Episode 11

The Why and How of Inclusive Teaching with Dr. Tracie Addy

[MUSIC PLAYING] STEVEN ROBINOW: This is Teaching for Student Success. I'm Steven Robinow. Today my guest is Dr. Tracie Marcella Addy, Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning and the Director of the Center for the Integration of Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.

In this episode, we will discuss why instructors and institutions should embrace inclusive practices. We also discuss practices that have been demonstrated to improve engagement, persistence, and success.

Wherever you are on your journey of providing the best learning environments and opportunities for all of your students, listen to this episode for new perspectives, support, motivation, ideas, and possibly a new book to add to your book club or journal club. I'm excited that Dr. Addy has joined me today. Welcome, Tracie. Thank you for joining us on Teaching for Student Success.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: It's a pleasure to be here today.

STEVEN ROBINOW: I'm excited to have you. Before we dig into your book, let's discuss a few things. First, on your CV, which is quite impressive, something unique piqued my interest. On your campus at Lafayette College, you served as a student quarantine buddy in the spring of this year. I've never seen that before. Can you tell me about that program, your responsibilities, and the experience?

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Sure, absolutely. So for that particular program, we were volunteers, and some of the students had to go into quarantine or isolation. And we wanted to make sure they didn't feel completely isolated and also that they had the things that they needed.

So our responsibility was basically to check in with the students. We could call them, email them, just check in to see how they're doing. Also how they're overall doing and how they're feeling, too. And then be their buddy in that way. So we would keep checking in on them and telling them that we were resource-available.

And at the end of their quarantine or their isolation, they'd basically leave, and then we'd cycle through students in that way because there were so many going into quarantine and isolation. So it was a really nice experience. I will say that some of the students would say, oh no, I don't feel bad at all even if they had symptoms or they were sick or whatever.

And some of them were just saying, I have everything met, or some of them were saying, thank you, or some of them would just ask me lots of different questions, like where can I get this or what can I do with this? And I could connect them to those that they should be connected to. So that was my role as a quarantine buddy.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Nice. So it sounds like a number of faculty—or was it faculty and staff, faculty, anyone on campus who participated in this?

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: They mostly asked staff. There could have been some faculty, too, though, that participated in it, but it was mostly staff.

STEVEN ROBINOW: And how many students did you buddy during the spring, do you think? Ballpark.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: So if I estimate it, I probably say maybe about 15 or so. Yeah, 15 or so students. We were split up across several people, so there was a bunch of volunteers.

STEVEN ROBINOW: That's an interesting program. So I've talked to a number of people during COVID and no one has talked—well, I hadn't seen evidence of a program like this, so it was interesting to hear about. So now this is an interesting program that was developed, COVID-generated or COVID—whatever the right term is.

There must have been some positive aspects for the students obviously because of COVID but this sort of program would be positive for students in non-COVID times, don't you think? I mean, is there any discussion about continuing a program like this into the future?

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Yeah, that's a good question. So this program was mostly through the Student Affairs division of our institution. And it was very intentional because students had expressed being isolated and whatnot during that time period.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Sure.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: I think it's a good opportunity to try to think about like are there other opportunities for this as well? The nice thing is, more of us are seeing each other on campus and more people—less people are being isolated and in quarantine, so that's nice. But, I mean, I think it's a good point to make. These types of programs can have benefits outside of circumstances like COVID as well.

I think it would be good for some students. I will say, some students were like, oh, I don't need to be checked in on. So maybe it could be also potentially a voluntary basis as well, because some students will feel like, oh, this is really great, wonderful. And some might be like, I'm OK.

But I think intentionally checking in on students, whether it's this type of program or in teaching and learning environments, that this is a good thing in general to show that we care and we want to know how our students are doing.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Right. It's a really interesting innovation, and it's super interesting to think about. Everybody has done different things during COVID and implemented new practices, many of which might be worth considering moving forward even as we move out of the COVID phase into the COVID vaccine available period, whatever this is going to mean.

I mean, it's a new period we're moving into. And even after that, as you said, it just provides an interesting way to connect with students, lots of students need connections on campus and just helps them feel more connected and more seen.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Yeah, definitely.

STEVEN ROBINOW: More involved. Interesting. OK. Thank you. Thank you for that. That just sounded super interesting. Now let's talk about your book, What Inclusive Instructors Do: Principles and Practices for Excellence in College Teaching. Perhaps we should start with the definition. How do you define inclusive teaching?

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: This is a great question, and it's a question we explored in the book itself. So that's actually something that we asked the participants of the study, what does inclusive teaching mean to you? So I'll frame it as what came back to us. Essentially when instructors had thought about inclusive teaching, they thought about it in two ways.

So one is the equity piece that we're designing learning environments that support all learners, diversity of the learners. It's responsive to those who are in the classrooms that we teach, right around the learning spaces in which we teach, It's equitable with regards to instruction.

The second component, they also felt that students are included and they feel a sense of belonging and it's welcoming. So inclusive teaching is facilitating not only this equitable environment for all students, but it's also allowing students to feel a sense of the community, that they are part of it, that they're not excluded, that it's built for them in mind as well.

So those are two big pieces of inclusion that we parse out. It's really hard to parse out the equity and the belonging pieces with regards to inclusion because they're so related. When things are equitable, they can be more inclusive. When things are more inclusive, they're typically more—they can be more equitable for the group that's there.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Maybe you could—you mentioned it. Maybe we should talk just briefly about the study that you did. Who did you collect data from? Can you tell us a little bit about that study that really becomes the foundation for much of the work in this book?

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Sure, yes. We basically tried to do a national study. We tried to throw it out there and a lot of different groups. Instructors primarily being our audience, instructors across disciplines, across institution types, across ranks. And we basically wanted them to be able to participate in the study. So we distributed it to a variety of different institutions, to a variety of organizations.

So you'll see like in the study, if you look at the published paper, that it's across—mostly across the United States. It's a mostly US-based study. And there are different types of institutions involved, from research-intensive institutions to baccalaureate colleges to minority-serving institutions, historically Black colleges and universities, community colleges, they're all there, and the voices of those instructors are represented.

So we essentially wanted to hear from everyone. We wanted to hear from all different types of institutions, all disciplines as well represented and to tell us a little bit more about, what is this inclusive instruction that you do? And then a number of other questions, like the barriers, the challenges, what types of supports and whatnot. So we ask a variety of questions in that particular survey.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Did you target specific faculty or were you just broadcasting out and people were self-identifying as inclusive instructors?

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Yeah, we broadcasted it out, but we can identify by the survey design if they were inclusive because they would be able to describe inclusive teaching practices that they engaged in. So we did ask those specific questions. There were some respondents that said, I don't know what inclusive teaching is, I don't know if I use it. So those will be the ones that we're still at uncertain phase at that point.

And this study was conducted before the COVID pandemic got big. But the great thing about it is the results still live. This is something that we’ll continue to reflect on in years and years. It doesn't have to depend on a pandemic and an increased awareness. Now, we're seeing certainly that there is increased awareness and desire to make change because of that increased awareness and accountability. But this data is stable and it's timeless, I think, in a lot of ways. Some of it is timeless.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Yeah. So what do you think is driving the increased awareness among the faculty?

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: So COVID-19 really—and I see this at my institution, too, because our centers for teaching and learning played a huge role and a lot of institutions around moving institutions into on—faculty and courses online. And so we're at a school where all of our classes mostly were essentially in-person, so we had to move completely online.

And as a result, one of the big things that happened—there's a couple it's also tied to our social political climate right now, but the move online also introduced a lot of awareness of the challenges that our students face. So some students not having access to certain things and technology and being revealed that if they were just at the college, you might not have ever seen that unless they told you or expressed it in some way.

So we saw into the lives of our students a little more and the struggles that some of them had due to differential opportunities and differential privilege that certain students with advantaged backgrounds had that disadvantaged backgrounds did not. So that increased awareness was really profound for many instructors. And they wanted to do something about it and they had to grapple with that, and they were very surprised, I think, by a lot of the things they saw that they had not realized about their students.

The second thing, of course, is all of the events happening in our nation. The injustices, George Floyd's murder, all of that tied to what's happening in our Black communities, et cetera. And so all of that tied to it even other communities as well and racism happening.

So all of that, I think, led to a very dynamic situation—an urgency more, an awareness where people wanted to do more, they see more, now it's time to actually do more. We also are in a generation, I think, now, especially with all of what's happened that that has been helpful, but also the students of today, they definitely have a lot of spirit around these issues and a lot of thought and activism and whatnot around this.

So I think also, we have to think about this generation also, this is important, and it's being important for beyond this—the current college-aged generation, but that's also there as well. So I think it's like a perfect storm of many different factors, some of them obviously of which are very unfortunate, but it also has propelled individuals to move forward with inclusive instruction and designing more inclusive environments.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Yeah. That's interesting, this sort of collision of all these events coming at once that's generated, as you said, this perfect storm. Terrible, but also great that we can move things forward in the classroom. So let's talk about the problem.

Define what inclusive teaching is and maybe you can talk about your motivation for writing the book, but let me just ask a few questions about the problem. What's the evidence that there is a problem in the higher education system? If we're going to do something, what's the motivation to do that? What's the failure of the current system or what failure of the current system does inclusive teaching address and hope to solve?

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: So if we look at our populations of students that are going to college now, it's more diverse than it ever was. And that's because more students are having opportunities to go to college. And one of the challenges of that is that institutions have not necessarily been built with diversity in mind, like the historic nature of how the institution's built, who made the decisions about it, how people who had privilege to go to these institutions who has access to resources before so that they can actually get to the institution.

So all of that has been something that I think a lot of institutions are grappling with. There are some institutions such as historically Black colleges and universities, community colleges where they’re completely designed from the beginning to be accessible or to support students from certain identities to be able to go to school and have access to higher education.

And so what a lot of other institutions, especially like predominantly white institutions, are having to do now now that their populations are becoming more diverse, more first-gen, students of various identities and backgrounds, and seeing that some of them are not succeeding in terms of staying—retaining at the institution, feeling belonging at the institution, and not even potentially coming to the institution or matriculating or even trying to enroll or apply to the institution, so they're seeing that this is a problem and seeing it in certain fields even more than others as well.

So the problem is we have systems in place where they might not support the types of students that we want, and we want them to succeed at our institutions. So we need to think about, what do we do now? So how do we backtrack here and try to make sure that those structures and resources and supports are basically in place, and also that students will want to come to our institutions?

So that is a lot of the problem. There's been a lot of exclusion that's happened, and now we're trying to figure out how do we promote more inclusion now that we're allowing other students—students are having more opportunities to go to school with diverse backgrounds.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Absolutely. Thank you. It's a critically important issue that you're really addressing here. So let's talk about evidence for a second. Is there evidence—or what is the evidence that inclusive teaching increases the retention rate or the persistence rate? Maybe we can talk about the opportunity gap or the equity gap. What's the evidence that inclusive teaching diminishes the equity gap?

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Mm-hmm. So inclusive teaching involves a lot of different types of teaching behaviors. And if we look at the research, certain types of studies have really honed in on trying to answer that question. So there's been studies—and they also intersect with the psychology. So we're seeing things across different disciplines to really think about belonging, issues of belonging as well as tied to academics and performance and retention and all of that.

But we’ve also seen some studies that look at different techniques and tools in inclusive teaching. Active learning being one, active learning, if it's done well, being able to reduce those gaps that we see between groups who have been historically excluded from higher education and they can improve as a result. They can do better as a result of different strategies and teaching that are used, such as active learning methods. And that's seen a lot—various studies in STEM education have definitely shown that.

So we're at the point now, I think, where active learning is pretty accepted as an important practice and we can include it in our inclusive teaching framework.

Also, when we look at some of the studies around belonging, we'll see some studies that do self-report of different identity groups. First-gen students, students of color, et cetera. And they might look and ask students to report their sense of belonging related to their community and their institution. And they'll also look at other factors like their achievement, how they're doing, their persistence, and things of that nature.

And we'll see in those studies broadly that the students who are reporting more belonging, there's a relationship with their achievement, their mental health as well.

And they've done some interesting studies in psychological sciences, too, where they've actually done interventions where belonging's used as a psychological lever, and they track those students, and they see the students affirm that they will be able to develop these networks of support at their institution, that they're actually doing better. They do better academically and achievement-wise as well as their mental health.

So there's been a lot of interesting work around, I would say, belonging and looking at achievement. Belonging looking at mental health and well-being. There's been a lot of interesting work about some specific teaching strategies like active learning and reducing those gaps.

And I think that's a lot of the—a lot of what's going on right now, and I feel that there's going to be more around this as we continue to explore all of the different strategies now in awareness, that increased awareness that people have now, especially instructors in higher education wanting to actually do more research around this.

It's very promising. There's evidence that we really need to think about belonging, we really need to think about the teaching strategies and how we can reduce those equity gaps that we see.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Thank you, yeah. And this is really how you open your book. And let me say, your book really documents and references a lot of these studies that you've just mentioned. They're all documented in your book and referenced. So it's a great resource, really, for also finding the primary literature that refers to these papers. If anybody's interested, it's great. It's really good.

So that's how you open the book. You really open the book talking about, why do we need to do this? One of the reasons I've started this podcast was to help people figure out how to do things. And one of the things that your book really does quite effectively and clearly is it lays out things people should do—part two of your book really is all about, what does one do? How does one design an inclusive course? What are the things you can do?

And what I like in there—and maybe we can talk about some of these—are things that people can do that really aren't hard to implement. Some of them are very basic and straightforward, and I like where you start. You start by talking about the syllabus. So maybe we could talk a little bit about the syllabus and how the syllabus can become a tool and a very important tool to promote and develop an inclusive teaching environment.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Sure. So when I think of the syllabus, I think of just the general framework of the course and the design of the course as well, and the messaging that we give to students around the course. And so yes, in our book we did talk about the syllabus to really hone in on it because it is at that level of design of a course and making it more inclusive.

So some of the things to consider in the syllabus is, first, just basic things, like the tone of your syllabus. Is it inviting? If you read it—you really want students to take your course. Do they feel invited into the course itself? Is it more of a contractual agreement or is there some inviting language?

So we talk about the language of the syllabus and the tone and how you can actually make it more warm and student-friendly in a lot of ways. Use language such as growth mindset language. Include various types of resources on the syllabus. Just making sure students are aware of what's available to them and normalizing it.

So for example, tutoring or other support resources. Making that evident that students have those supports, that you also support their engagement in that and that you want them to succeed. So tying in that mindset of a growth mindset, but also with all the tools that they have in the class and beyond you as the instructor at the institution to succeed. So including those is also very important.

We can also in the syllabus give some aspects of how we view or our philosophies around teaching, around the classroom environment. So we'll also see in syllabi that we value all members of the community. That type of language is also going to set up a more welcoming environment for students.

In addition, when we think of the syllabus, we can think of the design of the course and how, if it's very intentional, it can build inclusion. So we talk a little bit about resonant materials, thinking about your course and who's taking it, who's in my class? Knowing who's there. And ensuring that some of that material will resonate with your students, that they can see themselves in their material or they can access portions of themselves through that material.

So what does that look like? You might have to teach certain content or concepts, but you can also create assignments that allow students to have choice and indicate that on the syllabus so that they have that agency to incorporate aspects of themselves in those particular assignments. We can think about the content of the course, too, and how that can make it more resonant with students and make changes in that way.

In addition to just the content of the course, we can think about the practices we use to assess students, how we've set up the structure of the course. For example, if it's a course for first-year students and it's a high-stakes-test type of environment, is there a way you can lower the weight of it? Let the students have time to practice.

We have to think about ways in which we can also incorporate places where students can have more chances, more feedback, and actually, they're also learning you, the course. But they also have to learn the material, but we don't want to make sure we're assessing students just because they know how to take a test.

We want them to be able to show and illustrate they know the content, they have developed the skills. So if it's their first time taking a test, let's give them some time to practice. So those are certain things we can think about.

We can also think about more formative types of assessments over the high-stakes assessments. What are also ways that we can help students see where they're at, where they're standing in a class? That are not always high stakes, maybe they might not be graded. And just various informal things that we can incorporate in the class—in the design phase of that class very early on that will help students have a chance for practice, will help students have a chance for feedback before more high-stakes types of things.

Now there's a lot of other pathways to take with inclusion with regards to designing a course. Some will also venture into other areas like ungrading and things of that nature. But we're focusing more on the learning and we're going to focus more on these formative types of feedback and processes and activities to help the students build their knowledge and to learn in several of the different types of ungrading kind of practices, although they take many different forms.

So there's much to do with, I think, the design, the syllabus of a course. Also leaving opportunities for students to invite content that they want to talk about in the course. So there's a lot of things we can do there. But those are just a few.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Yeah, it's a big discussion of the syllabus and the importance of it. And I think it's a great way to open this section because I think, as you point out in that chapter, this is really how students often first interact with the course.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Mm-hmm.

STEVEN ROBINOW: The first thing they might do before they even come to class is to open the syllabus and look at it. And so providing a welcoming document as opposed to one that is only a contract, you talk about this notion of being a contract or a communication tool or an organizational plan. And I think in the end, probably a well-designed syllabus probably does all of those things.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Because it serves many purposes.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Absolutely.

STEVEN ROBINOW: But providing a tone and a structure that doesn't frighten students.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Yes.

STEVEN ROBINOW: It doesn't intimidate them, but instead welcomes and excites them about coming into your course so that when they first walk in the class and maybe see you for the first time, they already feel a sense that you've welcomed them into your realm, because you're really bringing students into your world. They don't know what that is. They don't know what they're walking into.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Mm-hmm.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Super interesting. Since you mentioned these things, I'll mention a couple. There is an earlier episode with Susan Blum talking about ungrading, so we've had one and we'll have more discussions about ungrading so people can refer to that. And also, episode 3 was Bill Davis talked about some interventions in his syllabus that he did some really interesting studies showing that a very simple intervention in syllabus was able to significantly impact the equity gap.

So the syllabus is a very important tool to pay attention to, and I think at some level, very low stakes. You're not asking people to do different things in their course on a daily basis. If all you did was attend to your syllabus, you can have a significant impact on students that come to you. So I think that's a great place to start.

You then spend a section talking about making students feel welcome. It's a really interesting section. You talk about on the first day of class, building community. One tool you talk about is a tool called the Value Relevance Affirmation Statement. This is by Saltarelli in 2017 and Kizilcec as well, 2017. You refer to a few papers.

Can you describe what a value relevance affirmation is and the impacts—the positive impacts that it has? Again, something very simple that seems to have a big impact on persistence and completion rates and grades.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: A lot of times when values affirmations are done, it's basically before something high stakes like a test or something like that, and it's very simple with regards to what the students do. They're basically just asked to think about what they value and to write it down, and essentially that's it.

And so they've definitely had a lot of really interesting results from those types of interventions where they do see differences in the equity gap. Students actually performing much better when they have a chance to reflect on what they value before that particular assessment. So it is a really promising tool that has definitely evidence behind it.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Yeah, it's really interesting that such a simple exercise has positive impacts. Fascinating. You follow that by talking about the professor memoir as a way of a professor to share out—introduce themselves and talk about who they are.

But it also seems to me to tie into the value affirmation statement that it's really a way for a faculty to say, hey, here's who I am and here's what's important to me and to share that with the class. This comes from Hollander in 2001 and is talked about in your book. Could you perhaps provide an example of what a professor memoir might sound like?

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Mmm, that's good. Some of our professors—and I guess I can talk about Khadijah here because she's one of my coauthors. One thing that she does in her classes is she just shows her students her career journey and path and everybody's been connected, so she'll display that on the screen and say, these are all the people that have been important to me in my life with regards to my path and my journey.

And go over and talk about how each of them played a role in her path. And having her students be able to see that and hear that and hear where she got her encouragements, how that drove her, that would be one example of how a professor can share aspects of themselves. She talks about her path and journey and research, and especially as a Black woman navigating the sciences, it's very inspiring. It's very, very encouraging for students. And just to see her journey.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Right.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: That would be one example, I would say, of a professor memoir, but they can look in so many different ways. Depending on what the professor would like to share about themselves, just thinking about what things would help my students. What things would make them also feel encouraged? And just learn a little bit more about me and who I am that can also help them.

Some of our professors will also share about being first generation themselves, how they navigated college. That might also be in that memoir. Or some of the challenges that they faced as learners. Some of them will say, oh, when I took this course, I didn't do so well, you know? And now look where I'm at now, and these are things that you can learn and grow in, having that growth mindset language. So sharing various pieces like that of themselves and their paths and journeys I think are a couple of ways that happens.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Yeah, it seems great. It's a great way to express your humanity to your students and to help them see you as a person, and as you said, serve as a role model for your students.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Mm-hmm.

STEVEN ROBINOW: There's two other things I think I really want to hit on. You talk about a student information survey. This seems like an important way for the students to share with you so you can learn about them. You want to talk a bit about that?

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Yeah. In general, instructors might want to know things about their students. Sometimes it might be things that are anonymous, and that's why we did the Who's in Class form that allows students an opportunity to share things that they might not feel comfortable sharing with every professor at the beginning of a course.

And then other things. Maybe their hobbies, what courses they take, things of that nature or their extracurriculars that might not be anonymous the professor would just want to know. So the Who's in Class form is one tool that I'll draw out a little bit further since we've done some work on it and we use it at my institution as well.

The Who's in Class form basically was co-created with students, staff, faculty to really allow students a chance to anonymously share aspects of their identities as well as their thoughts on inclusion and things that they grappled with in an inclusive environment. Anything they wanted to share about that they felt the professor should know.

This particular survey is typically given out early. It's the first class or prior, and the students complete it anonymously. The instructor can use that information to learn more about who's in my class. They can actually make tweaks—so the whole goal was that they can make tweaks to their class if they know this information. And they can actually make it more inclusive for that class because every class is going to be a little different and students might share different information.

So we ran studies on this form so that we could just understand and monitor how it was doing. The percent of completion, even though it's voluntary, we would see over 70% or higher response rates. Students were open to doing the form. A lot of different interesting responses on the form.

We did ask students and their instructors who used it their feedback at the end of the semester on their instructor using the form. So the instructor was actually to work with the teaching center and to really think about what the student said on the form and how they would build a more inclusive classroom based on that information.

So thinking of we need these tools that give us information that support these inclusive environments to help us do it even better. So they would tweak it, they would have some plans, and they'd put them in place. Then at the end of the semester we asked the students in their classes as well as the professors what they thought of it.

Majority—high percentages of students were comfortable with using the form. They appreciated that their professors did build more inclusive classrooms with the form. And the instructors felt similarly that they really would use it again. So having that information at the start is really going to help seed a more inclusive environment because sometimes it takes a while to get to know students. You have to be very intentional about it.

We also see informal office hours and things like that, but this is a small step—again, you mentioned small steps. It's a survey. You know you can send it out to a large class or small class. Any size, you can look at the results and you can consider how to make changes—small changes—this is not going to be reforming or revising your whole course at this point, it's the beginning of the semester. But small changes.

And some of the things that we saw the others did in their courses, I can share a few of them. Maybe they have students of certain identity groups and they would actually incorporate different examples so that it would resonate, again, with more of the class in those particular identity groups.

Sometimes it would be like students had preferences for maybe writing versus typing or something like that. So they give more choice and opportunities to students whereas they wouldn't have before. A lot of the professors were surprised how many students work a lot of hours in their classes. So they would absolutely like think about that with regards to when and how they structured in the assignments and what they expected of the students.

Some students would say they're first gen. They'd also make sure all students had access to the first-gen resources at the college. Some of the instructors might share that they are first gen, things like that. So those are the types of changes, the tweaks they're making to basically build these more inclusive settings.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Yeah, nice. So again, another tool, low stakes, very simple to employ to make a relationship between students and faculty.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Definitely, yep.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Yeah, very nice. Did you have any instructors that were resistant to do this but did it anyway? And do you have some that you dragged in and did they come out the other end thinking this was a great idea?

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: For the tool itself?

STEVEN ROBINOW: For the tool itself, yeah.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: We had one instructor—this is all voluntary. We had one instructor who said they would do it, they used the tool. But that instructor complained about it and said, oh, this is pointless, it's a waste of my time.

And so the one really interesting thing about that instructor who genuinely was very interested in building more inclusive classrooms and also just figuring out, how do I do it, grappling with these questions, at the end of the semester we surveyed their students—and the instructor we did, too. The instructor gave it low ratings overall. It's really high, but this instructor was one of the few that said, oh, this wasn't helpful.

So their students were actually the most positive of the responses that we saw where they really appreciated that this instructor—and I was just like, oh my goodness, when I looked at that data, I was thinking, oh my goodness, because actually when the instructor had these comments, it made me concerned that I'm like, oh, I'm wondering if their students are going to say that, too. Will this align? Absolutely not. They were actually the highest scores of those particular classes, the students being appreciative.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Of the survey?

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Yeah, doing the form. So the end of assessment was specifically commenting about your instructor using the form and implementing those strategies and things.

STEVEN ROBINOW: So the instructor who is on board with having an inclusive classroom implemented the form, then complained that the form was useless. And the students—of course, he or she—this faculty member didn't report that they—they didn't report—thank you. They didn't report that to the students back, that was just an aside to you that this is useless. And then the students at the end of the semester, when reporting about the form, thought it was great.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Yeah.

STEVEN ROBINOW: And they gave you the most positive results.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Yeah.

STEVEN ROBINOW: That's fascinating. And then how did that instructor respond to that?

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Yeah.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Knowing that the students then found it super, I mean, extremely—a positive intervention.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Mm-hmm.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Did it change that instructor's perspective on the form?

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Yeah. And unfortunately I can't comment upon that, but what I can say is that I did tell the instructor this. But I don't know if that changed their mindset on the form now.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Interesting.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: In general. But yeah, I can definitely say that. But one of the things that we think came out of that, how we can draw a conclusion is that students—if they feel that you care, you're taking intentionality of trying to find out more about them, even if you don't think it's going to work or it works, it actually might have an impact on your students. That was a pretty very interesting finding there.

STEVEN ROBINOW: That's very interesting. And it's a great story to tell.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Yeah, it's definitely.

STEVEN ROBINOW: That's great. You also in this section talk about essential office hours, which is an interesting concept. Can you describe that and say a little bit about essential office hours?

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Sure. Yeah. So essential office hours, which people can call different things nowadays, it's basically inviting students to informal conversations with you. It's like a coffee hour with students. And so a lot of instructors, especially in the COVID pandemic when it was starting and trying to figure out ways to build relationships with students, especially in the remote environment, they started to just say, virtually come to my office hours before start of class or at some point during the semester just to talk informally.

That's it. There's no big agenda, we're not going to talk about the class necessarily or anything like that. I want to know more about you, your thoughts about the class. And so they'll in that time and open up those times for students to be able to do that.

Now some do it voluntarily, but some do it essentially in a way that they ask all students at some point, come to my office or I want to talk to you, I want to meet with you. And I've definitely seen a lot of rewards of instructors doing that and reporting a rewards of it and building these relationships with students.

Some students commenting upon, oh my goodness, this was wonderful to be able to have the opportunity to talk to my professor outside of my own academics to get to know me as a person and to spend that time and investment. So it's, again, another way that we can build these environments by building community with our students. So those are essentially what a central office hours are, and there's a lot of instructors that have adopted that, I think, since COVID.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Nice. So implementations during COVID that may persist beyond because of the positive benefits they have—

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Definitely.

STEVEN ROBINOW: —for the relationships with students, which always result in better retention, better grades, better engagement, all those things that are very positive.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: And of course, just one thing to note is that of course for some courses it's really—they're really big, so it does take a lot of time for the essential office hours. But it is worth the investment by what the instructors all say, this is definitely worth it, but it is time-intensive.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Yes, absolutely. Unfortunately we don't have time to cover your whole book. We could sit here and do this for a few more hours, but you have things to do, and I don't think anybody wants to listen to me for that much, that long. But just to summarize this section, so conducting classes inclusively involves having a student-centered approach, things you talk about in the book.

Student-centered approach, growth mindset, accessibility to content, accessible content. And having diverse resources and valuing diverse student voices. And then being explicit in your intentions where—you talked about structured design, structured courses. But also, providing flexibility, realizing that students have complicated lives and flexibility is needed sometimes.

Perhaps one last question before we get to some personal issues. How does providing students with an inclusive learning environment change the students? I'm particularly thinking about what do they expect in following courses. So if they come into your course in a first-year course and they think you're a highly inclusive course, what do they expect? And does it change how students interact and learn in courses that may be less inclusive? Not by intention, but some courses are different, that's all right.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I don't know any studies on that, but from anecdotal and observation, the students are changed by their professors in the way they're taught, they're going to carry that experience with them into other places. So students will likely do some probably comparisons between courses. So certain courses will stand out to them as being more inclusive and those professors having impacts that are higher, I would say, in general than compared to other courses.

I think students take that with them. And seeing some of the feedback that I see also—I run several different programs around inclusion, some of them are very deep dive-type interaction students, partnering with faculty on their inclusive teaching efforts, observing feedback, all of this.

And seeing some of what happens there can definitely say that the students who experience it are deeply appreciative of it and that carries with them forward. They will probably be able to notice, though, obviously that it's not happening and when they do feel excluded in other environments. That's why it's important to have a culture of it.

And so this gets into the cultural issue of like at an institution, we don't want them to go to one class and feel included in another class and feel excluded. That's clearly a problem. In general, I think something that we all need to consider and work on.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Absolutely. And that's part three of your book. Part three of your book really is talking about making it part of the culture on campuses.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Mm-hmm.

STEVEN ROBINOW: This should happen in your class and your colleagues' classes across colleges, across departments. That's how you spend your last section of the book, which is an important read as well. I'd like to spend the rest of our time maybe talking about you a little bit or some stories that you might have.

I have in the past asked what's your best and worst moments teaching, things like that. The worst moments when I asked people about turn out to be the most transformative moments in teaching. Which I think makes sense. You have something bad happen and it transforms what you do.

I'm wondering if you have any transformative stories that you've experienced teaching or seeing teaching, but maybe that you've experienced. So when you were giving your background earlier, I was wondering why you became an educator. I didn't know if you have educators in your family. Education became important to you clearly.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Mm-hmm.

STEVEN ROBINOW: I didn't know if that would tie into a transformative story.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Sure. Yes, I'm actually from a family of educators. Both my father and mother in K-12 education. My father taught special ed education in an urban setting where we grew up. Also, my mother spent time teaching mostly like in middle school settings. I have aunts and uncles and whatnot that are in education. So I do come from a family of a lot of Black educators, which is kind of exciting and neat.

STEVEN ROBINOW: It is.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: And so with regards to transformative experiences, I will say that I think I've been transformed most by being able to be in different teaching and learning environments. As I mentioned earlier, being able to teach at a community college and a state institution, ivy league institution, private schools, all these different types and seeing so many different types of learners.

And just the beauty of that I think is very transformative, some of my most memorable experiences were when I was trying things out. I was an adjunct for a little bit before I got a full-time position. I recall one community college class, and that particular class that I taught at night. I will never forget that class. It was basically a class that was required. And so not everybody was like very excited about it.

But one of the most powerful things is most of these students, they had never seen a Black woman teach science. So that was one thing. They were all ages, all backgrounds. So it's really a unique experience to have someone like me to be able to teach them because it's not something that was grounded in the experiences that they had.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Right.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: And I must say, they were very respectful. The class went well. But I just remember forming such strong bonds with that class in particular. And even though they weren't science majors, they were very interested in it. They all had opportunities to talk about their experiences in science, build relationships in that way.

At the end of that class, I felt really sad. I didn't want to end that magic, I guess, of that class, and I remember some of the students, they didn't want to leave the class, and I just kind of say, bye. And then I had students contact me later and whatnot.

So I will say that that was—that's very transformative because teaching diverse groups of students, coming from somebody who is a person of color who's had some interesting experiences, I would say, as a student and also as a faculty member, as an administrator that's related to identity and things like that.

But what's the most transformative is how any teacher—I think this is why it's transformative for me. Any teacher can have such an impact on their students. So we can all play a role in this process and be able to really impact our students. And I see that across the board wherever I am and the students having these wonderful gratifying experiences.

So I'm very invested in teaching and learning. I'm very interested in what makes students learn, what makes them tick, what makes professors support students. And so I think my own experiences needed that and continued that type of interest that I developed early.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Yeah. Nice. Yeah, from your intro, I'm not surprised that you came from a family of teachers. My mom was a special ed teacher in K through 12 as well.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Oh, nice.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Actually, K through 6, but she also did some adult education. I remember when I was a kid, in summers she would have adult students in our house, adults who couldn't read.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: That's wonderful.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Yeah, I think that's why I went into what I did.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Sure, sure. That's wonderful.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Let me follow up your transformative story and see if we can focus on maybe one student that's impacted you. Do you have a most poignant moment for you with a specific student that you'd like to share?

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Yeah. I had—it's an unfortunate sad story, but I had a story, it's very transformative, though, of a student who was in my biology class. This student had cancer. They already knew they had cancer, they had it for several years. But the student had to go to get treatments, chemo, was in the hospital at various points in the semester.

The reason why this was so transformative—this student, the most lovely student imaginable. And the student would actually score the highest on the test.

And so she would be there for the tests and everything, and she would take it to the hospital when she had times where she had to go and she would be studying, studying hard, and then come back. And sometimes she'd email me like, oh, I have chemo, I'm so sorry I can't make it. I'm like, absolutely. I totally understand. Please you know get the treatment that you need. Come when you're able to come.

She ended up doing super-fabulous achievement-wise in the class. Made a real big impact when she was there. It was wonderful to have her there. She had—at that point all of her hair was gone, et cetera. You could tell she had been treated for cancer.

Unfortunately the student, she did pass away a year or two later after I taught her. And I was able to go to her funeral and I was able to meet her family. And so when I met her mother, her mother said, oh, you were her biology teacher. And she said, biology was such a wonderful—like a big light to her. It was so wonderful and an important light to her.

And that really touched me. Because I saw—that student loved the course, she was doing so well and she was trying so hard and she wanted to have a college experience even though she had the cancer and the treatments. And so that was very meaningful. And that's, again, another thing, another student, another story, another thing that I will never forget that was pretty touching and amazing.

STEVEN ROBINOW: That's an amazing moment. I'm very sad.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Yeah, it's very sad.

STEVEN ROBINOW: To think of the joy you brought to her.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Yeah.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Through that trying time. So you helped her through that period.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

STEVEN ROBINOW: You tell part of the story in your book I believe.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Yes. Some of the scenarios arise from real teaching experiences like that we've had. Yes, that was definitely one of mine.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Thank you. I'm looking at the time. Tracie, I want to thank you so much for your time that you've spent with us, with me today. I look forward to your future work on inclusive teaching and helping faculty embed these practices in their courses with the goal of helping all students to be successful, particularly those that have been historically excluded and disenfranchised.

In addition to this podcast, our website will provide a link to your website, to Dr. Addy's website, which is you've got a great website, you've got a wonderful blog. I really encourage people to look at that. It's a great resource for inclusive teaching. And again, Tracie, thank you so much for our time. This has been a—I've really enjoyed our hour together.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Likewise.

STEVEN ROBINOW: It's been great to get to know you. Really enjoyed it.

TRACIE MARCELLA ADDY: Thank you. I enjoyed it as well. And thanks so much again for inviting me.

STEVEN ROBINOW: Absolutely.

For more information about Tracie Marcella Addy, her research, and favorite books and papers, please go to our website, teachingforstudentsuccess.org. Thank you for spending time with us today. I hope you found this discussion interesting and helpful.

Please share our podcast and website with your friends. I'd like to give a shout out to Lawrence Hobbie. Lawrence is part of an NSF-funded research coordination network in undergraduate biology education that has recently started a journal club to discuss evidence-based teaching practices. What a great way to support colleagues and efforts to improve student success.

We love hearing from our listeners. Please contact us through our website at teachingforstudentsuccess.org. Teaching for Student Success is a production of Teaching for Student Success Media. Let's end this podcast with some music by JuliusH. Julius's music can be found on Pixabay.

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