DEI Audit Rubric Use

All categories and standards in the EarlyEdU DEI Rubric are scored using a 5-point scale and include a notes section to write your findings and suggestions. Our team wrote the standards by incorporating promising practices from sources like CAST for universal design for learning, various inclusive language and writing guides, and organizations supporting the early childhood profession (See References).

As we developed and tested the rubric, our team scored each standard by looking at one course session at a time (typically our courses include 10-15 sessions) and reviewing how close to the standards the session content and design were. As part of this process, we quickly realized that we needed a resource to aid with consistency and interpretation of the standards for reviewers. In response, we created a DEI Audit Reference Guide which we continued to edit and refine throughout our process and as multiple users conducted audits and debriefed their scoring.

The DEI Audit Reference Guide provides recommendations for scoring and norming practices, as well as a description and examples of each standard within the areas of content, design, and overview.

There are 10 suggested steps to the DEI Audit process.

1. The kick-off meeting: In the kick-off meeting, we figure out who the reviewers will be and what course sessions each person will review. (See Appendix B: DEI Audit Kick Off Guide)
2. Pre-audit tasks: Before reviewers begin reviewing their individual sessions, we do a few pre-audit tasks, such as running the link validator in Canvas.
3. Practice norming: We look at the course overview for some of the teaching practices standards and to standardize how we are scoring with the rating scale.
4. Debriefing norming: We meet and compare the scores we assigned to the course overview, discuss them, and adjust.
5. Audit sessions: The DEI team reviews their assigned sessions using the rubric and records their scores in the spreadsheet.
6. Debrief audit: We discuss the results, prioritize what needs to be addressed. (See Appendix E: DEI Audit Debrief Tool)
7. Action items: We create our action items to update the course.
8. Course updates: From there, we bring together the group who will be updating the course and distribute the work.
9. Apply prioritized updates: Designated team members complete updates on the course
10. Quality Assurance and re-launch: After all the updates are complete, we perform our usual quality assurance checks and then re-launch the course.