Class Activities | DEI

Activities to think about social identities and how they shape experiences

To enable community building and participation as each student is given a vital clue that the group needs in order to solve the puzzle. The game highlights the importance of everyone’s contributions to the success of classroom objectives.
- This goal is best achieved by having students debrief in the closing discussion the positive and negative interactions that took place during the activity. The activity itself is not a model for community building so much as it illustrates the impact of individual behavior and participation on group learning goals.
To encourage students to think critically about participation, barriers to participation, and how social identities can impact one’s experience of inclusion and exclusion.
To help students who tend to speak a lot in class and take on leadership roles become better attuned to the value of other students’ contributions.
To help students who tend not to speak up in class recognize the value of their contribution to the success of learning objectives.

To encourage students to consider their identities critically and how identities are more or less keenly felt in different social contexts. The classroom and the university can be highlighted as a context as a way to approach questions on barriers to inclusion.
To illuminate how privilege operates to normalize some identities over others. For example, a student who speaks English as their first language can reflect on why they rarely need to think about their language as an aspect of their identity while some of their peers may identity language as the aspect of their identity they feel most keenly in the classroom.
To sensitize students to their shared identities with their classmates as well as the diversity of identities in the classroom, building community and encouraging empathy.

To encourage students to consider their identities critically and how identities are more or less keenly felt in different social contexts. The classroom and the university can be highlighted as a context as a way to approach questions on barriers to inclusion.
To illuminate how privilege operates to normalize some identities over others. For example, a student who speaks English as their first language can reflect on why they rarely need to think about their language as an aspect of their identity while some of their peers may identify language as the aspect of their identity they feel most keenly in the classroom.
To sensitize students to their shared identities with their classmates as well as the diversity of identities in the classroom, building community and encouraging empathy.

Activities to increase participation

The goals of this activity can shift depending on how the instructor chooses to implement it. Its primary goal is to encourage participation.

In classrooms where instructor finds they are having to drive discussion, the activity can be used as a way for the instructor to step back from the discussion by letting students initiate the passing of the ball of yarn.
If used during regular course-content discussion, the activity can make students more aware of how much they are speaking in class in comparison to their peers. Instructors can encourage students to step-up (speak more if they are not frequent participants) or step back (speak less if they are frequent participants).
At the discussion’s conclusion, the web will help students visualize their and their peers’ contributions to the exploration of the topic at hand. The web symbolizes the complex understanding on the topic as arrived at through the sharing and discussion of everyone’s perspectives.

K. Patricia Cross Academy has over 20 activities to help students take better notes, process lecture content, and translate what they have learned.

University of Michigan's Inclusive Teaching site has over 50 activities for inclusive teaching, promoting discussion, and icebreakers