Developing Diversity Awareness and Multicultural Competence Across Liberal Arts Campuses

Introduction

Our world is changing faster than it ever has, primarily in terms of technology, population, diversity, and education. These changes bring myriad challenges associated with adjustments to what is familiar. One way to help prepare each of our students for a life full of change and diverse interactions is to cultivate their empathy, tolerance, and multicultural competence. While it is difficult to “teach” appropriate attitudes and beliefs related to diversity and social change, developing students’ awareness and competencies to navigate change through the integration of the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes/beliefs (KSABs) identifiable within several topic areas may lead to more well-rounded and transformative lifelong learners who are amenable to all forms of change. Each of us has worked singularly throughout the years to develop our students’ multicultural competence; however, recent current events indicated that a greater need was emerging. It was time to combine forces and make a bigger impact.

Similarly, educational changes, digital and technological changes, and the movement toward more online learning offerings have also impacted our students in higher education (see Adekola, Dale, & Gardiner, 2017; Allen & Seaman, 2014; Bates, 2015; Dron, 2014). Where fully online courses are not utilized or a possibility, blended learning strategies have emerged with the intention of reducing in-person teaching time by providing a well-designed combination of online and face-to-face pedagogical and andragogical learning methods (Adekola et al., 2017; Garrison & Kanuka, 2004; Halverson, Graham, Spring, & Drysdale, 2012). These changes presented us with an opportunity to develop multicultural competencies in our students and provide a flexible learning environment across liberal arts college campuses. We developed and implemented diversity awareness modules across two liberal arts college campuses in Pennsylvania that combined KSABs students need to understand and navigate diverse social relationships in diverse arenas of interaction. This chapter discusses the use of blended learning techniques, digital tools, and learning management technologies, as well as instructional design and collaborative approaches to our own teaching, learning, and course development. Our intention was to create and disseminate modules that could be implemented in multiple courses, disciplines, and collegiate levels across college campuses in an effort to better prepare our students for the rapidly changing social landscape of interpersonal relationships and technological developments.