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Graduate school is hard. It can be even harder when there are very few people in your program that look like you or come from a similar background as you. Studies show that not only does the diversity of a program contribute to student experiences, but feelings of inclusion and belonging play an equally important role. In fact, a study of MSU graduate students showed that students who did not feel supported or included due to gender, race, sexual identity, culture, or religion were significantly less satisfied with their graduate school programs. This research and our personal experiences suggested that an important project for us as Fellows of the Graduate School would be to focus on improving the experience of underrepresented minority graduate students in our college. Together we built a framework of a multi-tier support system that would provide resources at different levels (student, faculty, and college level). However, in brainstorming possible resources, we discovered that we had very different ideas of what would benefit students.
 
The experts in change management would suggest that you should first conduct a needs assessment before attempting to provide a solution, particularly in a big system. After already establishing that satisfaction with one’s graduate program depends on underrepresented minority graduate students feeling included, we next should figure out what they need to feel included and like they belong. This article is a step by step description of our journey planning a needs assessment to discover how we might best serve underrepresented graduate students.
 
Step 1: Do your research
As PhD students, research comes second nature! We dug into the academic literature to find studies or theories that offered solutions for improving feelings of belonging, engagement, happiness, success, or retention of underrepresented students in graduate school. The literature also provided a bonus: tips for how to successfully implement the solutions. The list of possibilities was further narrowed when we considered what could be done within the bounds of our college with the resources and time we had.
 
Next, we did some benchmarking studies where we looked at what other campuses implemented to address the same issue. Many were far past our ability to implement (giving fellowships for example), but we were really inspired by the student led efforts we found. A few more solutions were added to our list.
 
Step 2: Construct tools to capture voices
A needs assessment suggests that you must ASSESS NEEDS! It is extremely important to not just use your own experiences or examples of what others did to “create a solution”. Instead, the crux of creating sustainable change is to find out what the recipients of the solution need and think through how you might address those needs.
 
We began by creating an open-ended survey that allows underrepresented minority students to freely tell us if they are satisfied with their experiences in graduate school and their suggestions on how to improve their experiences. The second part of the survey asks for feedback and opinions on the list of solutions that we came up with.
 
Next, we made a plan to conduct focus groups. We thought through recruitment, locations, the questions we would ask, and how to merge this information with our survey results. The two methods would allow us to capture the voices of underrepresented students and build our multi-tier support system from their needs and suggestions.
 
Step 3: Identify and engage with administrators
Institutional support is an essential part of creating sustainable change. Getting partners within administration to lead the change also increases the chance that you implement lasting change. To begin this process, we reached out to introduce ourselves and our role to the Dean and Assistant Dean of our college. After establishing a friendly connection, we identified the Assistant Dean as a person who could help champion this work and who had a personal interest in the topic.
 
We set up a meeting and prepared for it by outlining our project (including future steps), summarizing the benefits to the MSU community, and preparing a list of “asks”. The meeting went over successfully with the Assistant Dean agreeing to support and help with the project. She also recommended other administrators that we could consult with. We went about the same process for engaging those administrators.
 
Step 4: Execute Your Plan!
The next step in completing a needs assessment is to do it! Unfortunately, a global pandemic prevented us from being able to conduct our activities, but we can share our plan.
 
Our survey was to be administered from the Dean’s office directly to underrepresented minority students. We concurrently would begin to recruit and conduct focus groups.
 
The information would be consolidated, and we would make a decision about what type of changes, resources, solutions, etc. to provide in order to enhance the experience of underrepresented minority graduate students. Once we created a proposal, we would begin to engage the necessary stakeholders to make it come to life. For example, one of the solutions on our list was to create a page on the college website that featured all of the available resources for underrepresented students. We would have to compile a list of these resources, request permission to do so by administration, get assistance from the website owners, and establish an updating protocol so that the page stays current.
 
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The best advice that we can offer when conducting a needs assessment is to stay flexible and stay encouraged. You have to be flexible enough to realize that what you thought people needed may not be exactly what they think they need or what can be provided. You will need to be innovative so that your solution satisfies the needs of your audience. Change leadership projects can also be very involved and take a long time. You must bring your patience and enjoy the ride! Stay encouraged throughout the journey and persevere to you goal.

Title: Exploring the effects of the flipped classroom approach in an undergraduate lab math coursePresenters: Jun Fu (Neighborhood Student Success Collaborative); Angela Wholehan (Biomedical Laboratory Diagnostics Program);  Julie Libarkin (Associate Dean for STEM Education Research and Innovation)Format: Paper PresentationDate: May 11th, 2023Time: 1:30pm - 2:30pmClick here to viewDescription:The flipped classroom approach has been applied as an instructional strategy to enhance active learning and critical thinking – even in basic science courses. During this past year, the participants of a MSU faculty learning community has collaboratively designed and implemented an action research study to examine the effects of a flipped classroom approach on students' integration and application of content knowledge, sense of belonging, and critical thinking skills in an undergraduate lab math course. This presentation will share the findings of this work and implications on the assessment of student learning in the STEM context.

There are a variety of platforms you can consider in supporting remote learning for your students. Some are expanded upon in greater detail in other articles and playlists in the MSU Remote Teaching Group. They each offer different affordances for your consideration.  
Podcasts

Your platform for learning on-the-go.
Podcasts allow you to review workshops and training material while taking a run, walking the dog, etc.

Zoom

Zoom allows you to video conference with up to 300 students at a time by logging into https://msu.zoom.us/.
You can use Zoom to join a virtual classroom for lecture, share your screen for group projects and easily integrate your scheduled meetings with calendar integration.
Beginning April 1, 2020, all Zoom meetings will require a password in order to access the meeting room.

When setting up a meeting using a randomly-generated user ID, Zoom meetings automatically create a password.

Meeting creators can modify meeting passwords by doing the following: https://bit.ly/2xAMFss 


Meeting creators who use their Personal Meeting ID (PMI) when creating a Zoom meeting will need to manually enter a password in order to schedule a meeting.



D2L

Holds course materials, communicates course grades, hold discussions with your classmates, etc.
MSU sets up every credit-bearing course section at MSU in D2L each semester and enrolls all students.
D2L is recommended as the place to find your syllabus, readings, and engage with your classmates online.

YouTube: Your Virtual Tutor

Videos facilitate remote learning.

MediaSpace

Create screen recordings, voiceovers for presentations, podcasts, etc.
All students and faculty have free licenses for MediaSpace.
You can log in with your MSU NetID to use the resources provided and share with classmates and professors.
For tutorials and 24/7 help, please reference Kaltura MediaSpace Help.

Spartan 365
Spartan 365 makes Microsoft Office applications and files available wherever the user goes, on whichever device the user chooses. This platform – available to all MSU staff, faculty, and students – provides remote access to a user’s work and organizational tools and is essential for telecommuters. Programs available through Spartan 365 include Word, Excel, OneDrive, Teams, Outlook, and more.
 
Spartan 365 is compliant with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This means student and health information are protected and onshore data storage is ensured. As part of this agreement, Microsoft will not mine individual data and will only access that data for troubleshooting needs or malware prevention. Spartan 365 customer data belongs to individuals and they can export their data at any time.
Learn more about Spartan 365: go.msu.edu/about365

How to save your documents to Spartan 365

Uploading your local files to Spartan 365 is simple. Microsoft OneDrive is an online storage tool that is available after logging into Spartan 365. This tool is the ideal place to upload documents, spreadsheets, and other files for personal use. Files located on OneDrive can then be shared to other users using links.



Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is a program available through Spartan 365 that allows users to chat, video conference, share files, and collaboratively work on projects. It is one of the most useful tools available when collaborating remotely. Access Teams at spartan365.msu.edu or to request a team or learn more about teams, visit Microsoft Teams.

Set up a Teams meeting

If you are a member of a Microsoft Team, you can schedule a meeting in teams. Teams meetings support up to 250 people.


Record your meeting

If you are a member of a Microsoft Team, you can record your meeting.



 

Title: Finding Your True North: Equitable access to career education through core curriculum integrationPresenter: Shahnaz Masani (Lyman Briggs College, Physiology Department) Krysta Coleman (Lyman Briggs College)Format: WorkshopDate: May 11th, 2023Time: 1:30 pm - 2:30 pmClick here to viewDescription:What if students approached their collegiate journey with a purpose-driven as opposed to a destination-driven mindset? What if the silos between curricular and co-curricular experiences no longer existed? By bringing career education into a space in which students are excited to engage academically, we aim to address the inherent inequities present in the current siloed approach. During the past academic year, Lyman Briggs College has made a concentrated effort to imagine this world in a practical way by incorporating career education into the core curriculum of the college’s introductory biology course. Through meaningful reflection and by broadening their worldview through a variety of experiences, students are able to identify multiple career paths that they may wish to pursue, and develop skills that enable them to better articulate their purpose and pursue opportunities related to their long term career goals. During this session, we will explore the results of a collaborative effort between LBC faculty and career services staff focused on building partnerships, and the impact of this integrated curriculum on students’ self-efficacy, science identity and sense of belonging. Participants will be able to identify strategies for creating partnerships between academic and career units, and apply a backwards design approach that ensures alignment with program values and objectives as it relates to career curriculum development and assessment.

Title: “That Doesn’t Work For Me!”: Tools for Students with ADHDPresenters: McKayla Sluga (History/College of Social Science)Date: May 11th, 2023Time: 11:30 am - 12:30 pmFormat: Learning Technology DemonstrationClick here to viewDescription:Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) affects undergraduate and graduate students—diagnosed and undiagnosed. Often, instructors are unaware of symptoms’ variability or helpful strategies. Even though ADHD’ers frequently have high intelligence, they drop out of academia or leave employment at double the rate of neurotypicals. If they stay, students often experience exacerbated anxiety, depression, and other psychological distress. Why? One explanation is that executive functioning differences often make academic advice ADHD’ers receive ineffective or even damaging. This presentation features three practical strategies instructors can explore to make higher-education teaching and learning more ADHD-friendly.Scrivener organizes large projects in one place with the ability to form subdocuments. This makes it easier to structurally and visually break projects into smaller components. Read Aloud features in Microsoft Word and Google Docs may ease revision or renew stimulation for those struggling to focus or avoid boredom when re-reading familiar work. Bionic Reading is a visual tool that bolds the first letters of each word. It can help those who jump around reading, get distracted reading unchanging text, and want to speed up their reading pace. Tools can remove access barriers while diversifying strategies to complement ADHD symptoms can help students reduce shame or anxiety rather than disparage learning differences. As Devon Price, author of Unmasking Autism, writes, “Refusing to perform neurotypicality is a revolutionary act of disability justice. It’s also a radical act of self-love.” Environments embracing diverse learning approaches can elevate students’ sense of belonging and confidence.

Copyright Basics
Many people believe there is a blanket exception in the copyright law for education.  This is not true.  There are exceptions that allow instructors to use copyrighted material without special permission in face-to-face and real time classroom teaching.  This does not translate over to the posting material on a web site.  Posting materials on a web site is considered re-publication and not teaching, so teaching exceptions do not apply for #iteachmsu.   
The most important thing you need to understand about copyright is that all original works of authorship are copyrighted, by default, from the moment they are fixed in tangible form.  Since 1989, the copyright symbol, a copyright notice, or copyright registration are not required, so you must assume that everything is copyrighted unless you can confirm that it is not.  
Copyright belongs originally to the author and (for works published in the United States since 1978) lasts the life of the author plus 70 years.  As noted above for your own work, authors can sign away their copyrights, or many of the rights of copyright, however, and often do, when they publish.  So, it is important that you think about this when you publish.
Copyright, by definition, only applies to original works of authorship, so the following cannot be copyrighted:

Facts, procedures, ideas, systems, concepts, and principles
Mathematical equations
Lists of ingredients
Strictly factual photographs, such as photos of histology slides

Holding copyright in a work gives someone a number of exclusive rights, including the right to:

Reproduce all or part of the work
Prepare derivative works from the work
Distribute copies of the work, including through the internet
Perform the work publicly
Display the work publicly

Some materials are considered to be in the public domain and do not have copyright protection.   The following types of materials are in the public domain:

Material published in the United States prior to 1924
Material created by a United States government employee and published by the United States government
Material which the owner has dedicated to the public domain

Using Outside Sources
The material that you post to #iteachmsu should be your own work, as you do not have the right to post, distribute, or display material that is not your own.  Of course, sometimes you will use outside sources in creating your own work, and you want to make sure that you do so legally. 
Public domain and uncopyrightable sources
It is legal for you to post and reproduce sources that are in the public domain (or uncopyrightable—see above lists in Copyright Basics) as well as create derivative works based on them.  Good scholarship says that you should still cite these sources and not simply plagiarize.   
Creative Commons sources
You may find materials on the web that are licensed under a Create Commons license similar to the one #iteachmsu asks its authors to use.  You should check which Creative Commons license was used to be clear on how you are allowed to use the material. 

Creative Commons attribution licenses allow you to use the material as you like as long as you give attribution. See How to give attribution.
Some Creative Commons licenses specify you may only use for non-commercial reasons or you must license your derived material similarly (“share alike”).
Creative Commons licenses that specify “no derivatives” mean that you may re-post the material but not remix or build your own work on it.

Other copyrighted sources
It is legal for you to use most copyrighted sources if you:

Cite ideas, facts, and other information
Link out to sources on the web
Quote short excerpts from textual works with attribution

However, even if you cite your source, you are probably infringing on someone else’s copyright if you:

Use larger portions of copyrighted texts
Closely paraphrase portions of copyrighted texts
Use parts of song lyrics or poems where even one line can be considered a significant portion of the work

Terms of use
On the web, some sources may come with licenses and terms of use that take precedence over basic copyright law.  MSU Library electronic resources all come with licenses and terms of use.  Using material that has terms of use means you agree to abide by those terms.

Look for “terms and conditions” on any web site, usually found in the small print at the bottom of the page or in an “about” section.
The terms may allow you to use portions on a site like #iteachmsu, or they may prohibit you from using any portion on any web site.
Terms of use may specify exactly how you may use the content. For instance, YouTube specifies that you may link to their videos or use their own embeddable player, but you may not download videos and save them on your own computer or server. 

Multimedia
Use of multimedia (images, music, video) can be especially fraught with possible copyright infringement issues.  For instance, most images that come up when you do a Google images search are not legal for you to reuse.  To stay legal you may:

Link out to videos and audio instead of downloading (which could violate terms of use)
Use a web site’s own embeddable player or a form of use that the site itself suggests
Use images that are marked public domain or with a Creative Commons license that allows re-use

Tip: To find public domain or Creative Commons images, you can search for “public domain images” or do a Google Images search, then, at the top of the page, click on “Tools”, then under that “usage rights”.  Limit your search using this link to images that are labelled for “reuse with modification”. 
 
Seeking Permissions
If you determine that it is probably not legal to reuse the work or the amount of the work that you selected, you may seek permission from the copyright holder to use the work.
There are a few caveats:

You must make sure you have identified the actual copyright holder of the material you want to use and not just someone else who is reusing the material. This can be difficult and time consuming if you are using material from Power Point slides and other non-traditional sources you find on the web.  
Because #iteachmsu may eventually be opened up to the public, you would need to seek permissions to post on the open web.
It is very unlikely you will receive permission to reuse commercially published material on a site like #iteachmsu.
If you are able to get permissions from commercial sources, the fees may be cost-prohibitive.

Because of these caveats and the nature of #iteachmsu, it is recommended that you please do not rely on being able to use or embed much, if any, outside, copyrighted sources in the materials you post. 
 
Getting Help with Copyright
The MSU Libraries Office of Copyright can be found at https://lib.msu.edu/copyright/ . 
Susan Kendall, Copyright Librarian, is available to help you work through a copyright question, although she cannot give legal advice.
The Office of Copyright can help with some permissions questions but asks that you consider copyright and the above caveats first before choosing your sources.

The Center for Teaching and Learning Innovation and educators discussed the title “What Inclusive Instructors Do: Principles and Practices for Excellence in College Teaching” By Tracie Marcella Addy, Derek Dube, Khadijah A. Mitchell, Mallory SoRelle (published by Routledge in 2021) on 11/2/23. This title is available in print at the MSU Main Library (Call Number: LB2331 .A34 2021) or as an eBook (via ProQuest EBook Central).
If you missed the discussion or want to continue your reflection, in addition to the great reflection questions incorporated in each chapter of the book, here are the prompts we used for our discussion:


The book defines inclusive instructors as the “literal embodiment of inclusion. Inclusive instructors generate spaces through their scholarship, service, mentorship, teaching, activism, and their very selves. To be an inclusive instructor is to critique and challenge traditions, systems and structures that were constructed to exclude and marginalize”.Is this aspirational or achievable? How / what would you add or change in the definition of an inclusive instructor? 


What are you currently doing to create inclusive and welcoming learning environments? How do you incorporate inclusivity in the beginning, middle, and end of the course? How do these things create and support educational equity and belonging?


The book talks about the importance of growth mindset in this work. That as humans we never "fully arrive". How do you (currently or aspire to) continue your learning and development journey in this area?


In your opinion, how can educators measure the effectiveness of their inclusive teaching practices? What indicators or assessment tools can help them gauge the impact of their efforts? The naming and framing of this work is important. How can/do you tell the story of your inclusive educator practices?


The group had a conversation rich with activities and resources. Here are a few of the items that came up:


Resources:



Microvalidations


Power Wheel


OFASD Learning Communities



Practices and ideas from the group:


smaller assessments give students feedback on a limited amount of knowledge and they’re less likely to forget everything after the midterm





removed all grades related to "participation" or attendance


1 min check outs (What rocked today? What sucked today?)


Break large exams into the smallest chunks for learning assessments… this allows educators to demonstrate flexibility in large courses


“made a mistake and I had total points of 105 - rather than correcting it, it gave students some room to miss deadlines on some of discussion forums”


small-group exams


“I have my quizzes open Monday and close Friday each week, and they can take as many times as they want while it is open - I still have students who don’t do them, so they will typically use the drops”


“I've been offering flexibility in assignment format. Granted, I teach small grad-level courses so this might not work for larger undergrad courses. But I give students the option to do a traditional academic paper, powerpoint presentation with recorded narrative, or if they have other ideas I ask them to meet with me to talk it through.”






If you’d like to nominate a title for a future CTLI book discussion and/or volunteer to co-facilitate a discussion, please reach out to Makena Neal at mneal@msu.eduCover-photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

As the pandemics continue to impact our personal lives, many educators are exhausted, stressed, and overworked. Some are burned out. The constant “pivoting”, adapting, working more, differently and harder has taken its toll. Selfcare is not the usual ‘go to’ for educators who are inclined to help others. But research, science, experience, stories tell us taking time for ourselves [including listing to a podcast!] is very important. We invite you to experience …  
The Spartans Will, Spartans WELL Podcast: A space where educators can dock to get a second wind
During this biweekly podcast, guests respond to questions submitted by educators with stories and strategies that can inspire hope as listeners deal with challenging realities that have changed their lives. Spartans Will, Spartans WELL is hosted by members of the MSU Community with expertise in educator and student well-being. The podcast has been designed to let listeners know they belong, they matter, and they make a difference.
New episodes, which are released every other week, are determined by listener suggestions.  Find this podcast at Spartans Will Spartans WELL Podcast Playlist.
Connect with us!
Please send comments, ideas, questions, suggestions for future podcast topics to worklife@msu.edu.