Lorayne Robertson, Sanya Cardoza, Wendy Barber

Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Society and Information Technologies: ICSIT 2023, pp. 72-77 (2023); https://doi.org/10.54808/ICSIT2023.01.72

Lorayne Robertson
Faculty of Education, Ontario Tech University, Oshawa, Ontario, Canada

Sanya Cardoza
Faculty of Education, Ontario Tech University, Oshawa, Ontario, Canada

Wendy Barber
Faculty of Education, Ontario Tech University, Oshawa, Ontario, Canada

Cite this paper as:
Robertson, L., Cardoza, S., Barber, W. (2023). From the Periphery to the Center: Undergraduate Co-creation of an Equity Course. In N. Callaos, L. Robertson, B. Sánchez, T. Tran (Eds.), Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Society and Information Technologies: ICSIT 2023, pp. 72-77. International Institute of Informatics and Cybernetics. https://doi.org/10.54808/ICSIT2023.01.72

This paper reports the findings from the analysis of the student work generated in an online, undergraduate course that was designed by undergraduate students. First, the authors examine student engagement in higher education from different perspectives, including the student role in quality assurance in the academy. They describe a project where undergraduate students who became engaged through the quality assurance process continued their involvement by designing a series of courses in equity, diversity and inclusion areas: equity foundations, inclusive learning environments, decolonization and enabling learning through technology. In this paper, the authors analyze the student learning outputs from the first student-designed course. The findings indicate that 1) a pedagogical stance toward student empowerment can be linked to student participation in quality assurance; 2) student involvement and empowerment can be encouraged into increasingly deeper levels of involvement; and 3) expanding student engagement in higher education opens spaces to allow for more authentic learning; and 4) newer pedagogical approaches to increase student engagement and social presence in online courses bring voices and experiences from the margins that can improve course and program design.