Level 1: Creating A Welcoming Learning Environment

This level is focused on how to create a learning environment that ensures all students can be successful in your classroom regardless of their background, resource availability, and identity.

1. Building a relationship with each of your students.
   1. Figure out who you are teaching by having students complete a survey. Questions may include ice-breaker questions to help you understand them as a person (such as their favorite food, book, or movie), questions addressing important aspects of their identity (including their chosen name, pronunciation, and pronoun preference), and queries into their resource needs (such as computer, calculator, and internet access). This is a great way to get to know your students and get them in touch with necessary campus resources (such as mobile campus and Academic Support Hub) so students can be successful from the start of the semester. Example surveys are included below.
   2. Student View of Welcome Survey, Instructor Copy of the Welcome Survey  
   3. PSY415 Survey
2. Learn your students’ chosen names and correct pronunciations. This is important – even in large-enrollment classes. There is meaning and importance in using someone’s chosen name. It helps them feel seen and as a contributing member of the learning community.
   1. It can be helpful to have students introduce themselves at the start of the semester so you can hear (and write yourself notes) on the proper pronunciation of their names.
   2. In an online classroom, consider having each student create a short video introduction to share with the class
   3. In a large enrollment class, using the “roster with pictures” is helpful in practicing names. Research has shown that even knowing some of the student’s names makes a big difference in students’ perceptions of the environment.
3. Get to know your students as people. Building a relationship with your students means letting them see you as a real person with hobbies and interests, as well as getting to know them outside of the context of the classroom. This helps students feel more comfortable asking you for help and assistance and builds the student-teacher relationship. Easy topics to ask about include how their other classes are going, where they work and how their job is going, and questions about their hobbies and interests outside of class. These can be in-person conversations before class, during class if students are working on a project, or through informal online check-ins.
4. Using verbal affirmations and growth mindset language. A positive outlook on learning and student effort can improve student engagement with the course material and build strong relationships. Validating students’ efforts and recognizing which of the students’ efforts are most impactful on learning can be effective. It is important that this praise is tied to learning outcomes, not empty praise for the sake of boosting student morale. Utilizing growth mindset language means reminding students that learning is about the effort they invest along the way, and that learning is a journey. It can be challenging for students to identify which efforts will be the most impactful, but encouraging the use of evidenced-based study practices grounded in cognitive psychology can increase knowledge retention.
5. Improving the accessibility of classroom resources. While formal accommodations can be obtained through the Office of Disability and Testing Services, ensuring all course materials meet basic accessibility requirements is beneficial to all students and helps create a welcoming environment.
   1. Do your materials meet minimum color contrast guidelines? There are many online color contrast checkers available, such as WebAIM, to help determine if you are meeting the minimum color contrast guidelines.
   2. Do your videos have accurate closed captions? Many students prefer videos with closed captions to aid in their information processing and so they can watch videos in places where it is not appropriate to use sound. While many programs offer auto-generated captions, unfortunately these are usually not discipline-specific, requiring corrections of more specialized vocabulary and nomenclature.
   3. Are your materials compatible with screen readers? A screen reader will read displayed text aloud. In order to be compatible, you need to consider the order in which the text will be read and make sure that all images have descriptive alternative text (alt text).
6. Creating engaging learning activities. Active-learning classrooms have been shown to improve learning outcomes and narrow achievement gaps between gender and racial groups (Theobold et al, 2020). While there are a lot of interpretations of what active learning looks like, the most important aspect is that students are actively engaging with the course content, not passive recipients of knowledge. Some examples of active learning strategies are shared below (this is not an exhaustive list).
   1. Classroom response systems are a formative assessment option to gauge student learning throughout a class meeting. These can take the form of open-ended questions, multiple-choice questions, or other forms depending on the technology used. Instructors can also have students justify their responses to their peers, followed by a re-poll to see how responses have changed after the discussion. This technology continues to change, at the time of this writing some great options include Poll Everywhere, Mentimeter, PearDeck, and Nearpod.
   2. Think – Pair – Share is a form of student engagement that gives students individual time to reflect on their response to a question, perhaps recording their response in OneNote, their notebook, or submitting it either to Blackboard or in a Microsoft Form. Students are then asked to discuss their responses with a neighbor, followed by time to share responses to the entire class.
   3. Learning Stations are an alternative to traditional lectures, providing students multiple modalities to receive new information and demonstrate their learning. Different stations can be situated throughout the room and students, working in groups, physically move from station to station to complete a variety of activities. Activities may include watching a short YouTube video, reading a passage, using hands-on manipulatives, exploring an interactive website, answering exam-style questions and short writing prompts. Each station should have clear instructions and provide opportunities for students to assess their learning.
   4. Game-based learning and review games can be a fun way to introduce new concepts and gauge student learning prior to a summative assessment. This technology continues to change, but at this time some examples include Kahoot, Blooket, Gimkit, Jeopardy, and digital escape rooms (example of a digital escape room).
   5. Building concept maps allow students to make connections across ideas and to build deeper understanding. These can be built online using programs such as ClickUp, Witeboard, LucidSpark, and Miro. These can also be completed on a whiteboard or on paper. You can also start with a set of terms and then have students walk around the classroom adding terms and connections as a class, similar to a gallery walk.
   6. Case Studies require students to analyze a situation or scenario, analyzing data, solving problems, and making real-life connections. The NCCSTS Case Collection offers free case studies, answer keys and teacher notes available to instructors for a small annual fee. This collection features case studies across many STEM disciplines and academic levels.
   7. Making real-world connections can increase the relevancy of the content for students and improve their motivation to learn. This can involve using topics from the news as examples or foundations for discussions in the classroom (such as the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio or the water crisis in Flint, Michigan).
   8. Additional instructional ideas can be found here: https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/search?type=strategies
7. Making the learning discernible. Historically there are many hidden curricula, undefined vocabulary, and unspoken guidelines in higher education. Many students, particularly first-generation college students, are not aware of these rules and structures, putting them at a disadvantage. By making these aspects of your course structure clear, students will be armed with the knowledge of how to succeed in your class.
   1. Make your learning objectives specific and clear. Each class should have specific learning goals and these goals should be made clear to the students. These clearly stated learning objectives should then align with each learning activity the students participate in and also align with the summative assessments. This uniformity and communication about expectations and outcomes helps students direct their efforts and gauge their learning.
   2. Consider rebranding your office hours to encourage more students to attend. This may include scheduling a classroom, meeting in a lounge area, or at a local coffee shop.
   3. Be clear about the time expectations outside of the classroom. It can also be helpful to be mindful of the commitments students have outside of the classroom with work and family commitments when designing class activities.
   4. Ensure your due dates and expectations of your assignments are clear. You can post a rubric for each assignment or a list of requirements. It can also be helpful to walk students through these during class time, perhaps even incorporating a peer check for larger assignments. This may involve a student using the rubric or checklist on another student’s work. This will not only provide feedback to each student but will streamline your grading process because some of the larger mistakes will have hopefully already been caught and corrected.