Cultivating inclusive classrooms to foster student success

January 16, 2025

Dear instructors,

Our campus places great importance on having inclusive classrooms that foster a sense of belonging for all our students. To aid you in that mission, we wish to remind you of some of the resources that the campus provides to help you ensure your classrooms provide equitable opportunities for student success, are inclusive, and foster belonging.

Students succeed academically when they feel welcomed and included in the classroom, in their academic programs, and on campus. Consequently, we cannot realize the levels of academic achievement to which we aspire, unless we are committed to advancing equitable and inclusive instruction. By making our classrooms more inclusive, we remove barriers to student success and provide more equal opportunities for all students to succeed.

To support our instructors in creating more inclusive classrooms, our campus’s Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) offers many resources that help faculty promote a sense of belonging for students, including a stated commitment to advancing teaching in the service of social justice. Inclusive teaching encompasses teaching strategies and approaches that take into account and welcome the wide range of identities, experiences, needs, and backgrounds that students bring to the classroom by creating a learning environment where all students can thrive. This can include course design and teaching strategies that you regularly incorporate into your class and a mindset of being responsive to student needs and current events. 

Online Resources
Online CTL resources that may be of particular interest to instructors include:

Fostering Belonging in Teaching

Flexible Instructional Strategies to Meet Students Where They Are

Gender Justice in Teaching

Disability Justice in Teaching

Reflective Teaching

In addition, many valuable suggestions can be found in our University Health Services guide to Creating Healthy Learning Environments.

Consultation Services
For instructors who wish to go beyond online resources, CTL offers a variety of consultation services by request, including one-on-one and small group teaching consultations, support for collecting mid-semester feedback, classroom observations, customized faculty group programs, and presentations at department meetings. We encourage all instructors to peruse these services and take advantage of those they would find helpful. Deans and department chairs may wish to consider inviting CTL consultants to present at college, school, or department meetings on topics relevant to inclusive classrooms and student belonging.

Provost’s Teaching for Equity and Inclusion Faculty Course
We are also very excited that this spring will see the launch of CTL’s new Provost’s Teaching for Equity and Inclusion Faculty Course, which is designed to raise awareness of potential inequities both faculty and students face when engaged in the process of teaching and learning. This first cohort is currently full, but stay tuned for future opportunities to sign up.

Best Practices
Although this wealth of resources may seem overwhelming at first, keep in mind that developing a more inclusive classroom can begin with implementing a few new practices or straightforward changes. For example, some effective practices include: 

  • waiting slightly longer after asking a question before calling on a student, to give more students an opportunity to contribute; 

  • giving students multiple ways to contribute to class discussion, and not limiting participation to oral discussion; consider providing an alternative option for students to share their perspectives, such as by responding to an in-class writing prompt

  • inviting students who haven’t spoken up yet in a class period to contribute; 

  • inviting students to introduce themselves to each other on the first day of class or in an online discussion forum, such as by sharing where they’re from and their goals in taking the course; 

  • using discussion techniques that encourage students to talk in small groups before regrouping as a whole class, so that all students have opportunities to speak; 

  • learning as many students’ names as possible; 

  • conducting mid-semester evaluations that provide students with a low-stakes opportunity to provide feedback that you can use to be responsive to their experiences and improve your course;

  • using in-class polling to gauge student learning and viewpoints, to show students they aren’t the only ones who feel a certain way; and 

  • using a diverse variety of names and identities in hypotheticals, assignments, and exams. 

The Academic Senate has also suggested that faculty consider eliminating curve-based grading when possible, as grading on a curve fosters a spirit of competition over collaboration; can make it more challenging to promote academic integrity; and exacerbates students’ stress and anxiety, among other downsides.  

Closing Thoughts
We hope these suggestions inspire you to develop your own teaching practices as you launch into the spring semester. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to consult the Center for Teaching and Learning if you are interested in further support or thought partnership related to inclusive instruction.

As always, we are tremendously grateful for everything you do for our students, and look forward to a semester of continued academic success for all.

Sincerely,

Benjamin E. Hermalin, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost

Amani Nuru-Jeter Chair, Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate

Oliver O’Reilly, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education

Jenae Cohn, Executive Director, Center for Teaching and Learning