to introduce and implement such a system at colleges/universities with the system described as “one more tool to enhance our teaching and make learning more inclusive for all students.”
With the UNC tool, “Whether and how you use the information to adjust your teaching practices and narrow such gaps is entirely up to you.”
“In making the case for this tool at Chapel Hill,” the writers explain that “one of us (Kelly) demonstrated how descriptive data and inclusive teaching methods allowed her to remove or narrow the performance gaps between certain demographic groups in her courses.”
They do note that privacy is an issue— “Privacy laws mean student information is tightly guarded by campus data stewards — and rightly so. To build an analytics tool, you will need to educate and build trust with those stewards.”
They also note that lawyers may need to be involved: “We also had campus lawyers weigh in on our early ideas to identify the potential legal consequences of making this data accessible to faculty members.”
To protect against biased interactions, the UNC team decided to make data available only after the semester ends for analysis, reflection and change. The team also decided to limit the availability of data to classes with more than 10 students.
