Inclusive Design and Design Justice: Strategies to Shape Our Classes and Communities | EDUCAUSE Review

Design matters in higher education. Inclusive design and design justice provide frameworks and strategies that are attentive to learners for whom education has not typically been designed. 

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Design matters in higher education. In her book Mismatch, Kat Holmes writes, "Design shapes our ability to access, participate in, and contribute to the world."¹ , argues Amy C., Associate Provost for Digital Learning at Middlebury College 

Photo: Matt Chase © 2020

When we think about what that means in education—that design shapes students' ability to access, participate in, and contribute to meaningful, transformative learning—we are reminded how seriously we should be taking the concept of design in education. In her introduction to the keynote address at COLTT 20, Theodosia Cook, chief diversity officer for the University of Colorado system, commented about the context of higher education in the United States:

As I say these two phrases—inclusive design, design justice—I struggle to understand why some in our country are against these principles, these methodologies, when our creed states our government should be one of the people, by the people, and for the people. I would hope that you consider that the United States sits on the land of indigenous people, grew its wealth through enslaved Africans, expanded its territory by taking Mexican indigenous people's property, created railroad tracks off the backs of Chinese immigrants, and has always had its borders open to European immigrants who used this country as a penal colony where White convicts were allowed to come work off their debt and grow their wealth. . . . Our country today is in dire need of living up to its creed, and we can only do that if we embrace and live out the principles of inclusive design and design justice.²

As she notes, when there is both a growing realization of structural inequities across our social systems, including and especially our educational systems, and a denial on the part of many that such inequities exist, we are reminded of how critically we should be examining our designs and design processes in higher education.

We engage in design in many ways at educational institutions: from instructional design, to curricular design, to classroom design, and more. Yet design processes are often obscured or kept private as individuals or groups make decisions—for example, about how they will teach courses or which technologies will be used to support teaching and learning...

Conclusion

I want to conclude with a warning and a call to action. More than a generation ago, bell hooks wrote: "Within white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, we have already witnessed the commodification of feminist thinking (just as we experience the commodification of blackness) in ways that make it seem as though one can partake of the 'good' that these movements produce without any commitment to transformative politics and practice. In this capitalist culture, feminism and feminist theory are fast becoming a commodity that only the privileged can afford."²² I want to caution, as hooks does, against making gestures toward inclusive design and design justice without committing to the transformation required to change the structures of inequality and oppression that shape our students' lives. There is real, and challenging, work to do, and we cannot allow ourselves to stop at small moves.

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Recommended Reading

Mismatch:
How Inclusion Shapes Design
(Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life)

Source: EDUCAUSE Review