Principal Investigator: Dr Mona Sakr, Co-Investigator: Faiza Hyder

Funded by the Centre for Academic Practice Enhancement (CAPE), Middlesex University.

In three stages, the project examines how learning and teaching of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in university courses can be enhanced through digital critical pedagogies. This is urgent given the need to weave EDI more thoroughly into university learning experiences and the potentials of digital critical pedagogies – when designed and implemented effectively – to support with this.

Firstly, the project will systematically review existing research on the use of digital critical pedagogies to support EDI learning and teaching around the world. The review will highlight interpretations, characteristics and strategies of digital critical pedagogies that have been found to be most effective in enhancing EDI learning and teaching experiences.

Secondly, the project will investigate innovations and advancements of digital critical pedagogies that have emerged in the context of Middlesex University, at least partly as a result of the COVID19 pandemic and the transition to online learning and teaching. It will examine how a diverse range of lecturers, teaching in different disciplines and at different levels, developed digital critical pedagogic practices in their teaching of EDI. Based on the experience of those developing these practices, this strand of the project will suggest what can be learned about the future possibilities of digital critical pedagogies in teaching EDI.

Finally, the project will bring diverse Middlesex University lecturers together to develop concrete recommendations about how digital critical pedagogies for teaching EDI can be more systematically advanced in the university and in higher education more broadly. These recommendations, intended primarily for learning and teaching enhancement teams working in universities, might relate to 1) the types of digital platform that are most conducive to effective digital critical pedagogies, 2) the interaction between digital critical pedagogies and modes of delivery and 3) digital practices and activities that can support critical and meaningful discussion among students and lecturers about EDI issues.