WatSEE-aligned Actions
- Adopt course processes that positively impact student well-being and the teaching team (e.g., course policies, expectations, workload)
- Promote equity in students’ experiences and outcomes by incorporating growth mindset and sense of belonging strategies into your course outline’s messages, policies and practices
- Apply inclusive pedagogical principles (e.g., slip days, smaller lower stakes assessments, drop lowest score, ≤35% test weights, accessible teaching strategies and materials, timing coordination with core courses)
- Provide clear written course and assessment expectations
- Create a positive environment that respects diversity (e.g., use inclusive language, model respect, strive to learn student names)
- Foster a sense of belonging (e.g., normalize but don’t minimize academic stress or lived experience, learn how to respond to students in distress, refer students to supports and services)
- Foster a growth mindset (e.g., share own academic and personal challenges while a student, communicate ability can be improved and developed, provide constructive feedback on how students can improve, give low stakes chances for students to ‘fail’ and learn from it)
- Embed community-building activities into your course
- Integrate movement breaks into class to increase performance and well-being, considering student ability, for example:
- Stretching
- Interactive peer exercise (placing sticky-notes on boards)
- Permission to stand or get out of the chair during class, if able
- Learn how to respond to students in distress and how to interact with disabled students’ assistive devices (e.g., wheelchair, guide, listening aid)
- Reflect in course design and practices that an academic accommodation is a legal responsibility, not a favour; it removes barriers that exclude students, and it does not reduce rigour or academic integrity
- Consider in your course practices that the way your nervous system responds to sensory stimuli (e.g., fluorescent lights, perfumes/colognes) may not represent all students
- Employ trauma-informed pedagogical strategies, such as:
- Understand that students notably vary in their life experiences and that trauma (one-time, ongoing, or generational) impacts their learning and behaviour
- Provide a transparent course outline regarding instructional decision-making
- Promote safety by fostering healthy relationships with students and among students
- Ensure students know what to expect regarding upcoming difficult content and provide on- and off-ramps to potentially disturbing material (e.g., give students voice and choice where possible regarding participation and assessment)
- Discuss how language in historical documents, media, and materials may not reflect how we view and describe ideas now
- Adopt strategies that support Black, Indigenous, racialized, 2SLGBTQ+, disabled, and other historically underrepresented students
- Encourage students to determine how they should mediate their UWaterloo experience and support their well-being via organized activities (e.g., sports), unstructured activities (e.g., crafts), and/or university services and supports
- Use the Postsecondary Course Accessibility Guide to review and improve accessibility in your course pertaining to:
- Course outline: instruction and assessment formats, processes and policies, and essential requirements
- Course organization and navigation: LEARN setup of modules and assessments
- Course materials: instructor-created course content (e.g., lecture slides) and other source content (e.g., textbooks), assessments and learning activities, and educational technologies
- Communication barriers
- Physical learning space barriers
Resources
Accessibility at Waterloo
Ableism
Accessible Education
Postsecondary Course Accessibility Guide
Athletics and Recreation
Warriors Recreation Activities
Centre for Teaching Excellence
Supporting Students Mental Wellbeing: Course Design
Supporting Students' Mental Wellbeing: Instructional Strategies
Integrating Movement Breaks into your Class
Content Warnings
Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism
Anti-Racism Education Road Map
International Experience
Open-source modules for developing intercultural competence
Strategies to become a better intercultural communicator
Student Success Office
Making Referrals
IDEA Series for Advisors (support strategies for marginalized students)
Strategies for becoming a better intercultural communicator
Quick Tips and Tools (for students)
Campus Wellness
Mental health training opportunities
Identifying and responding to students in distress
Office of the Associate Provost, Students
Campus Life
Explore Your UWaterloo Life
Equity Accelerator
Effective Social Belonging Messages
Effective Growth Mindset Culture Messages
Syllabus Review Guide
Creating Student-Centred Course Policies
Ensuring Classroom Identity Safety
Creating a Belonging Story
Addressing an Identity Threatening Incident
Supporting Financially Stressed Students