Learn more about inclusion, belonging, and course design. Faculty identified inclusivity and student belonging, accessibility and accommodations, and assessment and learning design as their top three professional development topics of interest. Check out the 2023 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report, Teaching and Learning Edition, specifically the section on Trends for more on inclusive teaching and learning and the section on Key Technologies & Practices for more on student belonging. EDUCAUSE will also be offering Learning Labs on Introduction to HyFlex: Designing Courses to Support Multimodal Learning Environments and Designing Inclusive and Equitable Learning Environments.

Consider these ten steps that can be taken to better support faculty teaching. We asked faculty what their institution could do to better support their teaching across multiple modalities. In their open-ended comments, they identified the following areas for improvement (time was again mentioned by many faculty).

• Provide more time for teaching responsibilities, especially for course design and development and learning new technologies (e.g., assign balanced teaching loads, offer course releases, reduce administrative and service duties, hire enough instructors, reduce the number of meetings).
• Provide more training, professional development opportunities, and opportunities for discussion and collaboration. Also, give advance notice for these opportunities (e.g., training focused on best teaching practices related to modality and technology use, instructional technologies, assistive technologies and accommodations, inclusion and accessibility, and assessment and learning design).
• Collect exemplars of effective teaching and course design across modalities, and share these in a centralized place.
• Provide more staff support and make it easy to access, especially for those who have to use support that is not available directly on their immediate campus (e.g., instructional designers and specialists, librarians, teaching assistants, and technology support).
• Improve the quality of technology support (i.e., develop better user training, ensure that tech personnel have enough expertise to adequately answer questions, invest in in-house support as opposed to outsourcing it).
• Offer faculty more choice in teaching modalities, yet also hold them accountable for teaching according to the modality chosen.
• Provide and use more consistent and clear and nuanced terminology surrounding instructional modalities, and set student expectations for courses in each modality.
• Provide technology and physical spaces that are reliable, up to date, and well maintained.
• Provide fair and adequate incentives for course development and teaching and financial support for training and professional development.
• Support adjuncts at the same level as other faculty members.