First-Day Info Sheets: A Tool to Prompt Semester-Long Inclusive Teaching

Abstract

What faculty do and say on the first day of class is crucial to establishing and maintaining an inclusive learning environment for the duration of the semester. First-day information sheets (“info sheets”) are commonly used by instructors. By making simple modifications to this tool, we can gather more information about the goals and experiences of our students, the lives of our students outside of our classroom, and how our students’ lives may impact their engagement with the course material and course structure. We can also use this information to actively highlight to students that their full selves (names, pronouns, background) belong in our biology classroom. We provide a set of prompts and suggested steps, rooted in the scholarly literature, to encourage and facilitate faculty use of info-sheets as a valuable tool to inform semester-long inclusive teaching efforts.