Justice, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (JDEI) Teaching Toolkit
Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion (JDEI) Teaching Toolkit
Resource type: Self-paced Canvas course
Intended for: New faculty, emerging practitioners, seasoned educators
The Justice, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (JDEI) Teaching Toolkit is a flexible resource to enhance your teaching practices. The toolkit is designed to be navigated freely, allowing you to jump between modules and topics based on your current needs and interests. While this toolkit can be quickly scanned in approximately 30 minutes, as with racial justice work, it is ongoing and not time-bound. It invites lifelong learning. Some of these resources are not quick fixes but rather parts of a greater whole to pause, process, and reflect. It invites conversation within yourself and a trusted community.
What's in the JDEI Teaching Toolkit?
This module explores how culturally-responsive curriculum utilizes the heritages, experiences, and perspectives of ethnic and racial groups to more effectively reach/teach students who are members of those groups.
In this module, you will explore three sub-topics:
- Representation
- Caring and Loving Pedagogy
- Universal Design for Learning
This module explores how to build an equitized syllabus that considers how to reduce barriers to equity for minoritized and poverty-affected students.
In this module, you will explore three sub-topics:
- The Inclusive Syllabus
- The Invigorating Syllabus
- The Intuitive Syllabus
This module explores the active involvement of students in their learning process, faculty, the content, and each other.
In this module, you will explore two sub-topics:
- Proactive Communication
- Addressing Student Trauma
This module explores how effective assessment practices not only measure student progress but also inform instructional decisions, support student success, and contribute to the overall quality of the course.
In this module, you will explore three sub-topics:
- Equity-Centered Assessment Design
- Student-Centered Assessment Design
- Alternative Grading Practices
This module focuses on the input, perspectives, and opinions of students in the learning process, allowing them to express their thoughts, ideas, and concerns.
In this module, you will explore three sub-topics:
- Student Voice
- Student Experience
- Student Feedback
Tools You'll Use
The Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion (JDEI) Teaching Toolkit is built within PSU’s learning management system, Canvas by Instructure. You can learn more about how to use Canvas with our Canvas Tutorials.
About the Toolkit Creators
The JDEI Teaching Toolkit Project Team created this resource, guided by the OAI inclusion charter (part of the Office of Global Diversity & Inclusion’s Time to Act Plan), with significant input from both Portland State University faculty and students.
Cross-list in Canvas to combine multiple Sections into one Course Shell
What is cross-listing?
Cross-listing is where multiple CRN sections of the same course are combined into one course shell in Canvas. This process is not able to be completed by instructors. A majority of cross-list requests are completed before course shells are released to instructors by your department’s scheduler and added as a unified shell within Canvas. These combined courses may share the same scheduling, location, and/or instructor. However, there are certain situations where this prior cross-listing is not possible and a manual cross-list will need to be created on your behalf.
In Canvas, how can instructors see if their course has been cross-listed?
In Canvas, there are two main indicators that may show your course has been cross-listed.
- In most cases, cross-listed courses will have all Sections listed in the Course Code. The Course Code is displayed at the top of your Canvas course and listed on the Settings page within Course Details.
- In all cases, cross-listed courses will have each Section listed within the Sections tab. Instructions on how to access the Sections tab are listed below.
From the Course Navigation menu within your course, click the Settings link [1].
Click the Sections tab [2].
Under Course Sections, view your sections [3] and the number of users within each section.
When to request a manual cross-list
Instructors primarily request cross-listing in order to improve course management efficiency. Not all courses can be cross-listed, though. The requirements for cross-listing are that all course sections must have the same content and occur within the same term.
Common cross-list request situations:
- An instructor is teaching ABC-460 and DEF-460; these contain the same course content, but with different department codes.
- An instructor is teaching ABC-543-001 and ABC-543-002. This course is listed as two different sections due to class size, but the Canvas course content is identical.
- A special studies course, ABC-199, uses the same content as ABC-399.
- ABC-435, an undergraduate course, and ABC-535, a graduate course, share the same content, with only 1 or 2 distinctions between assignments.
In a cross-listed course, by default all students will receive the same content and assignments. For this reason, we recommend you consider using the Differentiated Assignments feature. By using Differentiated Assignments, you can set different due dates and availability dates for quizzes, discussions, and assignments. You can choose if the assignment will be limited to specified students, sections, groups, or assigned to everyone in the course. Reference How do I assign an assignment to a course section? for more information on setting up Differentiated Assignments.
How do I start?
To begin the cross-listing process, submit a cross-listing support request including all course names and their corresponding URLs, if possible. If the request can be completed, we will reply with a link to the cross-listed course. If you have already begun adding content to one or more of the courses, please let us know so we can ensure your content is preserved.
The Registrar’s Office requests that instructors with custom cross-listing in Canvas add this note to their syllabus or Canvas course:
“This Canvas course is shared by one or more course sections. This means that students enrolled in the other section(s) of this class will be able to see the Canvas course content, and may be able to view various activities such as discussion boards or any activities that are created by the instructor to be shared commonly among the different sections.”
Peer Review in Canvas
Contributors:Isabel Elizalde, Misty Hamideh, Lindsay Murphy
Enabling Peer Review on your Canvas assignment gives students a way to provide feedback on their classmates’ work. The peer review process exposes students to different perspectives and approaches to the same task, and can often deepen their understanding of the material.
Peer review can be used for various types of assignments, such as:
- Writing assignments (essays, reports, research papers)
- Multimedia projects (videos, presentations)
- Problem sets or coding exercises
- Artistic or creative works (drawings, designs, compositions)
Setting up effective peer-reviewed assignments can be tricky. Consider scheduling a consultation with OAI staff to get help through the process!
How do I set up Canvas Peer Review?
Canvas supports peer review through the Assignments tool. When creating a new activity, you can enable the “Peer Review” option and configure settings like:
- Anonymous or named reviews
- Number of peer reviews required per student
- Instructions and rubrics for reviewers
Here are some things to consider as you set up your peer review assignment:
Include the due dates for both the initial submission and peer review comments in your assignment description.
Because you cannot set separate due dates for the initial draft posting and peer review phases, communicating both due dates in the assignment description will make your expectations clear and help ensure that all students have a paper to review. Using Announcements to make sure students stay on track is also a great idea!
Be sure to highlight the importance of submitting initial drafts on time.
Students who don’t submit an assignment cannot be assigned another’s work to review. (Note: If you have chosen to “Automatically Assign Reviews”, students who did not submit the assignment by the due date will not be automatically assigned a classmate to review and thus will need to be added manually.)
Peer review may be new to some students.
Consider sharing a model and/or rubric that gives students a framework for providing feedback. (Note: If you attach a rubric to the assignment, peer reviewers are also able to access this rubric. Rubrics used by peer reviewers for feedback are not included in the final grade.)
Once the assignment is published, you can monitor the progress of submissions and peer reviews through the Assignments page. Canvas provides an overview of the peer review status, allowing you to see which students have completed their reviews and which ones are still pending. If needed, you can extend deadlines or reassign peer reviews to ensure each submission receives the required number of reviews. There’s also a Reminder tool you can use to send a notification to students who have not completed their assigned reviews!
What Should Students Expect?
Peer reviews are not assigned until:
- The student has submitted their own assignment, AND
- The date set by the instructor to assign the reviews has passed (if you choose to assign reviews automatically) or the instructor assigns the peer reviews manually.
Until both of these things have happened, the peer review assignment will not show up on the student’s To Do list or on the original assignment. As many students rely on the To Do list to keep track of their assignment due dates, be aware that this may cause some confusion.
Note: Peer review details do not show up in Student View.
It may be helpful to ask students to watch this overview video of the peer review process in Canvas:
As the instructor, you may want to provide feedback to the students on the peer reviews. Canvas allows you to view and comment on the peer reviews themselves, offering feedback on the quality and accuracy of the reviews. You can also use SpeedGrader to view each student’s work alongside the peer reviews they received, making it easier to assess their overall performance and provide your own feedback.
Canvas does not have a way to automatically assign a grade for completing a peer review. However, if you would like to assign points for peer reviews, you can create a No Submission assignment in the Gradebook and assign points manually. The Peer Review page for the assignment will show the names of students who have completed the peer review. (Note: You can find a link to the Peer Review page on the main Assignment page under Related Items.)
Group Peer Review Assignments
Peer review can also work with group assignments. By creating group set, you can assign students to specific groups and distribute peer review tasks accordingly.
Some important things to know about using peer review for group assignments:
Peer reviews are assigned to individuals, not groups.
Each group only needs to have one member submit the assignment, but this submission will show up for every student in the group. When the peer reviewer makes comments on their assigned classmate, these comments are compiled with other comments from reviewers who were assigned the same submission. In this way, each member of the group will see comments from all the peer reviewers in their feedback.
By default, automatically assigned peer reviews will not be assigned to members of the same group.
If you would like to allow group members to review their own group’s work, be sure to check the option to “Allow intra-group peer reviews”. This will randomize the peer review assignments, not paying attention to group membership. (Note: The only way to ensure that students are assigned only to members of their own group is to set peer reviewers manually.)
Instructional Continuity During Campus Closures
Contributors:Megan McFarland
Whether it’s due to severe weather-related closures or individual circumstances, missing one or more instructional days can feel stressful for faculty and students alike. Explore the following responsive and proactive strategies to learn how instructors can limit the impact of unexpected disruptions and keep their courses on track.
Human Needs Come First
Unexpected disruptions, cancellations, and closures often come as a result of significant emergency events. While instruction is important, the human needs of faculty and students come first. These kinds of events–such as severe weather, natural disasters, or illness–impact our functioning in a variety of ways. This means that our ability to think and behave might be different than we are used to.
Learn more about how to implement Trauma-Informed Teaching practices in our latest teaching guide:
Connect students and colleagues with resources to support basic needs, such as food, water, shelter, and healthcare:
Communicate as quickly and clearly as possible with students about class closures. Use email, Canvas Announcements, or even a separate module to share updates to due dates, assignments, and independent work expectations. Consider opening a separate Canvas Discussion to avoid answering the same question multiple times.
Reassess Your Course Plan
Check in with your college/department
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- Contact your department or school for any specific requirements and guidelines around instruction during a disruption.
Streamline course content
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- Identify the most crucial learning outcomes for your course as well as the assignments that assess them.
- Consider eliminating assignments and activities that don’t directly assess the most essential learning outcomes. Determine if there are any learning outcomes that are assessed by multiple assignments, and reduce duplications.
Example: Eliminating a weekly in-person reading quiz when students are already submitting a reading reflection to Canvas
- Collaborate with your department and colleagues for guidance on how to prioritize a course’s learning outcomes.
Adjust course content modality and pacing
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- When possible, offer asynchronous alternatives to missed course content. Consider recording lectures, offering supplemental readings, or even self-paced learning modules.
- Set aside office hour time to answer questions and review material.
Practices to avoid
Both faculty and students carefully plan their work, courses, and other responsibilities around listed class schedules. This means that it is often an undue burden to require participation outside of typical class meeting times.
Avoid these practices in order to best respect student and faculty time:
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- Holding an additional class session on a day and time the class does not typically meet.
- Extending class meeting time.
- Rescheduling finals or adding a class session during finals week.
- Asking students to do the same amount and kind of work the syllabus initially expected them to do while compressing the work into a shorter time period.
How to Teach in a Condensed or Accelerated Format
For more ideas on how to adjust your course format following a disruption, check out the following resources from our colleagues across the U.S.:
Plan for Instructional Continuity
When you have the option in the future, proactively planning ahead will help ease some of the stressors of having to quickly pivot during the term.
Create and share a communication plan
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- Include information in your syllabus and Canvas about what students can expect in case of an unexpected disruption or inclement weather event.
- Clearly articulate your communication plan in your syllabus and Canvas, as well as how often students are expected to check those communication channels.
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Design with flexibility in mind
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- Offer low- or no-internet alternatives for assignments and course materials at the beginning of the term.
- Offer asynchronous or make-up alternatives for in-person requirements, such as community partnerships.
- Examples: Establish a policy that allows students to make up participation points by demonstrating mastery of that week’s learning objectives via a written reflection, slide deck, or short video.
- Consider inserting a designated buffer week around Week 7 or another strategic point in the term. You can use this week as a catch-up period in case of unforeseen disruptions. If catch-up is not needed, you can use this week to present a special topic based on student interests! (Note: Be sure to communicate the purpose of the buffer week to students in advance.)
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More Ideas for Planning Ahead for Course Disruptions
Check out the following resources from our colleagues at the University of Washington:
By utilizing both proactive and responsive strategies, you can enhance your ability to navigate unexpected disruptions while maintaining a supportive and effective learning environment for your students. We recommend regularly revisiting and updating your strategies based on feedback from your teaching experiences and your students to help you arrive at the best balance for you and your classroom.
Learn More Elsewhere
Place-Based Engagement: Featuring KSMOCA
Contributors:Harold McNaron, Megan McFarland
Place-Based Engagement: Featuring KSMoCA
At PSU, we “let knowledge serve the city”, but how? To what end? Who benefits? What does it mean to center community interests at PSU? The place-based engagement strategies utilized as part of PSU College of the Arts’ (COTA) partnership with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary (Dr. MLK, Jr.) School provides a helpful example.
Who
PSU College of the Arts (COTA)
Where
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary (Dr. MLK, Jr.) School
According to the Place-Based Justice Network, place-based engagement is “a long-term university-wide commitment to partner with local residents, organizations, and other leaders to focus equally on on-campus and community impact within a clearly defined geographic area.” But how does that relate to pedagogical techniques and classroom activities? It starts with community.
Forming a Community Partnership
In 2014, administrators at Dr. MLK, Jr. School reached out to neighborhood residents and COTA faculty members Harrell Fletcher and Lisa Jarrett to explore a potential partnership. Specifically, the administrators and the PSU faculty members were mutually interested in increasing art access for the young students of Dr. MLK, Jr. School. Out of this collaboration, the King School Museum of Contemporary Art (KSMoCA) was born. Since its founding, KSMoCA has hosted collaboratively-designed gallery exhibits, artist talks, a student-produced podcast, publications, an artist-in-residence program, and more.
Through the KSMoCA partnership, Dr. MLK, Jr. School students gain access to local artists, PSU faculty members, and PSU students for shared learning experiences, art-making, mentorship, and generative exploration. In turn, participating PSU students benefit from off-campus, authentic art practice experiences in a public school setting. PSU students also enjoy connections to Dr. MLK, Jr. students, school administrators and professional artists—local, national and international.
What roles do PSU students play?
Currently several graduate students in the Art and Social Practice program serve in leadership roles for art projects within COTA’s interdisciplinary course “Museum in a Public School”, involving everything from a visiting artist to even student safety patrols. The undergraduates taking this course come from a variety of areas of study and, as part of their participation in the course, mentor Dr. MLK, Jr. students one-on-one and support them in creating their own art projects.
“This is a key element of impactful place-based community engagement: challenging traditional and current disparities of power and privilege via more equitable, mutual and generative strategies.”
Rather than centering the partnership on any one product or outcome, KSMoCA’s success is attributed, in large part, to the relationship between and mutual commitment of the Dr. MLK, Jr. School community and PSU. Professors Fletcher and Jarrett, along with KSMoCA’s Program Director and current MFA student, Laura Glazer, use an iterative process to frequently query and return back to the interests and needs of Dr. MLK, Jr. students, their teachers and their families in program-planning efforts. This is a key element of impactful place-based community engagement: challenging traditional and current disparities of power and privilege via more equitable, mutual and generative strategies. Based on community input, KSMoCA organizers develop themes, program ideas, and student engagement plans as mechanisms of progress towards shared interests and goals. While specific projects and funders may vary, it is this common bond–authentic relationships between neighbors–that sustains the community-engaged learning efforts at KSMoCA.
Activate Your Teaching
To engage with current community partners:
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- Start course-based, annual or other planning efforts by querying and centering the interests and energies of area residents, activists and partner organization staff
- Explore new ways of connecting PSU’s assets with community partner interests and vice versa (e.g. providing HRAC report data to support a grant they are writing or sharing a previous webinar recording aligned with community partner professional development interests)
- Consider if one or more of PSU’s current community partner organizations seems to align with your goals. Your course/initiative might be an opportunity to expand or deepen the PSU-community partnership (e.g. Latino Network’s partnerships with University Studies’ capstone program as well as GDI’s Latine Futures initiative)
To foster new community partner relationships:
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- Check in with with OAI staff Harold McNaron about potential or current partnerships that might be a good fit
- Review PSU’s current community partners via University Relations’ Community Impact Team
- View the Community Engagement Toolkit from PSU's Student Community Engagement Center about strategies for successful community engagement strategies.
- Explore off-campus groups and individuals using the on-campus resources above whose work aligns well with departmental and course-based learning outcomes and themes (e.g. governmental water safety teams or entrepreneur support networks)
- Take time to understand key elements of the community-engaged context of any potential partnership (e.g. history of their organization; current goals and areas of focus; current funders, collaborators) and to share key contextual elements with your new partner, especially if they are not accustomed to partnering with colleges or universities (e.g. academic calendars; PSU student demographics; potential for sustained partnership, funding)
- Reach out to OAI staff Harold McNaron to assist with designing meeting agendas, partner agreements and other resources to help your new partnership set a firm foundation
Teaching with Non-Supported Platforms
As stewards of PSU’s digital learning environment, the Office of Academic Innovation (OAI) is always exploring new teaching and learning platforms, applications, and resources. We take a risk-minimization approach to accessibility, with the goal of full inclusivity.
How does an application become adopted campus-wide?
Before any software is adopted campus-wide, it must be rigorously tested for both security and accessibility. If approved, it may be piloted among a small cohort of faculty, and the results of that user testing are reviewed. At that point, if budget approval is granted, OAI staff are trained to support faculty use, while the Office of Information Technology (OIT) staff are trained to support student use.
In some cases, a school or program at PSU may review and license an application for specific faculty. For example, interactive materials from McGraw-Hill Connect are often used by instructors in the School of Business. If you know the application you need is used by others in your program, begin by checking with your department administrator. Make sure to ask if there’s a dedicated staff member trained to support faculty use.
- To propose an application or LTI integration review, please use the Canvas Integration Request form.
Independent application adoption
PSU maintains a suite of tools that are centrally supported and approved. You may choose to use any software that you feel would help your learning community, but if you choose to use an application that has not been adopted by PSU, here are some things to keep in mind:
Student Support
It will be up to you to test and support the tool for use in your course. OAI and OIT staff have not been trained in the use of these applications, nor do they have administrative access to these tools for troubleshooting. Take some time to explore the support materials available on the application website. Make sure to search for “support” or “help” and review those resources carefully. This material will be significantly different from the marketing content on a product’s website.
When possible, test the application by creating prototype student resources or activities. It’s important to keep in mind that you’ll also be responsible for helping your students use the application. Be sure to check for any student-facing support materials available from the vendor so you can provide them.
In keeping with the University’s mission to provide equitable learning opportunities to all students, you may also take into consideration whether the tool is accessible for all students and that it is being used in a FERPA-compliant way (see FERPA Student Records Privacy Tutorial).
Student Experience
Look for possible areas of student confusion. If you can’t access a student view of the application, contact the company’s support team for more information. Another important step is to explore any user forums available. See what kinds of problems users have, and whether they receive the help and information they need.
If the learning and support resources for either instructors or students seem inadequate, you should be cautious with adoption. It can be stressful to troubleshoot issues during the term, particularly if you’ll be using the application for graded activities.
If you feel confident about adopting the application, we suggest using it for low-stakes activities at first. Let your students know you’re doing a “trial run,” and be sure to share instructions and support resources with them. It’s particularly important to make sure they know not to request help on this application from the OIT support desk.
Teaching Strategies for Digital Class Meetings
Contributors:Lindsay Murphy
Digital class meetings are sessions that some or all students attend via Zoom or another virtual meeting platform. Such meetings may be recorded for students to also use asynchronously. Digital class meetings are most often associated with these delivery methods:
- Online – Scheduled Meetings: Online courses with required meeting times
- Hybrid: Fewer in-person class sessions with more online, remote, or self-directed activities
Learn more about PSU course delivery methods, including examples and guidelines, in the Faculty Guide to Course Delivery Methods.
Set Expectations
You and your students may have varied experience with digital class meetings. It can help to gauge student expectations and circumstances at the start of the term and to communicate your expectations clearly.
Try a Pre-Course Survey
A pre-course survey is a great way to get to know your students and understand where they are in their learning. When your course includes digital class meetings, it can help to include questions about students’ technology setups and their expectations for participating. For example, you might ask how students anticipate they’ll usually attend class (in-person or via Zoom). If they’ll attend via Zoom, it’s a good idea to ask about their Zoom and technology setup.
Will they join:
- From a smartphone, tablet, or laptop/desktop computer?
- At work, on campus, or at home?
- In a private space or from a shared space?
- With a camera and reliable internet?
All these factors can influence access to digital class meetings.
You can use what you learn from the survey to set your expectations and plan your digital class meetings. For example, if many of your students will join from a smartphone, asking them to pull up Google Docs, Canvas, or specialized software may prove challenging.
Communicate Your Expectations
As you plan your course, take some time to reflect on your expectations for student participation in digital class meetings.
Consider:
- How will you assess engagement in person? On Zoom? When students use recordings?
- How will you handle questions in the chat?
- How will you handle technological issues that emerge?
- Are there bare minimum requirements for participating (e.g. a way to take notes, access to the textbook or handouts)?
- Will you require attendance?
- Will you require or expect students to keep their cameras on? If so, how will you handle accessibility, equity, and privacy issues?
Consider:
- Do you expect students to attend in-person and use Zoom only for emergencies?
- Will you record every session and make it available to all students? Only when requested? Only in some circumstances?
- Will you always attend in-person? What is your backup plan if you or a family member gets sick?
- Will remote students interact with in-person students? For example, during small group activities or class presentations?
Consider:
- If students miss scheduled synchronous activities (whether digital or in-person), how can they make up the work?
- What will students need handy during scheduled meetings?
- How do you expect the class to stay in touch and on track between meetings?
Once you have a sense of your expectations, how can you communicate them to your students or even collaborate with students to define participation norms collectively? At a minimum, consider sharing expectations in your syllabus and in early class communications.
Beyond Lecture: Active Learning in Digital Class Meetings
Student feedback indicates that when synchronous class time is heavily lecture-oriented, students are less motivated to attend remotely. As you plan teaching strategies, remember to factor in what you know about your particular group of students and any technological or logistical constraints.
Among the many teaching strategies to consider, this handful may be particularly well suited to the constraints and capacities of digital class meetings:
- Include self-paced activities online before class to help build a cohesive and well-balanced blended-learning environment.
- Use short, ungraded knowledge checks to assess learning during sessions.
- Give students opportunities for peer-to-peer learning using think-pair-share, jigsaw, and other small group activities.
- Allow students to choose how to give presentations: via Zoom, in-person, or recorded and shared.
- Punctuate lectures or course discussions with polls, problem sets, example generation, and/or other applied practice. Use Google Docs and forms to give students space to contribute answers and ideas regardless of how they attend.
Deliberately plan each class, accounting for the technological complexity of digital class meetings. Plan your first class session especially carefully; it sets the tone for the rest of the term. As you plan, find ways to intentionally bridge the gap between modalities and create a supportive learning environment.
Here are some example plans with teaching strategies to engage students across modalities — and with planning down to the minute.
Along with creating a detailed lesson plan for yourself, consider sharing a brief agenda with students at the start of each class meeting. This can help you set the tone for the day and communicate any particular needs or high priority items.
Here are some example class agendas.
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- Business Administration 336U, Dr. Kam Moi Lee
- Management 510, Prof. Beth Jensen
Across modalities, it may be easier to connect with some students than others. However, it’s crucial to engage with all students regardless of how they attend. Here are a few suggested practices to help connect across modalities:
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- Welcome everyone to each class, specifically speaking to in-person students, remote students, and students using the recordings.
- Learn your students’ names, how to pronounce them, and which pronouns they use. Greet and refer to students by their names. (Get tips on learning students names, even in large classes.)
- Find ways to show the contributions of remote and asynchronous students live and in class. For example, share the collaborative documents remote students are working on, or screen share the discussion posts asynchronous students have contributed.
- Use Canvas as a “home base” for the course. This centralizes communications and provides a consistent space for students to interact across modalities when possible.
- Take proactive steps to foster community and connection in your course.
- Maintain your digital presence through timely feedback, virtual office hours, regular announcements, and other means.
Ideally, complete a practice run before your course starts in the classroom or space you’ll teach in.
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- Try out your classroom equipment, run through your day-one plan, make a practice recording, and test anything you’re worried about.
- Ask a colleague or TA to join as a practice remote student.
- Practice including all groups of students (in-person live, virtual live, and/or asynchronous).
- Practice pulling up the various content you want to display and sharing it in the room and on Zoom.
- Practice switching between items you’re sharing.
- Practice basic touch-screen functions such as managing participants, turning the waiting room on and off, and starting/stopping the camera and microphone.
- Use your practice recording to note any potential problems.
Streaming Class Sessions from Campus Classrooms with Zoom
Zoom capabilities in general pool classrooms might be different from what you’ve experienced elsewhere. Consider these key distinctions.
These assume the instructor joined the meeting via the classroom’s Logitech touch panel.
You can
- Start and stop recording.
- Share screen from classroom computer display, doc cam or HDMI connection.
- Mute/unmute Zoom participants.
- Share computer audio to Zoom participants through screen sharing options.
- Engage in limited chat with Zoom participants.
You cannot
- Show chat screen and gallery view simultaneously.
- Pause recording.
- Launch Zoom polls.
- Launch or manage breakout rooms.
- Display remote participants in classroom.
These assume in-person students are not individually signed into the class Zoom session and are relying on the default setup for classroom technology.
Available to Students
- Remote participants are audible. (Volume is controlled by classroom speaker settings.)
- The instructor’s shared materials are visible — by either computer display or doc cam. This may mirror what the instructor is screen-sharing to remote students via Zoom.
Not Available to Students
- Remote participants’ video and thumbnails are not visible.
- What students say in the classroom likely isn’t audible over Zoom. (The default microphone is at the front of the room; audio pickup varies when the speaker is not close to the microphone.
- Zoom chat is not visible.
These assume remote students are individually signed into the class Zoom session and the instructor is using the default setup for classroom technology.
Available to Students
- The instructor is visible when at the front of the room, and audible when behind the default microphone.
- A shared screen is visible, either from a computer feed or a doc cam, controlled by the classroom Logitech touch panel.
- Zoom chat is available.
Not Available to Students
- In-person students are not visible.
- The in-class whiteboard is not reliably visible or legible.
- In-class questions or conversations are not reliably audible.
To learn more about in-classroom Zoom technology, contact OIT’s Audio Visual Services and/or review OIT’s full technical documentation for Zoom rooms.
Getting More from Zoom in the Classroom
- Move the podium or the monitor/webcam to capture different camera views, if possible. This may be helpful for student presentations, or other times when you want to share a view of the full classroom with remote students.
- Ask an in-class student to join the Zoom meeting and keep an eye on the chat. Make sure that student does not join audio. When questions or comments come up in chat, the in-person student should raise their hand and voice the chat contribution, crediting the contributor. Rotate this role each class session and let remote students know the plan. Let remote students know that direct messages to you may go unnoticed.
- Join as the meeting host or co-host from your laptop or the podium computer. Don’t join audio (recommended), or keep your microphone and speakers muted to avoid audio feedback. As a host or co-host of the meeting from your laptop, you can:
- Add live transcription to your meeting.
- Pause and restart the video recording.
- Initiate and manage breakout rooms.
- Expand the chat window on your laptop view so you can more easily monitor and respond to chats.
- Check audio or other Zoom functionality as a regular meeting participant.
- Launch polls.
- Join from your smartphone. Mute the phone microphone and speaker when using the podium mic, and vice versa, to avoid feedback. Adding the additional microphone connection allows you to:
- Move around the classroom without dropping audio.
- Use the second microphone to pick up student questions that can’t be heard clearly through the default microphone.
Learn More Elsewhere
Canvas Student Support and Syllabus Statement
OAI supports only faculty, but this article provides options for students to get help with Canvas.
Syllabus Statement
Consider adding this statement to your syllabus:
This course uses Canvas as the main learning platform. If you haven’t used Canvas before, I recommend you take the PSU Learning Center’s remote readiness course this week. If you’ve used Canvas and you just need occasional technical support, contact the OIT Helpdesk. If they can’t help you, please let me know.
Canvas Resources for Students
The Learning Center has self-paced learning resources for students new to Canvas. We recommend sending students there first — and encouraging them to take the Center’s remote readiness course during the term’s first week.
The OIT Helpdesk offers “just in time” technical support. This is good for students having trouble logging into Canvas, finding or accessing Canvas materials, and other technical issues.
The Help item (on the global navigation bar within Canvas) reveals links to OIT’s Canvas resources and to technology support through the myPSU portal.
Growing with Canvas
Growing with Canvas
Resource type: Self-paced Canvas course
Intended for: New faculty, emerging practitioners
Growing with Canvas is a self-paced training course to introduce the main Canvas tools. You can self-enroll through the Canvas learning system. The course is organized into modules with videos, text explanations, examples, and practice exercises. Consider working through the modules in order, because some topics build from others.
What's in the Growing with Canvas course?
In this module, you’ll learn more about the basics of navigating your Canvas course as well as how to communicate with students via the Inbox and Calendar tools.
This module covers:
- Getting Around in Canvas
- Communication Tools
This module focuses on overall course design, sharing strategies for customizing your course appearance as well as organizing content to support student learning.
This module covers:
- Customizing Your Course
- Course Design
In this module, you’ll learn more about the different Canvas activities you can use to support student engagement in your course.
This module covers:
- Pages
- Discussions
- Assignments
- Quizzes
This module shares strategies for effectively using Canvas SpeedGrader™ to assess your students’ work and share their grades with them so they can keep track of their progress in the course.
This module covers:
- Course Settings and Weights
- SpeedGrader and Gradebook
This module reviews how the Canvas Groups tool can be used to support learning and develop a sense of community in your course. It also outlines the steps for copying your course materials from term to term, as well as how to share content with your colleagues.
This module covers:
- Groups and Collaboration
- Copying and Sharing Courses
Tools You'll Use
The Growing with Canvas self-paced course is built within PSU’s learning management system, Canvas by Instructure. You can learn more about how to use Canvas with our Canvas Tutorials.
About the Course Creators
This course was adapted from the Instructure’s Growing With Canvas: Faculty Development course and customized for the PSU community by OAI staff.
Student-Faculty Partnerships in Curricula
Contributors:Kari Goin, Sophia Ryker
There is a growing movement to not only include but also involve students in curricula decisions. Students in higher education have challenged the notion that they are customers receiving a transactional education and instead call for higher levels of participation and agency in their learning (Matthews et al., 2017). Students collaborating with institutions, programs, and faculty to design curricula is a framework known as students as partners, or student-faculty partnerships. At Portland State University, student body President Nya Mbock has called for more student involvement with faculty in the curriculum (Swordfisk, 2021).
Positive outcomes of student-faculty partnership include increased student engagement, motivation, and ownership for learning, a positive shift of power dynamics between faculty and student (toward more equitable power), engagement and empowerment for students who are historically excluded, and increased student confidence and self-determination (Cook-Sather et al., 2014).
With any approach to curricula, the intention of including students can end up harming students. It’s important to set intentions, to be transparent, and to reflect on how power affects the partnership. Without these intentional pieces, partnership work may end up tokenizing students and essentializing the student experience (Cook-Sather et al., 2014; de Bie et al., 2021). As a result, and despite good intentions, partnerships can reinforce the inequitable learning environments that they seek to disrupt. For example, partnership work may focus on an increased sense of belonging for students, which may be problematic when the institution students are invited to feel connected with has a history of erasure and colonization for some student populations (de Bie et al., 2021).
Example Partnership Approaches
Here are three examples of partnership approaches you can include in your own practice:
Student-faculty course design
This happens before a course is taught and when you are designing the course. A student or group of students collaborate with the faculty member on the design of a course. This might include a redesigned syllabus or elements such as course outcomes, a course assignment, or an entire course.
Students create and choose
This includes students in a course you are teaching. This might include having students choose the weekly discussion topics or create and vote on quiz questions, embedding students’ social bookmarking annotations to shape course content, or having students collaborate to create course content (Cook-Sather et al., 2014).
Partnerships in assessment
Invite students to identify grading criteria for an assignment or final essay or invite students to co-assess their own final presentations. Another example is to bring a rubric with past student papers (used with permission) and have current students grade the papers based on that rubric. Have a discussion about the rubric and invite students to offer suggestions on adapting it for their course term.
Getting Started
Step 1
Begin by reflecting on how you currently involve students in your curriculum.
Step 2
Create a list of when students get to make decisions within your curriculum. (If this is currently “never,” consider starting with a negotiated syllabus.)
Step 3
Acknowledge that this iterative process never really ends.
Examples in Practice
Provide a diversity of materials in formats that remain consistent from week to week. Students choose which materials to engage with to learn the concepts outlined for that week. The focus of the negotiated syllabus is to highlight student agency within their learning by creating opportunities for students to choose the way they want to learn a concept.
For example, provide lecture slides, supplementary texts, and external videos covering the information being taught each week. From this collection, students can choose which items are most useful to them and will have reliable access to their preferred materials for each new topic.
Reflect on the level at which students make decisions and identify opportunities to increase student involvement: Hold a discussion with students in class to determine course learning outcomes and discuss how predetermined assignments will help the class reach their goals.
Be prepared to make small changes to assignments based on the class discussion. This is expected, as every class will have different students. The discussion may also yield ideas for new or different assignments to help the class meet their co-created learning outcomes.
Alternatively, hold a discussion with students in class to create course assignments based on predetermined course outcomes and how these assignments will help the class reach their goals.
Integrate the student voice into your course by providing ample room for identity expression and application of the material to students’ own lived experiences — in ways such as including languages spoken beyond English and encouraging cultural and community practices. This engages more parts of the brain and allows for greater communication between them, along with deeper integration of the learned material into long-term memory (Johnson et al., 2006)
Develop a syllabus, in partnership with students, that reflects your collective values. Co-creating a syllabus is a chance for students to democratically participate in their own learning. It signals that a course is designed to share power and encourage not only student involvement but also engagement and agency.
The syllabus might include co-created community guidelines, flexible deadlines based on the class’s needs for that quarter, or opportunities for students to self-grade. You might also consider including a list of linked resources (where to find cost-considerate course materials, necessary technology, internet access), a land acknowledgement, and an acknowledgment of bias.
Cook-Sather, A., Bovill, C., & Felton, P. (2014). Engaging Students As Partners in Learning and Teaching : A Guide for Faculty. John Wiley & Sons. https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/lib/psu/detail.action?docID=1650837
De Bie, K., Marquis, E., Cook-Sather, A., & Luqueño, L. P. (2021). Promoting Equity and Justice through Pedagogical Partnership. Stylus. https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/lib/PSU/detail.action?docID=6647714
Johnson, S., & Taylor, K. (2006). The Neuroscience of Adult Learning: New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education. Wiley. https://search.library.pdx.edu/permalink/f/p82vj0/CP71182273540001451
Matthews, K. E., Groenendijk, L. J., & Chunduri, P. (2017). We Want to be More Involved: Student Perceptions of Students as Partners Across the Degree Program Curriculum. International Journal for Students As Partners, 1(2). https://doi.org/10.15173/ijsap.v1i2.3063
Swordfisk, K. (2021, September 27). In pursuit of student success: ASPSU president prioritizes student involvement, improving the post-COVID learning environment. PSU News. https://www.pdx.edu/news/pursuit-student-success
Learn More Elsewhere
The Teaching and Learning Institute at Bryn Mawr and Haverford colleges