Designing Inclusive and Welcoming Online Learning Experiences at Scale

I recently gave a talk at the University of Michigan’s Academic Innovation at Michigan (AIM) Research symposium. I really enjoyed sharing our work with and learning from this group. We still have much work to do to establish effective research-practice partnerships with the goal of eliminating educational privilege. But much as it pains me to say as a Spartan, U of M’s Academic Innovation group is the place most likely to make it happen. All the relevant materials at are here and a brief description below.

Description: In this talk, Andy will discuss his research on practical, scalable techniques that help to create psychologically welcoming online learning environments for traditionally marginalized learners. These studies build on extant social psychological theory and research in face-to-face environments and demonstrate how brief activities and subtle design cues in online environments can improve outcomes for underrepresented groups of learners. For example, findings suggest that brief social psychological interventions can close persistence gaps for learners in developing countries and inclusive marketing cues and course descriptions can increase enrollments by women in online STEM courses.

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