E-INCLUSION: MOVING FROM DIVERSITY TO INCLUSION IN ONLINE HIGHER EDUCATION ENVIRONMENTS
Online Course, hosted by Open University of Catalonia
Course duration: 7 weeks
Course workload: 75 hours (= 30 hours devoted to read/study + 45 hours devoted to work/assignments)
Number of Credits: 3
Course dates: 19.10.22 – 21.12.22
** Kindly note that the course acceptance will be limited to the approved classroom capacity. e-Inclusion Consortium obtains the right to conduct the selection. You can read more at the bottom of the Course Details section
COURSE SUMMARY
This pilot course offers you windows of opportunities to further develop your knowledge and capabilities to work against social reproduction in virtual educational settings. The course (3 ECTS credits of workload) has been designed and implemented within a project called Building capacity for inclusive education in digital environments (e-Inclusion), co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.
The pilot course will enhance your expertise in building and nurturing meaningful e-learning experiences for a diverse range of university students – regardless of their socio-economic, occupational and health backgrounds. This will facilitate higher education institutions to adopt organisational cultures that promote virtual environments which are inclusive, academically challenging and of a high quality.
You will be given three challenges to work on. As an overview, these challenges will take you on a journey of personal reflection about your own background and needs as educators, as well as those of your students. You will also learn how to apply the principles of inclusive education in virtual settings and create truly engaging learning environments, with a strong sense of social virtual presence.
Associated professional fields
This pilot course is aimed at educators like you (and would-be educators as well) – architects, implementers and mediators of student experiences in higher education institutions. You are the glue that holds virtual education environments together. And this course focuses on preparing and equipping you to teach in digital settings inclusively from many different perspectives.
COURSE DETAILS
Competences
The competences associated to the activities in this pilot course are the following:
- Challenge your own perspectives and practice self-reflection.
- Recognize and cater to diversity in digital classrooms.
- Design effective and engaging digital learning strategies for diverse learners.
- Create and make use of diverse, meaningful digital learning content.
- Cultivate an inclusive online learning climate.
- Build alliances for digital inclusive education.
Learning Outcomes
The learning outcomes associated to the activities and to the competences in the course are the following:
- Critically reflect on your own specific biases and position, and the way in which these affect digital learning.
- Develop and integrate an inclusive language for digital learning purposes.
- Recognise the specificities of digital learning for social action and community building.
- Analyse and value your students’ backgrounds, perspectives and learning journeys.
- Devise digital learning initiatives that empower students to express their perspectives.
- Design digital learning initiatives that value and integrate the different perspectives to personalise the learning experience of the students.
- Find and choose inclusive digital tools for learning purposes.
- Recognise digital learning approaches that fit your students’ different needs.
- Design your digital course so it is accessible, activating and challenging.
- Find and make use of a diverse range of non-mainstream topics and perspectives for your digital course.
- Find and make use of multimedia learning resources from academic and alternative sources.
- Identify learning methodologies and digital tools that let students collaboratively co-create content.
- Identify digital inclusion catalysts within your university and find strategies to collaborate with them.
- Identify external key players in digital inclusive education and find strategies to collaborate with them.
- Recognize and articulate the characteristics of, and requirements for, an inclusive online learning climate.
- Design learning activities that strengthen an inclusive online climate, with students as co-participants.
- Identify and describe didactical approaches to make online discussions and hot moments into moments of learning.
- Design an interactive activity with peers to evaluate the created didactical approaches.
Content
The contents of this pilot course are broken down into three challenges, which are the following:
- Challenge 1 | Educating (to) different perspectives
This challenge deals with some of the core concepts of inclusive education, where the focus is put on the practice of continuous self-reflection on positionality. In this challenge, you will be introduced to the concepts of color braveness, learn the different ways in which you can establish a ‘space’ for dialogue and reflection in the classroom and are familiarized with some online resources for further learning.
- Challenge 2 | Moving from diversity to inclusion in the digital arena
In this challenge, you learn to create an inclusive online learning environment. The design, learning objectives, resources, learning environment and feedback/evaluation is viewed through the lens of inclusion with the power of online learning possibilities. In this challenge, you will find opportunities and inspiration to see this and be able to work with it.
- Challenge 3 | How can I engage my online students?
In this challenge, you will learn the significance of some essential concepts, as critical incident techniques, inclusive education, inclusive online learning environment, sense of belonging, social presence, hot moments and digital learning activities. The combination of Moving from rlearning resources and activities includes a step-based reflective approach to evaluate unexpected situations that we reacted to and had unexpected outcomes, tools for making education accessible and engaging for every student, regardless of their social background, identities and/or disabilities, a learning setting where every student feels safe to learn and participate, where students feel they belong as a member of the learning community and where they feel their contributions matter, experiences when individuals feel that they are acknowledged as full-fledged members of a community, skills for creating social and emotional connections and to present oneself as a ‘real person’ to group members in online contexts, strategies for managing emotion-laden moments of conflict or tension that threaten to derail the teaching process and finally the design of learning activities that are supported by digital tools.
Selection Procedure
e-Inclusion Consortium encourages applications from candidates from all backgrounds, communities and industries. We value the positive impact that diversity of opinions, contexts and experiences can bring to the Pilot Course.
In selecting participants for the Pilot Course we are committed to having a team that is made up of diverse skills, experiences and abilities. Selection will be made in accordance to geographical representation, institutional diversity and potential to apply the knowledge in working directly with students.
All potential participants should provide a short CV, consent to complete the Pilot Course (3 credits workload) and give their feedback through assessment surveys.
No longer accepting applications. Check the website in March 2023 to access Course Materials.
