Create an introductory video to humanize your online course.

Ensure course content is fully accessible and offered within multiple modalities to honor learners of all backgrounds and styles (audio, text, video, hands-on, etc.).

Reduce the cost of class materials with OER (Open Educational Resources) when possible.

Utilize rubrics to assess anonymously and decrease unconscious/conscious biases in assessments. Learning outcomes and formal/informal assessments should include DEI knowledge, attitudes, and skills.

Ensure equitable access to the course so as synchronous activities don’t pose barriers to participation (e.g., recording sessions for students in other time zones, caretaking, etc.).

Ensure technology requirements don’t pose barriers to participation (e.g. remote students with limited devices, internet access, or bandwidth).

Ensure trigger warnings are properly labeled and located at the forefront for any sensitive content that could be offensive, traumatic, violent, or possibly re-traumatize certain groups.

Ensure sensitive content is deconstructed and situated within the historical context where warranted. Otherwise, keep in mind the viewpoint of those colonized, indigenous, oppressed people, etc.

Organize course content into small segments and ensure the online learning environment is standardized, consistent, easy to understand, and navigable (conduct usability tests with non-students in seeking feedback).

Recognize and honor the neurodiversity spectrum of students needing accommodations, modifications, and remain flexible in supporting student success for each individual as each case is entirely unique.

Ensure you are actively anti-racist via proactive and deliberate efforts to address the individualized, institutional, and systematic oppression of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) communities in a culture that systemically privileges whiteness and Eurocentric views.

If possible, embrace Critical Race Theory in “understanding and rectifying the ways in which a regime of white supremacy and its subordination of people of color in America has had an impact on the relationship between social structure and professed ideals such as ‘the rule of law’ and ‘equal protection.’”

Establish classroom norms and monitor group work to look for and address inequities and biases that might be structural, cultural, gender-based, etc.

Advocate for departmental and institutional support for promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice within and outside of your spheres of influence.

Utilize inclusive language and avoid using acronyms, analogies, colloquialisms, metaphors, and abbreviations that are not clearly defined and might not be understood by all. Doing so might contradict the intention here.

Recognize and utilize pronoun preferences as well as the choice not to disclose gender and sexuality.

Learn how to and always pronounce names accurately/as preferred.

Create learning experiences that prompt students to consider the ways their positionality shapes their approach to the topic (privilege, intersectionality, backgrounds, prior experiences, etc.). Acknowledge, affirm, and support the identities of students who share diverse experiences and perspectives related to their backgrounds.

Develop your cultural competence by practicing openness, humility, flexibility, sensitivity, a spirit of adventure, sense of humor, and positive change.