You may have heard Aesop’s fable of The Tortoise and the Hare . The two are pitted against each other in a race. The Hare is confident in his speed making him the clear winner, against the Tortoise’s slow and languid gate. The speedy Hare stops for a nap, and the Tortoise passes him and wins the race. The moral of the tale adds up to “slow and steady wins the race”. But what if we could learn from both the Tortoise and the Hare in our course revision and instructional design practices and win the race together? Tortoise: Managing Workload Over Time As instructors, we may be very much aware of the things we love about our courses or those that we wish we could change. Sometimes the small suggestions of an extra assignment, more active learning, updated readings, recording new lectures, updating an outdated learning technology can be…overwhelming. The Tortoise is the prime example of how to approach this process. Slow and steady. We are in our teaching for the long haul. We don’t need to...

Online textbooks and simulations have become commonplace in online courses. However, there is an increased need to review online content from an "inclusive lens". More research has helped instructors understand the value of embedding case studies and role models into their traditional courses that depict different genders and diverse ethnicities. Too often, computer-generated simulations use stereotypes and implicit bias to create narratives and visuals, and professionals that design the simulations are rarely educated in inclusion and diversity issues. However, students using virtual-reality headsets found themselves completely immersed in the storyline, and often empathetic to the avatars. Under-represented communities need to be able to see themselves as scientists, researchers, leaders in science, and our simulations needed to reflect the diversity of our school. At the School of Life Sciences, we created a team that would review all new simulation content with...