Step 2: Calling on Students in Equitable Ways

Inclusive instructors looking to cultivate equitable participation think carefully about the ways they structure discussions. One way instructors include a variety of voices in the classroom discussion is by carefully choosing the students they call on to participate. Timothy Patrick McCarthy intentionally calls on students from different groups to promote equitable seminar discussions, even if he needs to wait for students from underrepresented groups to raise their hands. It’s worth the wait. “For a class like this,” explains McCarthy, “where we are talking...

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Step 3: Expanding Participation Through Cold-Calling

 Intentionally calling on students from different groups helps create equitable discussions, but what happens when students don’t raise their hands? Todd Rakoff uses an age-old technique: “cold calling.” When using this technique, Rakoff keeps in mind the complex factors that influence which groups of students typically do and do not feel comfortable sharing their views in class. He explains, “Over the course of a semester, everybody deserves to be called on. And one thing that you can do with cold calling is to bring into the conversation people who otherwise don't...

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Step 4: Using Pre-Work to Highlight Diverse Voices in Classroom Discussion

Another technique to bring different student voices into the conversation is “warm calling,” where the instructor chooses whom to call on (rather than inviting raised hands) but does so knowing that the student is already prepared to contribute to the discussion. Jane Mansbridge warm calls by leveraging students’ weekly reading responses to elevate voices that might otherwise be diminished or discounted. Because all students complete reading responses, all are prepared to participate. One of Mansbridge’s students touts the value of this approach: “In a class...

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Step 5: Moving Around the Room to Encourage Participation

Instructors can encourage different students to participate not only by calling on them directly but also through physical proximity. Dan Levy intentionally moves around the classroom as a way of encouraging more students to share their thoughts during discussions. Standing in different places in the room allows him to express support for students sharing controversial or nondominant views and to create room for students to engage with one another. This technique can be especially helpful for large classes, where some students might be quite far from the front...

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Step 6: Using Small Groups to Expand Participation and Deepen Thinking

Engaging in partnered and small-group work gives many students a chance to join the classroom discourse at the same time. Christina Villarreal highlights how she uses these smaller conversations to help students engage with the curriculum and work through challenging topics more safely. These more intimate conversations can also help fuel subsequent whole group discussions. Especially when students are showing signs of discomfort or shyness, Villarreal finds that these smaller discussions encourage participation: “Generally speaking, my experience has been that students...

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Step 7: Providing Multiple Ways for Students to Engage in Class Discussion

Participation in a course is not limited to the time spent in the classroom each week. Providing students with multiple avenues for sharing their thoughts and questions outside of scheduled class time brings more students into the conversation, particularly those who feel uncomfortable speaking in large groups. Tina Grotzer provides her students many opportunities to share their questions beyond speaking up during class: she solicits written feedback at the end of class, facilitates online discussions, and hosts weekly drop-in lunches. As one of her students...

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Pathway 3 Conclusion

Complex factors influence which students feel comfortable speaking up in your classroom and when. Although some of these factors are outside your control, there’s a lot you can do to expand participation. Equitable discussions require intentional action from instructors, and as this pathway shows, there are many techniques that can help you include more students in classroom conversations, especially those students whose voices might otherwise go unheard or unappreciated. In this pathway, we learned a number of instructional moves that can help you bring more...

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Step 1: Presenting Material in Multiple Ways

Students learn best when instructional strategies give them different pathways into the content. Thus inclusive instructors build different modes of instruction into their lessons and activities, from analogies to anecdotes to concrete examples. Bob Kegan explicitly tells his students that they may not find all of his pedagogical moves engaging, but the very moves they find boring may be pivotal to their classmates. By presenting material in multiple ways, he invites all students into the course, not just those who learn from his natural teaching style. “I think my...

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Step 2: Employing Handouts to Support Diverse Learners

Students bring different levels of experience to their courses, so inclusive instructors provide the supports that a wide array of students need to be successful. They provide extra scaffolding to those students who need it and extra challenge to those students who are ready for it. Dan Levy uses course handouts as “a vehicle for the students to learn in class” and “a study guide after class,” as well as appendices that go beyond the course content “for the interested student.” With this one tool, Levy helps the many different learners in his classroom....

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Step 3: Leveraging Graphic Organizers as Optional Scaffolding

Like lecture notes, graphic organizers can provide important scaffolding as they guide students in making their thinking visible. Gretchen Brion-Meisels uses graphic organizers both for small-group discussions and in whole class share-outs. These organizers help students “who need more structure” keep track of their learning and “hold onto” key ideas they generate in class. In small groups, Brion-Meisels makes these graphic organizers optional, letting students decide how much they need to use them in order to have generative discussions. She also collects these graphic...

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Step 4: Applying Concepts Beyond the Classroom

Handouts and graphic organizers can be powerful tools to help students learn new ideas and revisit that learning after class. Tina Grotzer adds another tool for integrating learning with her "connecting forward" activity. At the end of each class, she asks students to look for examples of the concepts covered that day as they go about their lives over the next week. As her teaching fellow explains, “Asking students to go out into the world and test ideas to see how those ideas are affecting them outside of class gives them richer understanding than they would have if...

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Step 5: Using Project-Based Learning to Engage Students

Another tool to help engage students in course content is project-based learning, in which students gain focal knowledge and skills while completing an authentic and interesting project. Eric Mazur’s course uses project-based learning as “a Trojan horse, in which physics is hidden.” Mazur’s teaching fellow explains how project-based learning helps students retain what they are learning in class: “In the process of building something, the students really engage actively with the concepts, and they see a physical manifestation in the world of their knowledge.”...

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Step 6: Using Contracts to Foster Inclusive Teams

Effective teamwork can be challenging and often requires careful planning and effort. Eric Mazur and his teaching team use a variety of techniques to help individuals come together to create a high-functioning team. At the beginning of each project, individuals share what has made for effective team experiences in the past, and students build on these principles to create a contract of how the team pledges to interact. At the end of each project, each team member evaluates the performance of themselves, their peers, and the group as a whole. Mazur’s teaching assistant...

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Pathway 4 Conclusion

The activities and resources that you provide are an essential part of creating a welcoming and effective course for all students. Intentionally designing activities that will engage different learners and providing differentiated supports within those activities help make your classroom more inclusive. In this pathway, we learned that there’s no single activity or resource that works best for everyone, but incorporating a variety of activities and resources can help you reach all your students. These activities and resources include: 

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Levy Clip 2



Topics Covered

Eliciting participation; Questioning, listening and responding; Instructional technology; Peer learning; Making thinking visible; conceptual understanding; reinforcing norms; movement in the classroom; polling; engaging more voices

• Instructor: Dan Levy, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy
• Student Group: Graduate
• School: Harvard Kennedy School
• Course: Advanced Quantitative Methods
• Clip Length: 8 minutes, 35 seconds

Go to Levy Clip 2

Using the physical space to support a democratic philosophy

While students certainly pay attention to their professor’s verbal communication, they also pick up on nonverbal cues. Sitting in a circle with your students instead of standing over them, or empowering them to participate without necessarily waiting to be called on can foster a democratic culture where all voices matter equally. In this video, Christina “V” Villarreal explains how she purposefully arranges her classroom and uses physical cues to build a classroom community that “agentizes” her students.

Asserting political opinions in discussion

An instructor’s personal or political opinions might be less relevant when it comes to some topics, but asserting your opinions on certain controversial issues may be crucial. In this video, Christina “V” Villarreal and Tim McCarthy reflect on when and why they choose to assert certain political positions or strongly held beliefs in a discussion, particularly when “a line is crossed” or when “stakes are high.”

Using small groups to intensify focus and provide safer spaces

To get students comfortable speaking in larger groups, discussion leaders might choose to start the conversation in smaller groups first to provide a safe environment for students to gain comfort and confidence while testing out ideas with their peers. In this video, Christina “V” Villarreal discusses how she breaks her class into smaller groups when she wants to draw attention to certain material, or when discussion topics require vulnerability from students.

Adjusting lesson plans in real time

Making quick mental calculations can at times be an awkward maneuver, but it’s far better to readjust in response to the natural pulse of a class than to forge ahead, blind to the individual needs in the room. Christina “V” Villarreal is carefully attuned to these immediate needs and exercises plasticity with her lesson plans to accommodate them. In this video, she uses the guiding questions outlined in her syllabus to prioritize class time and focus spontaneous discussion.

Waiting for student responses

Processing information requires time to think. Although several seconds of silent think-time can be uncomfortable for students and professors alike, extending the time between when you ask a question and receive an answer can increase the number of students who volunteer to participate and improve the quality of their responses. In this video, Christina “V” Villarreal describes her thought process behind strategically using wait-time at different points in a discussion.

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