We can help you and all faculty foster equity in teaching and assessment

Equity is about inclusiveness

Effective teachers  practice including all their students being intentional to especially include students who have been historically or traditionally been excluded or marginalized, such as those who have physical or mental disabilities and members of minority groups.

Equity is not the same as equality

Equality

The picture below shows equality  as all viewers are given the same box.  Some viewers do not even need the box to see over the fence, whereas others cannot even use the box to help see over the fence.

Equity

The picture below shows equity. Equity means that people are given what they need and everyone is not treated the same,  Some viewers do not need a box to see over the fence,  some need  two boxes, whereas others need completely different help to  see over the fence.

Effective teaching  must consider equity

Recommended effective teaching practices that foster equity:

Learning-centered teaching including

• Providing scaffolding support to students
• Scaffold difficult content
• Scaffold high stakes assessments
• Some students will need more support
• Some students might need this support longer
• Provide frequent formative feedback
• Consider using effective student success strategies
• Grade open ended assignments using rubrics
• give students grading rubrics in advance
• ask students to self-assess using these rubrics, hand in their self-assessments

Recommended effective assessment practices that foster equity:

• grade all assessments without knowing  the identity of the student to prevent bias
• include varied types of assessment methods
• recognize the validity of alternative perspectives and viewpoints
• students who have traditionally been marginalized perceive that less negative grading bias directed toward them when grading rubrics are used
• disaggregate  data to determine if all students met the objectives