Share Paper: Encouraging Awareness and Empathy for Diversity through Experiential, Practiced Simulations

  1. Farah Vallera, Lehigh University, United States
  2. Noor Syed, Lehigh University, United States

Abstract: The diversity of classrooms across the U.S. has changed exponentially throughout the years. Individuals must be able to communicate and collaborate with individuals unlike themselves, but are often not prepared to do so. As educators, it is our responsibility to help develop our students’ competence, empathy, and tolerance so they are more aware of the differences between diverse audiences. This paper describes an experiential, simulation-based learning activity designed to encourage graduate students’ development of empathy for and awareness of diverse student populations. In order to allow students to take the “role of the other,” they were placed into different situations ...