Caption: SELC students at our Launch Event. May 2023.
Students are at the center of education. Yet, education improvement projects are often limited in how they incorporate student voices, relying on student advisory boards, one-on-one student-faculty partnerships focused on pedagogy, and student membership on committees. Led by the University of Michigan, nine large public research universities recently wrapped up the STEM Equity Learning Community (SELC) Project, where students worked on teams with instructors and staff members to evaluate student outcomes data and make recommendations for structural change (NSF 2215398, 2215689).1 Each university hosted a year-long learning community that leveraged institutional data, the perspectives of many roles in higher education, and an understanding of equity-minded approaches to STEM education. Through this project we employed several strategies for supporting students to fully participate in our teams and we share these strategies and additional considerations below. Whether or not IUSE PIs engage in similar projects as the one described in this blog post, they will be able to take away valuable insights for authentically including students in education reform efforts and building genuine student-faculty-staff partnerships.
Key elements of the student-faculty-staff SELCs
Each university hosted one SELC typically made up of four to six instructors, two undergraduate students, one team facilitator, and one data analyst. The instructors varied in their institutional roles, from faculty members to lecturers to administrators with teaching experience. The students were recruited based on past experiences in introductory STEM courses and other involvement they may have had in STEM pedagogy projects2. The team facilitator was often housed in the university’s teaching and learning center and had experience managing complex team dynamics and sensitive discussions around equity. The data analyst was often in an office of institutional research and had access to student demographic and grade data.
The multi-institutional project began with an in-person two-day Launch Event, allowing SELC participants to connect across roles, disciplines, and institutions. Then, the individual SELCs had monthly local meetings to learn together about how to promote equitable learning experiences for students and to examine the current status of their courses. This examination was accomplished through course equity reports, which captured student grade and demographic data in specific courses, disaggregated along various dimensions including race, ethnicity, gender, college generation status, college major, and transfer status. Occasionally throughout the year we hosted virtual Inter-SELC meetings, where teams connected across institutions. At the end of the year-long experience, each SELC developed a presentation for campus leaders where they made recommendations for practice and policy changes impacting STEM courses. Example recommendations included simplifying the course equity reports, making the reports more widely available to instructors, and creating a fellowship program to continue team-driven equity work in STEM.
Four strategies for the authentic inclusion of students in education reform projects
1) TEAM NORMS
During our in-person Launch Event, after giving an overview on the importance of team norms for equitable and inclusive teams, we asked SELC participants to individually answer the following questions:
- What do teams do to make you feel respected, valued, and heard?
- How do you respectfully disagree with a team member?
- How do you make sure you are not dominating the conversation?
Participants wrote their answers on sticky notes and posted them on walls around the room. Next, participants were invited to do a gallery walk where they read all of the responses and noted down the ones they particularly liked and wanted to discuss with their own teams. We found this to be a safer way for participants—particularly those who had less power on their teams (e.g., students, staff, junior faculty) or were uncomfortable voicing their opinions with a team of new people—to introduce norms for discussion. This had the added benefit of prompting our participants to co-develop a huge list of team norms that they could refer back to for future team-based initiatives or even in their own classes. After this event, local SELC meetings would start with a reminder on the agreed upon team norms, keeping them top of mind for team discussions. Throughout the project, student participants continued to reference this team norms activity as a useful way for breaking the ice in teams and making it clear all voices were valued and welcome.
In future iterations, a tweak I would make is to revise how team norms are touched on during the team meetings. Merely reminding members of the norms can feel stale after a time and not meaningfully prompt them to engage with the norms. A revision would be to pose a question with the norms every so often, such as, “what norm have you struggled with in past meetings that you want to work on today?” This would allow for more vulnerability and empathy in teams, as members support each other in building more inclusive spaces.
2) LEADERSHIP OF AN EXPERT FACILITATOR
The facilitator role in the SELCs was critical to the inclusion of student voices. Our facilitators were trained staff members with appointments outside of the STEM departments. They participated in the SELCs and ensured different viewpoints were raised during meetings, appropriate time was given for individuals to formulate their thoughts and respond to discussion prompts, and attention was paid to power dynamics within groups. The facilitators understood that the SELCs would not make effective progress unless the whole team could participate. One facilitator even noted, “The student voice was what set this program apart from others and I think that is one of the strongest parts.”3
It is not always feasible to pay for external facilitation in the long term. I wholeheartedly believe new teams should begin with an external facilitator but then transition to internal facilitation as the team becomes more seasoned. One way to build internal capacity for inclusive facilitation is by having teams attend facilitation workshops led by local teaching centers. For example, at the University of Michigan, the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching has a unit that uses theatrical case studies followed by facilitated discussions to teach facilitation skills.4
3) IN-PERSON EXPERIENCES AND BUILDING COMMUNITY OUTSIDE OF TEAMS
A multi-institutional collaboration carries many benefits, but a limitation is the reliance on asynchronous and online work. We leveraged both in-person and online opportunities to build community, especially for the student participants. The value of beginning the year-long SELC experience with our in-person Launch Event cannot be overstated. By coming together in person and having opportunities to engage formally through meeting activities and informally through meals and downtime created relationships that sustained well beyond the SELC project. We ended the project with an in-person conference as well, which provided closure to participants as they wrapped up their involvement. Unprompted by project leadership, our students created their own structures for maintaining community, including a student-only group chat that remained active throughout the project. During our occasional online Inter-SELC meetings, we dedicated time for individuals to meet according to their roles (i.e., students, facilitators, data analysts, instructors). This provided a space for individuals to get out of the dynamics of their own local SELC, and instead connect around shared experiences happening across the institutions. In future projects I would dedicate more time up front to parallel role meetings, as these provided opportunities for students especially to share concerns and strategies with peers, and subsequently to feel more comfortable in their student-faculty-staff teams.
4) PARALLEL RESPONSIBILITIES AND EQUAL ACCESS TO SENSITIVE DATA
Despite the differences in institutional responsibilities and experiences, for the purposes of the SELC project we mirrored the roles of students and instructors as much as possible. This meant that there were the same expectations in terms of preparing for meetings, participating in discussions, and presenting recommendations to their campus. This was not portrayed as a “faculty” project with “support” from students. Students were not assigned to be the team notetakers or given the tasks that were deemed less important. Instructors and students were peers on these teams. I recognize this is easier said than done, and there were obviously power dynamics at play. However, the structures we put in place, such as external facilitation so that students were not tasked with the logistics work and ensuring equal access to sensitive data (below), encouraged this collegial intent. In the words of our SELC participants,
- “Our students brought eye-opening perspectives and wisdom… I will be asking to include student voices on any committee I serve on in the future that is related to course transformation or equity.”
- “It’s important to think of the teaching and learning environment as a community that works together for a common goal, and I think it’s good to be able to directly interact with the students about their experiences.”
- “Students were by far the best prepared in our meetings… they infused all other team members with a sense of responsibility that… elevated the quality of our conversations.”
- “[Students] reminded us that some of the recommendations in the literature do not help, and that there is more to an (in)equitable student experience than just grades.”3
Earlier we introduced the course equity reports as a key way to understand equity issues in the courses. Importantly, this access to course-level, disaggregated student data was a bold step. While institutions are becoming more open to examining student data, there is still much resistance to disaggregating data to examine inequities and providing broad access to this data. For example, some institutions limit this access to university leadership or department chairs and do not disaggregate beyond grouping students of color into one “underrepresented minority” category. The majority of SELC institutions were able to both develop these course equity reports and make them available to the students, faculty, and staff in the SELCs. Participants reported that they had increased access to this type of data after the project.3 Some SELCs went further and developed reports that would be available campuswide. On the other hand, a few SELCs faced more restrictions and even their SELC students were unable to view the data. We used our project connections to university-level leadership and institutional peer pressure to help our teams have as much equal access to this sensitive data as was possible given institutional differences in policies.
In summary
Authentically including students in collaborative teams takes work and is well worth the effort. Student voices are central to education reform efforts and are not heard enough. Faculty and staff repeatedly ask to work with students after participating in projects such as the SELC project, which is further evidence of this need. For those looking to include students in their initiatives, I encourage you to set up team norms early and come back to them often, engage an external facilitator for the first year or two to ensure smooth team building, provide in-person and online opportunities to build community in and out of the formal teams, and ensure the initiative is designed such that the students are working as colleagues, not as support.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to all of our SELC collaborators for diving wholeheartedly into this project. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Numbers 2215398 and 2215689. Thank you also to the Sloan Foundation for providing funding and support in building the SEISMIC community.
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