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Agreeing guidelines for inclusive interaction in course
Inclusive teaching practices are inseparable from high quality teaching practices, hence inclusive teaching affects all aspects of a course and learning experience in it. One of the inclusive teaching and learning practices is to create an equal and comfortable environment for all students to study. This is one important step towards a respectful, supportive, and productive course learning environment where everyone can feel safe and welcome.
Feeling safe affects how individuals envision what happens if they speak out, try new things and how comfortable they feel in their surroundings. But not only that, this affects a person's ability to learn, focus and act in an organized manner. Feeling unsafe in teaching and learning situations might lead to lack of participation and interaction, not sharing and experimenting and not feeling included.
Adopting these guidelines supports achieving learning goals: they help clarify expectations, cultivate a sense of belonging among students, and facilitate students’ ability to engage productively with one another across their differences, and develop their transferable skills. Every teacher can contribute to the development of supportive environment by creating a community in which all students feel a sense of belonging and a willingness to engage in discourse. You can start with your own course or a student group.
How to start?
One of the core practices could be to start the course by collectively agreeing on inclusive interaction guidelines. This means common guidelines for sensitive and considerate communication that are agreed with all students and staff. These guidelines should be discussed and agreed together. Return to these guidelines also during the course if needed.
A suggestion for guidelines to be copied and modified for your course or other event is available at the bottom of the page.
Remember also to discuss the intended learning outcomes, content and the evaluation criteria with your students. Make sure that students understand these and revisit these goals during and at the end of the course to see if they were reached. Use various feedback methods, in addition to teacher lead feedback, also peer feedback and anonymous feedback are something to consider. Use the opportunity to collect feedback during and at the end of the course to develop your teaching further.
Guidelines for inclusive interaction
Meeting people around you with an open mind and understanding that others will come to situations with diverse backgrounds and different experiences from yours. Respecting the diversity of people and their boundaries, and giving everyone space to be themselves.
Try to recognize how your own position, background and experiences affects to your thinking patterns, perspectives and your way of working with people. Our unconscious biases and stereotypes may be attributed unfairly to different groups of people, so be careful about assumptions and generalizations you make. You cannot know the experiences, thoughts, life situation, or self-defined identity of others.
Staying open to fresh perspectives, share experiences, listen others and experiment other ways to foster open discourse, encourage free exchange of ideas and build mutual trust. Giving space to everyone and making sure everyone is involved. Respecting each other’s time, space & effort. It’s ok to ask questions and it’s ok to disagree.
Have discussions with colleagues, read books, listen to podcasts, and be open to change your view based on new learnings.
Download and modify a slide for your course
You are free to download, modify and use the slide below in your purpose. It is important that the guidelines are introduced and agreed upon as a group as well as in smaller groups. This list is not complete and not fit for all purposes, feel free to edit or make additions throughout the course. Remember shared responsibility for making our community safe and welcoming for all.
Intervening in the harassment and inappropriate treatment
We do not accept any kind of inappropriate treatment, bullying or harassment.
Etiska principerna - Värden i praktiken
De etiska principerna (Code of Conduct) utgör grunden för Aalto-gemenskapens kultur och hjälper oss att omsätta våra värden och vårt sätt att agera i handling.