Today’s university student population has become more diverse compared to previous decades: social background, ethnicity, gender, family status, age, abilities, work obligations diversified as did the official claims of universities to accommodate and welcome diversity. Yet, this diversification can limit access to standard study settings of face-to-face lectures and seminars in a classroom on a weekly basis. So, how to accommodate diversity, how to make the classroom more inclusive?
One way of reacting to increasing diversity is using new technical support in running teaching virtually. Hence, universities and their faculty test out innovative teaching methods. Such formats include flipped classroom, blended or hybrid learning and teleclassing and they provide students and faculty with a flexible setup for teaching and learning, independent of space or/and time constraints. By using the virtual environment, universities thus hope to increase and facilitate access to their courses for a variety of traditional and non-traditional learners.
In this paper, we compare two cases of virtual classroom settings – blended learning and teleclassing – to discuss how well they respond to diversity among students and where problems can occur. The two course cases share core features (including the same teacher): same topic ‘EU gender equality policy’; trans-disciplinary setting with more than three disciplines each; English as language of instruction; next to ‘traditional students’ the attendance by working students, by students with care obligations, and by exchange students. The courses differed in the number of students (20 vs 90), study level (BA vs MA), country (Germany vs Belgium), time regularity (quite flexible vs weekly) and, last but not least, virtual teaching method (blended learning vs teleclassing).
For both cases and teaching methods, we discuss the opportunities and limitations of virtual settings in responding adequately to an increasingly diverse student body.
