DEI4All Project Recognized
SUNY Online national DEI project selected for the EDUCAUSE Horizon Report 2024
The SUNY DEI for All (#DEI4All) project has been selected as an exemplar to be highlighted in the Educause 2024 HorizonReport | Teaching & Learning Edition. Exemplar projects are the heart of the Horizon Report. Below is a description of the SUNY/national project that has been selected to be featured in the publication (p. 27):
Inclusive Online Learning Environments: A National Collaboration to Support Online DEI for All
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) experts, higher education instructional/learning designers, and online teaching faculty from SUNY, the Center for Effective Teaching and Learning at Cal State LA, and California Community Colleges, along with individual contributors from over 60 institutions, have developed an openly licensed and freely available framework that integrates DEI practices into any online course quality rubric to help institutions, online instructional designers, and online faculty ensure inclusive, high-quality online course designs.
Project has included:
- 13 workgroups made up of 60 individuals representing 3 areas of expertise: DEI, Online instructional design, online faculty.
- A collaborative effort coordinated and facilitated by SUNY and partner co-leads to adapt 54 Cal State LA inclusive teaching practices for online teaching and learning environments and aligned with the major online course quality rubrics.
- 68 institutions from across the US (and Canada and Brazil) are currently represented in workgroups that are drafting the annotations.
- 11 SUNY representatives have participated in the project representing each institutional sector and the 3 areas of expertise from UAlbany, Stony Brook, SUNY Delhi, ESC, Genesee, SUNY COIL, Nassau, Schenectady, SUNY Online, and SUNY System DEI office.
- A technical platform used to categorize and organize the resulting annotations, to align the DEI online inclusive teaching practices with current online course quality rubrics, such as OSCQR, COLT, and QM, to facilitate the incorporation of the practices into online course designs/reviews, online faculty development, and as a repository of practical approaches for use by online instructional designers and online faculty in online course design and teaching practices.
- Releasing the DEI practices under a cc-by license to ensure that they are available with an open license and freely available to all.
- Parallel plans to incorporate DEI inclusive online teaching practices into existing SUNY OSCQR online course quality standards.
The EDUCAUSE Horizon Report® profiles key trends and emerging technologies and practices shaping the future of higher education, and envisions a number of scenarios and implications for that future. It is based on the perspectives and expertise of a global panel of leaders from across the higher education landscape. It is not a peer-reviewed publication. While there are several versions of the Horizon Report, this one represents exemplars specific to the 2024 Teaching & Learning Edition.
EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association whose mission is to lead the way, advancing the strategic use of technology and data to further the promise of higher education. We connect and empower our member community through insights, advocacy, resources, and learning opportunities to anticipate trends and strengthen professional practice.
Projects to be featured as exemplars in the Educause 2024 Horizon Report | Teaching & Learning Edition represent the six key technologies and practices identified by an expert panel for this year’s report. They are:
- Supporting AI fluency
- Supporting equitable and inclusive learning
- Protecting data privacy and security
- Finding appropriate uses for AI-enabled technology
- Navigating misinformation
- Supporting mental health
The intent is to give readers of the upcoming 2024 Horizon Report | Teaching & Learning Edition, a more concrete sense of how these technologies and practices are playing out in higher education. As one of the selected projects, we may be asked by Educause to present our work at conferences, webinars, or other publications.
The DEI project selected as an exemplar for the 2024 Horizon Report | Teaching & Learning Edition (p. 27) is associated with the “supporting equitable and inclusive learning” technologies and practices category of the report.
This project was also previously featured in the most recent 2023 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report (p. 24): Holistic Student Experience Edition.
You can review past examples of projects featured in the 2023 Teaching and Learning Edition starting on page 20 of this document.
This important work is a tangible example of how SUNY Online is working to support the SUNY DEI Action Plan in online teaching and learning across the SUNY System (2021 – https://www.suny.edu/media/suny/content-assets/documents/diversity/suny-dei-final-action-plan.pdf).
Alexandra M. Pickett, Director, Online Teaching, SUNY Online has served as an invited expert panelist for the Educause Horizon Reports for 2017-2019 and 2023-2024 higher education editions.