STRATEGIES FOR CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE ASSESSMENT DESIGN

"Strategies for Culturally Responsive Assessment Design: Reflexive Teaching, Contemplative Pedagogy and Student-Centered Assignments"

Part of the Lindenwood University Certificate in Culturally Responsive Assessment Speaker Series

Facilitator: Dr. Melissa Elmes

Description: This webinar first introduces a praxis comprised of culturally responsive, reflexive, and contemplative pedagogical practices that is then employed to redesign five standard classroom activities and assignments. The goal is to disrupt student expectations of their learning experience as an institutionally devised and directed series of boxes to check off on their way to a grade, and instead foster sustained, truly student-centered practices that harness students' own interests in service of their learning experience. The result is an approach to teaching and assessment that decenters the professor and the academy while still meeting course learning objectives, placing the development and demonstration of skills, competencies, and content knowledge in the hands of the students and advancing students' perception of themselves as competent, lifelong learners.

Professional Bio: Melissa Ridley Elmes is Assistant Professor of English at Lindenwood University. An award-winning instructor, she has taught in rural and urban K-12 public school systems, a selective private college prep boarding school, and public liberal arts, private liberal arts, and urban comprehensive universities.