Teaching Diversity Online Is Possible. These Professors Tell You How.

Rebecca Bustamante, an associate professor of educational leadership at Sam Houston State University, says students have a tendency to shut down when talking about race during class discussions, which can be a challenge when you are teaching a course about diversity issues. And the challenges increase when the course is taught online.

Ms. Bustamante has developed some strategies over the years, but she wondered if other professors had come up with approaches to make online discussions on touchy subjects go smoothly. So she put the question on our continuing feature where we ask readers to suggest stories.

Courses about understanding diversity are standard in education and educational-leadership programs. The professors who teach them say they haven’t had many problems in their online courses, but they are aware that personal attacks and conflicts are a possibility. To them, building an online community and establishing trust are critical to keeping the courses on track.

The professors also say their students are more open and honest about their thoughts and experiences, something they chalk up to the online environment, where students are freed from the awkwardness of confronting difficult topics in person.

And while it might seem counterintuitive to teach diversity through an online format, Ricardo Montelongo, an assistant professor of educational leadership at Sam Houston State, says it’s doable. “You just have to do it innovatively and in a way that isn’t what you probably think an online course is,” he says.

But the online environment isn’t ideal. Shavonna Holman, an assistant professor of educational administration at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, says she would prefer to teach her course, called “Diversity and Equity in Education,” in a face-to-face setting.

“Being face-to-face, you are actually able to hear and see the passion,” she says. “Not having that face-to-face connection inhibits the class a little bit.”

Using Video

Mr. Montelongo and the other professors argue that for diversity courses, it’s particularly important for students to see and hear their instructor and one another. They turn to video to bring body language into the online classroom.

Erin McHenry-Sorber, an assistant professor of higher-education administration at West Virginia University, says some weeks, she requires students to all gather at the same time over an online videoconference system, which allows them to have a real-time discussion and get to know one another.

“While at first it might seem that the online format is a little distant in terms of creating community, in fact, we are seeing each other in our spaces,” Ms. McHenry-Sorber says. “I have students who are participating from the kitchen table. I have students who are participating from their bedrooms. It’s actually a really intimate space where we get to know one another in ways that we wouldn’t in a brick-and-mortar classroom.”

Paul Eaton, an assistant professor of educational leadership at Sam Houston, teaches a course called “Diverse College Students” in which he allows his students to respond to discussion-board prompts by recording a video.

“I’m finding that some of my students are starting to gravitate toward the video responses because it does allow them to put a face to a name,” Mr. Eaton says. “It allows them to engage in a conversation that feels more real, as opposed to just like reading static text on a page.”

Ms. Holman, at Nebraska, wants her students to know that she’s a real person rather than a robot who posts topics and grades assignments. So when she records a video, she says that if she messes up or if the phone rings, she keeps recording and leaves in those imperfections.

In Mr. Montelongo’s class, students know that they are going to see his face each week, when he previews the lesson and in the discussion boards. He says professors cannot be invisible while teaching this type of course. “Let the students see who you are,” he says. “Let the students see and hear your emotions. You have to share some bits of yourself.”

Setting Expectations

It can be a challenge, however, to get the students to participate in class discussions over video chat, says Ms. McHenry-Sorber.

Sometimes students prefer to write their thoughts in online discussion boards, where they have time to think through and edit their responses, and hopefully avoid off-the-cuff remarks that unintentionally offend others.

Whatever the medium, professors argue that it is important to set expectations early about class behavior and civility, defining clear ground rules. That way, students feel they’re in a safe space.

For instance, Ms. McHenry-Sorber says she begins the term by telling her students: “We are going to be talking about things that are really sensitive to certain people, and we may not even realize it. And we all come from different backgrounds and have different experiences. We need to think that while this space might not always be comfortable, it needs to be respectful. If someone says something that offends you, let’s have a conversation about it.”

Mr. Montelongo says he includes a respect-for-diversity statement in his syllabus, which is hard to miss, since it shows up in the first lesson and in a quiz.

Beyond that opening talk, Mr. Montelongo and others say they are actively involved in the discussion boards.

“I tell my students, I’m the ghost in the discussion boards,” Mr. Montelongo says. “I’m always hovering. I’m there, and if you don’t participate, you are going to find out because I’ll send you an email.”

In Ms. Holman’s course, she assigns different roles to the students. Someone might play devil’s advocate in the discussion board one week, while another would be assigned to kick off the thread in a creative way.

These days there’s no shortage of real-world examples when discussing issues of diversity, and engaging with those makes the course more relevant to students.

Mr. Montelongo and his colleague Mr. Eaton are looking to conduct a study on the experiences of students who go through online diversity courses. They hope to start collecting data at the end of the year.

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