About the program
The TIDE (Teaching for Inclusiveness, Diversity, and Equity) Fellowship is an opportunity to “explore how they can enhance students’ learning and academic success across cultural, social, and learning differences by adopting a strength-based, inclusive approach to teaching and learning grounded in the value of diversity. Experiential, collaborative, and reflective learning are integral elements of the TIDE program.”
Toggerson’s Goals
While white cis-gendered men are actually not a majority in my physics 131 and 132 courses, they do volunteer to contribute more to class discussions than other groups. Moreover, I have definitely observed, both as a practicing physicist and as a physics instructor in a team-based learning (TBL) environment, an undervaluing of the contributions of minority groups. As part of this fellowship, I want to explore ways to minimize and mitigate these effects.
Another topic I would like to explore is equity with regard to disability particularly in my TBL courses. Many of the suggestions and accommodation requests from the Disability Services offce are tailored to a typical lecture-style course and do not really apply to TBL. For example, a common accommodation is to provide notes before class. However, in a TBL environment, there is only a small amount of lecture and students are spending over half of the class-time working on problems in teams. What accommodations are needed for this environment? How can I structure the course in a way that uses the principles of universal design and minimizes the need for accommodations?
Finally, the issue of diversity came up several times in the rst iteration of physics 390T last fall. As part of that course, we discuss issues such as stereotype threat and soloing with regards to team formation and dynamics within a TBL classroom. The format of these discussions stemmed from readings from the physics education literature. Some students reacted to these ideas with skepticism. Through this fellowship, I would hope to learn new ways of exploring these ideas and facilitating better discussions with my students.