Equity in Action

Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration for Inclusive Teaching Practice

As part of the Monash University Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Sharing Circle (EDI-SC), I collaborated with the group on the creation of Equity in Action, an online resource designed to move inclusive teaching from theory to practical application. 

The initiative stemmed from earlier work mapping the CDIO engineering framework against Advance HE’s EDI curriculum standards, identifying substantial overlap between good practice pedagogy and inclusive teaching practice. We aimed to find alignment between these two frameworks and articulate this for engineering educators.  It was validating that the principles I value in quality learning design heavily intersect with inclusive teaching practices. 

From this paper, we narrowed our focus to actions that weren’t explicitly captured across good practice education standards and created inclusive teaching practice stretch goals. We transformed our findings into concrete actions and scalable ‘implementables’ to help time-poor educators begin embedding inclusive practices.

Image: Equity in Action screenshot.

The team began drafting the conference paper in November 2024, with a tight full-paper submission deadline in mid-January 2025 and a scheduled presentation in early June. At the same time, we committed to translating the paper’s findings into practical, actionable resources by launching the Equity in Action site in time to showcase it at the conference. This meant progressing two major deliverables in parallel while fulfilling our regular business-as-usual responsibilities. Much of this work was conducted in small windows of opportunity as we juggled professional obligations, competing priorities, and the intensive collaboration required to meet both goals.

The process was highly collaborative, drawing together Educational Designers from multiple faculties with diverse disciplinary backgrounds, professional strengths, and lived experiences of equity and inclusion. I drew on my experience in Universal Design for Learning and Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in general to contribute examples that could bridge disciplines while learning about inclusive practices outside my domain from colleagues.

Throughout the project, I felt energised by our collaborative efforts. Sometimes collaboration outside your work area may seem like a burden as it can take away precious ‘business as usual’ time, but there’s much to be said about connecting with people who share your skills, experience, and passion. Our shared human-centred values (empathy, humility, activism) smoothed collaboration and supported consensus-building. Through this initiative, I learnt the true value of finding your tribe. 

Equity in Action is a living resource, and we continually work towards building further implementables and refining the actions, ensuring relevance across disciplinary boundaries. Inclusive teaching is not a static goal but a living, evolving practice best achieved when expertise is shared across disciplines.

Image: Screenshot of an implementable: Establishing a co-created team contract for group assessment tasks