Inclusive Teaching in Isolating Situations: Impact of COVID-19 on Efforts Toward Increasing Diversity in BME


Teaching Tips - Special Issue (COVID)

Inclusive Teaching in Isolating Situations: Impact of COVID-19

on Efforts Toward Increasing Diversity in BME

MEMORIA E. MATTERS ,
1
ANDREW O. BRIGHTMAN,

2
PATRICE M. BUZZANELL ,

3

and CARLA B. ZOLTOWSKI
4

1
School of Engineering Education, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA;

2
Weldon School of Biomedical

Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47920, USA;
3
Department of Communication, University of South Florida,

Tampa, FL 33620, USA; and
4
Schools of Electrical and Computer Engineering and (by Courtesy) Engineering Education,

Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA

(Received 29 June 2020; accepted 24 July 2020; published online 20 August 2020)

As part of National Science Foundation (NSF)
sponsored Research in the Formation of Engineers
(RFE), we have been focusing on inclusive teaching
strategies for engineering professors. Now, in the
presence of a pandemic and protests for racial justice in
America, underrepresented students are facing
unprecedented challenges as they navigate new situa-
tions of remote learning. What does inclusive teaching
look like in this new context, and what does this mean
for teaching in the future?

BACKGROUND

Our research group was formed to investigate the
intersection of three goals in engineering education:
professional formation of students, diversity and
inclusion, and a sociotechnical perception of engi-
neering. We approached these goals with design
thinking in collaboration with faculty, staff, and stu-
dents in a comparative study of two engineering
departments—electrical and computer engineering
(ECE) and biomedical engineering (BME)—at a large,
research-intensive university. In our recent work, we
have highlighted the importance of faculty support for
engineering students, especially those in underrepre-
sented groups. Through interviews, we found that
BME undergraduate students felt they were ‘‘on their
own’’ to navigate the system of getting their degree and
finding jobs.

1
They felt it was up to them to learn

effective study habits, find a practical specialization,

and seek out professional development opportunities.
However, all of those skills are heavily influenced by
students’ previous knowledge and experience, or cul-
tural and social capital, within the world of engineer-
ing. If it is left up to students to navigate the
complexities of a career in BME, then underrepre-
sented and underprivileged students, who are less likely
to have the types of cultural and social capital typically
expected for that career, are at a distinct disadvantage
for success. Therefore, if professors become more en-
gaged with their students both inside and outside of the
classroom, it can help level the playing field among a
diverse student body.

A call for stronger relationships between engineer-
ing professors and students has a strong precedent in
the literature. To aid the persistence of underrepre-
sented STEM students, it is important that professors
foster their interest, capacity, and belongingness in
their field.

2
Stronger faculty-student relationships are

associated with higher performance and confidence in
students,

3
while student-perceived distance from fac-

ulty may actually harm self-efficacy and confi-
dence.

4
The evidence implies that to teach inclusively

means to actively form relationships with students,
work to understand them individually as people, and
engage in ‘‘informal mentoring’’

2
in everyday classes

and office hours. This means that inclusive teaching
takes work. To professors already juggling a multitude
of responsibilities, personally investing in students can
become an emotional, professional, and even financial
burden.

5
We observed this conflict in our interviews

with ECE professors, who perceived a lack of resources
and support to take action for diversity and inclusion.

6

As one resulting intervention, we developed inclusive
teaching ‘‘tip sheets’’ targeted at both the ECE and
BME departments that lists simple inclusive practices

Address correspondence to Memoria E. Matters, School of

Engineering Education, Purdue University, West Lafayette,

IN 47907, USA. Electronic mail: matters@purdue.edu

Biomedical Engineering Education, Vol. 1, No. 1, January 2021 (� 2020) pp. 73–77
https://doi.org/10.1007/s43683-020-00012-1

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2730-5937/21/0100-0073/0 � 2020 Biomedical Engineering Society

73

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8672-7942
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0058-7676
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s43683-020-00012-1&domain=pdf


intended to take little extra time or resources for pro-
fessors to implement. Examples include showcasing in
class a wide variety of career paths related to the
course material, addressing students by name, and
deliberately inviting students to office hours. All of
these tips, of course, assumed an in-person learning
environment which suddenly evaporated when cam-
puses across the country shut down and/or moved to
remote learning in the wake of the coronavirus pan-
demic.

CHALLENGE: DIVERSITY AND ISOLATION

Campus shutdowns and self-isolation suddenly dis-
rupted every aspect of university operation and the
lives of students, faculty, and staff. Professors are
scrambling to redesign courses for remote learning
amid the wider community’s uncertainty about finan-
cial stability, social isolation, and the virus itself. In a
time of heightened stress and physical separation for
both instructors and students, the idea of faculty-stu-
dent connection has become obscure. If BME students
felt they were ‘‘on their own’’ before the coronavirus,
now they are more on their own than ever. What does
this situation mean for underrepresented and under-
privileged students?

Some students in BME have noted recently that
their family and living situations make it difficult to
complete school assignments on time and communi-
cate with their classmates for team assignments. These
are just some ways that the switch to online learning
has affected students in unanticipated ways. Without
the ‘‘equalizing’’ environment of the classroom and
campus, students’ differences in economic as well as
cultural and social capital are exacerbated. Many stu-
dents do not have access to a quiet place at home to do
their schoolwork, or reliable access to a computer with
internet. Many low-income students relied heavily on
university resources for food, housing, and healthcare.
When those resources were suddenly shut down, some
students who were told to leave campus had nowhere
else to go.

7
Underprivileged students have had to

navigate online learning while also dealing with unex-
pected expenses, loss of jobs and housing, and worry
about the health and safety of themselves and their
families.

To complicate matters, the recent national attention
on racism in America and the resurgence of the Black
Lives Matter movement after the death of George
Floyd have disrupted black students’ lives further by
bringing their trauma to the surface. Many black stu-
dents have been forced to become activists for their

own survival, while recognizing that the universities
they attend are in many ways complicit in institutional
racism.

8
These students are attempting to continue

their coursework while the country publicly debates
their right to live.

In all the above ways, diversity and inclusion in
higher education are more relevant than ever, espe-
cially at the critical nexus of professional formation
and sociotechnical integration, and yet because of re-
mote learning and other isolating situations appears
harder to support.

NOVEL INITIATIVE: INCLUSIVE REMOTE

TEACHING

How can the BME educational community bring
much needed support to underrepresented students
during isolation? What is inclusive teaching in the
context of remote instruction? Although remote
learning has changed the mechanics of how instructors
are able to interact with students, the spirit of our
inclusive teaching tip sheet remains. It is a set of
strategies grounded in compassion and support, and
made to foster interest, capacity, and belongingness in
underrepresented students. In this section, we reimag-
ine each of our tips in the current context of isolating
situations. Where possible, we point to examples of
some specific virtual tools that instructors can use in
their remote learning courses.

Interest

Students need to feel that course material is
important and relevant to the world and their own
futures. Amid the current uncertainty, students may be
struggling more than usual to stay engaged in course
topics and see the true impact of what they are learn-
ing. Our tips for fostering interest in remote learning
courses are:

� Incorporate active learning to keep students en-
gaged: Although active learning in a remote class
may sound daunting, there are many tools avail-
able to create engaging activities virtually. If
teaching through Zoom or Webex, you can carry
out pair-and-share activities and other discussions
using breakout rooms. Zoom is also capable of
hosting a live collaborative whiteboard where
students can share ideas. You can also create live
quiz games and other activities with Kahoot!.

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MATTERS et al.74



� Connect course material to the real world and
people: Just as in in-person courses, continue to
spend time in remote lectures explaining the real-
world applications and impacts of what you teach.
Including discussions of recent biomedical engi-
neering research and responses to COVID-19, both
from your own campus as well as globally, is a
prime example.

� Showcase career paths which use your course mate-
rial: Invite guest speakers working in the area of
your course to your remote lectures to talk about
their work and take questions. Also, provide
students with links to videos about the wide variety
of careers in BME (the NSF and the American
Institute for Medical and Biomedical Engineering
(AIMBE) websites are just two sources) and
follow-up with online discussions related to student
submitted questions.

� Embed research experiences into courses: Integrat-
ing research into courses is vital to fostering
interest, but it is made difficult by the lack of
access to laboratories during social distancing. To
continue emphasizing the connection between
course material and research, you can create class
activities or assignments where students design an
experiment and get feedback. You can also have
students find examples of BME research online to
post in discussion boards.

Capacity

Students’ capacity in engineering includes both their
ability and perceived ability, or self-efficacy. In other
words, students need to feel capable of succeeding in
the field. The extra challenges of remote learning, in
which students have less access to academic support
from instructors, staff, and peers, can be damaging to
students’ confidence. Fostering students’ capacity
involves using a growth mindset, or the belief that
ability is not fixed but can change, in order to
encourage students to keep trying. Our tips for fos-
tering capacity through remote learning are:

� Understand and accommodate differences in re-
sources: As discussed above, not all students have
access to ideal remote learning conditions. Be
aware of assumptions you could be making about
students’ resources (technology, time, living condi-
tions, etc.) and have a plan to accommodate
students’ unique situations when necessary.

� Provide consistent feedback so students can recog-
nize their progress: Just as in in-person courses,
return graded exams and assignments as soon as
possible so students can correct course early. The
remote learning context also provides opportuni-
ties to leverage auto-grading capabilities of Learn-
ing Management Systems and other digital
technologies (e.g. Gradescope, Crowdmark, etc.).

� Provide opportunities for students to build confi-
dence: When creating assignments, break up longer
problems and projects into distinct steps so they are
less overwhelming. Also, an important way that
students can build confidence is through group
work (as long as their contributions are valued);
however, group assignments can be tricky to
implement remotely. To help alleviate communi-
cation issues between group members, you can
create defined roles for group members and help
groups establish a communication plan before
starting the project.

� Destigmatize students needing help: Some students
may be nervous about attending office hours, and
the unfamiliar format of virtual office hours may
make them even less likely to attend. Hold virtual
office hours and make it clear to students that they
are welcome and that you want to help them.
Additionally, provide an asynchronous way for
students to ask questions—even anony-
mously—through a discussion board like Piazza.

� Embrace questions in class: Praise students asking
questions during remote lectures by saying
‘‘Thanks for asking,’’ or ‘‘Good question,’’ to
encourage more questions. You can also use the
Zoom or Webex chat feature or Hotseat to make it
easier for students to ask questions.

Belongingness

Students need to feel that people like them belong in
the field. Since belongingness is influenced by visible
role models and strong relationships at school, this is
one of the most difficult factors to work toward in a
remote setting. However, given the particular struggles
of underrepresented students during this time, it is also
one of the most important. Our tips for belongingness
adapted to remote learning are:

� Model authenticity and vulnerability: Acknowledg-
ing your own challenges and life situation in the
pandemic as well as your struggles with online
technology and virtual teaching can provide a

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Inclusive Teaching in Isolating Situations 75



connection point for students. Asking for student
suggestions on how to make the virtual classroom
feel more connected can also encourage a sense of
belonging in the class, even if means potential for
introducing some changes to the routine.

� Include diverse students in class participation: When
taking questions during remote lectures, ask to
hear from students who haven’t spoken yet so that
a diverse set of voices is heard. Providing short
interactive activities for peers to get to know each
other in virtual breakout rooms can also enhance
belonging in the virtual classroom.

� Use diverse engineers as examples: Just as in in-
person courses, showcase the accomplishments of
diverse engineers when discussing real-world exam-
ples and represent diversity in any imaginary
characters you create for practice problems. The
virtual classroom allows opportunities for guest
appearances from diverse academic and industry
colleagues who might otherwise not be able to
attend in-person due to distance and time commit-
ments.

� Show interest in individual students: During remote
learning, students may feel especially disconnected
from instructors. To let students know you care,
you can learn students’ names and address them by
name, even in remote lectures. At the beginning of
the term, create an introduction activity (during
lecture or via student-made videos) to get to know
your students. If possible, schedule one-on-one
meetings with students to check how they are doing
in the course and in life. These extra interactions
can make a big difference to students’ sense of
belonging.

� Promote diversity in student leadership roles: Rec-
ognizing that student activities and employment
have been limited by restrictions of the coron-
avirus, it is still important to consider representing
diversity when you do have opportunities to offer
students (such as undergraduate research positions
or assistantships).

These are just a few examples among many and
varied options of inclusive teaching practices that can
be adapted for remote learning. We encourage
instructors to consider how other inclusive strategies
from their own experiences and from colleagues can
be incorporated into remote instruction. The work for
increasing diversity and inclusion in BME is inher-
ently difficult—it requires introspection and a will-
ingness to make mistakes

9
—and the current

circumstances might make it seem even more daunt-
ing. However, those circumstances’ effects on under-
represented students is precisely why this work is so
important now. Therefore, despite the general uncer-

tainty and chaos during this time, it is especially vital
that instructors remember to consider inclusion in
their course designs.

REFLECTION: WHAT’S NEXT?

In our current study, we are conducting interviews
with faculty members of the ECE and BME depart-
ments to determine the effects of the inclusive teaching
tip sheets and their own experiences on their intention
to use inclusive teaching strategies in their classrooms.
Thus, this exploratory study is focused on the extent of
usage of inclusive strategies by engineering faculty.
With this data, we will be able to identify school
policies and intervention strategies that encourage
inclusive teaching among engineering professors. In
the wake of current events, the interviews also inves-
tigate how remote teaching has affected the partici-
pants’ ideas of inclusivity in teaching. As diversity and
inclusion have recently been brought to the forefront
of world dialogues, perhaps these experiences can help
refocus the BME community on inclusion beyond the
current crises.

The coronavirus pandemic combined with the cur-
rent political crisis in America will certainly have
lasting effects on many aspects of life, including higher
education. As members of academia during this time,
we are helping to decide what those effects will be. We
are at a critical moment where we are all reminded of
our humanity: our differences, our emotions, and our
mortality. What if we use this experience to regroup
around compassion? What if we let the current crises
lead us to more human-centered teaching in the future?

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

The first draft of the manuscript was written by
MEM and all authors commented on previous versions
of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the
final manuscript.

FUNDING

This work was made possible by a grant from the
National Science Foundation (EEC-1636446). Any
opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommenda-
tions expressed in this material are those of the authors
and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National
Science Foundation.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The authors report grants from the National Sci-
ence Foundation during the conduct of the study.

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CONSENT TO PARTICIPATE

For the interviews used to inform these teaching
tips, informed consent was obtained from all individ-
ual participants.

ETHICAL APPROVAL

Approval for the engineering education
research was obtained from the Institutional Review
Board of Purdue University. The procedures used in
this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of
Helsinki.

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Inclusive Teaching in Isolating Situations 77

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	Inclusive Teaching in Isolating Situations: Impact of COVID-19 on Efforts Toward Increasing Diversity in BME
	Background
	Challenge: Diversity and Isolation
	Novel Initiative: Inclusive Remote Teaching
	Interest
	Capacity
	Belongingness

	Reflection: What’s Next?
	Acknowledgements
	Acknowledgements
	References