A guideline or set of options to handle the diversity in the students' background in a university lecture

1. Handling diversity in my classroom:
The guiding principles and practical examples
Dr. Behzad Behdani
Operations Research and Logistics

2. What I want to deliver here:
• What is diversity?
• In which aspects our students are different?
• Why we need to care about diversity?
• How to handle diversity: some guiding principles
• How to handle diversity: some specific best practices

3. Background

4. What is diversity and why we should care?
 Broadly speaking, diversity refers to a state in which
there are many different forms present.
 In a classroom setting, diversity can present itself in a
number of different ways: multicultural students,
different learning styles, distinct personalities, etc.
 Making sure each student feels like they belong in the
classroom is essential in order to maximize the
effectiveness of the learning process.

5. We will specially focus on:
 Diversity in Learning Styles
 Diversity in Cultural Background
 Diversity in Knowledge Background

6. Diversity and Wageningen University Vision
of education
 Internationalisation and diversity is a main path taken by
WUR in its education vision.
 Meanwhile, “Flexible and personalised learning paths” is
a main principle in Wageningen Education vision.
Therefore, the teaching methods in the courses need to
be designed flexibly to provide a personalised learning
path.
 It is fair to assume that with the increasing diversity of
incoming students, their starting levels of knowledge
and skills will also be different as well.

7. Internationalism as a key factor
 Universities throughout the world are now being ranked
for their level of internationalization.
Spencer-Oatey, H., & Dauber, D. (2019). Internationalisation and student diversity: how far are the opportunity
benefits being perceived and exploited?. Higher Education, 1-24.

8. Guiding principle 0:
understand and celebrate the diversity
 This is the basic principle: diversity is not a challenge but
can be a value for learning.
 Each student in a classroom brings something new and
distinct to the table, including world views, backgrounds,
experiences, cultural contexts, preferences, dislikes,
personalities, etc.
 It is important to embrace diversity and make positive
use of it

9. Practical example 1: Revealing the
diversity
 As an ice-breaker in the first meeting, ask students to
discuss about their background, nationality, discipline,
their learning preferences, etc. in peer. Repeat this for a
couple of times.
 As another energizer in the first class, you can ask
students to rank themselves in terms of their learning
style, e.g., in the range of 1 to 10 by standing in
between two points in the class.
 Use this knowledge to in selecting your teaching
methods and designing lectures or practical sessions
(e.g., by mixing different students in different teams)
 You can also positively mention “that is good that we
have this diverse students in the class; so we can see
the topics from different views ”

10. Practical example 2: Planning for diversity
 To cope with the diversity of students, we also need to
have diversity in our teaching methods, materials,
feedback moments, etc: BE READY FOR THAT! This also
needs a new MINDSET!
 Accommodating diversity needs a lot of planning.
 Take time to plan for different lectures, the pre-class
and in-class activates and diverse feedback and
evaluation methods.

11. Diversity in Learning Styles

12. Diverse learning styles
 Three main ways our students are learning best:
● Visual learners need to see things to truly grasp
them.
● Auditory learners like to hear information.
Matches traditional classrooms.
● Kinesthetic learners learn best while moving
and/or touching a stimulus related to the lesson.
>> mostly in practical sessions
 There are also other factors like time of the lecture or
the BSc/MSc differences influencing the learning style
and pace of learning of students

13. Guiding principle 1: diversify your teaching
methods
 All students don’t learn or develop knowledge at
precisely the same time or under the same kinds of
educational experiences. What some students learn in
the classroom, other students may learn during their
participation in other teaching activities.
 By incorporating different teaching methods to
accommodate different ways of learning, not only do you
ensure that each student is learning the material
effectively, you also broaden students’ abilities.

14. Practical example 3: plan, plan and plan
 Pre-assess students’ readiness or learning profile (for
example in a pre-class activity)
 Then, plan varied approaches to the 3 aspects of
lessons we can change…
● Content – what we teach;
● Process – how we teach it; and/or
● Product – how students demonstrate understanding
or skill
 These changes can be based on an on-going
assessment, adjust as needed.

15. Guiding principle 2: be clear and
structured
 Students with different capabilities may have different
learning pace.
 To be sure that everyone has understood the main
concepts, you need to give a clear structure to the
learning materials as much as you can.

16. Practical example 4: break down the whole
to pieces
 Strat the course with a clear structured schedule for
the course and how different topics and activities are
related. Preview the schedule with students and highlight
academic and behavioral expectations for each activity.
 Keep instructions brief. Break multi-step directions into
smaller subsets-and have the student complete one
subset before advancing to another.
 Write assignments or complex concepts on the board in
addition to saying them.

17. Practical example 5: communicate clearly
with students
 Use simple, clear language when communicating with
the students.
 Speak in a clear voice that all students can hear easily.
Be sure that all students can see the board or projection
screen without difficulty.
 Make eye contact with the student before giving new
concepts.

18. Guiding principle 3: incorporate multiple
forms of assessment
 If students are learning differently, the diversity must be
reflected in the assessment of students as well.
 Looking at a problem differently and learning in different
pace would also mean the students can benefit from
peer and group feedbacks.

19. Cultural Diversity

20. Cultural Diversity in the Classroom
 Cultural Diversity
The different cultures that you’ll encounter in
classrooms and how these cultural differences must
be handled.

21. Guiding principle 4: be multi-cultural in
your course materials
 Choose culturally relevant curriculum and instructional
materials
 Students' self-esteem is strengthened when they see
and read about the contributions made by their own
racial or ethnic groups.
 Students also come to realize that teachers value and
appreciate each child's culture and language.

22. Practical example 6: diversity in choosing
the cases or examples
 In case study and group works, students can choose the
cases for their countries or you can provide a list of
possible cases from different regions.
 Also in giving examples, you can have different
examples from different regions or countries (and not
necessarily, for example, the Dutch examples)

23. Guiding principle 5: Identify and dispel
stereotypes
 Studies involving people of all ages who are subject to a
range of different stereotypes (e.g., race, ethnicity,
gender, age) have consistently shown the power of
stereotypes to negatively impact all kinds of
performance, depending on the stereotype.
 Researchers have found, for example, that awareness of
the negative stereotype that black and Latino students
are less intelligent than white and Asian students can
actually negatively affect performance levels in black and
Latino students.

24. Practical example 7: avoid stereotypes in
your conversation, examples or teaching
methods
 As a practice, we need to be aware of racial or sexist
stereotypes and avoid them; such as the use of "man"
for "human" or the use of the pronoun "he" in referring
to both men and women.
 Using some terms like “third world countries”, “non-
western countries”, “eastern countries”, “Latino”, “Black”,
… in a classroom and as a teaching material/examples
may harm the sense of inclusiveness in the class.
 Avoid clustering students in the group works based on
ethnic or gender.

25. Diversity in Knowledge
Background

26. Disciplinary diversity
 Disciplinary diversity refers to teaching students from
diverse disciplinary backgrounds: for example,
teaching a course for non-majors or non-specialists (law
for business students, ethics for medical students, or
chemistry for engineering students).
 There is also a trend for multi- and inter-disciplinary
course design building on the different perspectives and
ideas students bring with them from other courses. Also
opening courses for different programmes in the
university.

27. Guiding principle 6: encourage differing
perspectives in the class
 Encouraging different ways to solve problems allows
students to come together and collectively contribute a
variety of solutions.
 This practice also teaches students the invaluable lesson
that there is often no one correct way to do things. If
students are encouraged to contribute different solutions
to a problem, not only will participation increase in the
whole class, but students will also feel as if their input is
valuable. They’ll then be encouraged to challenge
themselves to come up with solutions.

28. Practical example 8: again deign and plan
carefully
 For courses taught to students with different disciplinary
background, planning – especially for the pre-class
activities – is critical. It helps to bring all students to
the same level before discussing the concepts in the
class.
 Also in the class, use examples and promote
discussions to look at the problems from different
perspectives and discuss from other disciplines.
 Try to explicitly ask students of one background to
reflect on the problem; for example, if you are
discussing the design of new product ask law students to
reflect on the regulatory issues or food technology
students to discuss the technical challenges.

29. Practical example 9: include other people
in teaching
 Search out people that are different from yourself to
share certain ideas with your students (like in guest
lectures).
 Especially look for experts who themselves crossed
different disciplines in their studies or career
development.

30. Guiding principle 7: Use cooperative
learning strategies
 It is preferred to give a good weight to group works or
joint assignments (as well as peer-feedback) in the
design (and evaluation) of assignments for courses with
high disciplinary diversity.
 You can also make it more explicit – if possible. For
instance, in a supply chain management course, you can
specifically ask students in their case assignment to
address the marketing aspects and technical aspects of
chain design in a group assignment.
 For this purpose, indeed, we need to distribute the
students with different background equally in different
teams.

31. All principles in one snapshot
Type of Diversity Guiding principle
Diversity in Learning
Styles
• Incorporate multiple forms of
assessment
• Be clear and structured
• Diversify your teaching methods
Cultural Diversity
• Identify and dispel stereotypes
• Be multi-cultural in your course
materials
Diversity in Knowledge
Background
• Use cooperative learning
strategies
• Encourage differing perspectives
in the class
Basic principle: understand and celebrate the diversity

32. Some sources for further reading
 Day, Nancy E., and Betty J. Glick. "Teaching diversity: A study
of organizational needs and diversity curriculum in higher
education." Journal of Management Education 24, no. 3
(2000): 338-352.
 Sheets, Rosa Hernández. Diversity pedagogy: Examining the
role of culture in the teaching-learning process. Pearson/Allyn
and Bacon, 2005.
 Banks, James A. Cultural diversity and education:
Foundations, curriculum, and teaching. Routledge, 2015.
 Northedge, Andrew. "Rethinking teaching in the context of
diversity." Teaching in higher education 8, no. 1 (2003): 17-
32.
 Thomas, Kecia M., Ny Mia Tran, and Bryan L. Dawson. "An
inclusive strategy of teaching diversity." Advances in
Developing Human Resources 12, no. 3 (2010): 295-311.

33. “Diversity is the one
true thing we all have
in common. Celebrate
it every day.”