NSF COVID-19 DEI Challenge


Overview: The EDLI team developed a submission to the NSF DEI COVID-19 challenge, detailing EDLI as a key player in improving DEI across MSU through projects in student success, course evaluations, and institutional policy changes.

Outcomes: A submission representing Michigan State University to the NSF DEI COVID-19 challenge for our work with undergraduates.

EDLI submitted a nomination for Michigan State University for the NSF DEI COVID Challenge award for its impacts on undergraduate students in improving digital learning. We detailed the creation of EDLI and how it works to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion (quotes from the award submission):
“The members of EDLI were able to use their existing networks and collaborate with the MSU Library and the Information Technologies (IT) to address digital education challenges from a new approach. The capacity created by this collaboration filled an existing void, in that no centralized unit was previously dedicated to teaching and learning. As a result, after the initial scope of work was met, the collaboration was continued.
EDLI’s mission is to humanize the digital learning experience through a values-enacted approach to develop, implement, and evaluate evidence-based pedagogies and technologies for 21st-century learning. Individually, team members work in their units to identify and address the individual or course-specific issues that students and faculty face. As a team, EDLI works at scale by aggregating data from each college and participating in university-wide policy and IT infrastructure choices. The aims of this structure and approach are to build on the promise of increased digitization of instruction and implement DEI best practices and teaching pedagogies in MSU’s digital learning contexts across the university, including for STEM students. EDLI has been working to address digital inequities in three ways: access to technology for students, creating a culture of identifying and addressing student success challenges in online environments, and professional development for faculty.”

The submission went on to detail specific projects within each category, such as evaluating and improving student success in math, conducting validated mid-semester evaluations, and implementing the collaborative laptop loan project. For our submission, Stephen developed a comic demonstrating the development and impact of EDLI. MSU was not selected as one of the award winners for this program.

Publications: The EDLI Comic drawn by Stephen Thomas was created for this work.

Author/Personnel: by Caitlin Kirby; full EDLI team

Stephen Thomas

Dr. Stephen Thomas is a faculty member and the Associate Director for the Center for Integrative Studies in General Science at Michigan State University and the Digital Curriculum Coordinator for the College of Natural Science. He provides expertise for the EDLI team in pedagogy, curricular reform, and visual thinking.