For AIB World 2022 in Miami, the AIB T&E SIG offered two teaching cafés each day from July 6-8 on the following topics:

Diversity and Inclusion in IB education

This teaching café invited IB educators to share their experiences and learn from each other about: a) teaching practices that help to ensure fairness in student assessment and inclusion of diverse topics/theories in IB courses; b) pedagogical tools that support utilization of student diversity and when handling diversity of perspectives and views in the classroom; c) diverse materials and examples that IB educators could use beyond the Western-focused textbooks and cases; d) ways to develop own skills and support fellow educators in eliminating potential biases and growing open-mindedness; e) what business schools can do to incorporate diversity and inclusion in their own faculty and leadership.

Session chairs Ausrine Silenskyte and Marleen Dieleman shared reflections from their teaching DEI and institutional change towards DEI experiences and collected some resources (view here) inviting participants to develop them together further. Educators who joined the cafés were sharing a number of valuable insights on managing race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, mental health, and diverse abilities related aspects so everyone who joined learned a lot from their colleagues.

Study abroad in post-COVID

Participants joined to share thoughts, expertise, and questions related to current issues in study abroad programming in a round-table format discussion. T&E SIG facilitators, Karen Lynden and Daria Panina, helped direct the conversation, as well as share their own experiences of leading travel abroad courses in the current environment. Topics of discussion included airline policies, covid-testing (to leave and come home), contingency planning and risk management, passing on lessons learned, and setting all stakeholders, particularly faculty and students, up for ideal teaching and learning scenarios.  Topics that received the greatest discussion focus were: short-term travel abroad; programs where there is a mutual student exchange or shared course between universities; global virtual exchange; and student travel abroad in emerging markets.  Also explored in a lively exchange was the topic of contingency planning and risk assessment, particularly (1) policies for two faculty members leading a program, or a faculty and back-up responsible party to partner, in the event a faculty member became ill or quarantined, and (2) how programs were handling issues such as quarantined or ill students abroad.  Participants in the session ranged across a vast continuum of experience on topics ranging from many years of travel abroad experience, many years of college or university travel abroad programming leadership, to faculty embarking on creating a travel abroad experience for the first time or creating initial travel abroad programming for their HE institution.  All shared a mutual passion to create opportunities for students to experience travel abroad and cultural exchange in an IB context and we were grateful for all who took time to share their ideas.

Futures Studies for Sustainability

The Teaching Cafés on “Futures Studies for Sustainability: a New Approach to Management Education” led by Marina Schmitz  and Miguel Cordova introduced futures studies methodology and linked it to sustainability perspectives for IB in higher education. Participants were able to get to know and discuss selected exercises of the interactive and experiential learning nature of this topic. In addition, these sessions served as open roundtables to debate how to incorporate those exercises in IB topics such as sustainable development, maritime supply chains, and international procurement. Different resources were shared with the participants, focusing the discussion on how to apply these to their courses.