Description:

Bennett Goldberg will join our MPES seminar on Monday, April 29th, from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Refreshments and morning snacks will be provided!

About the event: There has long been an undeniable need for more inclusive learning environments in higher education, particularly in STEM courses. Due in part to alienating classroom climates and marginalizing instruction, historically excluded and minoritized students leave STEM majors – and hence careers in STEM – at significantly higher rates than majority students.

Practicing inclusive STEM instruction requires an understanding of the challenges learners face and developing strategies that actively support all students’ success. Inclusive instructors also must be aware of their own identities and impact to enhance their connection, awareness, and sensitivity to student experiences.

The Inclusive STEM Teaching Project has developed and implemented a free, open, online course that centers identity, power, positionality and privilege before focusing on evidence-based teaching and learning strategies.

Goldberg's course seeks to shift educator mindsets and abilities, through embodied case studies, optional local learning communities led by trained facilitators, and facilitated, virtual, affinity-based discussion groups. The course has run six times through fall 2024 with 11281 registrants, awarded completion certificates to 2565 learners who are largely instructors and maintained a completion rate of 60% for any learner who opened a single page, ten times the average for free online courses.

Coupled with the online, asynchronous interactive course are local learning communities led by project-trained facilitators. They developed content for and trained 494 facilitators at 154 institutions representing R1, comprehensive 2 year and community colleges who have run 108 local learning communities with 827 participants. Goldberg will report on research outcomes and give the audience short bits of the course and learning community experiences.  
 
Following the main presentation, Goldberg will provide a modest description of his academic pathway from physicist to educational change agent, from a traditional condensed matter experimentalist to leading projects on creating change in equity and inclusion through institutional change mechanisms in higher education.