Fostering Inclusivity Through Dynamic Teaching Practices

Teaching within the context of Higher Education (HE), often involves interacting with a wide variety of students, who come from, and have varying backgrounds, not just in their capabilities, but also with regards to their understanding. As such, dynamic teaching styles and practices need to be adopted in order to allow for inclusivity. This chapter highlights a particular case study involving the author, and a module that he currently leads—IMAT3406: Fuzzy Logic and Knowledge Based Systems. The teaching style and approaches adopted allow for a better understanding of core concepts, from which better executed applications can be garnered. Making sure that it makes sense to all, ensures that the foundational knowledgebase needed from which to build upon is adequately in place, so that everyone in the cohort is on a level playing field. This can be achieved through dynamic teaching practices, often involving acclimation and assimilation to the cohort. Making sure that a concrete understanding exists before the students are encouraged to undertake their coursework, has proved to cater for exceptional output, not only in terms of detail, but both in quality and substance. Through tried and tested means, the case study used in this chapter sheds light on the attributes of a successful approach; describing how the author’s own accession to harbouring inclusivity is adopted and executed for the module IMAT3406.