Joanne: How can educators make their online teaching more inclusive? This topic has become even more pressing and challenging with the current climate of social and political controversies surrounding our everyday lives. I recently spoke with Professor Shabalala from University of Dayton on the importance of inclusive pedagogy in online education.
In light of COVID, he had to transition his residential, on-campus course on Contracts in Law, to the online format. Here’s our conversation:
Joanne: So professor, having taught both on campus in your residential format and now teaching that same course online, what does inclusive pedagogy mean to you, what does that look like and how have you incorporated it in your course design and teaching?
Dyebo: The great thing about online teaching is that it gives each student the ability to individualize their learning. They can maybe work around their own schedule, they can figure it out for themselves, etc. What that does, however, is that when you design the course, you design a course in a very specific, relatively narrow, relatively sort of very structured way, especially for the async. One of the things is, you don't have the kind of luxury of sort of moving stuff around, changing this, adjusting to this. So you get a group of students and they're always different each semester.
And so, sometimes like what I’ve done with residential courses, “I've taken some tasks out and said oh we're going to spend more time on this, we're going to maybe move this material into a different place”, as I see where the where the group is and where the students are, I adjust to the group.
Whereas online, especially with a replicable course, you can't do that to the course. And so, one of the questions that arises, how do you adjust to the group? How do you make the group right, how do you fit to some extent material, the timing, etc. And you know, one of the things I've really focused on is okay, you have to know right from the get go, that the course is not just about one type of student. The course is about many types of students and many types of people. And they have to see that right from the beginning of the course.
So as you saw, we did the introductory session where we really talked about what it meant to be in this class. The idea was to really get buy in from everybody to the sort of common ‘we’ and community creation in the classroom. You have to all buy into that, understand that there is difference, but also there are limits to how we engage, etc. That's important.
But the other thing is, when they go see the async work, they look at the reading. So the cases I pick have to be a sufficient variety that represent people like them; there are lots of different students and there are cases that they see are going to have black people in them, lesbian, gay, transgender and bi people in them. So the cases are important for selecting, so that when they read it, they're reading cases that reflect a huge variety of experiences.
The questions that they get asked in the hypotheticals - what are the names that are seeing. They're saying Native American names, Indian names; they’re seeing Japanese names; they’re seeing Spanish names; they’re seeing Norweigian names; they’re seeing German. They’re seeing all these names, that are about “Oh, when I think about it, who are the kind of people dealing with this kind of problem? It's all these types of people.” When we give them hypotheticals to operate in or give them issue ID exercises to do, right, same thing - what the names and situations are: different locations, different kind of businesses, things that reflect different communities, different cities so that it doesn't just reflect either my experience and it doesn't limit experience with just that narrow group of students.
So the message is, “Okay, all of this belongs in the classroom so I can ask questions about it.. So we can have a discussion about it.” One of the cases that we just dealt with is a case about a gay teacher from the in the 60s, who was pressured to resign. And so he signed a contract and resigned and then the goal was to get his job back. And so now, we're at the point in the semester where we can have a frank, but supportive discussion about what that meant. What did it mean then? What are the parallels now? What did it mean to be ‘out’ then? What does it mean to be ‘out’ now? What kind of cases can you bring? Who can bring those cases? What defenses can they bring? I think, you know, that has been crucial because I can’t adjust to the group per se, but I can make a starting point, instead of here, make our starting point there.
Joanne: That’s fantastic. I love that you’re leveraging not only your diverse student population by having them bring in their own knowledge and experience into the discussions, but you’re also intentionally choosing cases that are not representative of your students - forcing them to think about different cultures, norms, and behaviors. I love that.
What suggestions do you have if classrooms, let’s say don’t have that diverse range of backgrounds and experience?
Dyebo: If you don't have a big number of students in a classroom, make students play roles that they otherwise wouldn't play. “You're representing the Third World Network, a policy group from Malaysia. If you don’t know, okay, you have to go play that role. You’re representing a business group from Nigeria - okay, and you go play that role. You’re representing the government of Brazil. Go and play that role.” So even if you don’t have them, placing them in situations that they have to represent people unlike themselves is a really good way to sort of get that material in, that they otherwise wouldn't be able to go find for writing their own individual paper that they've chosen.
Joanne: I love that you’re intentionally choosing cases that your students would otherwise never experience and really allowing them to immerse themselves into those situations through role playing.
So with all that’s been happening in the world, all of the challenges that 2020 has brought on us and all of those that we continue to face in 2021, how are you providing an inclusive space or sense of belonging for your students online?
Dyebo: It’s interesting, again, I’d like to contrast it to sort of being in the regular classroom where the students can see each other, they can respond to each other’s social and body signals. And that has both negative and positive things. When you're in person, you're less likely to sort of say something more controversial because you have the people around you. It cabins you, right. There's a lot of the peer group structure. I've used that in some ways to sort of say, okay that's great because you create the group, you create the buy-in, you create the community and you have the premises on which they operate. And then people can feel free to say things but they’re limited by their sense of belonging to the group that they won't say things that are harmful or inappropriate.
Online, you know, it's much more difficult. You have people who are both distant from each other, and especially with the hybrid JD, they’re in entirely different cities and doing entirely different things. They don't respond to each other in the same way online, right. They're looking at me for the most part. They don't do a lot of cross talk. And cross talk, like having them talk to each other is really, really crucial to this. But you have to set the rules up for how they talk to each other, much more explicitly. So I use a lot of breakout rooms but only for the live work. I put them in the breakout room, but everybody has an assigned role. So somebody has to be the rapporteur or the note taker. Somebody has to be the moderator of the discussion. And then you can have a free discussion, and then there are certain questions I want them to get around to talking about and answering as they think about this. So it's a much more sort of constructive dialogue and which in answering those questions they can do a lot of things. But I make them say, “here is your starting point for the discussion” and it limits sort of where they can go for that.
The other thing I found really useful is when people know that you’re recorded, they watch themselves a little more carefully sometimes. And so we record all our classes, because it's great for people to be able to revisit them. That means that students are also careful about it. It’s always in the back of my mind like, “Oh, this could be recorded. Am I saying this in the way that I want to say it.” It's not a chilling effect you want, right. I mean, the goal is to tell everybody you're free to raise issues, to even ask questions, but you're also going to have consequences if you behave badly - if you are behaving appropriately. And again, I feel like we're lucky in law that we have certain things. We can say, ad hominem arguments are not acceptable. We can say, if you go to make a normative argument - argument about what should be - you have to tell us why. Where does that rationale come from, what's your rationale for it? What's your reason for it and you'll have to defend that idea and will make you work all the way back to first premises for it. And if you have trouble defending it, that tells you something. And you don't get to be angry that your idea has been challenged. You don't get to feel like you've been shoved in a corner when your ideas are being challenged. I think that is set up by sort of making sure everybody buys into the premise at the beginning, but again that's law, right. Other places, when you're teaching something else it's harder to limit people in the way that they argue. But I think, by providing that kind of framework of - when they talk to each other, they have to talk to each other in a very structured way, with a particular goal with certain things to produce.
There's no getting away from controversy and controversial ideas. You shouldn't be trying to get away from that right, but you should be making sure that when people discuss controversial ideas, they're doing so in a way that is going to be useful and constructive to their learning.
Joanne: Professor Shabalala talks about three ingredients towards building an inclusive learning environment. From a course design perspective, he talks about how we must diversify the cases and examples that are studied to include the voices and experiences of those who are not represented in the classroom. We must move past the one-size-fits-all teaching approach by adjusting to the needs of the individual and creating customized learning for our students. He goes on to share that one of the most effective ways to build an inclusive learning environment is by forming meaningful connections with your students. Shabalala talks about how important it is to make sure you get buy-in from your students from the beginning, and work towards building classroom community. Lastly, while the nature of law school already sets the foundation for constructive discussion, he emphasizes the need for teachers to provide explicit instruction and modeling in order to create a sense of belonging and a safe space for controversial discussions to be had in a constructive and meaningful way.
This is Joanne An from FED Talk. Until next time!
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