Diversity Readiness Rubric

The Diversity Readiness Rubric is a unique guide that articulates a robust standards for evaluating courses. I designed this rubric to challenge our learning community to push our designs to meet Georgia State’s goals of diversity, equity and inclusion. I asked myself, How can we harness the potential of the ideals that define our community at Georgia State, inside of a course?  The answer, by consciously planning to do it.

The Diversity Readiness Rubric is a tool to build engaging and relevant learning environments where all students feel equally valued. It provides clear guidelines to help faculty critically examine their courses from multiple viewpoints and include materials that represent diverse perspectives (gender, nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, political affiliation, socio-economic status, age, and ability). The driving philosophy behind the Diversity Readiness Rubric is an asset-based approach to engagement. Instead of focusing solely on the deficits of a particular community, conscious steps are taken to create balance and identify and include assets, resources, skills and relevant knowledge existing in the community as well.

 

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When applying the Diversity Readiness Rubric ask yourself:

How might my own cultural-bound assumptions influence my interactions with students? How might the backgrounds and experiences of my students influence their motivation, engagement, and learning? How can I modify course materials, activities, assignments, and/or exams to be more relevant to all students in my class? How can I modify course materials to include alternative, local and resilient voices to address problems presented to students?

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The Diversity Readiness Rubric provides an opportunity to frame a design challenge in a different way. It provides guidelines on how we might select course materials and develop content to better meet the needs of our learners. An asset-based approach to course design considers the messaging. Who is this course for? How are your students or the communities they represent presented in the course? Is there a balance between problems and solutions? What are their assets? What do they bring to the learning community? Where can we embed key insights relevant to learners in the course design? When dealing with challenging material and issues this approach shifts the focus from always looking at “what’s wrong with us?” to including “what’s right with us?”This leads to nuances in course design that can deepen the overall learning experience.

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