Keeping course content up to date helps both students and instructors stay engaged with disciplines as they evolve. Including a variety of perspectives and examples in your course content can help students connect course material to their own experiences and goals. This page offers strategies from research literature and our L&S colleagues for updating and diversifying your course content.
Pick one Mini Discussion below and include a 10-15 minute conversation in your next group meeting.
1. Seek new perspectives from colleagues
Excerpt from L&S Exchange Episode 6: Education as a Practice of Freedom: Inclusive Classroom Conversations with Dr. Christy Clark-Pujara, Professor of History in the Department of African American Studies.
Finding new perspectives on your course material can help you enrich your course for students. Prof. Christy Clark-Pujara creates a terminology sheet each semester to help students learn new terms and feel confident communicating accurately and with sensitivity. In this podcast excerpt, Christy explains how she stays up to date with terminology that may change based on new knowledge or changing social norms.
One of the really great things about being on a campus of this size is that you can find an expert on almost anything. When I was working on my terminology sheet, I reached out to colleagues in the Asian American Studies Program, in the American Indian Studies Program. I reached out to folks in biology. I reached out to my colleagues in Gender and Women’s Studies, right? Like I don’t need to know all the answers. I’m in an institution of a whole bunch of experts. And one thing I really love about UW-Madison, when you send an email to a colleague that you don’t know, and they see that wisc email, they just get back to you. So you don’t have to have all of the answers.
Discussion Questions
- Think of a time you’ve learned from a colleague or shared a new perspective with a colleague. Share that experience with the group.
- Consider one course that you teach. What are the main topics in this course? What other disciplines might offer a new perspective on these topics?
2. "Humanize" your course content
Based on surveys with undergraduate students in STEM courses, researchers in one study found that “diversity-neutral” citation formats allowed for student biases to persist. They implemented an intervention of “humanizing” existing lecture slides to add images and full names of researchers alongside citations. Image A depicts an example slide before the intervention, and image B depicts an example slide after the intervention. Instructors made efforts represent a diversity of researchers. Surveys at the end of the course indicated that 75% of students agreed it was a good practice. Students expressed various reasons why, including the value of showing diversity & increasing belonging; giving scientists proper recognition; and helping students remember the material or investigate content further.
Recommendation from Henri, D. C., Coates, K., & Hubbard, K. (2023). I am a scientist: Overcoming biased assumptions around diversity in science through explicit representation of scientists in lectures. PLoS ONE 18(7). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271010
Discussion Questions
- How might humanizing your course content inform your students about your discipline?
- What might be the challenges to humanizing course content?
- Besides adding images and full names of researchers to slides, how else might you humanize your course content?
3. Take a cue from relationship planning
One common piece of advice to keep a relationship fresh and meaningful is the 2-2-2 rule, presented in the chart below. Consider how you might apply a similar rule to refresh your course content at regular intervals. We’ve provided ideas to get you started. What works for you will depend on your teaching style, discipline, and other factors.
| Interval | Relationship Example | Course Content |
| Every 2 weeks | Go on a date | Seek feedback from colleagues or students Add your own example |
| Every 2 months | Plan a weekend getaway | Implement a small change to a class activity or assignment based on feedback Add your own example |
| Every 2 years | Go on a longer trip together | Inventory syllabus and revise to incorporate a reading published in the last 2 years Add your own example |
| Add your own interval | Add your own example |
Many thanks to Dani Clevenger for suggesting this fun topic! The definition for the 2-2-2 rule above comes from McMillan, R. (2024, November 11). What is the 2-2-2 Relationship Rule and How Can You Follow It? the knot. https://www.theknot.com/content/2-2-2-rule
Discussion Questions
- What steps (small and large) could you take to review, update, or diversify your course content? At what intervals would it make sense to take these steps?
- How might you hold yourself or colleagues accountable for taking steps to update your course content?
4. Shift your approach
Excerpt from L&S Exchange Episode 7: The Purpose of the College Classroom with Prof. John Zumbrunnen, Professor of Political Science, Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Vice Provost for Teaching & Learning.
Sometimes a new approach to the same content can help you find new meaning in your course and help students connect more easily with the material.
I know that was the Introduction to Political Theory course. You know, that was an opportunity not just to change the modality, but to really rethink the organization of the course. I shifted that course from a chronological–in my subfield, we tend to say Plato, the ancient Greeks, up to the contemporary moment–to shift from that chronological organization of the course to a conceptual organization of the course. Sort of thinking about big political ideas, justice, power, freedom, equality. And, you know, trying to think there about what would resonate in particular with students in a largely asynchronous online experience. And then what happened, which is I think a fairly common story, is that transformation of the course for an online setting produced a transformation of the in-person course that I think is better. It’s, if I’m honest, it still, when I teach the course, challenges me because, you know, I was raised as a political theorist on a chronological approach and shifting over into that conceptual approach, it still makes me rethink things, and that’s fun.
Discussion Questions
- What is a traditional sequence or approach to content and topics in your discipline? How do students experience it?
- What is one change you could make to how your course content is sequenced or grouped? How might this change resonate with students?
5. Incorporate authentic examples & scenarios
In Fall, 2024, the IDC had a conversation with the Dean’s Ambassadors–a group of L&S students–about teaching and learning. Across the board, these students found that incorporating authentic content, such as real-world examples and scenarios, helped them to learn and enjoy their course material. Examples included a writing assignment about the applications of quantum mechanics and an analysis of actual CDC data. As you read these comments from two Dean’s Ambassadors, consider how you might incorporate authentic content into your course.
“[TA in Math] really made each discussion fun and interesting by giving real world application of how concepts are used. Moreover, he would recap concepts taught in class really quickly and really well. He would then start group worksheets allowing everyone to learn as we go along.” – Hriday T., Dean’s Ambassador
“[Professor in Communication Sciences & Disorders] does a great job of combining real-world examples, case studies, and relevant guest speakers with / about the conditions and neural mechanisms about which we are learning. This makes the content memorable and applicable to our other studies, work experiences, and future careers.” – Dean’s Ambassador
Discussion Questions
- What could authentic learning look like in your field? What examples and scenarios would feel most authentic to students?
- How might students benefit from more authentic examples and scenarios in your class?