There are many ways to think about inclusive course design—and, indeed, new pedagogical philosophy suggests “inclusive” isn’t enough and instead we should think about “equity-minded” course design.[1] Having taken a workshop series on universal design for learning (UDL), I opted to use that as my guide when I created a new LGBTQ Cinema course. I found that many of UDL’s principles were things I was often doing but simply didn’t have the vocabulary for and didn’t fully understand the implications of. Others seemed easy to implement without disrupting my vision for the course and, indeed, often enhancing it. In this essay, I will describe some examples to encourage others to take small steps toward more inclusive course design.

The course was organized into three units examining different aspects of what “LGBTQ media” might mean: representation of LGBTQ people on screen, media created by LGBTQ-identified creative professionals, and media admired by and associated with LGBTQ audiences and fans. Several facets of the course design were beyond my control, most notably the delivery format and enrollment. In a space-saving measure implemented by the university, the course only met once a week. Due to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, the weekly meeting moved to Zoom. The course was open to students in Film Studies and Production and in Women and Gender Studies or the LGBTQ Studies minor. The enrollment was 15 students, whose class standing ranged from sophomore to senior.

After the semester, I applied for IRB approval to conduct follow-up interviews asking students about their experiences and their perception of UDL as it applied to our class. Only two students (13%) opted to participate in these research interviews. While this is a small sample size, the results of these interviews and the student evaluations of teaching indicate students perceived our course to be a positive learning environment with which they sustained engagement all semester.

The Three Tenets of UDL

The principles of UDL are designed to “optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn” by providing multiple ways for students to encounter course material, express what they have learned, and understand why they are learning.[2] The developers of UDL separate the framework of “universal design” into three major areas:

• Diversity of engagement (different ways students connect to the course material)
• Diversity in representation (varied forms of course content)
• Diversity in expression (flexibility with assignments)

My course was designed to consider each of these aspects in multiple ways. Given the brevity of this essay, I will focus only on what I found to be the most crucial example within each area. Overall, by drawing on the principles of UDL, my students and I were able to queer traditional class models in a way that greatly benefited them.

Diversity of Engagement

To encourage engagement with course themes outside class, students undertook several experiential learning activities. While some students learn better by doing, all students benefit from this more active mode of learning that helps them develop an awareness of “the overall big picture structure of organizations, communities, and cultures” and “their own cultural identity and how it influences and interacts with the identities of others.”[3] I posted links to virtual events that were thematically connected with class, and students shared others they found. Some of the opportunities would not have been available to them in a non-COVID semester. For instance, one student attended a panel discussion about the trans media documentary Disclosure and took a screen shot of Laverne Cox answering a question he asked her.

This experiential learning was important to helping my students connect to the queer community around them, but it is also politically savvy at a time when the humanities are under siege. We are often asked to justify how what we do matters outside class, and experiential learning activities help make our work tangible.

After the semester, several students presented their research at a campus Pride Month event to a thirty-person audience of friends, other faculty, and the associate dean. This was a useful experience to build their oral presentation skills. It legitimated the work of the semester, and, crucially, reiterated that humanities scholarship is ongoing, always connected to the world around us.

Diversity of Representation

Having taught film and media studies at six institutions in humanities- and social science-based programs, one consistency I have seen is that film and media studies classes are usually divided into critical texts and media objects. In an upper division course, the critical texts might be an assemblage of PDFs the faculty member is responsible for putting together. While these texts may be free, they often lack context students need that is taken for granted by scholars in the discipline. Critical readings are also not reflective of the many ways that people today learn: via docuseries, podcasts, the news on TV and on the radio, etc. How can we get students to actually do the reading? When they do it, how can we get them to think enough about it to discuss it in class?

For this class, “readings” ranged from academic essays published in monographs and peer-reviewed journals to scholarly blog posts to video lectures. Often a critical text could be encountered in two different ways. For instance, students were given a PDF of the introduction to Bo Ruberg’s Queer Game Studies and a link to a recorded lecture Ruberg gave from the book. Many opted to watch the lecture, and there was no distinction in their comprehension and ability to participate in discussion.

Additionally, I felt it was important that students participate in designing the syllabus. In our final unit on audiences and fans, it seemed fitting not only to inclusive course design but to the topic that students select daily topics, readings, and screenings. Because they were undergraduates, I gave them a list of starting ideas, though at least one student suggested a concept I had not included. Because we were limited for time, I helped select appropriate readings and screenings to accompany their choices. With additional time or in a graduate version of the course, I would have students do cursory research, essentially crafting a bibliography, in order to find appropriate material themselves. With syllabus co-creation, students are more likely to do the work because they have helped to determine what that work is, and they better understand the logic of course design and the choices faculty make. Syllabus co-creation may also help decolonize a syllabus, as students may suggest content that even a well-meaning instructor has neglected.

Diversity of Expression

Students in my class came from different learning backgrounds (gender studies, film production, and critical media studies), as well as their own individual backgrounds. Generally, in media studies, students have a range of production skills. To allow them to concentrate on what they wanted to express instead of how they expressed it, I designed each assignment with a flexible format. In response to the same assignment, students made podcasts, video essays, written essays, and live presentations. Students were asked to vary the form of their work in a subsequent assignment, so they could explore which methods of expression worked best for their learning.

Before the first assignment, students were given the evaluation rubric. This helped them see the connection between the assignment and the course learning outcomes, recognize the common goal they were working toward despite their different project forms, and understand how consistent assessment would be applied to different project forms. Before the second assignment, students were given a chance to revise the rubric. By having input, students perceived their assessment as more logical and objective.

Conclusion: But How Is This Queer?

Once the semester ended, I conducted follow-up interviews to ask the students about their experiences with the use of UDL in the course design. Two students elected to participate in these interviews. Their responses to some questions mirrored responses found in the student evaluations of teaching. In the interviews and evaluations, students expressed their belief that having the freedom to choose how to complete assignments allowed them to create more thoughtful work. Both interview subjects additionally expressed that experiential learning was important to the course and that they would eagerly take another course with it.

In the evaluations, many students asked for the course to become a regular offering. While this was no doubt partly due to their interest in LGBTQ subject matter and their desire for increased courses on gender and sexuality, part of their interest was due to the course design and its ability to engage and inspire them.

At this point, I imagine a skeptical reader asking how what I am describing here is queer. There were many facets to the class that were incredibly normative: its weekly meeting over a fifteen-week semester, our use of assignments and grades, etc. But this is my point. Because of various university bureaucratic requirements, many of us may not find ourselves in the position to “burn it all down.” What we can do, however, is queer what is otherwise the normative educational format to focus on co-creation with students, experiential learning, and community building, in order to encourage our students to care about what they are learning and to understand that learning doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s part of larger world. To my mind, when teaching LGBTQ-themed material, this is the most important part.

1. University of Michigan Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, “Our Shift toward Equity-Focused Teaching,” accessed May 1, 2022, https://crlt.umich.edu/equity-focused-teaching/principles-strategies-resources. ↑

2. “The Universal Design for Learning Guidelines,” CAST.org, 2018, accessed May 1, 2022, https://udlguidelines.cast.org/. ↑

3. James R. Davis and Bridget D. Arend, Facilitating Seven Ways of Learning (Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2013), 246. ↑