Keystone Concepts in Teaching: A Higher Education Podcast from the Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning

S2 E15: Teaching Strategies Creating Access to STEM Courses

• Stearns Center • Season 2 • Episode 15

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Prof. Kelly Knight and Dr. Christine Rosenfeld chat with us about how we might increase access to courses, even those in STEM like labs and field experiences. 

Resources: https://phet.colorado.edu Disability Services:  https://ds.gmu.edu Office of Access, Compliance, and Community:  https://oacc.gmu.edu 

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Rachel:

Hello and welcome to the Keystone Concepts in Teaching podcast. My name is Rachel Yoho and I'm your host for this podcast where we share impactful and evidence based teaching practices to support all students and faculty. In this episode, we're going to start exploring the STEM fields and we'll talk about what we learn from the STEM fields and how some of those principles and ideas can also apply to other disciplines as well. So in this episode, we're joined by Professor Kelly Knight, who's a faculty member with the George Mason University Forensic Science Program and STEM Accelerator. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in forensic DNA and forensic chemistry, and is also the principal investigator of the Forensic DNA Laboratory. We are also joined by, Dr. Christine Rosenfeld. Dr. Rosenfeld is an Associate Professor in the Geography and Geoinformation Science Department at George Mason University. So welcome, both of you. I'm very excited to have you both here.

Christine:

Thank you so much for including us.

Kelly:

Thanks for having us.

Rachel:

So let's jump right in. So when we're talking about the STEM fields, let's get started with talking about, what does it mean to teach to support all students in the STEM fields? You know, often we hear about things like gateway courses or weed out courses, really, especially coming from these areas. So with this, what does it mean broadly? What do we want to be talking about today?

Kelly:

Yeah, I think it's really important when you are a professor to acknowledge when you're teaching your courses that every single student in your class is different, right? They have different backgrounds, they have different needs. And so for me as a STEM professor, I think when I am planning a course, a key thing for me when I'm thinking about success for all of my students is designing my course with intentionality. And that's really what we want to do because everyone is coming in with different things. One example that I think about is when we think about our multilingual learners in STEM. STEM specifically is a very highly technical type of knowledge and language, right? And so when we have students come into the classroom, everyone is essentially learning a new language. But when we have multilingual learners, they're actually learning two different things at the same time. They're having to translate that STEM knowledge into their first languages. And so this is something that we really need to think about when we're considering the intentionality behind designing courses for all students so they can all be successful.

Christine:

Yeah, for me when I think of teaching STEM for all, including all, it's something all good pedagogical practice should do, as my colleague Dr. Knight said, and then thinking what are the STEM specific considerations that make sense to pay extra attention to and be intentional with removing barriers that prohibit full substantive and continued participation. So that might look like if you have a field work component of your course. So coming from geography, we do have some field mapping courses going to the field, engaging with different tools like drones or GPS holders. What are some things that are specific to those tools and equipment that might not be as immediately available to a set of students. Formulas, right? STEM has a ton of formulas. For students coming from different experiences with neurodiversity, formulas can pose a really significant hurdle to inclusion, and invite, really almost require immediate shutdown, and prevent the buy in and maybe even push folks away from a discipline. So that oftentimes warrants a lot of conversation between co facilitators and teachers and interfacing with your department to see what would be a more equitable approach or what could be.

Kelly:

Yeah, and I think what Christine said was really important because one of the points I want to emphasize for all faculty, especially in this climate, a lot of times when we think about teaching for all students or inclusive teaching, a lot of faculty will automatically think that we're focusing on race or gender, but I think it's really important to remember that when we're looking at inclusive teaching for students, we're thinking about all of our different types of students. So that can include students with disabilities. I mentioned multilingual learners earlier, but even our military students or our students who may be pregnant. And so I think that when we approach our inclusive teaching methods in that way, understanding that it is broadly covering all of the differences of our students, then we can better design courses that will that will help all of them to succeed instead of just one group or another.

Rachel:

Yeah, I think that's such a great point, we're not privileging a certain group, let's say, or, you know, how things might be seen, but really we're looking at how do we make spaces that work for everyone, or consider that, and it's really a mindset shift, if you will, and I think that really leads us well into our next question. And so with that mindset shift, how do or maybe how can faculty move to a space of feeling ready to engage in this space?

Kelly:

I think it's important to acknowledge that we may never reach that point of feeling ready. I feel like I have actively engaged with inclusive teaching pedagogy for at least a decade now, and I still have a point every year where I'm reflecting back on my teaching practice and thinking about something else that I need to do. If I waited until I was officially ready, I would never, ever reach that destination and I would never incorporate anything that would benefit my students. So I think As faculty, especially we lean towards perfectionism, right? We want everything to be organized and listed and ready before we go for it. But I think if we push past that and just start small and think about just one small thing that you can change at a time, one step. one workshop, one training, it will get to get you to a point where you feel increasingly comfortable, more comfortable. You will probably never feel like you have it all together, but that's completely normal to feel that way.

Christine:

Totally agree with Kelly, and to your point, you should never feel that you totally get it, because indeed how could we possibly interface with the multiplicity of diverse experiences and students we have, and we are changing ourselves as professors, as scholars. To add to that point, one thing that I would recommend I've done myself when I'm ready to start really any type of pedagogical change is take a semester to observe. Now, I'm a qualitative researcher. I tend to do this somewhat naturally anyway, but if you're having the intention of moving towards a teaching for all inclusive teaching in STEM, I really think you could take one semester, keep yourself a log, put it on your calendar every week to put five minutes. What students am I losing? What are the students who aren't engaging fully in the lab space, who are really knocking it out of the park in another setting? Observe if there are any patterns that emerge across sets of students to get yourself some data. Right? We love data. And we can start to build that own data set kind of about our discipline and how we teach, and trying to increase the breadth of students that we're reaching. That's kind of my always overall goal, and I think that's one way that you can start observing about it before kind of diving in to get some confidence up to make the moves.

Rachel:

Yeah, and to even build on that, Christine, I mean, these are some of the things that some of our departments and program directors might already be building. There may be existing data on things like DFW, the drop fail withdrawal rates or anything like that. There may even be existing data that we can tap into to inform our practices. So as we think a little bit more about the STEM fields in particular, you know, we're talking about very interesting and very diverse audiences across departments and programs and even colleges for the STEM fields. But we also have some unique spaces, and so one of those unique spaces that I want to talk about are lab courses. And so when we have labs, we have chemistry or biology or forensic types of labs, lots of different types and lots of different things going on. So how could we start to think about how we make lab courses more available and more accessible to all students?

Christine:

When it comes to lab spaces, I think the obvious way to start is like, what are the visual impediments that learners might have? I think that you can think of it in two layers. You kind of, what are the visual needs of the cohort of learners and what are maybe the invisible needs? Sometimes it's easier to start with the visible. So thinking about navigability of space is one thing for sure. And navigability of space in a way that allows collaboration of lab partners and such, as opposed to isolation. If somebody's using a wheelchair or some type of mobility device that may preclude them from being at the same lab table with other partners, what is the way that that can be intervened in that doesn't result in isolation? I think that's one thing. So physical obstacles can be a good way to start. Some of the invisible concerns to think about are things that we've encountered in our college in terms of how do we take into consideration conditions that people may have such as pregnancy that are not visible and cannot be asked about, or can they? Right? These are all pretty scary, or they can be pretty scary from the faculty standpoint. They're really important to know to preserve the safety of our students, but we're afraid to kind of approach that sometimes. So being proactive about getting information from the top down in terms of policies that are already in place of how to ask what syllabus statements can I put on to encourage, for instance, pregnant students are experiencing pregnancy loss to integrate and interface with the professor, and to come up with alternatives, of course, to any graded work that requires exposure to particular chemicals, or whatnot. There is potentially the opportunity to gather some feedback from students as well. You may consider doing some type of an anonymous survey after particular lab work or halfway through the semester, right? Asking or proposing and then doing a set of open ended and closed questions. What are some potential again, barriers to full participation, things that are potentially discouraging unintentionally, full engagement with that space or in that space.

Kelly:

Yeah, I would agree with all of that. And I think a lot of this starts with the culture that we develop within our laboratory space and within our courses. Because one thing I have noticed with students is oftentimes, they are experiencing barriers that they are hesitant to bring to their instructors because there is this culture, especially within STEM, that if you can't do it, you shouldn't be here, or I'm not going to make any exceptions to the rule. And I think that as faculty, we need to be very clear from the first day of class that, you know, we're here to support you. Please feel free to come and discuss any barriers with me. I know for myself, I always do a pre course survey and I give students the space to tell me about any barriers they may be facing this semester that they want to share with me or how I can better support them because they If we want to provide this space where all students can succeed in an equitable way, we have to put them on a level playing field and in some way. And I think establishing that inclusive culture is really important and thinking about different ways that we can engage students in lab courses that maybe does not always involve them actually putting hands on things. So I think about the many resources that are available for virtual lab simulations as well. I know in some of my online courses, I definitely go to YouTube first because that's free. Also, PHET dot colorado dot edu. That's PHET. Colorado. edu. They have a ton of virtual lab simulations available for all different types of STEM disciplines. And there's other companies online as well that have a cost associated. But there are ways to engage students that does not involve them physically touching a test tube if that's a barrier for them. Also thinking about some of the, you know, more simple ways to offer accommodations and reduce barriers is when you think about the lab protocols and the instructions that we're providing. How many different ways are you offering this information? Are you just providing it in a written form? Are you also including videos? Do your videos have captions? All of those things matter in helping students to be able to evaluate this lab material and to engage with it equally.

Rachel:

These are such great points. I think, you know, when we're moving into a space of how do we make things more accessible from a teaching approach, right? You know, obviously we want to be considering, of course, the legal bare minimum accommodations we have to make, but also we want to take the next step or hopefully a few next steps of what does this mean to include everyone in the space a little bit more actively.

Kelly:

Some modifications may be easier than others. So I think you don't want to allow yourself to become too overwhelmed by it all. So I think the best thing to do is to kind of do an inventory of your syllabus and just take a look at it and think about, you know, what's the easiest thing you could probably do is adjust the language in your syllabus, maybe. Maybe your syllabus is really overwhelming to read. There's a lot of information. There's no language about, you know, being inclusive or providing resources for the Office of Disability Services or assistive technology. So that's a simple fix, but then you can also think about maybe just one assignment that you want to change. The key is to just pick something that you feel very confident with in terms of the material and then choose something within that to kind of take that and modify. I also think one of the, well, it may or may not be easier to some people, but the first step to all of this is really reflecting on yourself as an educator. And that may be where you literally start. You may just spend an entire semester thinking about your identity because I know there's research out there that shows that a lot of STEM faculty actually identify more as scientists as opposed to educators. And that can be a little bit of a barrier when we're teaching because we're teaching just as scientists, as opposed to thinking of ourselves as faculty who are educators and, you know, are taking on this role in the classroom. And so I think taking that time to just really reflect on who you are as a scientist and an educator. But then also thinking about your own assumptions and your own biases that may be affecting the way you're teaching in the classroom. So I would probably start there and then go on to pick that one thing that you want to modify.

Rachel:

I think that's a great point. And just to add to that, Kelly, you know, even if we don't have faculty seeing themselves necessarily as educators, even if we see ourselves as scientists, if we try to take a mindset of, I want to experiment with how I can improve my course, we can take that research based approach that we have in our lab research or whatever type of practice we have or even for faculty from other areas if you're a performer, if you're an artist, you know, whatever that might be taking that next step of, how do I improve this? How do I see what's working here? How do I see what else I can do here and that may turn into seeing yourself as an educator as well. So I think that's such a great point. And so, as we continue our conversation, you know, one of the things I wanted to talk about specifically was how do we make the course content or even data sets, I know that's a particular interest of yours, Christine, more representative of the student population, or even the general population. You know, we have some data sets or some content that is just very specific in our fields, doesn't really reflect the world around us. What are we thinking about here? What might we think about here?

Christine:

Yeah, I love this question. I feel like for me, this answers a little bit of some previous conversation about where to start. I think it also could be a bit of a low hanging fruit to get at this goal and this vision of diversifying your data sets. I think a lot of times in STEM, the focus is teaching a skill or a technique or how to use a piece of equipment or a tool, but there's an opportunity there to layer in some data sets that show a diversity of things, right? Whatever that may be. So, if you're teaching a cartography or a GIS class, and the goal is to teach a certain technique or a model, you have an opportunity there to get creative with the data. Pick a data set that's interesting to you. Maybe that has to do with ground cover types and change over time. Maybe it has to do with historic redlining. There's an opportunity there. And if that's scary, just make it available to students. Maybe it's not something you showcase, but building in opportunities to choose and modeling to students kind of a multiplicity of different data sets, where to find them, is a way to show students too this is just as valuable and worthy of investigation as it is looking at something that potentially seems less controversial, like ground cover. No, no, no hard feelings to ground cover either. But I think that's also a way to build in inclusivity is through modeling research questions that speak to interests in the room. And building assignments also that might allow for different modalities, I think is another thing that is often done when we're trying to teach for all, we're trying to reach that breadth of the student community. Maybe it's too scary at first to say you could, you know, do me a podcast or you could write me a paper. Maybe there's one small point assignment that you could challenge yourself as a professor and as an educator and a scientist to say, what would this look like if we switched up the format? See what students give you. And that not only gives you a point of reflection for yourself, if that was, you know, kind of scary to do at first. Was it a hit? Was it a miss? Ask students why they chose this modality over another. And you're going to get another layer of information to kind of evaluate. So switching up your deliverables, diversifying your datasets, modeling an array of datasets. I think it's something you can do to overcome what can be a rigid mindset within STEM, particularly when we're teaching about skillsets and mastery over techniques. I think something else that could be done is to adjust your content to be more intentional in profiling particular scientists that maybe align with Latino Heritage Month, maybe get a data set that relates to something enjoyable and celebratory about that.

Kelly:

Yeah, I would agree with that. And I would also add that something practical faculty may want to explore, and I know, again, as STEM faculty, we don't always think of doing this type of research, but community based participatory research, service learning, where students can really pursue local communities that either they're a part of or that are a part of the Mason community that reflects, you know, a diverse population and they can really engage with the community as partners and learn more about a specific issue that is related to them. And I think when you bring in that real world component and also show this reflection of these diverse populations, it really is a profound learning experience for students and George Mason actually has really interesting opportunities for students and faculty to create community based participatory research courses where that's what they center around service learning courses. Or you may just want to include that as one small component. Maybe that's your final project. You spend the entire semester learning about these different concepts, and then you choose to partner with a community. So I think that's another avenue for faculty to follow if they're trying to look into expanding their population data sets and really making it relevant for students.

Rachel:

These are excellent points, especially when we're talking about basically two of our, what I see, as two of our keystone concepts. You know, we see a little bit more in the autonomy space, you know, having a little bit more ability, a little bit more space in whether it's assignments or activities or in the course for our students to choose topics or data sets or something that might be of interest to them. Obviously we want all the bounds on those or, you know, having, specific guidelines on instructions, you know, page length or whatever those might be, but a little bit more autonomy to bring in that experience. But also the other keystone concept that I think we, we often talk about kind of relates to whose voices are being heard and whose voices are not being heard. That's not just of our students certainly asking them for feedback is, is great and can be ways that we can learn more about our courses and activities, but also even thinking about the course not just in the readings, but also whose voices are being heard in those data sets. I'm seeing those two as our kind of key takeaways from that big picture if we take a step back. But what else, Kelly or Christine, other thoughts that you have to perhaps wrap up our conversation for today?

Christine:

One of my big takeaways I'd like to leave and be a point of further discussion is, you know, when you're making any type of pedagogical decision, I like to keep in mind, and I always benefit from keeping in mind, does this help me reach that fuller spectrum of students, or does it hinder it in some way? And that's the question that I'd like to leave the podcast with, alongside that Bloom's Taxonomy when we're course planning: is any tweak I'm making to the course content, to the procedures, to the enactment, of course to grading, am I reaching that full spectrum or am I doing something to hinder it?

Kelly:

And I think I would add, you know, don't aim for perfection. Aim for progress, because even if you take just one small step, that is better than doing nothing at all. So I think if you just take one step, do what is within your abilities. I know as faculty, we are all overworked and exhausted and cannot even fathom adding a professional development seminar or workshop, but there are lots of smaller options to engage with. Don't be afraid to I know I'm going to say the naughty word don't be afraid to lean into artificial intelligence, um

Rachel:

It's okay! We've had a whole episode on that, you can say that.

Kelly:

I know! You know, just as an example, if you use the universal design for learning framework, which is a great learning framework for designing inclusive curriculum, you can ask AI to help you think of a UDL framework for teaching, maybe you're talking about polymerase chain reaction, and of course, you're going to audit it on your own. But when you want to make those small changes, sometimes leaning into these resources that are available are not a bad thing. And I think that is a great way to start. Just start small. Don't aim for perfection. Just do what you can and know that, you know, you're helping your students along the way.

Rachel:

Well, thank you so much to both of you for your time, for your contributions, also for all the work that you do for your students as well. But thank you for the insights that you shared. And to our listeners, thank you for listening, and we look forward to sharing our next episode with you on Keystone Concepts in Teaching in another two weeks.