Introduction & Welcome
Welcome to the Care & Equity module of Design Forward. This program is designed for those who want to think more deeply about how the spaces they design for education can best support learners and promote justice and equity. Topics will include the decolonization of the classroom, understanding student agency, fostering co-constructive mindsets for course design, and exploring alternative assessment techniques.
Module Structure
The module is organized into four nodes: Topics (which will frame the main themes to LEARN about); and Questions, Activities, and Resources (which provide opportunities for you to INTERACT and share your thoughts and work).
Topics for Consideration
Over the next two weeks, we'll invite you to learn more about the themes or topics that underpin this module. Each topic presentation includes a summary, short video, and brief slideshow for you to explore. We'll also point to ways you can dive further into the topic via questions, resources, and activities.
Resources for Study
Where we share readings and media that can help you expand your understanding of our work.
Questions for Discussion
Where we post some large questions for the group to wrestle with and respond to.
Activities for Exploration
Where we suggest some exercises to further consider the ideas of this module.
Your Engagement and Participation
During the module, we recommend you plan to explore each topic over the course of the program and complete one engagement per day. An “engagement” can look like different things: answering or asking a question, completing and sharing an activity, reading and annotating a resource.
Every day of the module, we will share a Daily Dispatch, in which we will highlight a topic and suggest possible ways to engage that day. You are not required to follow the suggestions in each dispatch, but you may find that doing so makes it easier to plan your participation.
Always feel free to modify, rethink, or even ignore any work that doesn't help advance your own thinking and learning
Flexibility and Individual Experience
All Design Forward programs are meant to be responsive to the specific needs of participants and the contexts in which they are living and teaching. To that end, we invite you to help mold the direction of the module via your conversation on discussion questions — and by introducing new topics and questions for discussion.
We will also be pointing to and suggesting specific activities in the DF Workbook that are related the topics of this module. We invite you to share your activity work on this site and to modify activities in anyway that helps advance your thinking.
Goals and Takeaways
Most importantly, you are the center of Design Forward. DF is not about developing (or “certifying”) courses, activities, assignments, or assessments (although all of those things are covered in various ways throughout the DF curriculum). Rather, this program is about helping people–teachers–to develop into more confident, agile, and adaptive designers of teaching and learning experiences.
Each participant’s experience will be unique, and only you can know what it is you need to advance your development. Throughout your participation, you may share goals, thoughts, activities, or any other reflection of your progress in your Participant Portfolio. As you progress through other DF experiences, we hope you continue to add to your portfolio as a record of your own development and growth.
